Austrian physician Franz Mesmer is sometimes called the father of modern hypnotism, and in the late 1700s, he proposed that it was a mystical force called “animal magnetism” that flowed from the hypnotist to the patient. Hypnotists James Braid and Hippolyte Bernheim argued that “mesmerism” is something far different than hypnosis and that their work centered on the idea of passing a direct suggestion, while simultaneously encouraging deep relaxation, occasionally under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Yet, modern Ericksonian hypnosis, popularized by Milton Erickson in the sixties, purports that indirect suggestions have a greater influence over the mind. While there is much dissension over “who is right,” the hypnosis techniques are practiced in centers, clinics and living rooms around America to help people mentally and physically.
In 2000, Harvard researchers sought an answer to the question: Does being hypnotized change the brain? In their study, they asked a group of men to hold a brick out in front of them as long as they could, which was five minutes for most fully conscious subjects. However, under hypnotic suggestion, they held the brick out for fifteen to twenty minutes. Next, subjects were hypnotized and placed in an MRI scanner. A computer screen showed them patterns of yellow, red, blue and green rectangles and recorded their brain activity.
Then they were shown the same rectangles in shades of gray and were asked to imagine the colors. When they were not hypnotized, both activities showed brain activity on the right side only, but when they were hypnotized both the left and the right hemispheres responded. “What we have shown for the first time,” lead researcher Stephen Kosslyn concluded, “is that hypnosis changes conscious experience in a way not possible when we are not under hypnosis.”
In another study conducted in 2004, researchers at the University of Iowa, the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and Technical University of Aachen, Germany, measured blood flow in the brain under clinical hypnosis. They asked participants to touch a hot surface and report pain on a scale from 0-10. Next, under hypnotic suggestion, all subjects reported reduced pain (3/10) at previously 8/10 temperature levels. Additionally, assistant professor Sebastian Schulz-Stubner M.D. reported, “The major finding from our study, which used MRI for the first time to investigate brain activity under hypnosis for pain suppression, is that we see reduced activity in areas of the pain network and increased activity in other areas of the brain under hypnosis.”
Another use for clinical hypnosis is smoking cessation. In 2007, North Shore Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital ran a study regarding the effectiveness of stop smoking hypnotherapy, versus those who quit cold turkey, those who received nicotine replacement therapy or those who received nicotine replacement therapy and hypnotherapy combined. Just over six months later, researchers found that 50% of those treated with hypnotherapy alone were nonsmokers and 50% of those treated with NRT/hypnotherapy had quit fully, compared to 25% in the “cold turkey” control group and 15.78% in the nicotine replacement therapy only group.
