• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

hypnosis-real science or woo?

DouglasL

Scholar
DouglasL
Joined
Sep 4, 2007
Messages
111
Approximately one year ago I went to a group hypnosis session to quit smoking, and it worked very well. I even had two quick cigarettes before I went in, and have never smoked anything again.
I recently read an article in a local paper (sorry I can not seem to find a link to it directly) that completely blasted hypnosis treatments for smoking or weight loss as complete "self delusion" and "a waste of time and money for something that can not possibly work." The author even went as far as saying that hypnosis had no "scientific" basis.
Sense my own personal experience was a good one (I did quit smoking) my own opinion is biased.
Did I fool myself into quiting smoking through some form of placebo effect, or is there some real science to hypnosis? :confused:
 
DouglasL said:
Did I fool myself into quiting smoking through some form of placebo effect, or is there some real science to hypnosis? :confused:
Click to expand...

I have done a great deal of research into hypnosis. I have entertained people as a parlor game using hypnosis. The bottom line is there is no bottom line when it comes to hypnosis. If you ask five different experts on the topic you will get five different opnions. Quiting smoking is wonderful.
 
I've also known people who used hypnosis to quit smoking. I know of at least one who claimed he had no cravings whatsoever, but then went back to smoking a week or so later. I suspect there are a great many more who tried hypnosis and got no help in quitting smoking but don't go around telling people about it.

I've looked into some of the hypnosis research, and here's my opinions: I see no compelling evidence of a trance state, no evidence that a person who is hypnotized is in a state distinguishable from other mental states. The research is full of people who believe that you can use hypnosis to regress to past events (either to "relive" those events or to replay them as if the memory were a video recorder), and since that stuff flies in the face of reliable research that shows memory doesn't work that way, I'd say that part at least is pure bunkum.

Finally, even people who tout the benefits of hypnotherapy will tell you that there is no hypnosis that is not self-hypnosis. So to your question, "Did I fool myself into quiting smoking through some form of placebo effect. . ." I'd ask what is the difference between a placebo effect and self-hypnosis? How could you possibly design a test to separate the two?

My own pet theory, as a person who quit smoking 20 years ago without hypnosis, is that hypnosis is probably as much a help to quit smoking as telling all your friends that you have now quit smoking. Either way it sort of makes it a firmer commitment when you externalize it like that. (Whether it's actual auto-suggestion, playing a role in a hypnotherapy game, not wanting to embarrass yourself to your friends by going back, or what, I don't know.)
 
Derren Brown covers this well in his book "Trick of the Mind". Essentially, there is no measurable or empirical "trance" state, and "hypnotising someone", as the vernacular usage understands it, is impossible.

Stage and therapeutic hypnotism works (and it does kinda work) through a combination of performativity, suggestibility, self-'delusion' and what in other fields might indeed be called 'placebo'.
 
The general "rule" is that you can't hypnotize a person into doing something they wouldn't do already in a normal state. Which begs the question, is it really doing anything? If I were a betting man I would definitely say it was a placebo.
 
Yeah and can't people under hypnosis remember details about crimes that they can't w/o it? (Or is that just the movies?)
 
panchov said:
Yeah and can't people under hypnosis remember details about crimes that they can't w/o it?
Click to expand...
Not because of hypnosis anyway. Trying to get details that they didn't remember in the first place is an open invitation to confabulation. There's plenty of research on the malleability of memory. There is no subconscious video recorder taking down every bit of info available to rewind and play back.

volatile said:
Stage and therapeutic hypnotism works (and it does kinda work) through a combination of performativity, suggestibility, self-'delusion' and what in other fields might indeed be called 'placebo'.
Click to expand...
I'd add to the list a kind of role playing or fulfilling expectations or something like it (unless that's what is meant by "performativity"--I'm not familiar with that term).

As far as the stage stuff goes, I frequently have volunteers from my audiences do all sorts of odd things just because I ask them to. (I'm a juggler--not a hypnotist.) In other circumstances, they probably wouldn't talk to me since I'm a complete stranger, but there's an expectation set up in this situation--that it's all in fun, so play along. Stage hypnotists frequently do a quick screening. They'll say it's to find out who's most susceptible, but that's really indistinguishable from who is willing to play along.
 
Only in the past 40 years have scientists been equipped with instruments and methods for discerning the facts of hypnosis from exaggerated claims. But the study of hypnotic phenomena is now squarely in the domain of normal cognitive science, with papers on hypnosis published in some of the most selective scientific and medical journals. Of course, spectacles such as "stage hypnosis" for entertainment purposes have not disappeared. But the new findings reveal how, when used properly, the power of hypnotic suggestion can alter cognitive processes as diverse as memory and pain perception.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008D31F-BD5B-1C6F-84A9809EC588EF21

Long article, well worth reading. PET scans as well as MRI have shown with out a doubt that hypnotic states exist, can be measured, and can't be "faked". Of course some people don't accept this, but what can you do?

Plenty of studies on PubMed as well. But don't listen to real scientist, just go with some anonymous "skeptic" who assures you hypnosis is all fakery, after all, skeptics know everything, and real scientist, with their fancy tests and machines and stuff, are dumb. :D
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
I'd add to the list a kind of role playing or fulfilling expectations or something like it (unless that's what is meant by "performativity"--I'm not familiar with that term).
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I meant, though even more precisely. It's not just that the person themselves is performing, it's that the act of hypnosis in an entertainment or therapeutic setting is performative.

A performative act is, according to Dictionary.com:

"per·for·ma·tive (pər-fôr'mə-tĭv)
adj. Relating to or being an utterance that peforms an act or creates a state of affairs by the fact of its being uttered under appropriate or conventional circumstances, as a justice of the peace uttering I now pronounce you husband and wife at a wedding ceremony, thus creating a legal union, or as one uttering I promise, thus performing the act of promising."

Telling someone they are hypnotised in the appropriate circumstances performs the act of bringing about the 'hypnotic' state, given that the subject then (often) acts as they think they should, or are expected to.
 
Mike Heap has a wealth of information on the subject at www . mheap . com
(had to break that up because I'm not allowed to post URLs yet)

My personal opinion can be summed up with
"Tell me what you think it is, and I'll tell you if that exists as a phenomenon"
 
robinson said:
Only in the past 40 years have scientists been equipped with instruments and methods for discerning the facts of hypnosis from exaggerated claims. But the study of hypnotic phenomena is now squarely in the domain of normal cognitive science, with papers on hypnosis published in some of the most selective scientific and medical journals. Of course, spectacles such as "stage hypnosis" for entertainment purposes have not disappeared. But the new findings reveal how, when used properly, the power of hypnotic suggestion can alter cognitive processes as diverse as memory and pain perception.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008D31F-BD5B-1C6F-84A9809EC588EF21

Long article, well worth reading. PET scans as well as MRI have shown with out a doubt that hypnotic states exist, can be measured, and can't be "faked". Of course some people don't accept this, but what can you do?

Plenty of studies on PubMed as well. But don't listen to real scientist, just go with some anonymous "skeptic" who assures you hypnosis is all fakery, after all, skeptics know everything, and real scientist, with their fancy tests and machines and stuff, are dumb. :D
Click to expand...


Excellent article. Just the kind of thing I was looking for. Thanks.
My own research into the subject has found responses of approximately the same breakdown as the responses to this thread. That is, a range of opinions from "total bunk" to "scientifically verified."

Thank to every one
 
robinson said:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008D31F-BD5B-1C6F-84A9809EC588EF21

Long article, well worth reading. PET scans as well as MRI have shown with out a doubt that hypnotic states exist, can be measured, and can't be "faked". Of course some people don't accept this, but what can you do?
Click to expand...

Good article. Thanks.

I think you overstate what it says though.

The brain scans showed that people having hypnotically induced hallucinations really are hallucinating (as opposed to just imagining something or pretending to hallucinate), and that something different is going on in the brains of those who report less pain than in the brains of those who don't.

Very intriguing, and worth more investigation, but it's not the same thing as saying there is an identifiable hypnotic state.

I do have a problem with the article. In the section titled "What it is" it utterly fails to address the question of what hypnosis is. It focuses instead on hypnotizability (or high-susceptible vs. low-susceptible).

It shows plenty of research that a person's susceptibility is very consistent. It doesn't matter how skilled or unskilled the hypnotist is (or what particular technique or theoretical model he or she embraces). To me that argues that there isn't really something objective. At the very least, it argues that anyone reading a hypnosis script is just as good a hypnotherapist as someone with hypnotherapy credentials.

Also, most of these studies (including the ones you mentioned that showed the difference in brain scans) start off by separating groups into high-susceptibility vs. low susceptibility. To me, whatever results you come up with then are simply repeating that this group of people is doing something different than the other group.

From the article (my bolding):
In a classic 1969 report, Thomas H. McGlashan and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania found that for poorly hypnotizable people, hypnosis was as effective in reducing pain as a sugar pill that the subjects had been told was a powerful painkiller. But highly hypnotizable subjects benefited three times more from hypnosis than from the placebo.
Click to expand...

I take this to mean that overall there was no difference between the placebo group and the hypnotized group. If you compare just the highly susceptible subjects in the hypnotized group and to the sugar pill group, you get a more dramatic effect. (To me that merely argues that among highly susceptible people a sugar pill isn't a good placebo control for hypnosis. Try using a "fake" hypnotist and, as pointed out earlier, the result is the same as a "real" hypnotist.) These are the same control problems that dog acupuncture research.

The article's summary of memory is pretty accurate. Just about what I said earlier.
 
Long article, well worth reading. PET scans as well as MRI have shown with out a doubt that hypnotic states exist, can be measured, and can't be "faked".
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone is claiming they were "faking" it any more than a person with neck pain would "fake" feeling better when given a placebo.
 
tomwaits said:
I don't think anyone is claiming they were "faking" it any more than a person with neck pain would "fake" feeling better when given a placebo.
Click to expand...
That's a reference to an attempt at a control group. You have a group that fakes or pretends to be hypnotized. (Obviously, it's not double-blind because the people who are faking know they are faking.)

It's difficult to set up real controlled studies the way you can for a drug.

It would (maybe) be better if someone could define what hypnotism is. Then maybe there are other ways of approaching it. Right now it's just trying to measure results.

I'd be a lot more convinced if the area of therapeutic measure were anything more objective than the ones typically studied (pain or psychotherapy outcomes).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom