During his post-doctoral training and work in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1984-1987), Somer was personally supervised by Prof. Erika Fromm on behavioral medicine, dissociation and analytical hypnotherapy.
In 1942, Childbirth without Fear was published; it was a book written by English obstetrician Grantly Dick-Read and French obstetrician Michel Odent, that introduced the idea of using hypnotherapy for childbirth.
Although some would trace the practice of hypnotherapy back to Faria, Gassner, and Hell, it is conventional to trace what we now know as hypnotism back to the Scottish surgeon James Braid's reaction to a public exhibition of mesmeric techniques given by Charles Lafontaine in Manchester on 13 November 1841.