Division 30 defines hypnosis as “a state of consciousness with focused attention and decreased peripheral awareness, characterized by an enhanced ability to respond to suggestions” (Elkins, GR, et al., International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Vol. 63, No. 1, 2015). However, the definition of hypnosis has been the subject of debate for the better part of a century. Some experts believe that hypnotic induction alters the state of consciousness, but others argue that it is not a special state, but rather a change in attention. But what experts on both sides of the debate agree on is that hypnosis allows for a special kind of focused attention that makes people more susceptible to suggestion.
In hypnotherapy, clinicians begin with hypnotic induction, or audio prompts that encourage the client to shift focus and deepen relaxation. The clinician then makes therapeutic suggestions to guide the client toward the desired changes. “Our brain absorbs information from the environment and combines it with our previous beliefs, experiences, and memories to form our conscious experience of the moment,” says a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Stanford University. said Dr. Afik Furman, postdoctoral fellow and incoming president. Department 30. “Hypnosis is one situation in which our brains edit our conscious experience. As a hypnosis session facilitator, I can provide guidance on how to edit that experience, but my It is up to the person to act on the suggestion.”
These suggestions distinguish hypnosis from meditation and mindfulness-based interventions. Mindfulness and hypnosis are both built on the backbone of focused attention. However, mindfulness is about awareness and acceptance without judgment. “Hypnotherapy has several important benefits,” says Dr. Guy Montgomery, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Behavioral Oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. He uses and researches clinical hypnosis to reduce pain in patients. Cancer patient. “Meditation helps people accept the problem, while hypnosis allows people to make changes to do something about the problem,” he said.
Research has shown evidence that posthypnotic suggestion can cause significant changes in perception and behavior. Two classic and colorful studies demonstrate the power of hypnotic suggestion. In one study, cognitive neuroscientist Amir Raz, Ph.D., of McGill University in Montreal, and his colleagues found that hypnosis improved the Stroop effect, a popular experimental task that asks participants to name the color of the font of written words. It has been shown that there is a possibility of interference. If these words are color names and they interfere with each other because the words and font are different colors (for example, if the word “blue” is written in a red font), people will react much more It’s slower and makes more mistakes. However, when hypnotizable participants were instructed under hypnosis to pay attention only to the font color rather than the text, the Stroop interference effect disappeared.Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 59, No. 12, 2002). This study has been replicated many times in multiple laboratories. A recent example showed that hypnosis itself did not eliminate the Stroop effect, but posthypnotic suggestion did, and this finding was confirmed by electroencephalography (EEG) (Zahedi, A .,et al., neuropsychology, Vol. 96, No. 1, 2017). Such findings provide a vivid example of how hypnosis can have a top-down impact on cognition, even in automatic processes like reading.
In another experiment, David Spiegel, MD, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, and his colleagues suggested that participants perceive color when looking at grayscale images. Brain scans show that the color-processing areas of the brain glow even though the photo in front of us contains only shades of gray (American Journal of PsychiatryVol. 157, No. 8, 2000).
Both studies tested people who are considered “hypnotizable,” meaning they are quickly and easily hypnotized and respond strongly to hypnotic suggestions. Der Spiegel’s research shows that people who are more susceptible to hypnosis are connected to the central executive network, which governs executive functions such as decision-making and working memory, and the salience network, which is responsible for prioritizing important things. , it has been suggested that they have more functional connectivity, essentially more communication. Incoming information (Hoeft, F., et al., Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 69, No. 10, 2012). “We believe that cadre networks of individuals who are more susceptible to hypnosis are better able to regulate where their attention goes during hypnosis,” said Fuhrman, a postdoctoral researcher in Spiegel’s lab.
Hypnosis susceptibility is a characteristic that follows a normal distribution. 10% to 20% of people are not very hypnotizable, but about the same percentage are very sensitive. Everyone else is somewhere in between. Brief Hypnosis Induction Profile (Spiegel, H., & Spiegel, D., Trance and Therapy: Clinical Uses of HypnosisAmerican Psychiatric Association Press, 2004) or the Elkins Hypnotizability Scale (Kekecs, Z. et al., International Journal of Clinical and Experimental HypnosisVol. 69, No. 1, 2021).
But Dr. Gary Elkins, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University, said most people can benefit to some degree from hypnosis, although the strength of the response varies from person to person. . “Although people in the high range may respond more quickly, just about anyone can be a candidate for clinical hypnosis,” he says. “If people are in the lower range, they may need more sessions or more practice to achieve the same results.”
Elkins’ research shows that clinical hypnosis can be effective even for people who are not particularly hypnotically capable. A recent study tested a hypnotherapy intervention to treat hot flashes in menopausal women and breast cancer survivors. In one trial, menopausal women received five weekly clinical hypnosis sessions or a structured attention control intervention. People in the hypnosis group reported a more than 74% reduction in hot flashes, while the control group reported a 17% reduction in hot flashes. Objective physiological monitoring of hot flashes supported their report, showing a 57% reduction in hot flashes in women who received hypnosis compared to a 10% reduction in control participants (menopauseVol. 20, No. 3, 2013).
