Background
Hippolyte Bernheim was born on April 17, 1840, in Mulhouse, Alsace (now Grand Est), the son of Corneil Bernheim and Sara Lévy.
1867
Strasbourg, Grand Est, France
Bernheim received his education at the University of Strasbourg, where he was graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1867.
1910
France
In 1910, Hippolyte Bernheim became the Officer of the Legion of Honour.
neurologist physician scientist teacher
Hippolyte Bernheim was born on April 17, 1840, in Mulhouse, Alsace (now Grand Est), the son of Corneil Bernheim and Sara Lévy.
Bernheim received his education in his native town and at the University of Strasbourg, where he was graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1867.
In 1867, Bernheim became an intern in Strasbourg hospitals, then a lecturer at the University of Strasbourg and established himself as a physician in the city.
In 1871, Bernheim left Alsace (now Grand Est) after the Franco-Prussian War and became a professor at the Faculté de Médecine in Nancy after his agrégation. He was particularly interested in pulmonary localizations of the Bouillaud syndrome (rheumatic fever); forms of prolonged typhus that affect the cerebrospinal nerves; the effect of arteriosclerosis in the circle of Willis on the Cheyne-Stokes respiratory phenomenon; and in a special form of the right asystole without retrograde intervention of the pulmonary stasis (sinking of the poorly developed right ventricle caused by the enlarged left ventricle), called the Bernheim syndrome by the South American school of cardiology.
After teaching in the medical clinics for thirteen years, Bernheim heard of a practitioner named Liebault in one of Nancy’s suburbs. Liebault was a philosopher and philanthropist who successfully treated his patients through induced sleep. Bernheim, although very skeptical, went to call; this was the beginning of his study of hypnotism, of suggestion, and of hysteria, which also interested Charcot and the Salpêtrière school, as well as Émile Coué, a pharmacist in Nancy.
As early as 1884 Bernheim stated his Opposition to Charcot’s concepts regarding hypnosis. He criticized the Parisian idea of hypnosis in three stages, and was the first to have the courage to say that it was a "cultural hypnosis," entirely explicable by suggestion.
Hippolyte Bernheim died on February 2, 1919, in Paris, and was buried in Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Paris, France.
Hippolyte Bernheim was interested in hypnotism and hysteria and was the first to use suggestive therapies and to apply scientific bases to psychotherapy. For Betnheim, the effects of hypnosis reflected the power of mental suggestion. He conceptualized hypnotic phenomena as manifestations of ideomotor suggestibility, and believed that hypnosis was simply a state of heightened, prolonged and artificially induced suggestibility. He was opposed to the ideas of Charcot that were vigorously defended by his students Gilles de la Tourette and Babinski, who described three phases of hypnotism: catalepsy, lethargy and somnambulism.
Bernheim criticized this artificial description and also went on to criticize Babinski’s ideas on pithiatism. Bernheim emerged the winner of this "battle of the titans" since it later became recognized that hypnotism at the Salpétriere was an hypnotisme de culture (a "cultured" hypnotism).
On March 19, 1875, Hippolyte Bernheim married Josèphe Maxime Sciama.