Is hypnosis real?
I watched a show on PBS (Nova?) that interviewed a few hypnotist explaining how hypnosis did work. Then they interviewed a phsycologist (or some Ph.D) that said flatly that there was no such thing and went on to explain a phenomenom that, in a nutshell, caused people to ACT like they were hypnotized due to something akin to peer pressure or not wanting to hurt the “hypnotists” feelings.
BUT… my father (a pretty darn honest guy) was a medic in the Army and he says he was trained to hypnotize field injured soldiers to not feel pain if he ran out of PKs. He claimed it worked. Further, he told stories of using hyp to get his girlfriends to buy him gifts after the war, while giving the suggestion that they would not remember anything about the hyp session. He claimed it worked. BUT…I started experiencing migrains and asked him to give hyp a try. He refused - no reasons.
Then there is the folks who use hyp to go through surgury w/o pain meds. Bill Moyers did a show on it but seemed skeptical…high threashold of pain, strong will, etc.
I’ve done lots of searches with widely conflicting results.
Does anyone here know of an indesputable study that answers this question?
Indisputible? Nah. Not really any such thing. But there’s a good, recent article here. I recommend it.