HYPNOTISM

QUESTION:

Is hypnotism as a therapeutic method permitted in Jewish law? (Asked by Sonia Syme, Detroit, Michigan.)

ANSWER:

THE PROCESS of putting a person to sleep was known in ancient India and in ancient Persia, but the idea of using this medically was created by Mesmer (hence “mesmerism”) just two centuries ago in Vienna. I mention this dating so you can understand that Jewish law could know nothing about it.

But, of course, one might say that there is a good example of it in the Bible. When God wanted to remove a rib from Adam to create Eve, we are told He put him into a deep sleep; and the Ramban (Nachmanides), who was also a physician, said that God put him into a deep sleep in order that he should not feel the pain of the operation. In other words, we might call this hypnotism as a means of anesthesia.

Again, in Scripture, God was involved with a human being falling into a deep sleep. That was in the case of Abraham, when God made a special covenant with him (Genesis 15:12 ff.). We are told there that the deep sleep came upon Abraham, accompanied by a feeling of great terror, and in this sleep God revealed to him the exile of his children as slaves in Egypt, and the Midrash to the passage says that in that sleep there was revealed to him all the exiles (four of them) that would take place in the future. So here God used deep sleep, not as an anesthetic as with Adam, but as a means of transmission of ideas.

Whether these two cases could serve as an indication of the permissibility of hypnotism, one cannot say. However, this must be stated as a general principle: If it is a patient who is dangerously sick, the Sabbath, which is the strictest of all laws, must (not may) be violated in his behalf, and all other prohibitions in the law, such as kosher food, etc., may be violated for him.

So without stressing the two narratives mentioned above, we might say that certainly hypnotism or any other remedy is permissible in Jewish law for a patient who is in a dangerous condition.