This article first Issue 19 Our digital magazine Full of curiosity.
In the history of the world, no one on stage has ever been hypnotized.
– Amazing Kreskin, veteran mentalist and showman, 1994
In December 1994, in the middle of the night at the Palace of Westminster in England, hypnosis was in trouble.
“Stage hypnosis has been a concern of mine for many years ever since I was warned about its dangers by one of my constituency MPs.” announced Colin Pickall, then British MP for West Lancashire, stands on the floor of the House of Commons.
“A few years ago, her daughter[…] “I was hypnotized at the club,” he told the assembled lawmakers. “When her trance ended, she was told to come out of it as if she had been given a 10,000 volt electric shock. Her husband took her, somewhat dazed, back to her home. , and five hours later she died.”
Was this a case of death caused by hypnosis? MPs were so convinced that they prompted a Home Office inquiry into whether the laws surrounding the practice should be changed. But some people think this idea is ridiculous. [of hypnosis] It’s an illusion,” says Graham Wagstaff, professor of psychology at the University of Liverpool. said at the time. “It’s a cultural invention.”
In fact, Wagstaff went even further. Not only did stage hypnosis fail, but so did hypnotherapy’s supposed therapeutic effects. Hypnosis for pain relief is probably due to individual patients’ high pain thresholds, rather than psychological brain hacking, he said. The behavioral changes induced by the hypnotist are the product of wishful thinking and self-expression, and nothing else.
Thirty years later, we still don’t know who was closer to the truth.
I’m starting to feel sleepy.
Let me be clear: hypnosis does not kill people when performed by a trained physician who knows the patient well. But equally, there’s some pretty good evidence that it’s not just a result of exhibitionists looking for easy answers.
“Hypnosis is one of the most widely misunderstood practices in psychology and related fields,” experimental psychologists Stephen Jay Lin, Madeline Stein, and Devin Terhune wrote in the magazine. writing. BJPsych progress last year. “In particular, there are striking contradictions between how hypnosis is used in clinical practice and understood within contemporary scientific research, and how it is portrayed in popular culture. there is.”
So how is this practice understood in science? To be honest, science doesn’t exactly know.
“For more than 100 years, this issue has been hotly debated,” therapist Claire Jacques wrote in a 2022 magazine article. psychology today. “‘State’ theorists believe that hypnosis involves a unique state and that achieving this state is essential to positive treatment results. “Non-state” theorists, on the other hand, believe that a person “takes on” the role of a hypnotized person in much the same way that a person takes on various other roles in life.
Jack emphasized that no one was making a play. Those who are “hypnotized” truly believe it is happening to them, but those without state theory believe that the effects they experience are more mundane than altered states of consciousness. I would argue that it is due to factors. Lin, Stein, and Terhune state:[T]There is no solid neurophysiological evidence to prove that hypnosis is a special or unique state. […] It is more economical to think of hypnosis as a series of procedures that use verbal suggestions to modulate consciousness, perception, and cognition, rather than unnecessarily evoking “special states.” ”
Click your finger
Whatever the truth, one thing is certain: hypnosis is not just a trick.
“We have identified three brain regions whose activity and functional connectivity change during hypnosis,” the team led by David Spiegel, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, wrote. 1 paper in 2016. “This finding was evident in two hypnotic states, high but not low hypnosis, which were distinct from the memory and resting states.”
Hypnosis is the oldest Western psychotherapy, but it has been sullied by dangling clocks and purple cloak brushes.
They found that under hypnosis, activity in an area known as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, part of the brain network responsible for noticing things, decreased. Connections between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the default mode network are similar, Spiegel suggested, perhaps representing a disconnect between the hypnotized person’s behavior and the perception of that behavior.
“When you’re hypnotized, you become so absorbed that you don’t care about anything else,” he said in his paper. statement at that time. “When you’re serious about something, you don’t really think about doing it, you just do it.”
On the other hand, connectivity between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the insula, an area of the brain typically associated with more emotional or sensory functions, increased. Overall, this suggests that the brain is happy to follow external suggestions and doesn’t really care about self-consciously spending time or energy on it, and from experience it’s just wandering around looking for attention. I’m not drawing the brain of a person.
“Hypnosis is the oldest Western psychotherapy, but it has been sullied by dangling clocks and purple cloak brushes,” Spiegel said. “In fact, this is a very powerful means of changing how you use your mind to control your perception and body.”
you will crow like a rooster
It’s not just brain scans that suggest the reliability of hypnosis. While many of us may balk at a surgeon who suggests forgoing general anesthesia and using hypnosis during surgery, evidence suggest that adding the latter option may be a good option in terms of pain relief and healing time.
“It helps reduce anxiety and stress in patients, reduces pain, and accelerates recovery after surgery.” Said Mareike Holler, a student at Jena University Hospital and part of the team conducting the experiment. Huge meta-analysis Discuss the potential benefits of hypnosis as a surgical intervention.
“Research evaluations have shown that hypnosis is an effective intervention,” she acknowledged.
When doctors are faced with patients who have low hypnotizability, there are even peer-reviewed methods for using deep brain stimulation to increase hypnotizability.
On the other hand, professional hypnotherapy is recognized For decades, it has been one of the most effective treatment options available for irritable bowel syndrome to reduce symptoms. more than half According to one meta-analysis, the number of people suffering from this disease.very effective relieve chronic painThere are also peer-reviewed methods for using deep brain stimulation to increase hypnotizability in case doctors are faced with patients who are less hypnotically suggestible.
“My personal vision as a clinical psychologist is that in the future patients will come to our office, receive a quick, non-invasive brain stimulation session, and then go see a psychologist.” Clinical Neuropsychology said Afik Furman, a postdoctoral researcher at the university. said a Stanford University scholar and principal investigator on the latter project in a paper. statement. “The benefits of treatment could be even greater.”
and you are in the room
Therefore, there is no denying that hypnosis is “real” in the sense that it causes observable and measurable changes in the brain and body. But the skeptics among us may protest. The same goes for sugar pills. Could this simply be a manifestation of the placebo effect?
Short answer? Yes, it’s possible. Long answer? it’s complicated. After all, it is certainly widely accepted that hypnosis has much in common with the placebo response, with both relying on manipulating the patient’s expectations to produce a therapeutic effect. And despite the popular perception that placebos require deception to be effective, so-called “open-label placebos” that blatantly tell patients they are taking a sugar pill, repetition It has been proven to be effective in treating various diseases.
So what separates the two?
Potentially not that much. Regarding the placebo response, Terhune and Lin write, “An ineffective drug or treatment is beneficial simply because we believe it works.” conversation. “If you think about it this way, maybe hypnosis isn’t so strange after all. The seemingly sensational response to hypnosis is just a striking example of the power of suggestion and belief to shape our perceptions and actions.” Maybe not.”
“What we think will happen seamlessly changes into what we end up experiencing.”
click.
curios magazine A digital magazine published by IFLScience featuring interviews, experts, in-depth research, interesting facts, news, book excerpts, and more. Issue 22 has been published.
