Placing hypnosis in an academic context may appear incongruent, as this concept is known to be simultaneously ambiguous, unspecific and vague. However, it is by treating hypnosis not as a phenomenon to be observed but as a technical, epistemological approach that serves to study the influences at play in ritual interactions that this concept makes sense in the context. From the microsociological perspective inspired by the symbolic interactionism approach, hypnosis meets all the characteristics of a “boundary object” capable of generating interesting interdisciplinary collaborations to explore every facet of the complexity of relational influences and their effects on the actors. We will illustrate this potential by describing the circulation of hypnosis as a boundary object in Swiss universities over the past two centuries.