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Cover Story: Under a trance
Look into my eyes...... you are now under my trance ... Yes. Hypnotism is the act or practice of producing hypnosis, or a hypnotic trance that is a change in a person’s conscious awareness. Although hypnotism has been known and practised since prehistoric times no completely satisfactory definition has been developed.
Scientists believe hypnotism to be a natural part of human behaviour. There is no magic formula or process connected with hypnotism. The hypnotist has no such powers, and the process has nothing to do with black magic or anything similar. Under hypnosis a person’s consciousness narrows, just as much as it does during a dream or a trance. The only difference between a sleeping person and a hypnotized person is that the latter is active, whereas the former is usually inactive. The hypnotized person can walk, talk, or write, and may remain quite but obey all of the hypnotist’s orders.
Hypnosis is the altered state of consciousness and heightened responsiveness to suggestion; it may be induced in normal people by a variety of methods and has been used occasionally in medical and psychiatric treatment. Most frequently hypnosis is brought about through the actions of an operator, the hypnotist, who engages the attention of the subject and assigns certain tasks to him or her while uttering monotonous, repetitive verbal commands; such tasks may include muscle relaxation, eye fixation, and arm levitation. Hypnosis also may be self-induced, by trained relaxation, concentration on one’s own breathing, or by a variety of monotonous practices and rituals that are found in many mystical, philosophical, and religious systems.
The hypnotic trance
To hypnotize a person requires little or no technical training. Perhaps the best-known technique uses direct commands. These consist of monotonous suggestions repeated over and over again while looking straight into the subject’s eyes. The hypnotist tells his subject over and over again that he is feeling sleepy, drowsy or relaxed; he also tells the patient to let his eyelids grow heavy and to close his eyes; to breathe deeply; and to go into deep slumber.
Another method is to tell the subject to look at an object, which may be tied to a string, without blinking. The hypnotist then lets the object sway from side to side while the patient follows its movements. In the meantime, the hypnotist repeats the commands over and over again. Sometimes to make the process easier drugs may be used, which include sodium pentothal, also known as the “truth serum”, alcohol.
Awakening from the trance is generally not difficult. A person usually remains in a hypnotic trance until the hypnotist awakens him. Often the awakening follows a special signal from the hypnotist. For example, he may snap his fingers, clap, or count till five as the signal to end the subject’s ignorance of the real world. Sometimes, though very rarely, the subject wakes up on his own accord without being given the signal. Usually, the subject does not remember what had happened while he was under a hypnotic trance. Occasionally the hypnotist has a hard time bringing his subject out of the trance. For this reason, only medically trained persons should practice hypnotism.... Too bad, you cannot go and hypnotize your little siblings so that they obey your commands!
Hypnosis results in the gradual assumption, by the subject, of a state of consciousness in which attention is withdrawn from the outside world and is concentrated on mental, sensory, and physiological experiences. When a hypnotist induces a trance, a close relationship or rapport develops between the operator and the subject. The responses of subjects in the state of a trance, and the phenomena or behaviour they manifest objectively, are the product of their motivational set; that is, the behaviour reflects what is being sought from the experience. Most people can be easily hypnotized, but the depth of the trance varies widely. A profound trance is characterized by “a forgetting of trance events and by an ability to respond automatically to posthypnotic suggestions that are not too anxiety provoking”. The depth of trance achievable is “a relatively fixed characteristic, dependent on the emotional condition of the subject and on the skill of the hypnotist”. Only 20 per cent of subjects are capable of entering somnambulistic states through the usual methods of induction.
Medically, this percentage is not significant, since therapeutic effects occur even in a light trance. Hypnosis can produce a deeper contact with one’s emotional life, resulting in the lifting of repressions and exposure of buried fears and conflicts. This effect potentially lends itself to medical and educational use, but it also lends itself to misinterpretation. Thus, the revival through hypnosis of early, forgotten memories may be fused with fantasies. Research into hypnotically induced memories in recent years has in fact stressed their uncertain reliability.
Medical uses
Hypnosis has been used to treat a variety of physiological and behavioural problems. It is said to alleviate back pain and pain resulting from burns and cancer. Some obstetricians have used it as the sole analgesia for normal childbirth. Hypnosis is sometimes also employed to treat physical problems with a possible psychological component, such as Rained’s Syndrome (a circulatory disease) and faecal incontinence in children.
Researchers have demonstrated that the benefit of hypnosis is greater than the effect of a placebo and probably results from changing the focus of attention. Few physicians, however, include hypnosis as part of their practice. Some behavioural difficulties, such as cigarette smoking, overeating, and insomnia, are also amenable to resolution through hypnosis. Nonetheless, most psychiatrists think that fundamental psychiatric illness is better treated with the patient in a normal state of consciousness.
Dangers of hypnotism
Like a potent medicine only a qualified person should use hypnotism. People who make use of hypnotic techniques need adequate training in psychology. Only such people can understand what happens to patients under hypnosis and will not overestimate the cures they achieve. Many laymen have the ability to hypnotize people. But this ability to perform hypnosis is not a substitute for adequate training in psychiatry.
Untrained people cannot anticipate the difficulties that might arise as a result of this. Sometimes the patient might want to get hypnotized to cure some habits that cause him trouble; if a lay hypnotist tries this and does not give a good command the subject might end up with a problem.
History
Some scholars think that hypnosis was related to religious ecstasy and the hallucinations people experience during religious ceremonies. Ancient people seem to have practised a form of hypnosis as a part of religious rituals. People in a hypnotic trance were believed to have extraordinary powers that came from their gods. Investigations by the scientists on hypnosis did not begin before the 1700s; but the phenomenon of the hypnotic state was dramatized and became a tool of “charlatans” (dishonest people).
Early practice
Scholars believe that various hypnotic techniques may have been practised before the classical period of ancient history. These practices may have played an important part in the medical and psychological practices of that period. For example, priests of ancient Egypt induced a state similar to hypnosis in a religious ceremony called “temple sleep”. The priests would give healing suggestions to sick and troubled people in the name of their favourite gods or goddesses. Scientists have suggested that the priest cum physicians may have induced hypnotic trances on themselves too.
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