Look into my eyes . . . Hypnosis is more than a stage show, as Dr Jack Gibson can testify after more than 50 years of helping patients, writes Iva Pocock.

The term hypnosis was coined in 1842 by a British surgeon, James Braid, but the altered state of awareness it describes was not an invention of the 19th century. Many historians of hypnotherapy consider ancient ceremonial and religious rituals in which rhythmic chanting and monotonous drum beats put their participants into trances to be precursors of modern-day hypnotherapy. But it took time for the medical profession to accept it as a tool: the British Medical Association refused Braid an opportunity to present a paper under the title of his newly coined phrase and approved the use of clinical hypnotherapy only a century later.

Now there are international associations of hypnotherapists, including medical and dental groups. In Ireland, the Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy & Psychotherapy was founded in 1990 by Dr Joseph Keaney, who qualified in America. The institute runs foundation, diploma and advanced diploma training courses, which comprise home-study modules and practical training. It has about 250 graduates.

"The majority of students come from a non-medical background, with approximately a quarter being nurses, doctors and psychiatrists who want to incorporate hypnotherapy into their own therapy," says Dr Keaney. One doctor who has complemented his medical training with his expertise in hypnotherapy is Dr Jack Gibson. Indeed, he has used hypnosis so skilfully for more than 50 years that he is now, at the age of 93, almost a living legend.

He first encountered the benefits of the controlled use of the subconscious mind when practising in the Middle East as a young graduate of surgery - at 25 he was the youngest person to be made a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons - with additional expertise in tropical medicine and hygiene. A Bedouin tribesman refused anaesthetic but nevertheless allowed Dr Gibson to remove a growth on his leg, a procedure the doctor was certain caused his patient great pain. Not so. But it was only later he realised the tribesman had been under self-hypnosis and had suffered no pain.

The first time Dr Gibson used hypnosis was not to perform surgery but to help a patient in South Africa give up smoking. He was convinced the chances of his patient's house catching fire were high, as the house was wooden and the man's bed was covered with cigarette burns. "I had never in my life hypnotised a person, but I felt that this was the way I could get this man to stop smoking," writes Dr Gibson in his self-published memoirs. "I knew the techniques and now, I think, I must have had an absolute belief in its success." His patient stopped smoking, and so began Dr Gibson's career as a hypnotist. After training with a psychiatrist who used hypnosis in a mental hospital in Pretoria, he started to use hypnosis for treating asthma and for aiding in painless childbirth.

But it was as county surgeon at Naas General Hospital, in Co Kildare, that he consolidated his reputation as an outstanding hypnotist, becoming the first and only surgeon to systematically use hypnosis as an anaesthetic. During his tenure there, he performed more than 4,000 procedures - he amputated limbs, set bones and treated first-degree burns - without using conventional anaesthetics.

His record of successful operations is remarkable. Both his memoirs and website include testimonials from satisfied patients, including one woman who had both legs amputated, one under anaesthetic and one under hypnosis. She suffered no post-operative "ghost pains" after the latter operation.

Another patient, a barber from Naas called Mr O'Callaghan, was sent home to die, explains Dr Gibson, because he was too ill to be anaesthetised, to have his gangrenous leg removed. "He came into hospital to see me, but the anaesthetist said as soon as I gave him an anaesthetic he'd be dead," says Dr Gibson. "I asked him if he'd like to have it off under hypnosis, and to my surprise he said he'd be delighted." Afterwards, Mr O'Callaghan commented that as his leg was being sawn off it was the first time in two years he had not been in pain. Despite such a serious operation, he ordered himself a "good meal" on leaving the theatre, remembers Dr Gibson, who says he has endless similar stories.

As county surgeon, Dr Gibson continued to promote hypnosis as an effective tool for quitting smoking - in 1969 his How To Stop Smoking record went straight to number one in the charts, ousting The Beatles from the top slot for six weeks.

Now, 34 years later, Dr Gibson is still helping people give up cigarettes, through individual treatment sessions and his stop-smoking tapes. Indeed, since retiring as a surgeon, at the age of 70, Dr Gibson has been using hypnosis to treat "ordinary illnesses" such as asthma, acne and phobias. He is still practising, with people coming from all over the country to his home in St David's Castle, just off the main street in Naas, to seek relief.

"I practise all day, seven days a week, and I love the work," says Dr Gibson. "I have an awful lot of things wrong with me, but they don't hold me back."

He puts his remarkable energy down to the fact that he looks after himself very well: he takes exercise (more than many people 50 years younger than him) and he doesn't smoke or drink.

Self-hypnosis helped him get over a cancerous lump that appeared on his forehead in 1991, and he says he also used the technique to remove his varicose veins. After wearing stockings up to his knees for 30 years, he decided to cure the troublesome veins during self-hypnosis. Those on his lower leg were cured after three months; those on his thigh took another three months.

"Now I have a leg that's absolutely perfect," he says, lifting his trouser leg to demonstrate. He's not exaggerating. Many people decades younger would be delighted to have such a healthy-looking limb. He exudes enthusiasm, not just for what has been but for the present and all that life still has to offer; as our conversation ends, he says he is hoping to attend a hypnotherapy conference in Singapore and might fly on to China and possibly India, as he'll be in Asia anyway. Testimony to the power of hypnosis?

How hypnosis really happens

Being under hypnosis means being induced by suggestion into "a state of relaxation and concentration at one with a heightened state of awareness", according to Dr Joseph Keaney.

Like anaesthesia, however, hypnosis is only a state. "It's what you do in the state that's important," says Dr Keaney, founder of the Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy & Psychotherapy.

He divides hypnotherapy into two types: suggestive and analytical. The former involves the hypnotist suggesting, for example, that phobias or addictions will cease; analytical hypnotherapy is about going into the subconscious to find the roots of a problem, as psychotherapy would. Indeed, he says psychotherapy was born from experiments into hypnosis.

"Patricia" went to a hypnotist because she wanted to stop biting her nails.

Having seen a stage- hypnosis performance - clinical hypnotists' code of ethics bans them from such acts - she was nervous that she wouldn't be able to remember what she'd said or done during the session. "But if he said, 'Take off all your clothes and jump out of the window,' you'd wouldn't do it, because you still have your own will." She says she was always aware of what she was doing and remembered all the hypnotist said.

Although she stopped biting her nails only for a while, she says that hypnosis was a good experience and that she might have quit her habit if she'd had more than one treatment. Her overriding memory of the session was of being "deeply, deeply relaxed. It's like a big long massage, but it's mental".

This isn't surprising, as hypnotists induce hypnosis by telling their clients, calmly but assertively, to sit back and relax. Dr Jack Gibson, for example, then continues: "Let every muscle in your body relax as far as you can. Start with the right arm, the right shoulder, the biceps, the right elbow, the forearm . . ."

And so the relaxation continues until hypnosis is induced and the suggestive or analytical session can begin. Dr Gibson says people vary in their response to hypnosis but if the hypnotist speaks with authority, as he does, it will work on even the fiercest sceptics.

Dr Keaney says anyone who sleeps can be hypnotised, other than those with a "mental derangement". Ultimately, says Dr Gibson, the subconscious mind is a source of enormous energy - hypnosis is about tapping into that energy and using it positively.

The website of the Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy & Psychotherapy is at www.hypnosiseire.com

© The Irish Times