History
The international GTH (IGTH) was established in 1997 with the founding principles of content-related, organizational and public oriented levels originally predominantly in the statutes of the German Society for Hypnosis and Hypnosis Research e.V. (GTH), founded in 1981.
GTH Germany and IGTH have held internationally recognized conventions once a year in Meersburg, Lake Constance since. These conventions plus GTH training seminars, such as the ones organized at the Jagiellonian University Psychiatric Day Clinic in Cracow (Poland) and at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, in Quito (Ecuador), constituted a large part of the society’s core scientific activities.
The basic scientific work was largely supported by Practice-based research with people who sought and successfully alleviated suffering or improved self-development at a physical or emotional level with the help of integrative and depth psychological hypnosis.
I-GTH was founded in order to address specific tasks becoming increasingly important and urgent on an international level.
These issues tasks include: Education, information and investigation.
GTH Poland (GTH PL) was founded in September 1999 as the second national society. Extensive cooperation lead to a professional and human union with the “German-Polish Society for Mental Health” and the “International Medical Working Community”. This cooperation contributed positively towards an integrating spirit of a historical reconciliation; a spirit, which underlines the self-understanding of the method represented by I–GTH in the life history application of each individual human being.
In 1999 GTH Ecuador was established as the next national society followed by GTH Switzerland in 2001.
I–GTH today
After the passing on of Werner J. Meinhold in October 2019, founder of the H.I.T.T.® method, our international society, as well as our international societies, are undergoing a deep transformation in order to adapt to the new situation within-, and the present needs of, our society in general.
As an international society, I-GTH unites the existing national societies equally at a functional and human level, while promoting and supporting the creation of new societies in other countries.
I-GTH constitutes a visible scientific network through which insights and findings are communicated to and for therapists of the national societies. These include high research and teaching standards and quality requirements for therapists controlled regularly by the national societies.
I-GTH exchanges ideas with representatives of traditional healing methods and the academic scientific community worldwide. The society actively disseminates a deeper understanding of hypnosis and its effects and is against hypnosis misusage.
Last but not least, the society transfers its knowledge of therapeutic hypnosis to patients and those seeking a deeper understanding of therapeutic hypnosis to sufferers and seekers all over the world.
Franz Anton Mesmer is considered to be the historical founder of “scientific hypnosis”. He spent the last years of his life in Meersburg, Lake Constance and is laid to rest there. This is where the I-GTH’s legal seat was founded and remains to this day.
The approach underlying I-GTH activities is to promote the therapeutic application of hypnosis and its research, particularly in its connection with Depth Psychology and Psychosomatics. Simultaneously it promotes the spiritual plane of being within the included holistic conception of the human being. The approach has proven itself and is receiving growing international positive attention.
This spiritual aspect is increasingly important as hypnosis, being globally accepted, is also being included in explanatory and therapeutic models which have been reducing it into a biopsychological concept.