Is Hypnosis Moving Closer to Mainstream Medicine?

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Whether hypnosis is a genuine transcendence of normal consciousness or a kind of elaborate subconscious role-play is fundamentally irrelevant to whether or not it is effective as a medical tool. The term hypnotherapy refers to the use of hypnosis as a therapeutic tool, but the distinction between a hypnotist and a hypnotherapist is somewhat ill-defined, as some (including Andrew Barrett, who calls himself a hypnotist) reserve the term hypnotherapist for psychotherapists who use hypnosis as one part of in-depth psychological counselling.

Perhaps the most common reason people visit a hypnotherapist is for help with smoking cessation. Many hypnotherapists claim that hypnosis has been clinically proven to assist in the battle against the evil weed. However, a review conducted by the Cochrane Library in 1998 concluded that “The effects of hypnotherapy on smoking cessation claimed by uncontrolled studies were not confirmed by analysis of randomized controlled trials.” More recently, a 2004 review by two scientists at the Centre for Tobacco Control concluded “the evidence of any effect is anecdotal”. Evidence supporting the use of hypnotherapy to treat drug addiction is similarly lacking.

Hypnotherapy is also widely used in pain management, and here there is good evidence that it works, both epidemiological and from laboratory studies. A 2006 meta-analysis (an analysis of other analyses, considered the gold standard of evidence in medicine) by the Cochrane Library of five studies on a total of 729 patients concluded that women taught self-hypnosis techniques were only half as likely to require painkillers during childbirth as those who were not. Formal research on hypnotherapy to treat emotional problems is still unavailable, but anecdotal evidence suggests many have found it helpful. Jenny Fenfham, who used hypnotherapy to treat anxiety attacks, told me “At the end of the session I felt really tired but good, like after a heavy workout, but I didn’t feel any positive change. But over the next couple of days I felt less stressed and more confident.”

A 1999 laboratory study by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman centre in Canada performed PET scans of the brains of hypnotised volunteers as they dipped their hands into painfully hot water. Half were told that the water would be painfully hot, while half were told that it would be pleasantly warm. While the parts of the brain that process physical stimuli were unaffected by hypnotic conditioning, the somatosensory (literally “sensing the body”) cortex, which is involved in the conscious suffering aspect of pain, was significantly less active in the brains of those who had not been told to expect pain. This may explain the effectiveness of hypnotherapy in pain relief.

Another use of hypnosis has been to help witnesses to crimes to “recover” memories to which their conscious minds may not have access. This, however, has fallen out of favour owing to recent research suggesting that hypnosis does not enhance the accuracy of the memory in any special way and that the subject may subconsciously “fill in” gaps in memories with the imagination. The technical term for this is confabulation. Many states in the US have blanket bans on testimony recovered under hypnosis and, in Britain, the Crown Prosecution Service advises against hypnotising potential witnesses, saying, “A witness who has been hypnotised will often tell a story full of detail which may appear utterly convincing. No expert will be able to tell if it is the truth or confabulation. The story told under hypnosis will become so firmly fixed in the subject's mind that he or she will become unshakeable in cross examination.” Nevertheless, the police sometimes use hypnosis when searching for a lead from someone who is unlikely to be asked to testify in any resulting court case.

The debate surrounding the true nature of hypnosis will perhaps never be resolved, but what seems certain is that people will continue to seek help from it for a variety of purposes, and that modern medical science suggests that at least for some ailments hypnosis is a perfectly rational treatment.

For more information

The Mayo Clinic - Hypnosis: An altered state of consciousness
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hypnosis/SA00084

Columbia News - Hypnosis Gaining Ground in Medicine
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/05/07/neural_pathways.html