More than swinging watches, hypnosis has practical applications

There are many misconceptions about the practice of hypnosis, and among the general population, there seems to be some doubts as to its usefulness.

Perhaps this is because many people immediately think of a hypnotist as a conniving evildoer ready to swing his pocket watch in a pendulum motion in order to set his patient into a deep trance to take advantage of his mind. We've all seen it in movies.

The truth about hypnosis is that its practice has relevance in many medical cases and has been found to work with other interventions to alleviate pain in cancer patients, burn victims and pregnant women.

In the late 1950's, two psychologists from Stanford University came up with a way to measure the effect of hypnosis on patients, the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales. Ranging from zero to twelve, a person who has undergone hypnosis is rated on this scale as to how strongly hypnotizable he was during preliminary "tests."

There are twelve activities involved in this test, for each of the twelve points on the scale. A patient passing (or responding as hypnotized) eight of these activities, such as being told that a heavy ball was being placed into his upturned hand and reacting by dropping his arm under the "weight," would receive a score of eight.

But these scales say nothing as to whether a patient is faking or not. In order to tell a faker from a person truly under hypnosis, lie-detector tests can be administered. But further evidence is the study of physiological effects, and researchers can tell whether a response is simulated by the subject under hypnosis or whether he is being truthful.

PET (positron emission tomography) has also been used to monitor brain activity during hypnosis. PET is useful in viewing the regions of the brain stimulated by hallucination, a common occurrence when under hypnosis.

The multicolored image produced by PET indicates the activity of the brain, those areas of greatest activity identified by the color shown.

Under hypnosis, there are a variety of different reactions by a patient. While many people often mistake a person easily hypnotized as highly imaginative, it has been shown that imagination is completely unrelated.

Patients are also awake during hypnosis, and while they cannot distinctly remember answers to questions they normally would not be able to answer, the effect is somewhat a melding of memory and fantasy triggered by the hypnotist.

There has also been much argument over whether the patient is recovering memory or for drug addiction, alcoholism and nicotine addiction. It is probably a gimmick. Self-hypnosis can possibly lead to serious problems. It has been said that anyone who can read a document is able to hypnotize himself.

So while people are out diagnosing their own problems with self-hypnosis, the disorder itself isn't really been taken care of at all. Hypnosis is an additive treatment to these addictive disorders.

While hypnosis has been found to work with other medical procedures in reducing pain, it cannot be considered the only treatment and patients (such as those with cancer) must use hypnosis as an addition to other prescribed treatments.

The response to hypnosis varies from person to person, and there is no correlation between personality, imagination or placebo responsiveness, as is often mistaken.