The movie image of the hypnotist is of a person with almost magic powers over the patient. According ...

According to Schultz it was not. The inspiration for Schultz's belief came from Oskar Vogt's research conducted during the last decade of the 19th century. Vogt was a renowned brain physiologist working at the Berlin Institute in the areas of sleep and hypnosis. To Vogt's surprise, some of his hypnotic patients learned how to put themselves into an autohypnotic state. His patients had success doing this through applying various short-term mental exercises. The autohypnotic state they induced was beneficial in preventing somatic stress reactions such as muscular tension and headaches.

Thus, Schultz concluded that (1) patients could engage in self-management of their stressful conditions through achieving an autohypnotic state and (2) they were always in control of this state. Ultimately then he believed it is the patient and not the hypnotherapist that opens the door to the patient's trance state. Schultz's goal was to create a method in which the patient would be given the key to the door and use it when desired to enter into a restorative state similar to that observed in Vogt's patients. He called it autogenic which combined the Greek words autos (i.e, self) and genos (i.e., generation) to indicate that his method was a self-generated.