What, exactly, is hypnosis capable of? Everyone knows you can’t be compelled to do something against your will, but how far can you go? Could someone under hypnosis be given a gun and told it was a water pistol, then be tricked into shooting someone? Have there been any psychological studies on this sort of thing?
Hypnosis is probably one of the slipperier subjects we’ve discussed here at the SDMB.
My personal take on this, is that it largely depends on what the subject would be willing to do while not under hypnosis.
http://skepdic.com/hypnosis.html
Basically, if you belive in it, it might work. Someone like me, who thinks it’s a load of horse-hockey would make a rather poor subject–although in an entertainment venue would definitely play along.
[Teacher Hat on]
It’s all about disassociation and Suggestability folks. We cover Hypnosis in Psych 101,202 and interviewing and counseling 101 and 202. We have a lot of fun with it as I usually can hypnotize a class to show them physically what happens when one is hypnotized. I usually have them pick up 1000 pound balloons or bark like a dog if someone says Apple. It’s all within the faculty of teaching psychology…learning by behaviour is the easiest way to learn about behaviour.
Hypnosis has been around for many years, centuries even in one form or another. Have you ever stared are something when in the presence of someone else? That is a form of hypnotic trance state. I know when I am staring out my back door at our newly constructed treehouse…thinking deeply about all the things I want to do still, and my wife is looking at me staring…She’ll say things like…Honey can I have your credit card to go to Macy’s…?
Me: YEEEAAAHHHHH!!! Suuuure.
See what I’m saying, the brain has certain ‘states’ where it is more suggestable than others. The state of staring, happens to be the closest to the state of hypnosis.
I once went to a collegue of mine who is a hypnotherapist to lose a couple pounds…my winter warmer was not going away so I went to her for one session. KNowing I was a suggestable person I knew ‘as a psychologist’ that the session would work, because I knew how it worked with-in my cerebrum. I knew that if I allowed my self to be brought to a deep enough hypnotic state I would allow my mind to accept the suggestions being told to me to lose some weight. To stay out of the fridge after dinner, and to lay off the bagels in the morning.
And you know what. After an hour and a half session I thought she didn’t do anything. I was amazed. I was kind of perturbed because I thought it was going to be more intense than it was - I mean I was aware of everything she said to me and could recall almost all of it.
Yet that night around 8pm my wife asked me, “What no danish and a cup of milk tonight?”
I was astonished - well not really I knew it was going to work - but seriously it did. I simply had had that craving taken out of my everyday conscious thought. It was lovely. But there are some people who think “I can never be hypnotized” and you know what, they can’t.
One has to be open to the suggestion and not fight it for it to work…
[teacher hat off]
more like story teller hat off - wow did I get off on a small tangent…
Anyway, hypnosis is a valuable tool for many psychologists… Used to help treat obesisty - or in my case help me lose 20 pounds - smoking, anger, anxiety etc…etc…
Personally, I believe this is what hypnosis really is - it breaks down your resistance, and encourages your inclinations to ‘play along’. It doesn’t make you believe things that aren’t so, instead it loosens you up for entertainment value, convinces you it’d be fun to lark it up on stage.
Therefore I don’t think you can be convinced that a real gun is not one, and send you to pretend to kill someone… but then again, maybe it depends on how you’d set it up.
The power of suggestion was explored in some detail on a TV special on HBO not long ago. It dealt with faith healers and televangelists and was a very graphic depiction of what people can be induced to believe and to do. Ever seen film footage of all those people falling down when the guy waves his arm? What do YOU think is going on there…power of the “holy spirit”? Now, that’s horse hockey. I’ve been briefly hypnotized myself by a Psych professor; it was an odd experience, but I have no doubt that it was NOT some sort of circus trick.
There’s nothing really magical, mystical, psychic about hypnosis; that’s where the problem with understanding hypnosis begins.
I’ve performed stage hypnosis and I’ve been hypnotized several times. I’m sure I can answer any further questions.
As Chefguy noted, it’s NOT a trick, BUT there’s nothing really odd or unusual about it.
Once upon a time, when my band was gigging at a Smuggler’s Inn in Sacramento, CA, we had a stage hypnotist as the opening act. He hypnotized folks every night and had them do silly things, but the one thing I really remember was he had a bottle of smelling salts and would tell the subject that it was perfume. Every single person (who was really under) took a big sniff of that stuff and didn’t even flinch. Now I don’t know about you, but if anyone puts that stuff near MY face, I’ll twitch away even if I’m planning not to. Either those folks were tremendous actors (different people every night) or hypnosis gives you a LOT of control over yourself that you wouldn’t ordinarily have.
I’m a professional magician and entertainer, among other things. I have studied hypnosis and used it. I know some leading hypnotists very well, and have discussed hypnosis with them in depth, and have also seen many professional hypnosis acts. A pro hypnotist friend of mine was a key witness at a landmark legal trial last year concerning hypnosis, and I went along to watch the trial.
In general, hypnosis isn’t capable of anything. People are capable of many things, often more than they realise. Hypnosis can help by helping people give themselves permission to do the things they are capable of.
Let’s separate stage hypnosis, for entertainment purposes, and clinical hypnosis, for therapeutic purposes.
In stage hypnosis, the hypnotist gives people suggestions for silly things to do and people go along with them because they can, because they want to and/or because the normal social taboos and constraints have been removed (you can’t be accused of acting the fool or being an exhibitionist because you have an excuse… the hypnotist made you do it). That’s it. There is no trance, no control, no ‘access to the subconscious’. Man suggests silly things. People do silly things. That’s it. There is not a single shred of evidence that there is anything else going on at all.
In clinical hypnosis, the hypnotist can help the subject only to the extent that the subject can help himself. The hypnotist can’t give someone the willpower to quit smoking, but he can help the patient to realise the full potential of his own willpower simply by highlighting the need to do this and offering the encouraging suggestion that his willpower IS in fact strong enough to resist the weed. But that’s about all. It’s no better or worse than having a good, trusted friend lean forward, touch your arm affectionately and tell you that they believe in you and believe you can do it (whatever it is you happen to be yakking about).
The hypnotist may also help by teaching the subject some good ways to relax, and to focus on a problem, and to visualise the successful change of a given behaviour. But again it is important to stress that there is no trance, the hypnotist has no power over the subject, and there is no command/response pattern. The hypnotist’s only therapeutic role is to facilitate the patient’s realisation of how much he can do for himself.
In fiction it is fairly common to see hypnosis as a way in which one person can control another. This is fiction, pure and simple.
A couple (of the many) previous threads on the subject:
Can someone be hypnotised to commit murder or suicide?
My experience with hypnosis is a fraction of ianzin’s, but it’s in agreement with what he’s said.
What ianzin has remarked about hypnosis has precisely been my experience. He basically revealed the big “secret” behind hypnosis (though I have no idea if professional stage hypnotists consider it a secret): There isn’t any “hypnosis”. There is no trance, there is no secret tapping of the mind. What there is is the setting up of an environment that permits a person to behave in certain ways.
I’d be curious, ianzin, to hear from you if your stage hypnosis friends do indeed consider the above a secret or not (ie, something they don’t really want people to know).
I’m wondering how a memorable case I saw fits into all this; the subject was ‘hypnotised’ to forget the existence of the number four; when asked to count his fingers, he counted 1,2,3,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 and was very confused - he could see and understand that he only had five fingers on each hand. When asked to add 2+2, he was utterly perplexed and unable to answer.
Now this is a bit different, I think, to positive suggestions - like barking when you hear a trigger word - I have heard that subjects who do the barking thing later report that they felt like they were going along with it all because they wanted to, not because they had no choice - you can choose to bark, but can you choose to forget the existence of a number?
Then how do you explain the fact that EEGs of hypnotized people show changes?
In his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, the legendary Richard Feynman (a skeptic if there ever was one) had this to say about hypnosis:
Interesting stuff.
-Apoptosis
This is a common occurence with hypnosis subjects. It is just the natural tendency of the subconcious to make excuses for our behaviour.
Years ago I learned hypnosis from a hypnotist who had formerly done stage work. He would hypnotise people while they stood in front of him. They would collapse into his arms and he would lay them on the floor. When aroused and asked whether they were hypnotised people would routinely explain being on the floor with nonsense like “My legs were tired”, “I just felt like laying down” or “I didn’t want to make you look silly.”
It is true that you can feel that you are just “choosing” to do what was suggested and I often did. Once I went to watch him teaching another bunch of people, months after I had last seen him. He was giving a suggestion to one subject, telling him that “when I say the word jungle you will get up and beat your chest and make the Tarzan call.” He got no further than the word jungle and I was up in the audience doing it. He put me to sleep and removed the suggestion. At the time I responded I had no idea that I was “carrying” the suggestion. Later I recalled that the last time I had seen him I had left early before his mass “clear all the day’s stage suggestions”.
Mangetout: the person doesn’t choose to “forget the existence” of the number. Rather, they choose to obey the suggestion that they forget the number; there’s a difference. don’t ask brought up good points about hypnosis subjects making up explanations for their behaviour. This is why testimony from hypnotized subjects is no longer (never was?) permitted in courts: When asked a question, they will make up whatever explanation they can in order to fit the question. I too, when hypnotized, can feel myself “choosing” to do whatever suggestion I have been given.
Apoptosis: Richard Feynman’s description of being hypnotized is the most accurate description I’ve encountered regarding what it feels like.
ricksummon: I’m not an expert on brainwaves, so I don’t know how to interpret EEG results. However, when hypnotized, the subject IS in an altered state…a state very similar to dream sleep. Hypnotized subjects will often demonstrate REM (in fact, this is a test that hypnotists use to test for induction). I would assume that these EEG readings are a reflection of that fact.