Calling the evidence anecdotal rather than experimental does not dismiss what happens when someone undergoes hypnotic induction and overcomes a longstanding fear of flying or a chronic case of warts. It just doesn't explain it. Nor does it easily account for such phenomena as calmly allowing a limb to be amputated without anesthesia.
A Dance, Not a Trance
It may be possible to explain the effects attributed to hypnosis without invoking the existence of a unique altered state of consciousness. Whether or not hypnosis creates a single state of mind, it clearly involves a complex combination of other social and psychological factors. Chief among them are role-playing, imagination, motivation, and powerful responses to suggestion. In the emerging view of many researchers, understanding how these factors play together in the context of a social setting may provide the real key to understanding hypnosis.
No matter how hypnotherapy is defined or applied by its practitioners, the hypnotic interaction always involves a social process in which an individual takes on the role of an hypnotic subject. Simply enacting the role of a hypnotized subject begins with a certain element of role-playing and may even be a learnable ability.
But rather than being overpowered by the hypnotist, the hypnotic subject is a deliberately willing participant in the social process--whether or not he's aware he's being hypnotized. Assuming the role of hypnotic subject means striking a peculiar kind of bargain: temporarily agreeing to allow the hypnotist to assume a position of authority and to engage in a process of communication intensely focusing on a particular goal or problem.
Once a person agrees to enact the role of hypnotic subject, the bandwagon is rolling. "Some people get so deeply involved in role-playing that it feels as though they no longer have a choice in the matter," observes Tart. Taking on the role of hypnotic subject involves a kind of willing suspension of disbelief in one's own limitations.
Bringing Out the Power
T. X. Barber, a hypnosis elder statesman, says he's known "from the very beginning" that people can bring out their own inner capabilities by direct requests to think, feel, and experience in a suggested way, without any need for hypnotic induction. "In my first study for my Ph.D., over 35 years ago," says the author of Hypnosis: A Scientific Approach, "the control-group subjects were simply told very seriously to feel one extended arm becoming very heavy, that they were becoming exceedingly thirsty, that they couldn't unclasp their hands, and so forth. They responded in this amazing way that showed people have unexercised capabilities to experience things that are typically associated with the word 'hypnosis.' "
Further experiments led Barber to conclude that "the secret of hypnosis has several components. One is some people are superb subjects who are able to fantasize in a hallucinatory way and provide the drama and excitement. Another is that the majority of the rest can respond to suggestions far more than hypnotists have realized if the suggestions are given firmly--and without the complexities of calling it hypnosis or administering a hypnotic-induction procedure."
"Hypnosis is the art of securing a patient's attention and then effectively communicating ideas that boost motivation and change perceptions" of what's going on, adds psychologist D. Corydon Hammond, author of the group's 600-plus-page bible, Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors.
Metaphor is the basic language of hypnosis. So is suggestion. The hypnotist doesn't simply say to a patient who is afraid of flying, "You are no longer afraid of flying." Instead, the hypnotist might suggest that the patient imagine that riding in an airplane is like riding in a car. To a patient about to undergo a painful procedure the hypnotist does not say, "This won't hurt a bit." Instead, the hypnotist might suggest that the patient experience the pain as a feeling of warmth or pressure.
Because therapists do not know which ideas will be best received by any patient, they cast out an assortment of suggestions and metaphors. A person afraid of public speaking might be told, for example, to focus on all of the anxiety the situation engenders before getting up to speak and then let go of it, and to imagine the audience as a group of close personal friends.
The most effective hypnotherapists are therefore not those who exude some supernatural power of magnetism but those who are skilled at communicating with their patients in the language of metaphor and suggestion. Here is where the talent of Erickson is said to have revealed itself. His success as a hypnotherapist may have had more to do with language than with any supposed state of mind.
Power to the People
For every reportedly successful application of hypnosis, other possibilities than an altered state of mind readily suggest themselves. Critics offer these alternative explanations so we can know that the powers have really been ours all along.
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