In July 1964, Milton Erickson travelled to Huntsville, Alabama, to give a series of talks. Somewhere among the people he met there was a woman named Jane Cameron.
Afterwards, she wrote to him. She told him she honestly felt a whole new world had opened for her, and she asked for his help.
Erickson wrote back on 27 August 1964. He said he’d answer her request in a way that was simpler and far more effective, one he had used many times before. Then, tucked into an ordinary-looking paragraph about her letter and the hopes she’d had when writing it, came this:
“You do not really know this, but perhaps you can sense a feeling of hypnosis coming gently over you as you read this sentence.”
Erickson wasn’t describing hypnosis to Jane. He was doing it, through the act of her own reading. And because the suggestion lived on the page, it didn’t depend on him at all. She could fold the letter, keep it in a drawer or a handbag, and return to it whenever she wanted to renew that feeling . The same words would do the same quiet work every time. The letter itself was the appointment.
It’s a lovely idea. It also raises a serious question that scientists have spent decades investigating: does hypnosis actually need a hypnotist?
The hypnotist was never in the room
Here’s something most people don’t know: much of the research on hypnosis has been done without a live hypnotist at all.
In 1962, Ronald Shor and Emily Orne at Harvard developed what became one of the most widely used tools in the field: the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility. It measures how responsive people are to hypnosis, and it’s designed to be played from a recording to a whole room of people at once. A recorded voice guides everyone through an induction, then a series of suggestions: an arm growing heavy, fingers locking together, a fly that isn’t there.
For more than sixty years, researchers around the world have used recordings like this to hypnotise thousands of volunteers. And people respond, often strongly. The voice can be a stranger’s, played through a speaker, recorded decades earlier.
Seen this way, Erickson’s letter was less radical than it looks. He was relying on the same thing the researchers were: that the real work of hypnosis happens inside the person experiencing it.
A modern letter in your pocket
One of the best examples of distance hypnosis today comes from Melbourne.
In 2016, researchers at Monash University, led by dietitian Simone Peters, compared two treatments for irritable bowel syndrome. One was the low-FODMAP diet, the strict eating plan Monash itself had pioneered and which is now used around the world. The other was gut-directed hypnotherapy: weekly sessions plus recordings to listen to at home.
To many people’s surprise, hypnotherapy worked about as well as the diet. Around seven in ten patients in both groups improved, and the benefits of hypnotherapy held up months later. Patients didn’t have to give up foods they loved, either.
That research helped lead to something Erickson would have appreciated: a smartphone app that delivers gut-directed hypnotherapy as a self-guided audio programme, which people can follow at home on their own schedule. It’s Jane’s letter, sixty years on, in a pocket instead of a handbag.
Teaching people to carry it with them
Erickson designed his letter so that Jane could keep going back to it. Modern pain researchers have built whole treatment programmes on the same principle.
Psychologist Mark Jensen and his colleagues at the University of Washington have spent years studying hypnosis for chronic pain, often in people living with spinal cord injuries or multiple sclerosis, for whom pain can be relentless. Their approach doesn’t rely on the hypnotist being present whenever pain strikes. Instead, people are taught self-hypnosis in a handful of sessions and given recordings to practise with at home.
Many participants reported less pain, and for many, the benefits lasted for months after the sessions ended. The skill had become theirs. There’s a saying among hypnotherapists that captures this exactly: all hypnosis is really self-hypnosis. The hypnotist only shows you the door. You’re the one who walks through it, and once you know where it is, you can find it again on your own.
If you’d like to try building that kind of personal “door”, the anchoring technique in our article on hypnosis and stress is one of the simplest ways to start.
What gets lost without the hypnotist
None of this means a recording, an app or a letter is as good as a skilled person in the room. Some things only a live practitioner can do:
- Adapting in the moment. Erickson’s genius lay in reading people. He noticed a hesitation, a shift in breathing, a flicker of resistance, and changed course. A recording says the same words whether they’re working or not.
- Tailoring the suggestions. Erickson’s letter worked partly because he wrote it for Jane. A one-size-fits-all recording can’t use the details of your life the way he did. (There’s more on how he did that in our article on hypnotic language.)
- Noticing when something’s wrong. Occasionally, hypnosis stirs up difficult memories or emotions. A recording won’t notice, and a good clinician will.
Responsiveness also varies. People who respond strongly to hypnosis often do well with recordings, while others may need the support and adjustment that only a live session gives.
What happened to Jane?
We don’t know. The archive keeps Erickson’s letter, but not the rest of her story. We don’t know how often she read it, or whether the sentence did for her what he intended.
What we do know is that Erickson trusted a single sentence on a page to keep working long after he had sealed the envelope. Much of what researchers have learned since suggests his trust was well placed. Hypnosis doesn’t have to live in a special room with a special voice. Sometimes it can live in an envelope, waiting to be opened again.
Further reading
- Erickson MH. Letter to Jane Cameron, 27 August 1964. Published in “Unearthed from the Erickson Archives,” The Milton H. Erickson Foundation Newsletter, Vol. 45, No. 3 (December 2025), p. 10.
- Shor RE, Orne EC. Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A. Consulting Psychologists Press, 1962.
- Peters SL, Yao CK, Philpott H, Yelland GW, Muir JG, Gibson PR. “Randomised clinical trial: the efficacy of gut-directed hypnotherapy is similar to that of the low FODMAP diet for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome.” Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 2016;44(5):447–459.
- Jensen MP, Barber J, Romano JM, et al. “A comparison of self-hypnosis versus progressive muscle relaxation in patients with multiple sclerosis and chronic pain.” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. 2009;57(2):198–221.
- Jensen MP. Hypnosis for Chronic Pain Management: Therapist Guide. Oxford University Press, 2011.