Dick Sutphen

Dick Sutphen (1937-2020) was an American author, hypnotist, and seminar trainer who became one of the most prolific producers of self-development media in the New Age era.

From the 1970s onward he ran Valley of the Sun Publishing and, in 1976, released what are widely cited as the first commercially available prerecorded hypnosis tapes, eventually building a catalogue of more than six hundred hypnosis, meditation, and regressive-hypnosis audio programs alongside more than thirty books.

His large “Sutphen Seminars” introduced mass audiences to past-life regression, group hypnosis, and altered-state techniques. Sutphen’s work sat at the intersection of the old mesmeric-hypnotic tradition and the modern human-potential movement, popularizing past-life regression as both a therapeutic and a self-discovery tool and pioneering the use of subliminal audio for behavior change.

Within the Atlas his significance is as a populariser of mind-reprogramming media: he took the suggestion-based methods descended from Mesmer and the trance-and-reincarnation themes associated with Edgar Cayce, packaged them as accessible recordings and seminars, and helped seed the now-vast self-help audio industry.