Hypnowebs - Methods of Hypnotism

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Views & methods of Hypnotism

Views & Methods of Hypnosis

The act of inducing a hypnotic state is referred to as an induction procedure. There is no current consensus on what the requirements are for an induction procedure to be effective; while some practitioners use simple calming verbal techniques, others use complex triggers, including mechanical devices. http://hypnosistreatmentcenter.com/page45.html

Many experienced hypnotists claim that they can hypnotize almost anyone. They also claim it is a myth that people with strong will power cannot be hypnotized, as they claim these generally make the best participants. This is based on the idea that those who are most intelligent are also the most creative and as such they will make strong associations with the structure of language used by the hypnotist and by the visual or auditory representations inside of their mind. On the other hand, there is a common claim that no one can really be hypnotized against his or her will (Ambroise-Auguste Liébault, Le sommeil provoqué (Paris, 1889)). The counter-claim given by many hypnotists is that while you cannot make someone do anything against their will, you can change what it is that they wish to do.

Many religious and cultural rituals contain many similarities with techniques used for hypnotic induction and induce similar states in their participants.

Research

Research into the state of hypnosis has been widely covered with varying results.

Nevertheless, some modern research seems to suggest that hypnosis has a genuine effect on the brain functioning. For example, one controlled scientific experiment postulates that hypnosis may change conscious experience in a way not possible when people are not 'hypnotized', at least in "highly hypnotizable" people. In this experiment, color perception was changed by hypnosis in "highly hypnotizable" people as determined by positron emission tomography (PET) scans (Kosslyn et al., 2000). (This research does not compare the effects of hypnosis on less hypnotizable people and could therefore show little causal effect due to the lack of a control group.) Another research example, employing event-related Functional magnetic resonance imaging and Electroencephalography coherence measures, compared certain specific neural activity "during Stroop effect task performance between participants of low and high hypnotic susceptibility, at baseline and after hypnotic induction". According to its authors, "the fMRI data revealed that conflict-related Anterior cingulate cortex activity interacted with hypnosis and hypnotic susceptibility, in that highly susceptible participants displayed increased conflict-related neural activity in the hypnosis condition compared to baseline, as well as with respect to subjects with low susceptibility." (Egner et al., 2005) The subject is still a matter of current research and scientific debate.

Other claims that hypnosis has been used with variable success for hundreds of applications, including entertainment, analgesia and psychoanalysis are widespread and well-documented.

Hypnotism as a social construct

Generally, under hypnosis people become more receptive to suggestion, causing changes in the way they feel, think, and behave. This suggestibility has led some psychologists to believe that hypnosis does not actually correspond to any underlying mechanism of the human mind, but is merely a social construct so well-known that strong social expectations are played out by subjects, who believe they are in a state of hypnosis, behaving in a way that they imagine a hypnotized person would behave. This would tend to denigrate hypnosis to the status of a purely social phenomenon.

Popular culture

The notion of hypnotism has elicited many presentations in popular culture. Intrinsically, the notion that people are susceptible to commands outside their conscious control can be an effective way of representing the notion of the fallible narrator.

Treatments

The typical uses of hypnotism in fiction concentrate on one of the major abilities of hypnotism. As mentioned in the introduction, hypnotism can be used to

* Recollect knowledge

* Take command of a subject

* Implant suggestions that the subject will obey while free of the hypnotic trance.

The recollection of knowledge has inspired use in detective fiction, as a tool for witnesses to examine details (such as license plate numbers) that could not be recalled while fully conscious. This appears in many television series, such as Law & Order or Homicide: Life on the Street. In addition, it has been expanded to the notion of remembering "past lives", that is, previous reincarnation of the subject, in such movies as Dead Again. In real life cases, recollection of knowledge via hypnosis has helped solve many cases, oftentimes corroborating with physical evidence which would have been impossible to obtain otherwise. However, its use on victims of rape or attempted murder to help them jog their memory in identifying an accused has caused controversies including sentences doled out to the wrong person. This is because the hypnotist might make suggestions that are more likely to be remembered as "truth". Much like a lie detector it is used to glean more information rather than as the smoking gun.

The notion of implanting suggestions is probably the most thoroughly explored; ranging from comedies such as ''The Naked Gun'' trilogy to dramas such as The Manchurian Candidate. These films usually center around the concept of brainwashing or mind control. A couple of cases have been recorded where the defence arguing the accused had committed the murder under hypnosis. It was later used as the plot in movies.

Stage hypnotism

Stage hypnotists will put on a show, usually comedic in nature, that centers around the use of hypnotism. Typically, they will select a subject from the audience and have him or her perform acts that he or she would normally be very reluctant to perform in public, usually slightly humiliating or embarrassing acts, such as dancing, singing, or pretending to be someone else. Very often, the subject will claim to not remember having performed these acts.

The response to these acts from people who consider themselves legitimate practitioners of clinical hypnotism as well as sceptics of hypnotism is that the performer will select those from the audience that he or she feels already have exhibitionist tendencies, and use hypnotism to relax the inhibitions away or to give the person an unconscious excuse to violate his or her own inhibitions.

Extracts are taken from Wikipedia