I subscribe to a magazine that is the swedish equivalent of Popular Science - mainly because it has cool articles. Now, I know that one should be skeptical to things brought up in such magazines (as something can easily be lost in translation), but today when I got the magazine it had an article on hypnosis. I remember watching a Penn & Teller episode on how hypnosis is a fraud yaddi yadda (and yes, I don’t buy everything they say either) but I do believe that hypnosis is scientific and not a metaphysics.
According to the article one could do 3 simple tests which would show how susceptible one might be to the process (this is where my bullshit meter started jumping a bit):
If you roll your eyes as far as they go towards the top of the head there is supposedly a correlation between how much “white” is visible under your irises and how susceptible you are to hypnosis.
If you cross your hands (as if your praying) and imagine that they are stuck together and inseparable for 90 seconds and then try and separate them, here too is a correlation but in this case it has to do with how long it takes for you to separate them. Longer time = more susceptible.
A little survey that you had to fill out.
What’s the deal with this? I obviously can’t look in a mirror and check the whites of my eyes when I’m rolling them. But I tried number 2, and after a minute and a half of trying to convince myself that my hands were interlocked for life it took a mere split second to seperate them.
Hahaha Never actually got around to it. But I swear, everytime I’ve seen a tennisball in a store I’ve actually thought of trying it. I guess I’m just waiting for the summer. Or for somebody to try it first and post the answer, which ever happens first.
The jury’s still out, but it’s not very out. Part of it depends on exactly what you mean by “hypnosis.”
Past life regression is clearly bunk. So are “recovered memories” of any sort. It’s been shown that people cannot remember things under hypnosis that they can’t remember in a “normal” state. It’s easy to create memories under hypnosis, but then it’s pretty easy to do in general.
The sort of “bark like a dog” suggestibility is a harder case to determine. Sure, you can “hypnotize” people who wouldn’t normally do these things into doing them. But critics argue that the “hypnosis” gives people an excuse–they can do absurd things without social penalty. It’s pretty hard to create an empirical test for this, but several researchers point out that hypnotists can get people to do “embarassing” things, but not “repugnant” ones–folks still won’t eat cockroaches, for example. This implies, but doesn’t prove, that “suggestibility” hasn’t really happened.
There’s still debate on both sides among legitimate scientists. But the trend certainly seems to be in the direction that it’s all bunk, and if I were going to lay my bets at this point, that’s where I’d put them.
Yes, I understand the fact that it becomes an excuse to act like a jackass in front of an audience, for example. But then again, how is that so different from alcohol?
I was mostly curious about how rolling your eyes and then being able to determine how susceptible one might be to hypnosis. The clasping of the hands isn’t that hard to explain. Here goes: If you can convince yourself that your hands are “glued” together then it will be harder to pry them apart after x minutes. But if you’re rational (no implication that those who succeed are irrational) and the majority of your cerebrum is screaming THEY’RE NOT GLUED TOGETHER regardless of how hard your conscious mind tries, it won’t work.
I’ve always thought Hypnotism breaks down your social barriers. Like alcohol can. It loosens you up so that when a suggestion comes your way, hypnosis has suppressed the little voice in your head that normally would say “No way” and instead replaces it with “Yeah, why not, that sounds like a great thing to do.”
So when they get someone to bark like a dog, it’s not because they now think they’re actually a dog (even if that’s what the Hypnotist implies to the audience). It’s because by removing that “no” reflex, they have convinced the victim that barking like a dog would be “a fun thing to do, and what’s more I’m going to put some energy into it to make it really entertaining.”
I don’t find this argument particularly satisfying - it just seems to simplistic; it might go some way toward explaining the extrovert and silly things stage hypnotists get people to do, but for every example of a person barking like a dog, there’s a person who has been conditioned to forget that the number 6 exists, and appears genuinely perplexed and frightened that they can’t properly count their fingers.
I really recommend reading Derren Brown’s new book, Tricks of the Mind. He discusses hypnosis in quite some detail and cites quite a lot of academic research to back up his arguments. To me it’s more interesting because he was actually a stage hypnotist. He aregues that it’s a ‘permission to do something’ rather than an altered state, and he explains in quite some detail the techniques stage hypnotists use to ‘put people under’ and handle people who refuse to participate (i.e. aren’t buying into it).
For me though, the book was worth reading because of the sections on memory techniques and his opinions on pseudoscience, quack medicine and psychics (the explanation of cold reading was very interesting).
My friend from school was put under hypnosis whilst he had a dental operation. It was on the local news (slow news day). I think he wasn’t given any anaesthetic for the operation (this was a long time ago, so I may be wrong).
Yeah, I read about the medical uses of hypnosis as well. I don’t see how the critics of hypnosis can argue with the fact that someone is cutting out your appendix without anesthesia. The uses within cosmetic surgery are spectacular as well. Now, plastic surgeons can perform brow lifts without general anesthesia. After they’ve done a few cuts and modifications they can ask the patient to open their eyes so that the surgeon can determine whether any corrections need to be made. With general anesthesia one doesn’t have that luxury.
I can think of two ways: (1) the reported cases are false (see the infamous russian study of acupuncture as anesthetic – the patients were selected for pain tolerance and given anesthetic as well as the acupuncture), or (2) these patients are able to concentrate/ignore/distract themselves from the pain without “hypnosis,” and/or these procedures aren’t particularly painful anyway (note that appendectomies aren’t usually candidates, and that nearly every case mentions that the patient is deathly afraid of anesthesia for some reason, and therefore highly motivated for the “hypnosis” to work.)
The first is just fraud, and doesn’t seem likely given the widespread reports (although sensational reports often forget to mention things like “and the patient was given topical lidocaine,” too).
The second is testable, and should be. Probably it has been – but the hundreds of Google hits I’m getting are all anecdotes or straightforward statements that it works – nothing about real and replicated studies.
I still say the jury’s out, and that this hasn’t been decided one way or the other.
I’m not familiar with the first test, but the idea with the second test is someone else needs to suggest to you that your hands are bound and you can’t separate them. This can’t work as well if you are talking yourself through it; at some level, you know you’re trying to make yourself believe something, and it won’t be as effective.
Other susceptiblitity tests include being told to stand up straight, while it is suggested to you you are starting to sway slightly. There’s also one where you hold your hand and arm out, while being asked to imagine someone placing a brick on your palm. It’s then suggested to you your hand is starting to bow under the weight of the brick. At these suggestions, some people will indeed react according to your suggestions.
Every time I read one of these is hypnosis bogus or for real threads I just can’t understand why the truth (or a close approximation of it) cannot be determined. I mean, there are thousands of hypnotists, and many are not of the “stage” variety. Shouldn’t we be able to come up with some relatively easy-to-implement tests that provide some indication of its validity?
I’m on the “believer” side of the fence based on what I’ve read and observed, but I could be hauled over to the other side with adequate evidence. My anecdota:
I attended a six-week course at Lackland AFB with an Air Force Captain that was an anesthesiologist. He stated that he routinely used hypnosis - not during surgery - but as a pain-management tool for those needing it. He wasn’t “new age”, and he only tried hypnosis for patients where it seemed appropriate. He also provided “quit smoking” hypnosis on a personal after-hours basis; his success rate was better than average, but not stellar, and he attributed at least part of the success to the idea that if someone pays for treatment (hypnosis therapy), they are more likely to put more effort into its goals. In short: he seemed like a down-to-earth, squared-away normal guy who regularly uses hypnosis in an Air Force hospital environment with at least some success.
Some years ago I developed an interest in learning hypnosis and read several books on the subject. I gave my three daughters (about 8-12 at the time) a book-suggested susceptibility test that involved them holding both arms out straight, closing their eyes, being instructed to not move, and to listen while I described a balloon around one wrist and a watermelon in the other hand. Two of the three had the expected reaction within ten seconds. Granted, there is a lot that could be involved, including “Daddy’s voice” and whatnot, but they were instructed not to move.
Surely we should be able to conduct more scientific tests than this and get something.
Never actually got around to it. But I swear, everytime I’ve seen a tennisball in a store I’ve actually thought of trying it. I guess I’m just waiting for the summer. Or for somebody to try it first and post the answer, which ever happens first.