Imagine yourself lying on an operating table in a humid hospital tent near abattle front during the Vietnam War. Writhing in agony, you plead with the medics to give you something to relieve the pain in your leg. But the supply lines were interrupted hours ago and there is no more anesthetic. What's more, the leg can't be saved. If they don't operate immediately, you hear someone saying in the background, you're going to bleed to death.
The nurse seems unexpectedly centered as she sits beside you, leans over, and looks into your eyes. "It's going to be all right," she says, and you can't help noticing the smell of the soap she uses and the tiny lines around the comers of her mouth. "I know you're a little nervous," she slowly continues, "but you're in excellent hands. You're just going to feel a little pressure while we fix you up." She is so reassuring that you find yourself wanting to believe her. You also find yourself going along with the suggestion that you're only a little nervous, and even feeling relieved to know you're in excellent hands.
As the surgeon attends to your leg, the nurse continues talking to you as though nothing unusual is happening. "You just feel a little more pressure," she says calmly, and you find yourself imagining that none of the pain you've been experiencing all along is really that bad. The operation is completed in what seems like no time at all.
It never occurs to you that you are under the influence of hypnosis, but that is what they tell you when you later ask what happened. You are thankful for the relief you experienced while the surgeon sawed off your leg. You are testimony to the popular belief that hypnosis is a special state of consciousness in which many mental feats become possible--such as enduring surgery sans anesthesia.
Ever since Franz Anton Mesmer proposed his theory of animal magnetism more than 200 years ago, hypnosis has fought an uphill battle for scientific credibility. The establishment relegated it to the domain of stage performers and quacks for most of that time. But in the past few decades the phenomenon has enjoyed an increasing amount of scientific interest, as well as widespread clinical application for an array of medical and psychological purposes, from removing warts to retrieving memories long buried in the unconscious.
This sudden ascent to respectability began a little more than 30 years ago, when psychologist Ernest Hilgard, Ph.D., a former president of the American Psychological Association, set up the Laboratory of Hypnosis Research at Stanford University. At about the same time, psychiatrist Martin Orne, M.D., of Harvard and psychologist T. X. Barber, Ph.D., of the Medfield Foundation, pioneered hypnosis research at their respective organizations. Since then, dozens of research programs on hypnosis have sprung to life in universities and medical schools in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia.
The burgeoning hypnosis field also supports two independent professional organizations and two major journals devoted exclusively to the topic. The Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, which publishes the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, currently enrolls over 1,000 members. The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, publisher of the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, boasts almost 4,000 members. Several smaller organizations flourishing in a number of foreign countries publish their own journals on the subject.
In clinical practice here and elsewhere, hypnosis has simply taken off. Inspired by the late psychotherapist Milton Erickson, M.D. (considered by many to be the father of modem medical hypnosis), thousands of self-proclaimed "Ericksonian" disciples regularly feature hypnosis therapy in their clinical repertoire. So do a large number of "classical" psychotherapists who don't remotely consider themselves Ericksonians. Then there are the thousands of practitioners, clinically unlicensed, who advertise their services as hypnotists.
Excitement is building over reports citing the effectiveness of the therapy for a growing number of medical and psychological applications. Here's a sampling:
o Hypnosis has been used in place of anesthesia to numb the pain of childbirth and major surgical procedures such as amputation, abdominal surgery, and the removal of testicular tumors, and such painful procedures as dental surgery and hemorrhoidectomies. The ability to tolerate such pain while under the influence of hypnosis is laid to an altered state that allows patients to dissociate from and become consciously unaware of it.
o Hypnosis is used in an effort to dislodge deeply buried memories relating to past events. Therapists employ "hypnotic regression"--mentally taking a subject back in time to reexperience the past. The thinking is that hypnosis affords direct access to unconscious memories without resistance or distortion, making it an exceptionally reliable tool for exploring long-forgotten details of early childhood and a powerful investigative tool for drawing out critical details of crimes.
o Numerous reports attest the effectiveness of hypnosis in the treatment of warts. In those who have been hypnotized, warts later disappear entirely on their own, without medicine or surgery. Since warts are virally induced, this striking phenomenon has fueled belief that hypnosis somehow mobilizes immune response.
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