What Hypnotism Is - and What it Is Not
Regarded as a stage magic trick that was low-cost, hypnotism is proven to be a powerful clinical treatment, and now it is available on the NHS. There is no magic, no rocking watches or swinging pendulums, and no one is counting back as they sink into unconsciousness. This is medical rather than stage or film hypnotism, and it's increasingly used to treat the symptoms of afflictions and diseases as varied as asthma, cystic fibrosis migraines and warts.
It is been used to permit operation and dental work without anesthesia, and for pain-free childbirth without drug. And new evidence from the UK's first and only NHS center offering hypnotherapy reveals that it is exceptionally successful in treating some kinds of chest pain together with irritable bowel syndrome.
New research from America has also found that more than half the people who used hypnotherapy were able to kick the habit, while researchers in France have used the treatment to lower blood pressure.
Filmmakers take a lot of blame for damaging the impression of hypnotism: "When a hypnotist appears on screen, expect evil. He is probably around to compel someone to commit a crime, if magnetic hand passes are featured by his induction.
At the University Hospital of South Manchester, Professor Peter Whorwell, a gastroenterologist who heads the only NHS funded hypnotherapy center in Britain, which has been pioneering the therapy as a treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, agrees. "One of the problems is the name,'' he says. "If we started off again with a name like neuromodulation, as an example, it would be more easily taken. The name hypnotism has so much baggage attached. Of the three, Professor would say hypnotism is possibly the most powerful, although cognitive behavioral therapy so, also, is psychotherapy, and is currently fairly well accepted.
"When I'm dead and gone, folks will suddenly recognize that hypnotism is a really powerful instrument and question why it's been dismissed for such a long time.''
Just how it works is unclear, and some critics imply it is just a method of relaxing. But practitioners say that under hypnosis the patient can concentrate intensely on memory, a specific idea, feeling or sense while blocking out distractions, and there's more to it.
"The first thing you have to do is get past the myths and misconceptions about clinical hypnosis," says Dr Carol Ginandes who directed a study into its use for anxiety at Harvard Medical School. "It's not used for entertainment. There are no Svengali like figures in power relationships that are dominant. It is not a something or a sleep state that someone can make practitioners do. It is a state of heightened, concentrated attention that we all can shift into very naturally."
In a report in the Harvard Magazine, she clarifies how it has an effect: "We do not yet understand the mechanisms by which these suggestions are transplanted by the head into the language of the human body, but let us say someone is a smoker. When he's in a hypnotic state, I could indicate that he is going to find himself less and craving smokes less over a time period. If the smoker's ready to quit, that suggestion will be planted at a deep level in his mind, like seeds put beneath the soil rather than scattered over the top, helping him exploit into some useful physical and emotional resources."
Regarded as a stage magic trick that was low-cost, hypnotism is proven to be a powerful clinical treatment, and now it is available on the NHS. There is no magic, no rocking watches or swinging pendulums, and no one is counting back as they sink into unconsciousness. This is medical rather than stage or film hypnotism, and it's increasingly used to treat the symptoms of afflictions and diseases as varied as asthma, cystic fibrosis migraines and warts.
It is been used to permit operation and dental work without anesthesia, and for pain-free childbirth without drug. And new evidence from the UK's first and only NHS center offering hypnotherapy reveals that it is exceptionally successful in treating some kinds of chest pain together with irritable bowel syndrome.
New research from America has also found that more than half the people who used hypnotherapy were able to kick the habit, while researchers in France have used the treatment to lower blood pressure.
Filmmakers take a lot of blame for damaging the impression of hypnotism: "When a hypnotist appears on screen, expect evil. He is probably around to compel someone to commit a crime, if magnetic hand passes are featured by his induction.
At the University Hospital of South Manchester, Professor Peter Whorwell, a gastroenterologist who heads the only NHS funded hypnotherapy center in Britain, which has been pioneering the therapy as a treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, agrees. "One of the problems is the name,'' he says. "If we started off again with a name like neuromodulation, as an example, it would be more easily taken. The name hypnotism has so much baggage attached. Of the three, Professor would say hypnotism is possibly the most powerful, although cognitive behavioral therapy so, also, is psychotherapy, and is currently fairly well accepted.
"When I'm dead and gone, folks will suddenly recognize that hypnotism is a really powerful instrument and question why it's been dismissed for such a long time.''
Just how it works is unclear, and some critics imply it is just a method of relaxing. But practitioners say that under hypnosis the patient can concentrate intensely on memory, a specific idea, feeling or sense while blocking out distractions, and there's more to it.
"The first thing you have to do is get past the myths and misconceptions about clinical hypnosis," says Dr Carol Ginandes who directed a study into its use for anxiety at Harvard Medical School. "It's not used for entertainment. There are no Svengali like figures in power relationships that are dominant. It is not a something or a sleep state that someone can make practitioners do. It is a state of heightened, concentrated attention that we all can shift into very naturally."
In a report in the Harvard Magazine, she clarifies how it has an effect: "We do not yet understand the mechanisms by which these suggestions are transplanted by the head into the language of the human body, but let us say someone is a smoker. When he's in a hypnotic state, I could indicate that he is going to find himself less and craving smokes less over a time period. If the smoker's ready to quit, that suggestion will be planted at a deep level in his mind, like seeds put beneath the soil rather than scattered over the top, helping him exploit into some useful physical and emotional resources."
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