3 students die after principal hypnotizes them

[stanfr]

I can make myself weepy by listening to a series of very sad songs and "buying into" them. Is that hypnosis? Like hypnosis? It's at least an induced, altered state.

Im not an expert by any means--most of my knowledge of hypnosis comes from studies I did 20+ years ago--but from my experience I'd say that your example is probably 'like hypnosis'--it definitely shows the power of suggestion in creating a mental/emotional state that wouldn't exist otherwise. You could use that same tactic to do other things such as eliminate pain.

 

[Olowkow]

So can this gizmo tell the difference between someone who is under a "hypnotic trance" from someone who is faking it? It seems to me that would win Kreskin's 100 grand.

Good question. I have a sneaking suspicion that nothing could win Kreskin's $100,000.

From what I read in the publication abstract, it seems that they found a correlation between depth of trance and vagal tone/sinus arrhythmia. Kreskin does not accept the notion of a trance at all, so to him the variation in measured vagal tone could mean just about anything. Hypnotic analgesia is a good demonstration of suggestion, but no trance is necessary. For me, a person's honest reaction to visual hallucinations is pretty good evidence of a trance.

The article is from 1992, quite a while after my involvement with the project and long after I had been involved in hypnosis.

 

[Checkmite]

Such a basic logical fallacy, I'm surprised you would make such a mistake.

It's not a logical fallacy at all.

Like many other quasi-scientific fields of "study", hypnotism makes a specialized language out of ordinary, established terms, giving them new and different meanings. The ubiquitous "suggestion", in the context of hypnosis, is one of the most common such examples that can be found to illustrate this.

To be sure, "suggestion" is a real thing. Asking a (conscious, alert) person at a party if they remembered to lock up before they left the house for instance, has a chance of planting a suggestion in a person's (not just the asked person, but anyone who hears the question - including the person who asked it) mind that they may not have done so - a suggestion that might cause growing concern for as long as a person is unable to verify whether they have. But this isn't the kind of suggestion hypnotists talk about.

Earlier you posted links to a couple of alleged procedures for assessing a person's level of "suggestibility", used by people who happen to be studying hypnosis at Harvard or Stanford or some place. The procedure, which to me seems indistinguishable from just about any other hypnosis session, simply involves "hypnotizing" a person and asking them to do a set of specific things. The documentation calls these things suggestions, but they very certainly are nothing of the kind. When you tell someone to "raise your hand", that's not a "suggestion", that's an instruction. A person who then raises their hand, is not "responding to a suggestion", they're complying with the instruction.

The list of arbitrary and whimsical instructions goes on; but the test is fatally flawed for one glaring reason, and that is that there's nothing special about these instructions that would allow a therapist carrying out the procedure to distinguish between a so-called "hypnotized" person and a compliant, fully conscious person.

For instance, one of the instructions is to imagine that your arm has through some means been stiffened and immobilized so that you can't bend it at the elbow. You are instructed to imagine this scenario, and then instructed to attempt to bend your arm, while imagining it is not possible.

Now, anybody can consciously do this. I can imagine that there is a great stiffness in my elbow, and that I cannot bend my arm when I try. I can even try extremely hard, to no avail - and I can do this so well that my arm and then shoulder actually tremble with the force of effort. My arm muscles (such as I have...) bulge and strain. My face becomes flushed and red, a sign that my blood pressure is rising. My body can produce these physiological effects as a result purely of my imposing an imaginary inability to bend my elbow. And then instantly, I can release the imaginary immobility, and bend my arm with no effort at all. I can even do this whilst struggling, so that my arm closes suddenly with great force as the rigidity instantly vanishes. And I can do this completely consciously, without needing an altered mental state.

The same is true for other instructions given, such as one to imagine that you are a young child again sitting in your second-grade classroom, and then answering questions within the context of this scenario - what grade are you in, how old are you, what is your teacher's name, and so forth. Again - not something any conscious person has even the slightest trouble doing.

And we're not even talking about "deception" here, or "pretending to be hypnotized". I can walk into the person's office and sit in his chair, and with no attempt to deceive whatsoever - I can make positive, good-faith attempts to simply follow all of the instructions as given with no resistance to the process whatsoever: first to feel increasingly relaxed and calm, and to close my eyes as directed; and then to start raising my arm as told, imagining that it is unbendable, pretend I'm a young child again and answer questions within that context until told to stop imagining that scenario, and so on and so on through the long list of instructions...all fully consciously, and willfully, and according to that test's results I am a highly hypnotizable and "suggestible" person. The therapist will conclude that I was "hypnotized" and "responding to suggestions", because there is no way to tell the difference. The test is absolutely useless.

 

[Olowkow]

The sense of discovery exhibited by those claiming excitedly that a person can willfully follow instructions is verging on humor. I'm pretty sure psychologists and medical professionals who use hypnosis routinely are aware of this possibility. I certainly am. I have posted several tests which are less ambiguous for determining the stage of hypnosis.

The term "suggestion" is not used by hypnotists in the sense of instruction. The operator does not tell the subject, "raise your hand". Rather the suggestion is that the hand is light, and the arm then rises without any conscious input from the subject. Of course, it is trivially true that a person can fake this test by simply raising his arm, but other tests are available to test for suggestibility. I posted a video of a demonstration of Chevreul's pendulum, a very simple test that anyone can try that shows in minutes how verbal suggestion can control the subconscious ideomotor effect. It even works on most lone individuals.

Yes, one could claim that the pendulum is just moving because the person wants it to, is causing it to move, is controlling the movement. The point is that, just as with dowsing, the person is not consciously aware that he is causing the movement. When one consciously tries to swing the pendulum, the movements are more pronounced and obvious. In the video, the ideomotor based movements are very subtle. Hypnosis is very analogous to this simple test.

 

[The Norseman]

None of you pro-hypnosis people have actually shown that in this case of the principal and the students did any legitimate hypnosis occurr, nor that hypnosis in general is powerful enough to be a proximate cause of suicide.

Secondly, it's not up to skeptics of the link between hypnosis and these kids to prove anything wrong; it's up to the proponents to actually demonstrate the link with, you know, evidence. Disprove the null, anyone?

 

[The Norseman]

The sense of discovery exhibited by those claiming excitedly that a person can willfully follow instructions is verging on humor. I'm pretty sure psychologists and medical professionals who use hypnosis routinely are aware of this possibility. I certainly am. I have posted several tests which are less ambiguous for determining the stage of hypnosis.

The term "suggestion" is not used by hypnotists in the sense of instruction. The operator does not tell the subject, "raise your hand". Rather the suggestion is that the hand is light, and the arm then rises without any conscious input from the subject. Of course, it is trivially true that a person can fake this test by simply raising his arm, but other tests are available to test for suggestibility. I posted a video of a demonstration of Chevreul's pendulum, a very simple test that anyone can try that shows in minutes how verbal suggestion can control the subconscious ideomotor effect. It even works on most lone individuals.

Yes, one could claim that the pendulum is just moving because the person wants it to, is causing it to move, is controlling the movement. The point is that, just as with dowsing, the person is not consciously aware that he is causing the movement. When one consciously tries to swing the pendulum, the movements are more pronounced and obvious. In the video, the ideomotor based movements are very subtle. Hypnosis is very analogous to this simple test.

Why go through this elaborate explanation that "suggestion" doesn't really mean "suggestion"? Why aren't you questioning the use of the word by these researchers in the first place if it isn't accurate on it's face?

 

[Olowkow]

None of you pro-hypnosis people have actually shown that in this case of the principal and the students did any legitimate hypnosis occurr, nor that hypnosis in general is powerful enough to be a proximate cause of suicide.

Secondly, it's not up to skeptics of the link between hypnosis and these kids to prove anything wrong; it's up to the proponents to actually demonstrate the link with, you know, evidence. Disprove the null, anyone?

"Pro hypnosis"? I'm just stating facts and recounting my own experience. I thought readers might be interested. I'm starting to have doubts.

Why should I be tasked with showing that any legitimate hypnosis occurred or didn't in this case? I honestly don't care. While I doubt that healthy kids would commit suicide just because they had been hypnotized, I have no clue what actually happened nor do you.

Why go through this elaborate explanation that "suggestion" doesn't really mean "suggestion"? Why aren't you questioning the use of the word by these researchers in the first place if it isn't accurate on it's face?

It wasn't all that elaborate nor difficult to understand. I said, "The term suggestion is not used by hypnotists in the sense of instruction." I'm not sure how that becomes, "suggestion doesn't really mean suggestion".

A poster seemed to try to conflate suggestion with instruction. He was either wrong or being annoyingly argumentative. The term "suggestion" is quite accurate and is the accepted word used by many in the field. Post hypnotic "suggestions" are useful for all kinds of therapy.

ETA: I can imagine someone who has not looked into hypnosis may not realize that the term "suggestion" is in fact quite commonly used. It's even in the dictionary.

suggestion:

• the action or process of calling up an idea or thought in someone's mind by associating it with other things.
• "the power of suggestion"
• Psychology--the influencing of a person to accept an idea, belief, or impulse uncritically, especially as a technique in hypnosis or other therapies.
• Psychology -- belief or impulse induced by suggestion.

 

[Checkmite]

The sense of discovery exhibited by those claiming excitedly that a person can willfully follow instructions is verging on humor. I'm pretty sure psychologists and medical professionals who use hypnosis routinely are aware of this possibility. I certainly am. I have posted several tests which are less ambiguous for determining the stage of hypnosis.

The term "suggestion" is not used by hypnotists in the sense of instruction. The operator does not tell the subject, "raise your hand". Rather the suggestion is that the hand is light, and the arm then rises without any conscious input from the subject.

Sorry, but your explanation does not reflect the apparent reality.

Using again the "Stanford suggestibility test" that Skeptic Ginger linked (here it is again), make a very careful note of the script:

Now hold your right arm out at shoulder height, with the palm of your hand
up. There, that's right.... Attend carefully to this hand, how it feels, what is going on
in it. Notice whether or not it is a little numb, or tingling; the slight effort it takes to
keep from bending your wrist; any breeze blowing on it. Pay close attention to your
hand now. Imagine that you are holding something heavy in your hand.... Maybe a
heavy baseball or a billiard ball.... Something heavy. Shape your fingers around
as though you were holding this heavy object that you imagine is in your hand.
That's it....
Now the hand and arm feel heavy, as if the weight were pressing down....
And as it feels heavier and heavier the hand and arm begin to move down.... As if
forced down.... Moving.... Moving.... Down.... Down.... More and more down....
Heavier.... Heavier.... The arm is more and more tired and strained.... Down....
Slowly but surely.... Down, down.... More and more down.... The weight is so
great, the hand is so heavy.... You feel the weight more and more.... The arm is
too heavy to hold back.... It goes down, down.... More and more down....

Firstly, this is not a well-thought-out test as it is, because someone holding their arm straight outwards is bound to lower it little by little as their arm muscles naturally tire. But that aside, you can see here that it is not merely being "suggested" to the subject that there is something heavy in their hand, and then the hypnotist simply watching how they react to that suggestion. The person is told there's a weight in their hand, they're told repeatedly that the weight is increasing, they're told exactly how they should react to it - by lowering their arm.

All of the "suggestions" are very similar to this, telling the subject exactly what they will think, feel, or sense, and then prompting them to verbally affirm or physically indicate that they think, feel, or sense those things. They're told there is a mosquito on their hand, and explicitly told to brush it away. Again, these are all instructions, not mere "suggestions". This follows all the way up until the very end of the hypnosis, when the "post-hypnotic suggestion" is delivered:

In a little while I shall begin counting backwards from twenty to one. You will
awaken gradually, but you will still be in your present state of hypnosis for most of
the count. When I reach five you will open your eyes, but you will not be fully
awake. When I get to one you will be entirely roused up, in your normal state of
wakefulness. You will have been so relaxed, however, that you will have trouble
remembering the things I have said to you and the things you did or experienced
while you were hypnotized. It will prove to cost so much effort to remember that you
will prefer not to try. It will be much easier just to forget everything until I tell you
that you can remember. You will forget all that has happened until I say to you:
Now you can remember everything! You will not remember anything until then.
After you open your eyes you may feel refreshed. I shall now count backwards from
twenty, and at five you will open your eyes, but not be fully aroused until I say one.
At one you will be awake.... A little later I shall take a pencil from the pencil holder
on the desk. When I do so, you will get up from the chair you are in and move to
the other empty chair in the room, and sit in it. You will do this, but forget that I told
you to do so, just as you will forget the other things, until I say to you, Now you can
remember everything.

Once again, the subject is explicitly instructed to take a specific action. For instance they're told what specifically they should not remember, making it obvious that until the "trigger phrase" is given, they should respond in the negative when asked if they remember what happened to them, and then respond positively after the phrase is given. Subsequently in the procedure, this is asked of them exactly.

The test itself gives scoring instructions after each individual "component", and the instructions are almost always the exact same: if the person performed the task they were told to perform, it is a "+", otherwise not. The test presumes that performing a task indicates a person is hypnotized and responding to the "suggestion", and that someone who is not hypnotized or not "suggestible", will refuse or fail in some way to perform the task.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, at least not out of the blue. There's a half-awake dreamy state I sometimes get in between the third and forth "bop" of my clock-radio alarm, but not really hallucinations.

Do you suppose the ability to induce hallucinations will have some use?

For pain control, perhaps.

Beyond that I reserve judgement on the usefulness of hypnosis until research results support said uses.

But one has to at least consider the induction of hallucinations is evidence hypnosis is not simply relaxed and faking it for whatever secondary gain is being hypothesized.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I can make myself weepy by listening to a series of very sad songs and "buying into" them. Is that hypnosis? Like hypnosis? It's at least an induced, altered state.

It's not hypnosis and inducing emotions is not the same as inducing hallucinations or a trance.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

So can this gizmo tell the difference between someone who is under a "hypnotic trance" from someone who is faking it? It seems to me that would win Kreskin's 100 grand.

Kreskin's credibility was lost when he used a contract technicality to get out of paying the reward.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I never said otherwise.

So why ask me if I used hypnotherapy in my infectious disease practice?

I never said hypnotized people are faking it or hypnosis isn't a real phenomena (I believe you don't look at what I've said). I've said/saying it isn't an altered state of consciousness like sleep.


Hypnosis is a real thing. I've practiced it enough to know that. I also believe it can be therapeutic. Our difference is if it is an altered state of consciousness.

Hypnosis has been studied a long time.

It's been refuted because hypnosis is not an altered state that gives you abilities to retrieve past memories or past lives.

There's a logic fail in saying because one cannot retrieve past memories ergo it is not an altered state of consciousness.

Since when did retrieving past memories define an altered state? I think induced hallucinations (which has been documented in empirical brain studies) is a better definition of an altered state of consciousness than whether or not one can recover memories.


Apparently hallucinations are not induced in everyone who is hypnotized. Perhaps this is where the discrepancy is coming between people who don't believe the hypnotized state of consciousness exists. Maybe everyone who appears hypnotized or believes they are hypnotized aren't really under.

On the neurobiology of hallucinations

Szechtman and colleagues¹⁷ reported that the right anterior cingulate cortex was activated in hypnotizable people when they heard real external speech or when they were instructed to hallucinate under hypnosis, but not when they imagined speech. They thus suggested that the anterior cingulate cortex may be involved in attributing the speech to an external source. As pointed out by Allen and colleagues,8 however, controls (who were unable to hallucinate under hypnosis) in this study should also have been expected to activate the anterior cingulate cortex when they heard real speech, but they did not. Interestingly Raz and colleagues18 have demonstrated altered activation of the anterior cingulate cortex in highly hypnotizable people responding to a hypnotic suggestion (not involving hallucinations). This raises the possibility that the anterior cingulate cortex could be involved in hypnotic suggestibility per se (or in attributing control to an external source, possibly the hypnotizer) and illustrates the complexity of interpretation of these types of models.

Where the imaginal appears real: A positron emission tomography study of auditory hallucinations

Regional cerebral blood flow was measured during hearing, imagining, and hallucinating in eight healthy, highly hypnotizable male subjects prescreened for their ability to hallucinate under hypnosis (hallucinators). Control subjects were six highly hypnotizable male volunteers who lacked the ability to hallucinate under hypnosis (nonhallucinators). A region in the right anterior cingulate (Brodmann area 32) was activated in the group of hallucinators when they heard an auditory stimulus and when they hallucinated hearing it but not when they merely imagined hearing it. The same experimental conditions did not yield this activation in the group of nonhallucinators.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's not a logical fallacy at all.

Yes it is.

i.e. Being willing to follow instructions. Amazingly, I can do this without needing an altered mental state.

You can follow instructions without needing an altered state.
Ergo everyone following instructions is not in an altered state.

Logic fail.

Now, if you claim that anyone here is saying that following instructions (or suggestions) defines the hypnotic trance, that would be a straw man.

Like many other quasi-scientific fields of "study", hypnotism makes a specialized language out of ordinary, established terms, giving them new and different meanings. The ubiquitous "suggestion", in the context of hypnosis, is one of the most common such examples that can be found to illustrate this.

No, just no, that's not what's being said here at all.

To be sure, "suggestion" is a real thing. Asking a (conscious, alert) person at a party if they remembered to lock up before they left the house for instance, has a chance of planting a suggestion in a person's (not just the asked person, but anyone who hears the question - including the person who asked it) mind that they may not have done so - a suggestion that might cause growing concern for as long as a person is unable to verify whether they have. But this isn't the kind of suggestion hypnotists talk about.

It has been stated clearly more than once in this thread that hypnosis cannot enhance memories. So why are you discussing failure to recover memories as evidence hypnosis doesn't work? No one else is saying one can recover memories under hypnosis.

Earlier you posted links to a couple of alleged procedures for assessing a person's level of "suggestibility", used by people who happen to be studying hypnosis at Harvard or Stanford or some place. The procedure, which to me seems indistinguishable from just about any other hypnosis session, simply involves "hypnotizing" a person and asking them to do a set of specific things. The documentation calls these things suggestions, but they very certainly are nothing of the kind. When you tell someone to "raise your hand", that's not a "suggestion", that's an instruction. A person who then raises their hand, is not "responding to a suggestion", they're complying with the instruction.

The list of arbitrary and whimsical instructions goes on; but the test is fatally flawed for one glaring reason, and that is that there's nothing special about these instructions that would allow a therapist carrying out the procedure to distinguish between a so-called "hypnotized" person and a compliant, fully conscious person.

For instance, one of the instructions is to imagine that your arm has through some means been stiffened and immobilized so that you can't bend it at the elbow. You are instructed to imagine this scenario, and then instructed to attempt to bend your arm, while imagining it is not possible.

Now, anybody can consciously do this. I can imagine that there is a great stiffness in my elbow, and that I cannot bend my arm when I try. I can even try extremely hard, to no avail - and I can do this so well that my arm and then shoulder actually tremble with the force of effort. My arm muscles (such as I have...) bulge and strain. My face becomes flushed and red, a sign that my blood pressure is rising. My body can produce these physiological effects as a result purely of my imposing an imaginary inability to bend my elbow. And then instantly, I can release the imaginary immobility, and bend my arm with no effort at all. I can even do this whilst struggling, so that my arm closes suddenly with great force as the rigidity instantly vanishes. And I can do this completely consciously, without needing an altered mental state.

The same is true for other instructions given, such as one to imagine that you are a young child again sitting in your second-grade classroom, and then answering questions within the context of this scenario - what grade are you in, how old are you, what is your teacher's name, and so forth. Again - not something any conscious person has even the slightest trouble doing.

And we're not even talking about "deception" here, or "pretending to be hypnotized". I can walk into the person's office and sit in his chair, and with no attempt to deceive whatsoever - I can make positive, good-faith attempts to simply follow all of the instructions as given with no resistance to the process whatsoever: first to feel increasingly relaxed and calm, and to close my eyes as directed; and then to start raising my arm as told, imagining that it is unbendable, pretend I'm a young child again and answer questions within that context until told to stop imagining that scenario, and so on and so on through the long list of instructions...all fully consciously, and willfully, and according to that test's results I am a highly hypnotizable and "suggestible" person. The therapist will conclude that I was "hypnotized" and "responding to suggestions", because there is no way to tell the difference. The test is absolutely useless.

The procedure for assessing susceptibility to suggestions had nothing to do with documenting the hypnotic trance. I linked to that in response to Olowkow's post that he used a similar method assessing subjects on stage.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

None of you pro-hypnosis people have actually shown that in this case of the principal and the students did any legitimate hypnosis occurr, nor that hypnosis in general is powerful enough to be a proximate cause of suicide.

That's because we agree.

The discussion arose because there are hypnosis deniers that always chime in when anyone says there is evidence hypnosis is a real phenomena.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Sorry, but your explanation does not reflect the apparent reality.

Using again the "Stanford suggestibility test" that Skeptic Ginger linked (here it is again), make a very careful note of the script:



Firstly, this is not a well-thought-out test as it is, because someone holding their arm straight outwards is bound to lower it little by little as their arm muscles naturally tire. But that aside, you can see here that it is not merely being "suggested" to the subject that there is something heavy in their hand, and then the hypnotist simply watching how they react to that suggestion. The person is told there's a weight in their hand, they're told repeatedly that the weight is increasing, they're told exactly how they should react to it - by lowering their arm.

All of the "suggestions" are very similar to this, telling the subject exactly what they will think, feel, or sense, and then prompting them to verbally affirm or physically indicate that they think, feel, or sense those things. They're told there is a mosquito on their hand, and explicitly told to brush it away. Again, these are all instructions, not mere "suggestions". This follows all the way up until the very end of the hypnosis, when the "post-hypnotic suggestion" is delivered:



Once again, the subject is explicitly instructed to take a specific action. For instance they're told what specifically they should not remember, making it obvious that until the "trigger phrase" is given, they should respond in the negative when asked if they remember what happened to them, and then respond positively after the phrase is given. Subsequently in the procedure, this is asked of them exactly.

The test itself gives scoring instructions after each individual "component", and the instructions are almost always the exact same: if the person performed the task they were told to perform, it is a "+", otherwise not. The test presumes that performing a task indicates a person is hypnotized and responding to the "suggestion", and that someone who is not hypnotized or not "suggestible", will refuse or fail in some way to perform the task.

You are confusing an assessment of hypnotizability with a discussion of hypnosis itself.

 

[Checkmite]

You are confusing an assessment of hypnotizability with a discussion of hypnosis itself.

No, the aim of that particular tangent was much more narrow. I brought up the assessment to illustrate a specific point: that of individuals, who are presumably experts in the field of hypnosis (at the very least seen as such by others in that field), using the word "suggestion" to describe things which are clearly instructions or commands and not simply "suggestions". It supports my main argument of a few posts ago, that the issue is confused partly by a tendency of proponents to misuse or twist words into new, special meanings, something that is not uncommon in unscientific or pseudoscientific fields of study.

 

[Delvo]

Franz Mesmer was born in 1734 and your sleep stories and these articles are the best you got to prove it is an altered state of consciousness

You know perfectly well that what I was talking about was neither a "sleep story" nor intended "to prove it {hypnosis} is an altered state of consciousness". Resorting to lies about one's opposition's claims is usually a sign of knowing that one doesn't have a case to make for one's own.

I never said hypnotized people are faking it or hypnosis isn't a real phenomena. I've said/saying it isn't an altered state of consciousness

What other options does that leave? (Hopefully you can make it through an explanation of your own position without lying about it as you do about your opposition's.)

None of you pro-hypnosis people have actually shown that in this case of the principal and the students did any legitimate hypnosis occurr, nor that hypnosis in general is powerful enough to be a proximate cause of suicide.

Wow, you mean it looks as if there were nobody in here even making such a claim at all? What could possibly have made it look that way?!

Secondly, it's not up to skeptics of the link between hypnosis and these kids to prove anything wrong; it's up to the proponents to actually demonstrate the link with, you know, evidence.

Tell it to an actual proponent of that link, as soon as you find one.

 

[Olowkow]

No, the aim of that particular tangent was much more narrow. I brought up the assessment to illustrate a specific point: that of individuals, who are presumably experts in the field of hypnosis (at the very least seen as such by others in that field), using the word "suggestion" to describe things which are clearly instructions or commands and not simply "suggestions". It supports my main argument of a few posts ago, that the issue is confused partly by a tendency of proponents to misuse or twist words into new, special meanings, something that is not uncommon in unscientific or pseudoscientific fields of study.

Again, the word "suggestion" is the agreed upon arcane term for "you will feel sleepy", or "your eyelids are getting heavy", etc. which the operator speaks to the subject. No one is twisting words. You are arguing a very trivial semantic battle here. It's in the dictionary as such. Is the dictionary twisting the word "suggestion" into a new special meaning? Could it be that you merely are unfamiliar with the term in this usage?

suggestion: the influencing of a person to accept an idea, belief, or impulse uncritically, especially as a technique in hypnosis or other therapies.

Yes, the hypnotist might speak instructions, commands, orders, reminders, directives and requests also. So what? What's your point here? What do you hope to win with this line of reasoning?

Everyone really should try the Chevreul's pendulum test. It is the mere suggestion of direction of movement that triggers the swinging. It's not a matter of instructing someone to make it move. Big difference. In fact, the instruction is to try to hold the pendulum as steady as possible. There is nothing pseudo scientific about hypnosis or the ideomotor effect. Certain claims may be overstated for hypnosis by some, but they are part of our behavior as humans. I'd be curious to know what would cause someone to strongly argue against the reality of either without actually being informed. It could be a religious taboo, but I have not found any evidence for this in mainstream religions. I recall that in the dowsing thread, the dedicated dowsers claimed that the ideomotor effect was an invention by those "pseudo skeptics", meaning us skeptics.

 

[p0lka]

mentioning religions, the evidence for a god doesn't convince me, so I don't believe in a god,
the evidence for hypnotic trances and the like doesn't convince me either, so no to hypnotism too.
and unicorns.

 

[Olowkow]

mentioning religions, the evidence for a god doesn't convince me, so I don't believe in a god,
the evidence for hypnotic trances and the like doesn't convince me either, so no to hypnotism too.
and unicorns.

Could you explain which part of trances strikes you as not convincing? Do you accept any other facets of hypnosis? Have you ever met anyone who has been hypnotized?