The Transparent Hypnotist

In consideration of what Craig Eubank’s suggested, I am doing some footwork for us all. After Monday’s post about the hypnotist who used self-hypnosis rather than anesthesia during a surgery, Craig suggested that we all include the article in our packages to new prospective clients and such as a resource for “proof.” I have gone back to the beginning of this blog (a year now) and searched out the stories that have been positive about hypnosis. There were a few others, but for various reasons I thought they might be borderline.

Here they are the ones that seem really positive:

1. Surgery under hypnosis a pain-free event
2. Hypnosis Brings Groups into Focus
3. Scientists in new hypnosis brain link discovery
4. Tonsils removed under hypnosis
5. DDW: Hypnotherapy Effective in Children With Bowel Pain
6. Hypnotherapy shows promise for sleep disorders
7. If you want to kick the habit, a local study is finding a hypnotist may be your best bet

Photo courtesy PDPhoto.org

There was that whole Charcot thing, remember? My little walk back in hypnosis history led us to his door and I became a bit obsessed with him. At first I thought he was easy to dismiss - brought back hypnosis from Mesmer’s depths, but then it became so distorted in hysteria, that it was hard to take him very seriously in this genre.

But, perhaps, I made judgments too soon. Maybe he really had something going on. Hypnosis has made the news again in a way that brings back the notions of Charcot. He believed that people could study hysteria by inducing a hypnotically hysterical state in people (women). Did Freud and Bernheim dismiss him too quickly? Perhaps.

The Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science has recently been involved in the study of the delusional mind. How? You guessed it - through hypnotic procedures. More specifically they have been studying mirrored-self misidentification, which is when someone looks into a mirror and he or she believes the person looking back is not one’s self.

Apparently it is really hard to study such things in a controlled environment. So, enter hypnosis. Participants (I believe they did not suffer from mirrored-self misidentification) were then hypnotized and given one of three hypnotic suggestions. These suggestions were in the form “of initial thoughts that might ‘seed’ the delusion.” The delusions experienced by the participants were apparently remarkably similar to the malady. Why do this? It is hoped that this will lay a foundation for more research into the delusional mind, creating more understanding and therapies that will help those who truly suffer from delusion.

This is not at all far away from the work of Charcot. His premise was to recreate hysteria in those already suffering from it to study it, though history seems to show that he would did not use hypnosis to try to cure it. Perhaps this new school of thought will inspire scientists to use it as a therapy in itself. Would it not maybe be possible to create a “delusion” or a hypnotic “seed” in those with mirrored-self misidentification that when they do look in a mirror they see themselves?

Source: PhysOrg.com

Today it is a cup of Keemun tea. The trick is to not let it steep so long. So, happy Monday.

Yesterday I asked about tools needed for new starts, and I got some really good answers. Michael, as always so it seems, and I are on similar pages (but of course). Acadia’s answer about needing an alarm clock really made me laugh, Lady Rose’s was well thought out (50 points - Lady Rose), Debbie’s was inspiring, and Curt’s was touching.

And if you look to the right of this post, you will notice the weekly poll. As I am just justing use to these accommodations, I am experimenting with the poll. It is a bit different than the old site, so please let me know your thoughts about it - not so much about the content, but the style, etc. If anyone has other options, that would be good to know as well.

Now for the REALLY BIG NEWS!!!

At Hull University, Giuliana Mazzoni, Annalena Venneri and Irving Kirsch have done an amazing experiment about hypnosis. This could be ground breaking in the world of science verse pseudo-science. Using brain scans on those participants in the study who were found susceptible to their (the scientists’) hypnotic suggestions, evidence showed a remarkable thing. When these participants were shown a black and white image and told to see it in color, the scans indicated there was an increase in activity in the part of the brain that helps us perceive color. Interestingly enough, participants who saw the image in color when not hypnotized showed more frontal lobe activity (the area known to be used in logical deduction and problem solving).

These finding will be revealed in a documentary - Alternative Therapies - airing next Monday on BBC2.

Sources:
The Mirror.co.uk
The University of Hull

Now I just sat down and knew what I was going to write. It was there on the edge of my mind waiting to spew forth, but now it is gone…wait…it was…no…oh….shoot. It really is gone.

Not really, just a tacky way to segway into the topic of the morning, though this is a tad bit of old news. It is true. Really, I am not kidding. Hypnosis can cause you to forget certain things. Hmmm. Don’t we already know this? Perhaps not. Perhaps we do not know the half of it.

In a recent study conducted by Dr Yadin Dudai and peers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, when amnesia is induced with a posthypnotic suggestion, an internal monitoring system is what causes the memory not to be retrieved.

How the study was done:
A group of volunteers (in Isreal) were shown a movie documentary about the day in the life of a young woman. A week later they were hypnotized to forget the movie. Actually the words used in the Daily Mail were ” Once in a hypnotic state, subjects were ordered to forget the movie.” Now kids, what form of hypnosis is that? (The first person to respond in the comment section and get it right will get 50 entrecard credits).

Apparently, the original group had been divided into two sections - one group was hypnotizable and the other was not. Hmmmm, again. Was this really a division of people who were hypnotizable by a certain form of hypnosis? Might they all be hypnotizable (assuming they wanted to be, yahda, yahda, yahda) with a more permissive form of hypnosis? Any thoughts?

To carry on though - the half deemed hypnotizable were more apt to forget the movie. Each was given a quiz of yes or no answers. The results were no better than chance with the suggestion to forget the movie. Then a trigger
- Now you can remember everything (2), which was given during the hypnotic session, was was activated and the same participants retook the quiz. The results at this point were 80% correct answers.

cortex. This is the area mainly We are not through yet, though. While participants were taking the quiz, they were also being monitered by MRIs. While in the state of suppressed memories, the occipital and temporal lobes remained quiet. At the same time, there was major activity in parts of the prefrontalthougth to be involved with memory retrieval. This may show an interaction between the two, which the prefrontal areas control

Another question I have is the whole idea of the movie itself. Since I have not seen it, it is described as the average, mundane day in the life story, perhaps easily forgettable. I am not sure even without the hypnosis, how well I might remember it in a week.

Source:
The Daily Mail
ScienceNOW Daily News

Good morning! I am a bit foggy today, so I think I will spend this morning’s post on an In the News piece. It actually pinged into my inbox yesterday, but it is old news from May. Since I missed it at the time, maybe you did, too.

The subject is Childhood Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and hypnosis. Arine Vliegaer, M.D., Ph.D, of Saint Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein (Netherlands) headed a randomized controlled trial and found hypnosis created a cure for IBS by the end of treatment in 59% of 53 young patients. This compares to the 12% who received standard care. And here’s the really nice part: 85% were cured through hypnosis after a year of follow-up.

The subjects of the study (I think it might be okay to use the word subjects here as it refers to experimentation) were between the ages of eight and 18. All had suffered an average of 3.4 years from abdominal pain and IBS with no evidence of there being a physical problem. Considered a common condition for pediatric office visits, this has a “reported prevalence of between 1% and 19%.”

Traditional medical care for IBS includes pain medication and education on sensitive gut. Finding potential triggers is also encouraged.

The Nitty Gritty of the Study
The control group was given standard medical care with six half hour sessions of supportive therapy. The mean pain scores for this group fell, but from 14.5 to only 9.8 by the end, though there was a little more of a drop after a year to 8.0.

The hypnosis group received three months of six half hour hypnotherapy sessions using the Manchester Protocol. The mean pain intensity scores for this group dropped from 13.5 at the beginning of the study to 3.0 at the end.

Only participant did not complete the treatment. This research found an 80% improvement in pain scores.

Source: www.medpagetoday.com

You are abruptly awakened from a sound sleep. You are being thrashed by your partner (yet again). you try to stop them, but as they are in another state of conicousness, it is hard to bring them to awareness of their actions. Then they turnover and seem to go back to sleep. In the morning, you confront his or her (yet again) and they denie it. They have no memory of doing such as thing. And he or she is probably telling the truth. He or she may have a form of parasomnia.

Here is another study for your box of hypnosis-does-good. The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine’s Sleep Disorders Center has done a long-term study on hypnosis and parasomnia. What is parasomnia? This is the distinction and category that sleep disorders such as talking, walking and eating while you sleep, as well as night terrors, restless leg syndrome, and teeth grinding fit nicely into. Also, some people have sex or drive while asleep. We have all seen a few of the later, I expect. However, this is serious stuff, as it causes inappropriate psychical responses during slow-wave sleep or non-REM modes, which means the person with this disorder may hurt themselves or someone else without knowing it or doing it intentionally. These are often triggered by stress or depression.

The five-year study was done to see if hypnotherapy would be useful in treating people with parasomnia. It followed 36 people for this duration to see what the effects of hypnosis would have upon the disorder. The ages of the study participants varied between age sex and 71 years (four were between the ages of six and 16). Each was given one to two sessions of hypnosis with follow-ups at one month, 18 months, and five years. At the one month mark, 45.4% had stopped experiencing parasomnias. At 18 months, 42.2% remained without symptoms, and at five years 40.5% were still free of symptoms.

Did the hypnosis relieve these people of the symptoms or did it work because hypnosis is a great stress reducer or perhaps the depression was released during the process? That is undecided, but in my book, it beats medication.

P.S.
A potential finding of other studies on parasomnias show a link between it and Parkinson Disease. It is possible that the parasomnia is a potential warning sign of it.

Sources:
Insight Journal
WebMD
When the Brain Disrupts the Night (from the New York Times)

Last week while looking for information and statistics about hypnosis and breast cancer, I came across another study done in 2004. This one involved children undergoing cancer surgery and their pain levels.

Though I am still trying to find the original study information, including where it was done, this information came from a review by Linda A. Vrooman at thecancer.net taken from Cancer Online in September 2004.

There was research done to substantiate the role of hypnosis in prolonging life of those with cancer. One study specifically looked at how pain was perceived by children and the affects of hypnosis on this perception. Apparently 80 children participated. They were broken up into four groups, two of which consisted of experiencing an anesthetic and hypnosis during various procedures. The other two groups received an an anesthetic and counseling. The groups who used hypnosis experienced much less pain then the other groups, based on their response to how much pain they suffered using a scale of zero to five.

Again, I am still looking for the study this review is from, but thought it would be good to infuse a little good news after the debauchery we suffered yesterday with the showbiz hypnosis. If you know of the source of the cancer study, please share it here.

Normally, upon waking I grab my coffee or tea and slide into my chair, read email and begin my musing to you. Realizing the joy in occasionally shaking things up a bit, I read the New York Times this morning. There is an interesting article in the health section today entitled Who is Minding the Mind by Benedict Carey. You might want peruse it yourself, so just click on the article title and it should take you there.

Mr. Carey’s article discusses some interesting findings from various studies. One study focused on participants perceptions about a hypothetical person. Before this, the participants were “Bumped into” by a stranger and asked to hold a cup of hot coffee or tea or an iced beverage of the same nature. Those holding the iced cup often found the hypothetical person to be “cold”. Interesting.

Findings also found that much of humanities subconscious decisions happen in the ventral pallidum within the brain, the part that used to be considered the “reptilian” part and this is before it transmits to the prefrontal cortex.

Anyway, I will not rewrite or synopsize the whole article (two pages) so you can read it and enjoy it. I am always game for a good discussion.