Herbert Spiegel (June 29, 1914 – December 15, 2009) was an American psychiatrist who popularized therapeutic hypnosis as a mainstream medical treatment for patients experiencing pain, anxiety, and addictions.
[3] He later wrote, "I discovered that it was possible to use persuasion and suggestion to help the men return to previous levels of function" after sustaining severe combat stress.
[1] For many years, Spiegel was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, where he continued his research and study on hypnosis and taught postgraduate courses on the subject.
[4] He was a pioneer in the use of hypnosis as a tool to help patients control pain, stop smoking, eat less, shed phobias and ease anxieties.
"[3] Spiegel told a reporter in 1977 that he had used hypnosis to help 4,000 patients control obesity, phobias or addiction to cigarettes over the past ten years.
[2] Spiegel's work in the field of hypnosis has been credited with establishing the practice as a legitimate medical therapy.
In 1976, the New York News wrote that Spiegel was "one of the people whose work over the past few decades has helped strip away the aura of charlatanism and make hypnosis a respectable medical tool.
Modern medicine puts such extreme emphasis on high technology and drugs that it often overlooks the oldest, and at times the most effective, therapeutic instrument that humans possess—the mind.
Dr. Herbert Spiegel's regular table [at Elaine's] was near Woody Allen's at what was a fixture of the New York intellectual and creative scene in the 1960s and '70s.
"[8] Spiegel declined to have any involvement in the book and later made public his view that the popularization of the "Sybil" multiple-personality story was "an embarrassing phase of American psychiatry.