Hypnotism made plain

Hypnotism made plain by Maynard Shipley is a concise popular-psychology and medical primer written in the early 20th century. The book explains hypnotism and suggestion, outlining their scientific grounding, practical techniques, characteristic phenomena, and wider social implications.

It opens with a historical survey from Paracelsus and Mesmer’s “animal magnetism” to Braid’s psychological explanation, the Nancy school’s emphasis on suggestion, and Coué’s autosuggestion. It then presents practical methods for inducing hypnosis (fixation, verbal suggestion, relaxation, and even group sessions), reviews who is suggestible, and details therapeutic uses for pain relief, insomnia, bad habits, and functional disorders, with cautions and limits. A chapter on phenomena illustrates catalepsy, anaesthesia, altered senses, automatic writing, post-hypnotic actions, and the role of the subconscious, contrasting hypnotic somnambulism with sleepwalking. The book weighs hypnotism against psycho-analysis, arguing that suggestion is an efficient tool that often works through faith and imagination. It broadens out to mass suggestion in religion, politics, and war propaganda, and closes with cases of memory, amnesia, and multiple personality to show how hypnosis can probe and help reintegrate the personality while warning against showman abuses.