Does hypnosis ever really work?

Can you actually get someone to stop smoking, drinking, eating too much, exercise more, etc? Does it really help at all in recalling the details of a crime you witnessed? Can you make someone forget something? Anything at all?

The skeptic’s dictionary is quite thorough in it’s explanation of what we know about it and what is believed about it.

http://www.skepdic.com/hypnosis.html

I expect it will answer your questions.

It works all the time on TV. :D:D

Remember when the Professor accidentally hypnotised the Skipper into thinking he was still fighting WWII and that the other six islanders were Japanese soldiers?

Or when Raven’s dad was put in a trance and almost blew his big TV debut?

I don’t think hypnosis works as you see it on TV. However, I do believe that the process of hypnosis can relieve anxieties enough to enable a witness to recall things they might not otherwise recall.

I do believe that some people become more amenable to suggestion when in a “hypnotic state.” I believe it is just a state of heightened relaxation that most of us cannot obtain without help or training.

It works. “It” is a process in which the subject is an active participant. It works in the same sense that physical training works to get you into shape. In other words, not at all if you’re just going to lay back and let the “magic” do everything by itself.

It’s a means of concentrating and clarifying intentionality.


AHunter3 used to smoke cigarettes.

AHunter3 is on the dot. Two of my cousins, longtime smokers, tried a hypnotherapy course. One of them sucessfully quit, convincing himself that what he enjoyed about smoking was not the flavor, nicotene, etc. but the act of holding something between his fingers-he carries around a toothpick now. My other cousin, however, was less enthusiastic, and shortly returned to smoking. Positive attitude, and cooperation, is key.

Thanks! That site’s getting bookmarked.

I’ve posted quite a bit on how non-entertainment hypnosis works. If you’re still interested, search for posts made by me, keyword ‘hypnosis’, in this forum.

I’d love to know more about entertainment based hypnosis. I’ve seen several demonstrations (think the state fair) where a “hypnotist” asks for a number of volunteers and proceeds to perform any number of silly experiments on them. I have a very hard time believing anyone up there is actually hypnotised, and yet in each instance pretty much everyone goes along with it, heads rested on complete strangers shoulders and the like. Is there anything at all to it or is eveyone just going along with it because they want the attention?

Yeah, I’d like to know more about entertainment-based hypnosis too. I always suspect that these people are planted there by the entertainer, but I can never prove it. I’ve never known anyone who has claimed to be hypnotized, though…

I’m going to count from 1 to 10, and you will start to awaken. At 10 you will be fully awake, feeling relaxed and comfortable, and remember none of this…

I’ve seen the entertainment based hypnotism. My BF at the time went on stage (he certainly wasn’t planted) and was there for a portion of the show. They excused him because he wasn’t completely under, but he said the experience was real. He was very relaxed. Aware, but not totally conscious, etc.

As to if the other participants were hypnotized, I’m inclined to say yes. One of the girls was practicly masturbating on the stage (the hypnotist stoped her). All the women were wearing their bras on the outside of their clothes, and one guy was shuffling around, dragging his butt accross the floor every time “Ring of Fire” was put over the loud speaker. When the act was over, everyone looked pretty sheepish.

Additionally, my grandma and grandpa went in for hypnosis to quit smoking. Grandpa was totally succesful. He never smoked again, and never even had a craving. Grandma wasn’t so lucky - the hypnosis didn’t really “stick” in her case, and she had to use the Cold Turkey method.

Anyhow, all these anticdotes aside, last semester I took Psychopathology. The prof is also a psychiatrist and a large part of his practice is hypnosis. He’s based a number of research articles in various journals on hypnosis. Also, before my dad retired (hes a Psychologist), one of his practice partners did the bulk of his business in hypnosis, and also had a number of research articles to support his methods.

Anyhow, to sum up, hypnosis works really, really well, for some people.

My belief is that hypnosis breaks down your resistance to doing something. Instead of expressing doubt about an absurd request, you instead say to yourself “yeah, okay, I’ll go along with that” with hardly any question. Your reactions then tend to be exaggerated, because it’s like you’re in a sleepy dream state, but at the same time a heightened reality. Kind of.

I’ve never been hypnotised, though, so I may be talking crap.

Be very, very cautious about uncritically accepting the views of those who consider themselves Professional Skeptics. As they do not, usually, regard themselves as “fantasy-prone individuals,” their take on Reality may lack the degree of imaginative sophistication necessary to grasp what is ontologically difficult. (My comment on the article, not any of the posters.)

Scientific American did a study on this a while back. Here’s an excerpt.

I remember reading an article about 5 years ago that said that some people were able to go through major surgurywithout any anesthetic while under hypnosis, and have minimal pain. I don’t have a cite for it (ring a bell with anybody else?) but if it turns out to work that way, even for a few, I would say hypnosis shouldn’t be dismissed outright.
oh and by the way, I was one of the lucky few who were chosen by a hypnotist/entertainer… faked my way through the whole thing, I still lie to people that ask me about it today, just to avoid admitting that I CHOOSE to do all that embarrasing crap.

That kinda sounds like you were hypnotised. You knew what you were doing, it was embarrasing, but you did it anyway. You were pretty open to the suggestion of doing something so embarrassing you lie about it even today. Isn’t that basically hypnosis?

When I was in college we had this entertainer hypnotist do a show for us. We were all sitting in the bleachers, he was on a little stage in the middle of the gymnasium. He selected people from the audience. Usually “volunteers” from what I can remember (already open to suggestion?). He was turning them into various animals, space aliens, making them speak Martian, etc. After a while, he was putting his volunteers to sleep on command. From what I recall, he had mixed success doing this, but towards the end of that particular part of the show, after having given the “go to sleep” command, a couple people in the audience keeled over. There was much dramatic excitment as the hypnotist had to rush into the crowd to carefully wake up these accidental “victims.”

I always wondered if that were rigged beforehand, or these people were so open to suggestion they decided to play along too?

There’s this phenomenon, called mass hysteria, or sympathetic hysteria or something. Basically, if I’m in a room full of people, I suddenly stand up acting quite alarmed & say something like, “do you smell that? Oh my God, gas!” and then pretend to pass out. If I do it convincingly enough, dramatically enough, there’s a really good chance a couple other people will pass out too. Even tho there’s no gas. I also heard women were a little more susceptable to this than men. Is this a form of hypnosis too?

Be very, very cautious about uncritically accepting the views of those who consider themselves Professional Parapsychologists. As although they do not, usually, regard themselves as “fantasy-prone individuals,” their take on Reality may lack the degree of logical rigour necessary to grasp what is ontologically simple. (Not my comment on the article, nor any of the posters.)

:smiley:

My SO is a psychotherapist who uses hypnosis in her practice. When I asked her to hypnotise me, she asked me what I wanted to get out of the experience. I told her that I simply wanted to try it, and she refused saying, “This isn’t exactly a parlor trick.”

Hypnosis is something that’s saddled with a stupid name. Call it what it is: Monomania; a state of extreme concentration on one subject to the exclusion of all else.

That’s how people can do surgery without anesthestics, or get up on stage and do strange and wacky things. The subject is concentrating so intently on the hypnotiser, and the suggestions being made by that person, that the surgeon’s knife, or the audience, is irrelevant.

Any long-term effects-- such as smoking, reacting a certain way to certain stimulus-- usually need to be reinforced, and require the co-operation of the person being hypnotized.

And as for remembering long-forgotten events. Well, the evidence indicates that in a highly suggestive state, people want to remember things, and happily co-operate even if they don’t know the specifics-- so they’ll make stuff up. Which is where the whole past-life regression crap comes from.