Benefits and Limitations of Hypnotherapy - Research Paper Example

Hypnosis and its Implications School Hypnosis as rather mysterious phenomenon has always caused a lot of discussionsand controversial opinions concerning the matter of its usage. Thus the aim of this project is to analyze the nature of hypnosis in order to figure out whether it is indeed a helpful technique for multiple therapeutic purposes. Even though most doctors acknowledge that hypnosis is an efficient treatment approach, still it is rarely used in real clinical practice as the problem of how exactly does hypnosis really work concerns a lot of specialists from multiple branches of science. It is partly due to the myths surrounding hypnosis and its association with alternative-complementary medicine, even though there have been number of clinical studies suggesting that hypnosis may be effective and applicable to medical care. Thus literature review has revealed that the fact that hypnosis is efficient for reducing pain, treatment of psychiatric disorders, and defeat of harmful habits is doubtless for most doctors. Moreover, certain researches claim that all the mysteries around the phenomenon and its harmful implications for human mind are not true and hypnosis doesn’t do anything bad but only contributes to modern medicine. Since we live in psychopharmacological era, where drugs mainly treat disorders, hypnotherapy holds enormous potential as a safe non-pharmacologic tool for patient care. The contribution of this project is mainly to inform people about the beneficial potential of hypnotherapy. Hypnosis has always caused a lot of discussions in scientific circles; moreover, it has been considered through multiple perspectives like ethics, psychology, psychiatry, medicine, philosophy etc. However, even though most people realize the advantages of hypnosis for medicine and especially for its usage in psychotherapy, still most scientists have rather cautious attitude to this phenomenon in terms of its powerful influence on human mind which might be used for contradictory purposes; hypnosis indeed can help people to get rid of their mental traumas and harmful mind setups; moreover, hypnosis sessions may reduce physical pain and help to get rid of harmful habits. Thus hypnosis might be useful for various purposes if it is not misused by the people who know how to deal with hypnotic techniques, which requires special ethical code of the doctors that are willing to work with hypnosis in order to help people but not to do any harm. Hypnosis is one of the most mysterious conditions that human body might experience. This phenomena is characterized by a specific mental functioning that opens wide opportunities for a third person to re-establish some settings of a person’s unconscious mind. Hypnotic condition is full of paradoxes as it cannot be called a sleeping condition, although it looks like sleep, as person is partially awake and is able to response and react; but still it is also not a waking state. Scientific researches revealed that hypnosis looks like being on the edge between the state of awareness and unconscious state of mind (Kinnell 1979). According to Erickson, Rossi, and Rossi (1976) hypnosis is “the process of evoking and utilizing a person’s own mental processes in ways that are outside his usual range of intentional or volitional control” (Winsor 1993). Psychiatrists divide hypnosis into three types: directive, Ericksonian, and permissive. The directive style is based on simple commands and is not popular in clinical practice because of its low effectiveness. Ericksonian hypnosis deals with indirect methods like stories, metaphors, and confusion techniques; this type works with people who have low inclination to the ordinary techniques and require more slight approach. The permissive style is the most common. It operates with more straightforward techniques, where a therapist reaches a client’s altered state of consciousness, which appears to be the condition of trance (Winsor 1993). All the methods are effective for different purposes and work on different depths of invasion into unconscious. Almost each kind of hypnosis includes involvement into such specific mental condition as trance. According to Spiegel and Spiegel trance is “a form of attentive, receptive focal concentration with a sense of parallel awareness and a constriction in peripheral awareness” (Winsor 1993). The way how hypnosis works for most scientists is still a kind of mystery. Some claim that its deepness and efficiency depend on attention and concentration of a patient. Thus if a person is relaxed and attentive, it is more likely that such individual would be more disposed to hypnotic influence. Thus a person who knows all the techniques that could set up into the hypnotic condition uses specific verbal techniques and movements like making the person to follow the monotonous motion of some attractive thing listening to the doctor’s calm voice and setting oneself up into trance. Though some studies revealed that not all people are apt to hypnotic influence and their ability to set themselves up for the trance depends on their mental features and inclinations (Kinnell 1979). There are multiple theories about the mechanism of the phenomenon of hypnosis, its implementation and effects on human mind. However, it is important to figure out whether hypnosis indeed works or its functionality is overrated. Bunches of researches on the matter proved that indeed hypnosis is very effective in multiple functional areas and it can change many mental and physical conditions of human body, for instance, reduce pain or help in getting rid of bad habits, or even contribute to psychosis treatment (Maher-Loughnan & Zimmerman 1979). In fact there are a lot of clinical cases that hypnosis could solve if it was more popular and fully permitted in clinical practice. However, it is not that its efficiency is underrated, but the issue of hypnosis usage is in its powerful influence on human minds which, if was it fully allowed, could lead to huge misusage of this powerful source of manipulation on human minds. Hypnosis is effective because it works on the fundamental level of human psyche. It deals with human unconscious mind and is able to either update the part of human psyche with some information in order to make a hypnotized person to think the way the hypnotizer tells one to think, or hypnosis might help a hypnotizer to retrieve any private memories from a person’s unconscious. As far as human unconscious contains all the experience, memories, and desires of a person that one has gained throughout the lifetime, this part of human psyche in fact operates human conduct by sending the impulses that define a person’s further behavior. Thus if a hypnotizer is capable of getting into this part of human mind and can change it any way he wants, hypnosis becomes a powerful tool of manipulation of human consciousness (Kinnell 1979). Of course, the outcomes of hypnosis might be different and they depend on both a patient and a hypnotizer; however, there are no guarantees that a hypnotizer would be a decent person and would not decide to use his hypnotic skills to manipulate people against their will, pursuing some malicious purposes. However, certain studies reveal that there is no way for a person to be hypnotized against one’s own will, as human mind does not get hypnotized if a person is not set up for working with hypnosis. Thus if a person doesn’t want to be convinced during a hypnosis session then there is no way for hypnotizer to use his abilities against such patient (Winsor 1993). Ericson claims that even though all people are hypnotizable, still nobody can get under somebody else’s influence without being motivated enough and well-prepared for hypnotic session. Hence, it turns out that, according to these explorations, hypnosis therapy can’t be harmful for patients, as there is no way for hypnotizers to harm them unless they want to be harmed. There are multiple situations when hypnotic therapy might be not only an alternative method of treatment but also it can be used in combination with other clinical approaches and as the only effective kind of treatment that works even when pharmaceuticals are of no use. Hence the very first branch of treatment where hypnosis is one of the most applicable methods is psychotherapy. Usage of hypnosis has been popular in psychoanalytical context ever since it was suggested by Sigmund Freud (the establisher of the entire movement of psychoanalysis). Even though nowadays hypnosis is considered to be efficient in terms of psychoanalysis still it is used as an additional measure to the basic (more traditional) treatment modalities like more slight techniques of associations or conversations, or even pharmaceutical treatment. The thing is that pure hypnosis itself is considered to be a non-traditional kind of treatment, as its potential outcomes are too relative and obscure to have certain guaranteed results. Thus when psychotherapists use hypnosis techniques they strive to maintain the basic methods of treatment and speed them up (Winsor 1993). Thus hypnosis in terms of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis is used to help patients to understand what are the roots of their problems and where did they come from. Hence, hypnosis sessions, if they are conducted by a qualified specialist, can retrieve some deep memories and psychological traumas that might be the harmful inner stimuli that don’t let a person to exist normally in society and communicate with people. Moreover, hypnosis is efficient in treatment of different phobias and anxieties as a hypnotizer works with unconscious and can edit a patient’s inner desires (Kihlstrom 1997). Thus it happens as follows: a hypnotizer retrieves a person’s desire for some harmful actions and re-convinces the patient that one needn’t to do them, for example, a therapist convinces the patient that he doesn’t want to keep smoking anymore; however, he does it is specific manner, linking the desire to smoke with certain actions or words like: “After the session is over, you wake up from the trance and you don’t want to smoke whatsoever”. In fact the hypnotic methods work like specific semantic setups for human brain that are saved in human unconscious like on a memory drive. Although hypnosis is widely used to restore human lost memories within the scopes of psychotherapeutic sessions, still certain studies and multiple experimental data have shown that a patient in fact can’t remember non of what happens during hypnosis sessions, which means that the retrieved memories in fact are get retrieved only during the sessions but later they become forgotten again. Such phenomenon is called posthypnotic amnesia (Kihlstrom 1997). However, the issue of memories is rather controversial. Some researchers claim that the problem with the posthypnotic amnesia is about the fact that a person who tries to retrieve one’s memories through hypnosis and forgets them afterwards doesn’t trust the memories which this person cannot recall after the session (Lynn, Lock, Myers & Payne 1997). It turns out that a patient indeed can hear (if the session was typed) that he has remembered something, although the fact that he can’t remember this remembering makes the person doubt about the truthfulness of these memories and question whether they are true of a part of some kind of dream that the person has experienced during hypnosis sessions (Kihlstrom 1997). Thats why usage of hypnosis in criminal psychotherapy for retrieving the memories of victims and witnesses of crimes caused multiple discussions about the veracity of the retrieved memories (Laurence & Perry 1983). The opinions have split as data showed that “the use of hypnosis may unwittingly create pseudomemories of crimes which, subsequent to hypnosis, come to be believed as true by the person hypnotized” (Laurence & Perry 1983 p.523). Thus the problem of retrieving of memories and their veracity hasn’t been fully resolved by now, so the results of enhancing memories from hypnosis are quite controversial. One of the most useful effects of hypnosis, which is also widely accepted by medical doctors, is the relaxing and analgesia effects that allow using hypnosis in order to reduce different kinds of pain (Patterson 2004). Hypnosis has been reported to relieving almost all kinds of pain that has psychosomatic nature; moreover, it works as a strong analgesic for severe painful conditions like those that result from medical operations during treatment of burns, childbirth, and the surgeries where anesthesia doesn’t fully work because of specifics of a patient’s perception of anesthetics (Patterson 2004). Hypnosis if often used in dentistry as an efficient alternative to anesthetic drugs and usage of needle in dentistry, which is not appropriate for many patients. In fact certain studies have denoted that use of hypnosis in some cases might be the only way of reducing pain. For instance, in treating of psychosomatic pain most medical drugs just temporarily abate the pain, when a series of hypnosis sessions might help the patient with psychosomatics to get rid of the pain for good. Hence such treatment was used on the patients who had psychosomatic traumas caused by participation in combat operations and gained severe traumas. For instance, the phantom pain that results from amputation of a limb can’t be fully treated by any other methods but hypnosis or extended psychotherapy, as it requires certain re-set of brain convictions that send pain sense modalities about nonexistent parts of body. Hypnosis convinces the brain that there is no such part of the body to be in pain, so brain stops sending these signals of pain to the body (Patterson 2004). Moreover, hypnosis might be even used in order to reduce allergies, which are considered to be partially psychosomatic reactions of organism on certain external irritants (“Hypnosis and Allergy” 1963). However, not all the kinds of allergy can be treated by hypnosis, as some of them are genetic and have nothing to do with psychosomatics. Hence, as it has already been proven, usage of hypnosis might be definitely very convenient in multiple clinical cases. One of the most important factors that make hypnosis profitable is that the method might be used as an efficient alternative to drug usage in medical purposes. As far as multiple studies have proven that hypnosis indeed works as pain reliever, then why not to use it in medical purposes? It is a widely known fact that frequent usage of drugs does harm to human organism and it would be better to avoid using drugs unless it comes to the pinch; furthermore, human organism tends to get used to most drugs, which means that after using them for a long time their efficacy decreases. On the contrary, hypnotic therapy doesn’t lead to habituation and addiction, so it turns out that this method of treatment is less unhealthy and works more fundamentally as it gets rid not of the symptoms but of the roots of a problem. Also, contribution of hypnosis into psychotherapy can’t be underrated, because its effectiveness has been proven long time ago. Many patients manage to overcome their mental problems, fears, and psychological traumas by attending hypnosis sessions under the control of qualified specialists. Although the positive effects of influence of hypnosis on human mind are still doubted by many scientists, an absolute danger of usage of hypnotic techniques hasn’t been proven either. In the meantime, while many medical doctors avoid using hypnosis in treatment modalities, the useful functions of hypnosis are being deeply underestimated, which probably slows up the progress of medicine as a discipline. References Kinnell, H. G. (1979). "Hypnosis". The British Medical Journal, 1, 751. Maher-Loughnan, G, and Zimmerman, D. (1979). "Hypnosis". The British Medical Journal, 2, 208-209. Winsor, R.M. (1993). "Hypnosis—A Neglected Tool for Client Empowerment". Social Work, 38, 603-608. Kihlstrom, J.F. (1997). "Hypnosis, Memory and Amnesia". Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 352, 1727-1732. Laurence, J.R. and Perry, C. (1983). "Hypnotically Created Memory among Highly Hypnotizable Subjects". Science, 222, 523-524. Lynn, S.J., Lock, T.J., Myers, B. and Payne, D.G. (1997). "Recalling the Unrecallable: Should Hypnosis Be Used to Recover Memories in Psychotherapy?". Current Directions in Psychological Science, 6, 79-83. Patterson, D.R. (2004). "Treating Pain with Hypnosis". Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 252-255. "Hypnosis And Allergy". (1963). The British Medical Journal, 1, 968-969. Read More