Bristol: Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy and Hypnotism: A Hypnotist in Bristol Explains Some Distinctions.

This was originally written for a very pop-culture site. So it's non-referenced. But suggested reading on the points made is provided at the end and references are available for those points at  other articles of mine which can be found by simply searching "lore of hypnosis".

Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy:  Exposed by a Stage Hypnotist.

Over the past two centuries there have been many attempts to explain what came to be called hypnotism. Most theories assumed that there was a physiological change that occurred in the brain of a person hypnotised that could be called a “state”. This coming to be called “hypnosis”.

When the serious scientific study of hypnotism began in the 1920’s, it was soon realised that this was not correct. For a start, whereas “hypnosis” was seen as a type of artificial sleep, Clark Hull’s team of researchers at Madison and Yale proved immediately that it wasn’t. With the invention of the EEG machine by Hans Berger in Germany it became patently obvious that hypnotised people are not in any sense “asleep”. “Hypnosis” could no longer be thought of as a type of sleep.

Hypnotists clung to the idea that “hypnosis” was a type of “relaxed state”. But this too was easily disproven. First by Ludwig and Lyle, who hypnotised people by inducing stress, then, famously by Ernest Hilgard and Eva Banyai who, in the nineteen-seventies hypnotised people by using physical exercise machines! The relaxation hypothesis in any case does not square with the facts.  Ask yourself, do three men imagining they are gorillas and arguing over plastic bananas on stage sound like they might be in a “relaxed state”?

No physiological  “evidence” for a “state” of “hypnosis” has ever been found. Nothing to distinguish physiologically between a hypnotised person and one who is not hypnotised but engaged in similar activities, be that relaxation, exertion or in acts of imagination.

In recent years many studies of the brain activity of hypnotised people have been conducted using PET and FMRI “scanners”. These studies have been misinterpreted by many journalists, hypno-pundits and the public as indicating “evidence” of a “state” of “hypnosis”. Even some of the psychologists involved seek such an interpretation. However, when you actually read the studies themselves you find that what they establish is differences between the brain activity of “good” hypnotic participants and “poor” ones.

In other words its like comparing what happens in the brain of a conductor when he listens to a piece of music and what happens in the brain of someone who cannot play a note, when he listens to the same thing. It reveals the inner pattern of traits and learnings, not a “state”. To say otherwise would be to say that the conductors ability to conduct an orchestra results from being in a special “state” or “trance”. Hilarious. Of course you will find people who say exactly that! As I say, hilarious!   

So, if “hypnosis” was not sleep or relaxation or any special, unique “hypnotic” “state” what was it? By the Nineteen-Sixties masses of evidence was coming out of laboratories showing that not only was “hypnosis” not sleep or relaxation, but that everything claimed for it was a myth. Every one of the hypnotic “phenomena” was studied and found to be without basis in fact. Hallucinations, delusions, compulsions, increased stamina, increased endurance, increased strength etc. One by one these were shown to be things which the person who is hypnotised seems to believe happened but did not in reality.

Some things, like hypnotic anaesthesia, are more complicated. The fact is, very, very few  hard cases of operations with hypnotism as the only pain-relief exist. Overwhelmingly, such cases have featured the use of multiple relaxants and anti-anxiety drugs as well as local anaesthetics. The little-known fact is that internal organs are almost insensitive to pain. Once the surface is given a local anaesthetic, there’s little that should cause pain, as opposed to distress, which the relaxants and tranquilisers suppress. As does the extensive training and psychological preparations in such cases.

Also little known by the public is the fact that far more modern operations without anaesthetics have been conducted on non-hypnotised people than using “hypnosis”. In special circumstances it is necessary where possible to avoid general anaesthetics, but  “hypnosis” is not usually used. The fact is that a small percentage of the population can manage operations whilst wide-awake. Ultimately, these are the same minority of people, or very well prepared patients, whether they are hypnotised or not. So there is no evidence there that “hypnosis” plays a part other than as a placebo. And bear in mind how such operations occasionally hit the news. As one writer on hypnotism, Moll,  noted, if it was such an established routine, why does it remain so news-worthy when it occurs? And that observation was made over a century ago, whilst these rare cases still remain newsworthy

Hypno-pundits are liable to cite James Esdailes casebook. Esdaile was a surgeon who performed many operations using only “Magnetism” (the early expression for hypnotism) in place of chemical anaesthetics or drugs, which were not available to him. It was the 1840s and he was in India. In his 1847 book he claimed his patients felt nothing. But the regional government instigated an official enquiry and their observers told a different story. What they reported were mature male Indian patients, men used to hardship, writhing around in agony and their faces contorted into expressions of suppressed pain! So it seems Esdaile only saw what he wanted to see. Nor does this contradict the points made earlier about painless internal surgery, as his operations were mostly external (such as removing cysts) and he had not the advantage of relaxants and tranquilisers.

So there’s no evidence for a “state” of hypnosis there either. What about regression? Unfortunately for those who believe in this, every attempt to  demonstrate it scientifically has failed bar one, which later was shown to have used invalid procedure that disqualified the results. Results which were never replicated.

Obedience to suggestion? Three’s a rich body of anecdotal “evidence” there, mostly centering on the stunts pulled by US Army psychologist John “Jack”  Watkins during WW2. None of his supposed “experiments” stand sensible scrutiny. They have not been repeated, bar once, using non-hypnotised control-participants that showed that “hypnosis” played no part in things. More importantly, many psychologists in the following forty years tried to find evidence for obedience under “hypnosis” but none succeeded. It was even found impossible to get US students to simply cut up a Bible under the “power” of “hypnosis”, let alone get women to accept a “pass” from another woman, which was also tried!

Now the reader may protest…”hey, we see every manner of such things in a stage hypnotists show”.  And indeed you do.  This leads us to the “new paradigm” of hypnotic behaviour which emerged in the Nineteen-Sixties. Many, very many people misinterpret the “new paradigm” as being to say that people only pretend they are “hypnotised” and are play-acting. This is not true. This misunderstanding results from the general publics broad ignorance of social-psychology. In social-psychology a “role” governed behaviour is not play-acting, or as some people put it “role-play”.

Such people simply do not understand the concepts involved. These concepts, now backed up by vast bodies of experimental data, emerged in the late Fifties particularly in the work of Erving Goffman. A  role-governed behaviour is an expression of the unconscious programming we are given by the society we grow up in. It is demonstrated strongly in the famous experiments of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo.  But it is at work everywhere, everyday in every persons life. When we say a man fulfils the role of a father, we do not mean he is “play acting” or merely pretending. On the contrary, if he has been properly “socialised” in being a father, his behaviour and outlook actually changes at an unconscious and involuntary level.

This approach was taken to explaining hypnotic behaviour. The question was re-framed. Not “what is hypnosis” but “what causes people to behave in certain ways in response to a hypnotist?”

This approach is profoundly basic and powerful. Its as though for over a hundred years people were blinkered by the notion of a “state” of “hypnosis”. Railroaded by a basic assumption. In fact until the mid-Twentieth Century the conceptual frame of reference narrowly prohibited thinking “outside the box” on what hypnotism is. Since then things have moved very greatly. Although the philosopher Joseph Delboeuf already hit upon the right track at the end of the Nineteenth Century when he noticed how hypnotic volunteers are susceptible to the influence of past example. 

So forget about “hypnosis” and consider what a hypnotist actually does and what actually happens more broadly. “Hypnosis” was an attempt  to explain that. It failed, but people became so hooked on it that they failed to see they were trying to prove the explanation and not what it was supposed to explain!  Hypnotism does work, but not through inducing a “state” of “hypnosis”.

So how does it work you may ask, if not through “hypnosis”. Consider what the hypnotist does. The hypnotist is firstly fulfilling a special role in itself. A kind of Western witch-doctor or shaman. Simply by being recognised as  a hypnotist you tap into unconscious behavioural triggers. And you can establish that you are that thing, a “hypnotist” by using various cunning psychological tricks. Which activate more learned, socialised, unconscious triggers in the person you are influencing. Then you also manipulate their actions in other ways, disguised as nothing hypnotic (known as “abstract conditioning”). You also manipulate the environment in which you are operating. Both physically (lighting, staging, cameras, audience, etc) and in social-psychological terms.

Now a hypnotist might not think of this as what they are doing. If they are “old-fashioned” shall we say?  But it doesn’t really matter. A “witch-doctor” or shaman in a non-Western society doesn’t think of themselves as using psychology either. May never have heard of such a thing! Nor does the hypnotist need to understand why their techniques and methodology works as long as it does and they keep repeating it.   But for me that was never enough. I  became a hypnotist largely  because I wanted to know what it really was and how it really operates. I had studied psychology for three years at college and the mumbo-jumbo explanations never convinced me. So I had to do it to get into it! Reading scientific studies of the matter wasn’t enough.

So, that will leave many people still puzzling over the “sixty four thousand dollar question”. They want to know, what  “it” IS!  Basically, what is the difference between someone who is “really” hypnotised and someone who is not? What being “hypnotised” is to be!

Actually, it’s a quite simple thing but slippery to grasp. The person who is “really” hypnotised is one who is genuinely responding to the psychological influences manipulated by the hypnotist and the one who isn’t really hypnotised is only pretending. This doesn’t mean being hypnotised is to be in a “trance” or “hypnosis”. On the contrary, if you respond to  a movie by getting excited, does that mean you are in a “trance” or “hypnosis”. As I mentioned, some people say exactly that. They say everything is a trance state. But then by saying that they miss the point, because then being in “hypnosis” is no different to every moment in our life, or watching a gripping movie!

So, if being hypnotised is like watching a movie, the distinction between someone who is genuinely hypnotised and one who isn’t or who is faking is simple. Its exactly the same as the difference between someone who is genuinely excited, “gripped” or scared by a movie and one who is only pretending to be, for whatever reason, maybe because he’s trying to impress his girlfriend!  In a sense, its that the person who is really hypnotised is one who believes themselves to be or have been. Although that is not exact.  It’s still possible for someone to respond to the hypnotists techniques and believe they haven’t. And its still possible for someone to believe they responded when in fact they didn’t! Although that is much rarer.

The important thing is that the techniques of the hypnotist, what we call “hypnotism” DO have an effect. But that the effect is NOT to induce a state of “trance” or “hypnosis”. Most hypnotists do suggest relaxation, but it is simply a convenience and not the only way or in any sense what makes hypnotism work.

With all this in mind we can consider the events in a stage hypnotism show anew. The hypnotist is manipulating many factors to induce his volunteers to behave in certain ways. They are not in a “state” of “hypnosis” but as long as they are responding genuinely it remains sensible to say that they are “hypnotised”.  On the other hand, the fact that he is inducing them to behave as though they have hallucinations, strange ideas and apparent obedience does not mean those things are real. Only that the people up there genuinely feel and act as-though they are real effects! Most crucially, it does not mean the same people would comply with these demands outside of such a context.

Ultimately, there is a comparison to be drawn with stage magic. A magician creates illusory effects. They seem real but people nowadays understand that its an illusion. A stage hypnotist also creates illusory effects. Unfortunately, too many hypnotists claim these are real and far too many people believe them!

This leads to many implications. Not least for hypnotherapy. The fact that a man may be induced to behave as though he has been cured of a fear of dogs whilst on-stage does not mean that he really has been cured. It does not even mean that the same results can be obtained in the hypnotherapists office.

Am I saying hypnotherapy doesn’t work? No. The point is, hypnotherapists use many techniques and many of them, including the most potent ones, have nothing to do with hypnotism or “hypnosis”. Indeed, it is true of most therapies that the “common factors” at work in most therapeutic situations are the effective aspect whereas the actual methods used are less important. But hypnotherapy is an especial case. Search for hypnotherapists on the web and discover how many offer Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (“CBT”) up-front. Its not hypnotism and anything hypnotic used in conjunction with it is merely packaging or presentational.

There are some hypnotherapists who promise impossible things. For example increasing breast size by a couple of cups! Yes Milton Erickson claimed he had done this once on a smaller scale. No, there is not a shred of evidence that he actually did. Even if the girls breasts had enlarged, she was a young adolescent and it occurred over many months after she had seen him only once. Even he admitted it  “may” have been a coincidence! That’s Erickson for you.

It has to be declared that most “legitimate” hypnotherapists steer clear of such claims. In the UK one has even been successfully sued for guaranteeing that he would stop someone smoking who failed to give up the habit!  The real problems with hypnotherapists arise when they make authoritative-sounding assertions about “hypnosis”. There are some who are also stage hypnotists and what I am about to mention doesn’t so much apply to them. Most hypnotherapists have never induced people to exhibit the “deeper” aspects of hypnotic behaviour, such as supposedly hallucinating an imaginary spider. So they accept the supposed reality of such things on faith without seeing for themselves what a pantomime it is in real life! Or hearing volunteers openly explain afterwards that “I didn’t see a spider, I just thought it must be there because you said it was.” That’s just one example. Its as true of all hypnotic behaviour.

Hypnotherapists also acquire what they know about the field from other hypnotherapists running courses for hypnotherapists. That’s the same word three times in one sentence. For good reason.  Its circular. Myths, known as “the lore of hypnosis” are kept alive in this circle. Very little real knowledge, from genuine scientific research and the literature on the subject actually penetrates that dense circle. They award each other  titles and “letters” to string after their name but these really mean only they’ve been inside that circle. They amount to nothing. In fact they ought make you suspect that the bearer of such pompous strings of letters know only the long-outdated twaddle that such courses fill their heads with. Oh, and by the way, Even Milton Erickson believed this!  I, too, have a bunch of letters that I could put after my name but I wont, because I’d be embarrassed by them. They took merely six essays to “earn” and mean absolutely nothing….even though mine were awarded by a genuine, officially recognised UK university.

So, many hypnotherapists exhibit both a stunning naiivete about real hypnotic behaviour and a frightening degree of ignorance of both the full history and the real scientific literature on the topic.  Yet they are inside that ”circle” and so fall under the “priesthood effect”. They believe that they are party to a special authority to preach about the subject and they make a point of attacking others who are outside their sacred group. Such attacks are then based upon both naiivete about  real hypnotic behaviour and their ignorance of the full history and scientific literature on hypnotism.

The industry of hypnotherapy (people who are as much practicing for the money as any stage hypnotist) depends upon a belief in hypnotism that is created and maintained by stage hypnotists. Ultimately, without stage hypnotism there would be no such thing as hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy depends upon stage hypnotism, not the other way around.   

Further reading.

I have tried to keep this introduction to the issues raised as short and simple as possible. So no references or bibliography. Instead, if you wish to fact-check it start by web-searching some of the names I refer to, like Clark Hull, Joseph Delboeuf, Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, Ervin Goffman.  Or you could look up my referenced articles for what I have omitted here. As always though, its recommended you avoid Wikipedia. Tutors at UK universities actually deduct points from student essay scores if they refer to Wikipedia! So be warned.

For further reading I recommend you search the web to find articles and papers on, variously, hypnotism and hypnotherapy, by T.X.Barber, T.R.Sarbin, Graham Wagstaff , E.M.Thornton, Michael Heap, Richard Ofshe, Ethan Watters, Martin Orne, N.P.Spanos,  J.R.Chaves,  Windy Dryden, Tana Dineen, Paul Chambers, A.M.Weitzenhoffer, or indeed Alex Tsander.

For actual titles I would recommend you read:

# “Hypnosis, Compliance and Belief” by Graham Wagstaff (Harvester, Brighton, England, 1981).       

#  “Hypnosis and Suggestibility: An experimental approach” By Clark Hull  (Appleton-Century-Crofts. New York, 1933).

# “Hypnotism, Imagination and Human Potentialities” by T.X.Barber, N.P.Spanos and J.F.Chaves (Pergamon. New York, 1979).

# “Hypnosis, Hysteria and Epilepsy” by E.M.Thornton (Heinemann. London, 1976).

With reference to therapy:

# “Making Monsters.” By Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters (Scribners and Sons / Andre Deutsch, 1994, 1995).

#  “Manufacturing Victims” by Tana Dineen (Constable, London, 1999).

For an in-depth analysis of the social psychology of hypnotism:

#  “Hypnosis: A Social Psychological Analysis in Influence Communication” by T.R. Sarbin and W.C. Coe  (Holt, Rinehart and Winston. New York, 1972).

The above text, combination of references and compilation of bibliography is Copyright (c) 2011
by Alex Tsander, all rights reserved.
If you wish to re-publish I will be likely to consent but such consent must be obtained from me in writing (albeit in E-mail) in advance. I am very particular about copyright enforcement and any transgression will at the very least result in a C&D dispatch and its posting at the Chilling Effect site as well as notification of platform providers. Transgression of my copyright has in previous instances lead to the removal of entire web-sites.