The saying that there is a time for everything has found its modern variant. Now there’s an app for everything… including getting hypnotized. Coming from the United States, companies promising self-hypnosis have multiplied in recent years. Their applications are called Reveri, Harmony Clementine, Hypnobox, or, more simply, Autohypnosis. There are dozens of them and, in France, several start-ups are even arousing significant interest. Specialized in self-hypnosis to fight against smoking or weight gain, the French company OneLeaf has, for example, raised funds of 5.1 million euros, according to the statement by the firm ECAP Partner for L’ Digital Factory. Two weeks earlier, another young French company launched in 2017, Hypnoledge, announced that it had raised 1 million euros from its investors for language learning under hypnosis. Weight loss, stress reduction, increased self-confidence and even, therefore, bilingualism… The new promises of self-hypnosis are numerous, and, to listen to its promoters, its results are almost miraculous. But beware of the mirages of a discipline on which scientific studies are still rare.
Start-ups are multiplying because the market is constantly growing. In France, nearly 40% of French people already use so-called “unconventional” medical practices – of which hypnosis is one. In the United States, the meditation market is estimated at 1.86 billion dollars in 2021, and could approach 2.5 billion by 2025. Most applications are designed on a subscription formula whose price ranges from a few euros to around thirty per month. For example, the American app Harmony’s subscription costs $8 a month and $50 a year – but its users can pay $150 to buy it for life. On the French side, Hypnoledge offers several offers: solo, at 19.90 euros per month, family, at 29.90 euros monthly or even a “lifetime” pack, to be purchased at once and amounting to 449.90 euros. OneLeaf – which is currently mainly targeting the American market – offers access to its entire content library for 67.99 dollars per year and 7.99 dollars per month. “We also hope to eventually be able to turn to corporate subscriptions,” Eliott Cohen-Skalli, founder of OneLeaf, told L’Express.
home hypnosis
The founder of the application is all the more optimistic that the start-up is not only betting on the size of the hypnosis market, estimated at 4.5 billion dollars in 2025 by the American research company Grand View. Research. “We are targeting slimming users, as well as users interested in quitting smoking or seeking to reduce their stress,” he specifies. More than the hypnotherapy or meditation sector, OneLeaf is clearly eyeing the well-being sector. An industry of colossal dimensions: an estimate of the McKinsey consulting firm estimated the latter at more than 1,000 billion dollars annually.
Faced with such a financial windfall, hypnosis is therefore put to all sauces. OneLeaf, with its advantageous rates, sees itself as a substitute for hypnotherapists. In the United States, a hypnosis session can cost between 75 and 125 dollars on average. In France, the prices are slightly cheaper, between 50 and 70 euros per session. “Why leave home when you can benefit from the effects of a session from home?” Eliott Cohen-Skalli pleads. With twenty-one-day programs, OneLeaf promises to help you improve your self-confidence, lose weight or quit smoking. “They are for the moment exclusively available in English because we are targeting Anglo-Saxon users”, specifies the founder of the application. Each program, developed with specialists in hypnotherapy and behavioral psychology, is made up of twenty to thirty minute sessions of a voiceover emitting suggestions, accompanied by binaural rhythms in the background music. Listening to them would, according to the start-up, eventually change its behavior.
Medical hypnosis
Hypnoledge’s promise is similar. “At the start of each hypnosis course, an ‘induction’ allows you to be in a state where all attention is focused on the present moment”, explains Gershon Pinon, hypnotherapist and co-founder of the application. What, according to him, improve the concentration, and therefore the learning of the language. A technique so effective that it could make it possible to do without a private teacher. “The application is not just hypnosis! It contains vocabulary, syntax, grammatical rules… It is really gigantic!” enthuses Gershon Pinon.
This promise makes specialists in the sector jump. The very principle of self-hypnosis, to begin with, leaves more than one skeptic. “Hypnosis to learn languages? But who is naive enough to imagine that?” gets annoyed Vianney Descroix, doctor of dental surgery at the University of Paris and member of the scientific committee of the French Institute of Hypnosis. The doctor has no doubts about the method: he has been practicing medical hypnosis for ten years, to accompany chronic pain, emotional disorders or even dental surgery operations.
quest for legitimacy
An Inserm report published in 2015 also notes that “there is enough evidence to be able to say that hypnosis has a potential therapeutic interest, in particular in anesthesia”. But that does not mean that it can be used for any purpose. “In the case of smoking cessation, hypnosis is not necessarily inadvisable. It can serve as psychological support for smokers, notes Professor Daniel Thomas, spokesperson for the French-speaking Society of Tobacco. But nothing has scientifically proven to help quit smoking.”
Similarly, it is difficult to find sufficient evidence to ensure that hypnosis is used to lose weight or regain self-confidence. The same is true in the case of language learning. “The promises of these applications should be taken with all the more caution as they have often not been subjected to clinical evaluations, warns Grégory Ninot, deputy director of the Desbrest Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health at Montpellier. Unlike drugs, whose effectiveness must be tested before being put on the market, these companies do not have such results to present.”
In search of legitimacy, some self-hypnosis start-ups nevertheless seek to forge partnerships with scientific laboratories. OneLeaf, for example, explains that it is “in negotiation” to launch “clinical trials next month” with the New York University laboratory. For its part, Hypnoledge has signed a partnership with the Center for Research on Cognition and Learning at the University of Poitiers. “We are studying the impact of their system and potentially its effectiveness explains Nicolas Vibert, research director at the CNRS. Since hypnosis allows attention to be focused, it could potentially help us memorize vocabulary better.” The effectiveness of the technique therefore remains to be proven. “The popularity of the word ‘hypnosis’ has made it a marketing term, but we should not expect miracle results from these applications, warns Antoine Bioy, clinical psychologist and hypnotherapist. That said, that does not necessarily mean that everything is throw away. They can be good support tools in relaxation.”
If self-hypnosis can exist, it is difficult to enter the famous “hypnotic state” touted by the applications without first having been in contact with a specialist, according to several professionals. “Hypnosis is an encounter, believes Vianney Descroix. An application cold as death, it does not work.” For this practitioner, the state of hypnosis is enabled by the contact between the patient and the therapist. “You cannot practice self-hypnosis if you have not been received before by a practitioner, adds Antoine Bioy. Quite simply because hypnosis techniques vary from one individual to another. There is no no model that applies equally to everyone.”