hypnosis-real science or woo?

JoeTheJuggler said:
J My question is about the definition of hypnosis. How is it different than the relaxation therapy (which is used already by non-hypnotherapist therapists) I described?
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We need to distinguish between hypnosis (as a state of mind) and hypnotherapy (as an intervention).

Hypnosis

As has previously been said, hypnosis is a perfectly ordinary state of mind that we spontaneously enter several times a day when reading a book, watching a movie, driving, daydreaming etc. It is, quite simply, focused relaxation:

http://www.mcmaster.ca/inabis98/woody/de_pascalis0311/two.html

So hypnosis is a state of mind that we have all experienced; there is nothing special about it.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy uses this state of mind to enable the client to bring about changes. It is not magical, is it not coercive and it is does not give us some kind of mystical access to hitherto hidden material. It simply works by creating new possibilities in the client's mind. This creates the right conditions for change to happen. See:

Whorwell, P. J., Prior, A. and Faragher, E. B. (1984).
Controlled trial of hypnotherapy in the treatment of severe
refractory irritable-bowel syndrome. Lancet. 2(8414).
1232-1243.

Whorwell, P. J., Prior, A. and Colgan, S. M. (1987).
Hypnotherapy in severe irritable bowel syndrome: Further
experience. Gut. 28(4). 423-425.

So to sum up: hypnosis is not a different state of mind than that experienced in relaxation therapy, but hypnotherapy uses that state of mind in a very different way.
 
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The findings from hypnotherapy studies can be considered as "hard science" as those from other therapies such as CBT, leaving us with the argument of whether or not psychology is a scientific discipline.
 
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simonmaal said:
The findings from hypnotherapy studies can be considered as "hard science" as those from other therapies such as CBT, leaving us with the argument of whether or not psychology is a scientific discipline.
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One can argue about anything. Some people still think diet has nothing to do with health, or that hypnosis is bunk. What can you do?
 
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What are you on about? Plenty of it is bunk. The whole idea of some special altered state, or that you can reveal hidden internal knowledge or gain some special insight using it, is bunk. And that's what most people think it constitutes. Probably because for many years, that's all there was to it. The fact that science is starting to sort wheat from chaff doesn't diminish the fact that hypnosis as originally conceived, was total woo. It just happened to hit upon some useful psychology.
 
And, if the only real parts of hypnosis is no different from relaxation, then why use a term that's loaded with the historical baggage Big Less mentioned?

And even today, as JonWhite pointed out, training and certification as a hypnotherapist is still very closely associated with a lot of known bunk (past life regression, for instance).

And, as I pointed out, the science part (research) has some serious problems (screening for high hypnotizable subjects to test hypotheses regarding hypnosis, for one).
 
A deep hypnotic trance is not the same as relaxation.

In regards to avoiding the word "hypnosis", it's ironic you say that, because that word was coined by a researcher to avoid using the term "Mesmerized", because of the connotations associated with the word.
Gravitz & Gerton (1984)

"I adopted the term "hypnotism" to prevent my being confounded with those who entertain those extreme notions, as well as to get rid of the erroneous theory about a magnetic fluid, or esoteric influence of any description being the cause of the sleep. I distinctly avowed that hypnotism laid no claim to produce any phenomena which were not "quite reconcilable with well-established physiological and psychological principles"
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James Braid, Letter to The Lancet, 1845
 
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robinson said:
A deep hypnotic trance is not the same as relaxation.
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So hypnosis is not the same as relaxation? Is there any evidence of a deep hypnotic trance state? If so, how is it defined?

By now you should at least agree with me that there is a severe definition problem with hypnosis. Simonmaal just made the case that hypnosis is not any sort of unusual state of mind, that it is just a type of relaxed mental state.

Back to all of my questions (of the pattern "Is x hypnosis?"): what is and what is not hypnosis?
 
robinson said:
I posted a link to an extensive article on hypnosis. I suggest reading it.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008D31F-BD5B-1C6F-84A9809EC588EF21
It is all about the subject, answering questions like what it is what is Hypnosis? How can it be measured? What isn't hypnosis?
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I read it carefully, and commented on it above. Despite the fact that the article has a subhead "What Hypnosis Is" it fails utterly to address that question. Instead, that section is devoted almost entirely to hypnotizabilty and some subjective comments (for instance, that actions done while hypnotized feel different than normal actions).

While the author never says so, he seems to imply that the stability of hypnotizability argues that there is something real there. (He points out that a person's Stanford hypnotizability score remains perhaps more stable than IQ.) I disagree with that implication. Again, this statement seems to argue that whatever is going on is a very subjective thing, not related so much to what the hypnotist actually does:

A person's responsiveness to hypnosis also remains fairly consistent regardless of the characteristics of the hypnotist: the practitioner's gender, age and experience have little or no effect on a subject's ability to be hypnotized.
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The research has the problems I've mentioned--screening subjects, difficulty in placebo controls and blinding, etc.

I didn't see anything about "how it can be measured." There was mention of several studies, and pretty much all of them had measures of different things (looking to separate imagining from hallucination, for instance), but without knowing what hypnotism is, there really can be no measure of hypnotism itself. The Stanford measure of hypnotizability is not a measure of hypnosis itself, but rather a person's susceptibility to it--whatever it is.

I thought the study distinguishing imagination from hypnotism-induced hallucinations was interesting, but it has the same problem of placebo control already mentioned. (That is, the people who are intentionally faking it--i.e. imagining--know they are intentionally faking it. To compare to a drug test, that would be like telling the placebo group that they are in fact only getting a sugar pill.)

ETA: The word "trance" does not appear at all in the Scientific American article.
 
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JoeTheJuggler said:
I didn't see anything about "how it can be measured."
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To study any phenomenon properly, researchers must first have a way to measure it. In the case of hypnosis, that yardstick is the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales. The Stanford scales, as they are often called, were devised in the late 1950s ... and are still used today to determine the extent to which a subject responds to hypnosis. One version of the Stanford scales, for instance, consists of a series of 12 activities--such as holding one's arm outstretched or sniffing the contents of a bottle--that test the depth of the hypnotic state. In the first instance, individuals are told that they are holding a very heavy ball, and they are scored as "passing" that suggestion if their arm sags under the imagined weight. In the second case, subjects are told that they have no sense of smell, and then a vial of ammonia is waved under their nose. If they have no reaction, they are deemed very responsive to hypnosis; if they grimace and recoil, they are not.

Scoring on the Stanford scales ranges from 0, for individuals who do not respond to any of the hypnotic suggestions, to 12, for those who pass all of them. Most people score in the middle range (between 5 and 7); 95 percent of the population receives a score of at least 1.
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Maybe measure means something different to you. One version of the Stanford scales, for instance, consists of a series of 12 activities--such as holding one's arm outstretched or sniffing the contents of a bottle--that test the depth of the hypnotic state. In the first instance, individuals are told that they are holding a very heavy ball, and they are scored as "passing" that suggestion if their arm sags under the imagined weight. In the second case, subjects are told that they have no sense of smell, and then a vial of ammonia is waved under their nose. If they have no reaction, they are deemed very responsive to hypnosis; if they grimace and recoil, they are not.

This illustrates why a hypnotic "trance", or state, differs from relaxation. No matter how relaxed you are, a vial of ammonia isn't something you ignore. In fact, it is a method to bring somebody back to awareness. It can even wake you out of a sound sleep, at the very least there is a recoil from the ammonia, even while sound asleep.

I agree the article doesn't explain in great detail what the hypnotic state is. The link at the end isn't much help either.
What is Hypnosis?
Hypnosis is a social interaction in which one person responds to suggestions given by another person (the hypnotist) for imaginative experiences involving changes in perception, memory, and the voluntary control of action.


How is Hypnotizability Measured?
Hypnotizability is measured by standardized psychological tests such as the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale or the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility. These instruments are work-samples that are similar to other performance tests. Hypnotizability, so measured, yields a roughly normal (i.e., bell-shaped) distribution of scores.
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http://www.institute-shot.com/hypnosis_and_health.htm
 
robinson said:
Maybe measure means something different to you.
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Not at all. My quibble was with what is being measured. Measuring hypnotizability is not the same as measuring hypnosis. Again, without a definition of what it is, there is no way to measure it.
 
Hypnosis is "a trancelike state that resembles sleep but is induced by a person whose suggestions are readily accepted by the subject"
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

I guess most people just accept that hypnosis is what the definition says it is. The Stanford Scale measures how strong the suggestions are accepted.
 
robinson said:
In regards to avoiding the word "hypnosis", it's ironic you say that, because that word was coined by a researcher to avoid using the term "Mesmerized", because of the connotations associated with the word.
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Interestingly, Dr. James Braid originally came up with the term "hypnosis" as an alternative name to mesmerism as he thought the hypnoticic phenomenon to be a form of sleep (Hypnos = Greek God of sleep).

He soon realised this to be incorrect when he discovered that all major hypnotic phenomena could be induced without sleep and tried to rename it as "monoideism" (influence of a single idea - a concentration of attention) but it was too late and the hypnosis label stuck.
 
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robinson said:
Hypnosis is "a trancelike state that resembles sleep but is induced by a person whose suggestions are readily accepted by the subject"
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
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Even that is overplayed though. It doesn't cover the level of compliance that's needed from the client.
 
robinson said:
Hypnosis is "a trancelike state that resembles sleep but is induced by a person whose suggestions are readily accepted by the subject"
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
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There've been a couple of hypnotism proponents on this very thread who deny that it involves a trance state.

Your evidence of the existence of a trance state is that the dictionary defines hypnosis as a "trancelike" state?

Again, I think there's a fundamental problem with the definition of hypnosis, and the research is plagued by the methodology issues I've mentioned several times. Until these are addressed, I don't consider it a mainstream science. I appreciate the research efforts that are being made, but conclusions drawn from them should keep in mind the difficulties (such as placebo control groups).

Also, as we've seen, becoming credentialed as a hypnotherapist doesn't necessarily rely on science-based training.
 
Big Les said:
Even that is overplayed though. It doesn't cover the level of compliance that's needed from the client.
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I agree with that. Also, in my opinion, hypnosis involves a level of concentration that relaxation doesn't really have. When someone relaxes, they generally try to NOT to think of anything, letting thoughts wander. To go into, (for lack of a better word), a state of hypnosis, there is a focus on something.
 
Actually, during my hypnosis secession to stop smoking I was instructed to let my mind wander and to pay little attention to the hypnotist as possible. During the half-hour secession there were several times that I remember thinking I have not noticed this guy talking for several minutes. I drifted off (day dreaming) several times, just as if I were back in school listening to a very boring professor.
 
DouglasL said:
Actually, during my hypnosis secession to stop smoking I was instructed to let my mind wander and to pay little attention to the hypnotist as possible. During the half-hour secession there were several times that I remember thinking I have not noticed this guy talking for several minutes. I drifted off (day dreaming) several times, just as if I were back in school listening to a very boring professor.
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You're still focused though. Your mind might have drifted but it came back to the task at hand.

With simple relaxation, there's no "goal" to focus on. When one relaxes he/she is just there...

I don't know if I'm explaining this correctly, but the point is that your thoughts can drift when your are being hypnotized, but the focus is there or comes back. Relaxation there is no focus on anything.

....again, this is just an opinion... :)
 
I was just playing a very high speed and pretty demanding racing game on my 360, and a mate came online. I was speaking to him and fired up a race to see if I could concentrate on both at the same time (I get mixed results typically).

I somehow managed to win the race and miss most of the obstacles, and had virtually no memory of having done so. Yet I didn't miss anything he was saying. I think this is the kind of state you're talking about, the difference being that hypnosis involves the triggering of this state and the exploitation of the suggestibility and compliance level of the subject.
 
Big Les said:
I was just playing a very high speed and pretty demanding racing game on my 360, and a mate came online. I was speaking to him and fired up a race to see if I could concentrate on both at the same time (I get mixed results typically).

I somehow managed to win the race and miss most of the obstacles, and had virtually no memory of having done so. Yet I didn't miss anything he was saying. I think this is the kind of state you're talking about, the difference being that hypnosis involves the triggering of this state and the exploitation of the suggestibility and compliance level of the subject.
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Woooo hoooo!!!!

That was beautiful! Exactly what I was getting at. :) Thanks!!!
 
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