Healing through Imagination: The Multilayered Development of Hypnosis in France

For over two decades, the use of hypnosis for analgesic and relaxation purposes has been growing in France, whether in the treatment of chronic pain, in dental practices, in hospital emergency or oncology departments, or even in operating theatres. Its development is even more remarkable as a solution to a wide range of psychological problems (addictions, eating disorders, stress and anxiety, insomnia, etc.) A variety of professionals are involved in this field: licensed healthcare professionals (psychiatrists, psychologists, but also general practitioners or nurses) and a growing number of non-healthcare professionals who, after a career change, are joining the booming profession of “hypnotherapists”. Hypnosis offers a particularly heuristic object for analyzing the development of complementary and alternative medicines in relation to biomedicine. Firstly, hypnosis is increasingly legitimized in certain segments of biomedicine by an accumulation of neuroscientific research, while in many respects it remains more marginalized than several other CAMs in France (lack of official recognition of hypnosis as a training or professional practice, controversial reputation as a mind-control technique fueled by the high social visibility of stage hypnosis). Secondly, the interest of hypnosis lies in its ability to be differentially integrated into professional fields, where it is then mobilized as part of different claims to professionalism. Our article is based on a quantitative analysis of the profiles of professionals using hypnosis and on a series of biographical interviews with some of them. It explores the development of hypnosis in France as a multilayered process, and the political, moral and technical dynamics that underpin it. It will pay particular attention to the interactions between the different professional fields involved in this process, showing how the legitimization processes and controversies that occur in each field influence the development of hypnosis in the others.