on hypnotism and hype
why the watches?
I promised myself I would do a piece on hypnotism, which has long struck me as completely bogus, though I was left scratching my head and wondering as a kid when I saw people acting in a humiliating fashion at the behest of a stage hypnotist. Insofar as I’ve thought deeply about it since, I can’t imagine any mechanism by which this ‘spell-casting’ could really work. The Mayo Clinic appears to give it the green light, with certain caveats, but is silent on the proposed mechanism, the science of the thing, which seems to me completely derelict. And Time magazine has a 2022 article entitled How Hypnosis Works, According to Science, which tells me nothing about the science. That science would, of course, be neurology. And since our brains share many similarities with other primates, I wonder why nobody has tried to hypnotise a chimp or a bonobo? It wouldn’t make sense to argue that only humans would be susceptible to such treatment, surely? I did learn, something from the Time article, though. Hypnotists no longer use the term ‘trance’, replacing it with ‘hypnotic state’. Sounds more sciencey. By the same process alternative medicine is now called ‘integrative’, ‘holistic’ or ‘complementary’ – and all such practitioners spruik the positives of hypnotherapy.
So where can I find real scientific evidence about hypnosis? When I try the internet I’m almost invariably taken to psychology sites which cite the benefits and dangers, but don’t even try to describe the mechanism.
But finally I’ve found an article, ‘The Neuroscience of Hypnosis’, which promises to reveal all, and it’s only a few months old, and it’s in an Australian magazine, Psychology Today. So, before launching into it, I’m guessing that much of that neuroscience will pertain to brain regions more or less exclusive to our species, and that it will be at best speculative.
So, we’re told that, despite a lot of mystical pabulum, ‘the science behind the practice is profound’. The article, the principal author of which is Dr Ran Anbar, a professor of Paediatrics and Medicine in the US, and a hypnotherapist, claims that hypnosis is efficacious ‘in treating conditions such as pain, anxiety, depression, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, eating disorders, phobias, OCD, shortness of breath and substance use disorder’, though with the large caveat that ‘research is necessary to validate whether observations made with individual people can be reliably generalised’. I suspect that a ‘reliable generalisation’ will never be achieved, one obvious reason being that some people are just not going to be susceptible to this procedure. It’s a safe bet, methinks, that never, here, will always mean never, as is the case with other such treatments. Some people are highly suggestible, some are not (though of course, here as with other treatments, there are endless ‘I used to be a thorough skeptic’ stories). I can also accept that telling people, under hypnosis (but I’ve yet to comprehend what that actually means) that they are feeling pain (for example), can make them truly feel pain, measurable in neural activity. Such measurable activity, I’m guessing, would also be evident when a person dreams of being in pain. And a quick look at the research on this opens up a whole can of worms, such as real pain felt in an amputated limb, and the difficulty of separating the neurological signs of anticipated versus actual pain.
So the article goes on to name the five different types of brain waves (from fastest to slowest they are gamma, beta, alpha, theta and delta), and cites research finding that ‘hypnosis… is associated with increased theta waves and thus may be a state different from awake and sleep states’. A good term for this state, I reckon, would be ‘the twilight zone’. Apparently theta waves are slower and of greater amplitude (suggesting greater strength or energy) than other brain waves. But let me admit right now that I’m not sure what brain waves (neural oscillations) actually are. They’re generally detected and measured by electroencephalographs (EEG), and it’s these machines that display the electrical activity as waves, so…
All of these different wave effects are interpreted as measuring different types of neural activity, though whether we’re interpreting correctly is obviously a question. In any case the Healthline article linked below gives a summary of each kind of wave, or electrical activity, and its effects:
Fast gamma waves are produced when we’re intensely focussed, concentrating very hard on something. I say ‘we’ but I doubt that I’ve ever experienced them myself.
Beta waves are more about ordinary focus, paying attention, though they range in speed from pretty intense focus to a more general mulling over the disaster that your life has become.
Alpha waves are your more general existential waves, like when you’re sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.
Delta waves, at the bottom of the spectrum, are generally the deep sleep waves.
So, again, theta waves, the ‘dream’ waves, the border-between-sleep-and-awake waves are most associated with hypnosis, which is hardly surprising, but how does your hypnotist get people to relax, perchance to dream? And use that state to reduce their anxieties, or bark like a dog?
So I’ve just found and watched a video, linked below, by someone who seems to be on the same wavelength, so to speak, as myself with respect to this – phenomenon, let’s call it. The real issue being, WTF is it, actually? At the end, he describes himself as a convert, but with many many caveats, and I would definitely recommend watching it. The major caveat would be that, along with other treatments (it just doesn’t seem to work as a stand-alone treatment) it’s essentially, and unsurprisingly, effective, and only effective, for conditions that have a psychological component, many of which I’ve mentioned above, but I could add PTSD, bipolar disorder and no doubt many others unknown to myself. And psychology, without a solid neurological basis, is never, to me, entirely convincing as a ‘science’.
So I wouldn’t call myself a convert, actually, and it seems that much of the research is divided between those trying to prove that it’s real and those trying to prove it’s bogus, and I suspect it’s genuinely hard to find people sitting on the fence, so it’ll likely be a controversial topic for a while to come. I’m not for banning it or anything, I just wish there was better evidence about how it works, beyond, and well beyond, the undoubted, but individually highly variable, power of suggestibility.
Also, for ‘mesmerism’ and animal magnetism read my review of Aldous Huxley’s Island.
References
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