William S. Kroger

Kroger died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California on December 4, 1995. He was buried at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills.

In 1979, Kroger wrote Hypnosis in Medical Investigation with Richard C. Douce. an FBI special agent and psychology doctoral candidate. Kroger had been consulted on the use of hypnosis in ongoing investigations, and was asked by the FBI to evaluate the quality of information obtained through hypnosis in producing leads.

The procedure was captured for the first time in the film Thyroidectomy Under Hypoanesthsia. Kroger also participated in anesthetizing an expectant mother in Hypnosis in Obstetrics, which was also the first occasion on which hypnotism's use in delivery was filmed. Both educational movies were intended as teaching aids at medical schools, hospitals and scientific meetings and were produced by Wexler Films (now out of business). The first film was rereleased and included on DVD with the second edition of Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis. The text, featuring an introduction by Michael D. Yapko, is a republication of the second edition, originally printed in 1977; the first edition was published in 1963. He also produced the medical film Hypnosis in Dentistry.

One of the cases Kroger and Douce study in the article is the 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping. The FBI asked Kroger to question a school bus driver who was kidnapped along with 26 children. Under Kroger's hypnosis, the driver was able to recall all but one of the digits on the kidnappers' car's license plate, and the kidnappers were subsequently convicted.

Kroger maintained a private practice in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, California from 1960 until his retirement in 1986.

Kroger demonstrated the use of hypnosis on a breast surgery procedure on closed-circuit television for a national meeting of anesthesiologists in the removal of a benign growth and on another occasion in 1956 in Edgewater Hospital. Time magazine, which was covering the latter meeting, wrote an article about Kroger's use of hypnosis.

Kroger organized and conducted multiple-day teaching seminars at major medical schools and medical societies from 1950 to the 1980s.

Kroger was a faculty member of the University of Illinois College of Medicine and also practiced privately. However, his use of hypnosis in medical practice was not accepted by the medical community. He later became an associate professor at the Chicago Medical School in 1950. Later, he was involved in the establishment of the Psychosomatic Clinic at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago and became its first director. During this time he advanced his knowledge of endocrinology and neurobiology. The integration of his research and experience led to a collaboration with co-author S. Charles Freed in Psychosomatic Gynecology, Including Problems of Obstetrical Care, a textbook which argued that hypnosis had a place and merit in the medical field. It was reviewed by many medical journals and praised as an authoritative work and an instant classic.

An early member and co-founder of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (SCEH), a professional hypnosis society for researchers founded in 1949, Kroger later co-founded the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis with Milton H. Erickson, which included clinicians into their ranks. He was also founder of the Institute for Comprehensive Medicine and the International Society for Comprehensive Medicine, and the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine.

He received his medical training at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, obtaining his Doctor of Medicine in 1930. He pursued his interest in psychotherapy by taking coursework and pursued an expertise in analytic concepts under the direction of Sigmund Freud's student and founder of psychosomatic medicine, Franz Alexander.

Kroger attended Northwestern University and received his pre-medical degree in 1926.

William Saul Kroger (April 14, 1906 – December 4, 1995) was an American medical doctor who pioneered the use of hypnosis in medicine and was co-founder and founder of medical societies and academies dedicated to furthering psychosomatic medicine and medical hypnosis.