The earliest known healing use of Hypnotherapy was by the Ancient Egyptians.
Much later, a Frenchman called Charcot who was in charge of so called 'hysterical' patients in a French mental institution, noticed that he could put them into a form of trance, which appeared to help them relax and improve. He developed this over some years and Freud came to study with him for a time. Freud however, was not good at hypnotherapy and dropped it in favour of the psychoanalysis he later became famous for.
In the early 1800's in Britain, a Scotsman named James Braid based his work on the 'Common Sense Psychology school', which required a scientific, evidence based approach. He had no time for the light entertainment style of Anton Mesmer's stage hypnosis, after whom the word mesmerising was named, or other esoteric notions. James Braid is now justifiably becoming well known again after many years of being overlooked, as a leader in the field, and is a heavyweight in the study and modern origins of Hypnotherapy, with several serious books to his credit.
An American named Milton Erickson is often felt to be the father of modern hypnotherapy. In the 20th century, he became a professional psychologist as an adult, after becoming fascinated by and making close observations of his large family's behaviour when bedbound as a teenager with polio. His empathy with clients was renowned and he saw straight to the heart of their problem, which quite often was not the problem they initially presented with. His polio caused more problems in late middle age, after which he was confined to a wheel chair, even this could not stop him continuing his practice however, and he also, fortunately for us, wrote many books and was only too pleased to share his considerable knowledge and abilities with others.
I, along with many other people have been inspired by him, including Paul Mckenna, and Richard Bandler, who co-founded Neuro-Linguistic Programming with John Grinder, after studying Milton Erickson at work with his clients. As Milton later said, they showed him what he had been doing all along without knowing he was doing it!
Aaron Beck developed what he called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and many others, including his daughter, have followed him, she has also written books on the subject, including the successful 'Mind over Matter'.
Dr Roger Callahan developed the technique of Thought Field Therapy approximately 25 years ago. He originally trained as a psychotherapist, but became disillusioned with the low slow recovery rate of his patients. He also trained as a hypnotherapist, and though he maintains an interest in hypnotherapy, he prefers to use T.F.T. almost exclusively as he finds it so fast. I often use a combination of the above techniques for maximum effect with my own clients.