We’ve all heard this one. A stage hypnotist hypnotizes a subject. He tells the subject that he is holding a lit cigarette on the subject’s palm. The subject reports pain–and, lo and behold, a burn blister appears on the subject’s skin, sometimes immediately, sometimes later. Or the hypnotist may tell the subject that he is cutting him lightly with a sharp knife. A slash appears, and the subject bleeds.
Does this really happen? Are there any soundly documented incidents, or, better yet, laboratory studies? Or is this just an urban legend?
I’ve heard of this happening, but I’ve never heard it cited with names, a date, and place. If anyone can dig something like that up, I’d be grateful.
Two points:
Burns and scars cannot “just appear” or be willed into existence, regardless of hypnosis being used or not. The mysteriousness and associations with the occult that hypnosis has makes it sound like it’s possible for things like this to happen, but it’s not. Hypnosis is a relaxation method. It is a cooperative interaction between the hypnotizer and hypnotizee. That’s it. Unless the hypnotizer suggests the hypnotizee slash or burn himself and the hypnotizee is all for it and starts self-mutilating, there’s no way wounds could happen as a result of hypnosis.
Keep in mind that this is stage hypnotism. The point of the demonstration is to entertain. It would be a pretty dull show if all the subject reported were sensations only he could feel, and it’s many times more exciting if wounds suddenly open up on their own and blood gushes out like water out of a busted fire hydrant. For those reasons, you have to be skeptical of such an event’s authenticity. If it’s on a stage and someone’s making money off of it, it’s likely bogus.
This kinda sounds to me like the stigmata. One’s own mind influencing the body enough to cause effects. Not that I have any real evidence of either ever happening…
I once read a 400 plus page book on hypnosis that was heavily footnoted.
No stigmata effects.
Hypnosis is a state of being open to suggestions.
Stage hypnosis picks out the most apt candidates in the audience.
I have found self-hypnosis very useful for controlling pain and relaxing, even though I am not a very good hypnosis candidate.
Don’t try this in a car.
Sit down, focus on a point a few feet away, relax. Breath deeply and count backwards from ten, one count per breath. Give yourself a suggestion, such as, send me a buck.
I’ve seen photos of the burning phenomenon, it wasn’t that impressive - the subject had a (room temperature) coin placed on his/her arm and a line was drawn around it; under hypnosis, it was suggested to the subject that the are was being touched by something very hot (I forget what) - after a few minutes, the area inside the circle became slightly reddened, like I said it wasn’t very impressive.
I’ll see if I can find the article again (I seem to remember it was in a [fairly] reputable publication, maybe NewScientist or NatGeo)
As regards lacerations spontaneously appearing, I’d be very suspicious of any such claims.
Though I don’t believe that it really happends to the extent mentioned, this is remarkable similar to the placebo effect, where people have been cured of warts by placing water on them and telling the people that the water is a powerful medicine. Isn’t the mind amazing?
Well, if you think there’s something hot in your hand, blood is going to start flowing there to aid in the healing of a potential burn. An actual burn blister, of course, is a physical process and can not be controlled by your mind, conscious or not.
My high school english teacher told us about how there was some university that had part of it’s hazing rituals was to have a hot branding iron, and show it to the new guy, then go around behind and brand him - with a cold iron. A small percentage of them actually did blister as if burned. My confidence in factual info from high school english teachers is very low, but just last week I saw a show on stigmata where they were trying to explain certain religious people who’s hands bleed for no reason, symbolic of Jesus, blah blah blah… They mentioned the same branding experiments this time done by a scientist. They mentioned his name, but I don’t recall it. Apparently you can trick the body into thinking it’s damaged, and it will respond in such ways.
It’s still difficult to swallow though; simply because a blister is a local reaction to a local trauma, as far as we know the brain isn’t normally involved in the actual process of blistering, but maybe there’s more to it, maybe the brain is involved in producing a blister in reaction to a burn, hmmmm.
However even less likely is the idea that lacerations can be hypnotically induced; in order for this to follow the same logic as the burn phenomenon, we would have to believe that skin splits not because a knife cuts it, but because the brain senses the knife and sends a message to the skin to tell it to split, I find that most unlikely.
Here’s a page that lists the show I saw. It’s the thrid one down; stigmata. If anyone knows how to get specific info on the show, it would have the name of the guy that did the blistering study, and an explanation of how un-aided bleeding can occur.