Background reading

History

Adam Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing, Yale University Press, 1993.

Magnetic sleep – an artificially induced trance-like state – was discovered by Franz Anton Mesmer in the 1770s and revealed a realm of mental activity that was not available to the conscious mind, but could affect conscious thought and action.

Brain vs. Mind

Norman Doidge, The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, Viking, 2007.

A study of the new science of neuroplasticity: how what we think, feel, sense and do can change the brain physically, producing results that may help or hinder the individual.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley, The Mind and the Brain; Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, New York, Narper, 2003.

This book is a good overview of this fascinating field but also tells of the important successes achieved in the treatment of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) patient of Dr. Schwartz.

Teaching Stories

Milton H. Erickson and Sidney Rosen, My Voice Will Go with You: the Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson. Edited with commentary by Sidney Rosen, Norton, 1982.

Milton Erickson was probably the best-known practitioner of therapeutic hypnosis in the last century. His life and his work are equally fascinating. Out of his work there grew the movement now called “Neuro-Linguistic Programming” (NLP).

Generalized Paradigms

Frederic W. H. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, Longmans, Green, 1903, 2v.

Adam Crabtree has brought attention to Myers in his historical study mentioned above. Myers worked at the end of the 18^th century and has made a provocative attempt to arrive at a general paradigm of the mind that does not exclude any phenomena, including the paranormal. The original work is hard to find but several abridged editions have appeared over the years since its first publication.