‘‘Hypnotized and entranced subjects can develop spontaneous (but not random) wounds, such as patients who are touched with a (room temperature) pen that they are told is red hot, and develop real blisters as a result of the imagined heat. Wounds like these are frequently associated with powerful memories; one subject would develop weals and blisters around his wrists similar to wounds he received 10 years earlier when tied up. A 37 year old female patient described her father’s childhood beatings, and while doing so "bleeding whip marks appeared on her legs, buttocks, shoulders and hands. These were witnessed, photographed and reported by physicians, and had moreover to be dressed and treated […]. Two further cases of this same phenomenon are also reported by Dr Moody’’
I assumed that bleeding was a result of direct damage to both the dermis and epidermis, and not stress hormone secretion or nerve transmission as a result of suggestion, however I could be incorrect. What’s the straight dope?
What mechanism would translate thoughts about being whipped into actual bleeding weals on the skin? What would happen within the body to actually cause the skin and blood vessels to come apart and emit blood?
A suggestion of pain within one arm could lead to a stress response that results in actual pain located in the suggested arm, I am unaware of the mechanism behind bleeding, but I do not know much regarding the subject. I meant to edit my previous post and mention that individuals without a history of psychological disorder have endured the condition.
While, given a great stretch of the imagination, it might be possible for your mind to make your body bleed in a specific place, that’s doing it the hard way. It’s comparatively easy to use misdirection and fraud to simulate it. So far, that’s the only way we know for sure it is has been done. All else is speculation.
Indeed, and human fingernails are quite capable of inflicting damage to human skin - a person undergoing some sort of mental episode could probably quite easily scratch or cut themselves, then deny (or just not remember) doing it. Even if they were under constant watch this could go unnoticed.
The doctor I quoted in my original post exists and has published other articles and papers on medical agendas. Additionally, the case of the production of blisters or blood from hypnotic suggestion is a famous one.
I don’t have to. You have access to a fine search engine by the name of ‘‘Google’’. Conversely, I asked if it were possible for suggestion to cause external bleeding.
Eczema, a commonly malady. The causes are mysterious, but one hypothesis involves a skin barrier defect leading to reactions to all manner of environmental insults. At any rate it can leading to bleeding palms.
At least it did for me, once. I was in the midst of an outbreak with elevated itching. I used acupressure on my palm for relief. The next day, my palm was bleeding. It was somewhat ugly. Stigmata seem fairly non-mysterious to me: it’s not like skin never breaks.
And you have access to the same fine search engine. But Czarcasm isn’t making the fantastic claim; you are. It behooves you to supply good evidence to support it. Evidence as in valid medical studies and reliable sources that we can examine. Otherwise, the position that stigmata is caused by the mind amounts to bullshit.