Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault

Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault (; 1823–1904) was a French physician and is considered the father of modern hypnotherapy. Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault was born in Favières, a small town in the Lorraine region of France, on September 16, 1823. He completed his medical degree at the University of Strasbourg in 1850, at the age of 26.

He established a medical practice in the village of Pont-Saint-Vincent, near the town of Nancy.

He made many advancements for the field of hypnosis and hypnotherapy, such as co-founding the Nancy School of Hypnosis. The Nancy School — also known as the "Suggestion School", in contrast to the "Hysteria School", also known as the "Paris School", centred on the Salpêtrière Hospital — was oriented to a suggestion-centred approach to hypnosis in contrast to the previously used hysteria-centred approach promoted at the Salpêtrière Hospital. By contrast to the "Paris School", the main, fundamental belief of the "Nancy School" was that hypnosis was a normal phenomenon and not a consequence of a pathology analogous to hysteria.

Liébeault published several books on his theories, techniques, and results in working with hypnosis. On February 18, 1904, he died in Nancy, leaving behind a strong legacy and influence on the still developing field of hypnosis and hypnotherapy.

Early life Liébeault was born in Favières in Meurthe-et-Moselle, France on September 16, 1823. His father was Jean Nicolas Liébeault, a financially stable land owner and farmer, and his mother was Jeanne Fauconnier. His family could afford to send him to seminary school, and later medical school. Liébeault's father died when he was ten years old and later attended seminary school in his honor. In 1844, at the age of 21, Ambroise chose to leave seminary school and study medicine at Strasbourg. He decided to incorporate the techniques he had read about into his own medical practice. In the town of Nancy he established a practice where he could use his medical degree.

In 1866, Liébeault published Du Sommeil et des états analogues, in which he discussed his techniques, experiments, and findings. The school's fundamental theory was that the hypnotic suggestibility was a trait that is closely related to a characteristic of general suggestibility. In other words, people's ease in becoming hypnotized will vary depending on how much of the hypnotizable trait one possessed. This did not gain much popularity at the time in France. He published his second book Ébauche de psycologie(1873) which was also not popular. He showed that hypnosis could be used to treat physical illness. He was viewed as a fool by many of his colleagues for using hypnosis as a treatment for patients, but this changed in 1882 when he was able to treat and also cure a severe case of sciatica. When Liébeault's published work was introduced to Bernheim by Dr. Dumont (trained by Liébeault) his published books gained interest among other scholars worldwide such as Freud, and even Pavlov.