Understanding Hypnosis- What Can Hypnosis Do For You?
We all have a picture of hypnotism in our heads, a result of popular
culture messages over the years. A man, cloaked and looking somewhat
sinister, stands over the fearful subject. He waves a gold pocket
watch in front of him and quietly drones “You are getting sleepy,
veeery sleepy.” Soon the subject slumps in his chair and he seems to
take on a zombie-like state in which he is compelled to obey the
hypnotist. Whether he is asked to quack like a duck or begin gyrating
like Elvis Presley, he is now merely a puppet of the hypnotist. When
he is awakened, often with the snap of a finger, he will remember
nothing about his actions. And those who have watched all this have
been treated to a great show.
It is true that hypnotism has a
long history of being used for entertainment. But it has an equally
long history of being used in a therapeutic way, treating everything
from chronic pain to addictions. It is this facet of hypnotism that we
will be examining.
Group hypnotism has been practiced since
ancient times. In ancient Greece and Egypt, religious centers were set
up to treat troubled citizens. Through hypnosis, they were induced to
dream and those dreams were then analyzed to provide relief to the
patient. Other cultures have also turned to alternative states such as
trances to alleviate problems, using both drugs and psychological
techniques as a gate to the unconscious.
But the first real
“father” of hypnosis was Franz Mesmer (1734-1815), an Austrian
physician in the mid-eighteenth century. Mesmer believed that a
universal fluid was present in everything, including the air we
breathe, and this fluid was absorbed by the nerves of the body. He
identified it as “animal magnetism”. He believed disease was a result
of a blockage in the circulation of this fluid and that laying hands on
the body could unblock this fluid. A showman, he would sometimes sweep
his arms over a subject for hours on end, putting him into a trance,
some suggest, brought on by intense boredom.
James Braid, a
Scottish surgeon (1795-1860), noted that a subject could go into the
same “sleep” state if he fixated his eyes on a bright object. He
hypothesized that staring at something could exhaust the nervous
system, making it possible for the subject to be far more open to
suggestion. This treatment was useful for conditions where no organic
origin could be identified and he referred to the treatment as
“hypnosis” from the Greek word “hypnos” - meaning sleep.
Sigmund
Freud, in the late nineteenth century, hypothesized that neurosis was
caused by repressed traumatic events and tried to use hypnosis to bring
these events to consciousness. He was not very successful and became
convinced that hypnosis did not, in fact, work. Hypnosis went into
disfavor until the early 20th century when a scientist named Coue began
once again to investigate its claims.
Emil Coue, in the early
twentieth century, believed in self-healing and described a positive
attitude as the most important aspect of all healing. He introduced
his now famous affirmation “Every day I am getting better and better”
and spoke of the imagination being more powerful than the will. For
example, if you were to walk a plank on the ground with your eyes
closed and then compare it with walking on the plank while imagining it
is ten feet above the ground, the results would be considerably
different. It would be far harder to walk the plank when your
imagination has created a more difficult task. This same phenomenon
could be used to make positive changes in one’s life as one imagined or
visualized the wished-for success. Hypnosis could facilitate this
kind of self-healing.
By wartime in the twentieth century,
hypnosis was being used to reduce stress in soldiers suffering from
post-traumatic injuries. Milton Erickson used hypnosis in
psychotherapy, using words alone to induce a hypnotic trance. He
believed that people hypnotize themselves on a daily basis when they
become highly focused on some thought or object in their environment.
By
the mid twentieth century, the British Medical Association and the
American Medical Association had identified the therapeutic use of
hypnosis as a form of relaxation that could be used for such conditions
as addictions, stress, pain relief and weight loss. As the century
progressed, there was increasing concern for the possibility of false
memory syndrome - a condition possible, it was believed, because of the
high level of suggestibility a patient experiences while under
hypnosis. Hypnosis also became more common in dentistry, childbirth
and surgery as a natural form of anesthetic.
culture messages over the years. A man, cloaked and looking somewhat
sinister, stands over the fearful subject. He waves a gold pocket
watch in front of him and quietly drones “You are getting sleepy,
veeery sleepy.” Soon the subject slumps in his chair and he seems to
take on a zombie-like state in which he is compelled to obey the
hypnotist. Whether he is asked to quack like a duck or begin gyrating
like Elvis Presley, he is now merely a puppet of the hypnotist. When
he is awakened, often with the snap of a finger, he will remember
nothing about his actions. And those who have watched all this have
been treated to a great show.
It is true that hypnotism has a
long history of being used for entertainment. But it has an equally
long history of being used in a therapeutic way, treating everything
from chronic pain to addictions. It is this facet of hypnotism that we
will be examining.
Group hypnotism has been practiced since
ancient times. In ancient Greece and Egypt, religious centers were set
up to treat troubled citizens. Through hypnosis, they were induced to
dream and those dreams were then analyzed to provide relief to the
patient. Other cultures have also turned to alternative states such as
trances to alleviate problems, using both drugs and psychological
techniques as a gate to the unconscious.
But the first real
“father” of hypnosis was Franz Mesmer (1734-1815), an Austrian
physician in the mid-eighteenth century. Mesmer believed that a
universal fluid was present in everything, including the air we
breathe, and this fluid was absorbed by the nerves of the body. He
identified it as “animal magnetism”. He believed disease was a result
of a blockage in the circulation of this fluid and that laying hands on
the body could unblock this fluid. A showman, he would sometimes sweep
his arms over a subject for hours on end, putting him into a trance,
some suggest, brought on by intense boredom.
James Braid, a
Scottish surgeon (1795-1860), noted that a subject could go into the
same “sleep” state if he fixated his eyes on a bright object. He
hypothesized that staring at something could exhaust the nervous
system, making it possible for the subject to be far more open to
suggestion. This treatment was useful for conditions where no organic
origin could be identified and he referred to the treatment as
“hypnosis” from the Greek word “hypnos” - meaning sleep.
Sigmund
Freud, in the late nineteenth century, hypothesized that neurosis was
caused by repressed traumatic events and tried to use hypnosis to bring
these events to consciousness. He was not very successful and became
convinced that hypnosis did not, in fact, work. Hypnosis went into
disfavor until the early 20th century when a scientist named Coue began
once again to investigate its claims.
Emil Coue, in the early
twentieth century, believed in self-healing and described a positive
attitude as the most important aspect of all healing. He introduced
his now famous affirmation “Every day I am getting better and better”
and spoke of the imagination being more powerful than the will. For
example, if you were to walk a plank on the ground with your eyes
closed and then compare it with walking on the plank while imagining it
is ten feet above the ground, the results would be considerably
different. It would be far harder to walk the plank when your
imagination has created a more difficult task. This same phenomenon
could be used to make positive changes in one’s life as one imagined or
visualized the wished-for success. Hypnosis could facilitate this
kind of self-healing.
By wartime in the twentieth century,
hypnosis was being used to reduce stress in soldiers suffering from
post-traumatic injuries. Milton Erickson used hypnosis in
psychotherapy, using words alone to induce a hypnotic trance. He
believed that people hypnotize themselves on a daily basis when they
become highly focused on some thought or object in their environment.
By
the mid twentieth century, the British Medical Association and the
American Medical Association had identified the therapeutic use of
hypnosis as a form of relaxation that could be used for such conditions
as addictions, stress, pain relief and weight loss. As the century
progressed, there was increasing concern for the possibility of false
memory syndrome - a condition possible, it was believed, because of the
high level of suggestibility a patient experiences while under
hypnosis. Hypnosis also became more common in dentistry, childbirth
and surgery as a natural form of anesthetic.
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