The Book of Hypnosis

David Lesser (1928-2001) was the founding father of Curative Hypnotherapy. It was he who devised the use of hypnosis and a specific questioning technique to work with the subconscious causes and reasons behind why a person was experiencing their symptoms.

David Lesser had an extremely varied career before qualifying as a Massage Therapist in 1966. In refining his techniques of relaxation massage and learning how to teach them to others, he became interested by the interaction of mind and body, the way such deep mental effects could be achieved by purely physical treatments. He decided to investigate the opposite effect – that of mind over body – which led him to hypnosis.

Further study and research led him to using hypnotherapy, but he was intrigued as to why one person would react in one way to treatment, and others in a different way; some improving vastly, others only slightly and some not at all. He wanted to understand why this was so.

During his earlier career in electrical manufacture, he was used to using a logical ‘fault finding’ method. If something didn’t work properly, there had to be a reason for it and by working logically back through all the components the root of the problem is found.

It was this profoundly logical thought and the need to understand ‘why’, that started Lesser on his pioneering work into what eventually evolved into Curative Hypnotherapy.

While his innovative work and his understanding of how the subconscious works remains the basis of Lesserian® Curative Hypnotherapy, advances in the application and techniques continue to be made. The work he pioneered is constantly evolving to remain at the forefront of hypnotherapy treatments currently available and is carried out in his name.

David Lesser was the author of the first two books on the Curative uses of hypnotherapy. He was the elected President of the Association of Qualified Curative Hypnotherapists from its inception in 1985 until he died in 2001. He founded the Hypnotherapy Training College (as ‘Therapy Training College’) in 1978.