Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Scientology, Ron Hubbard and Hypnosis 1: Hypnosis - Acceptance and Evidence



 I have repeatedly run into talking points used to derail or disrupt posts and threads on the covert use of hypnosis by design in Scientology. I have had to deal with the same issues over and over.


So, to be efficient I am going to try to address the most frequently used points here and to have one place to route these ideas when they come up in the future.


Claim: hypnosis is outdated and no longer accepted by psychology.

Fact: hypnosis is accepted and used by many psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and therapists in 2019 as I write this.

Supporting Evidence: Psychology Today has the article The Truth About Hypnosis by Clifford Lazarus PhD up that states:


"Hypnosis is, perhaps, one of the most misunderstood and controversial methods of psychological treatment. The myths and misconceptions that surround hypnotherapy mostly stem from people’s ideas about stage hypnotism. The truth is that stage hypnotism is essentially a theatrical performance and has about as much in common with bona fide clinical hypnosis as many Hollywood movies have with real life.
The fact is, however, that hypnosis is a genuine psychological phenomenon that has valid uses in clinical practice.  Simply put, hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention or concentration, often associated with relaxation, and heightened suggestibility.  While under hypnosis (i.e., in a hypnotic trance), it seems many people are much more open to helpful suggestions than they usually are.
The positive suggestions that people are given while hypnotized are referred to as “post hypnotic suggestions” because they are intended to take effect after the person emerges from the trance and is no longer under hypnosis.
The suggestions given to people under hypnosis appear to be an important part of the mechanism through which the procedure works. While many people won’t accept or respond to an up-front, direct suggestion, under hypnosis, suggestions seem to get into the mind - perhaps through the “back door” of consciousness where they often germinate and take root as important behavioral or psychological changes. "

The American Psychological Association has an article titled Hypnosis Today by Brendan Smith:
 "Hypnosis works and the empirical support is unequivocal in that regard. It really does help people," says Michael Yapko, PhD, a psychologist and fellow of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. "But hypnosis isn’t a therapy in and of itself. Most people wouldn’t regard it that way."
"Hypnosis can create a highly relaxed state of inner concentration and focused attention for patients, and the technique can be tailored to different treatment methods, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. Patients also can become more empowered by learning to hypnotize themselves at home to reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, or alleviate some symptoms of depression or anxiety.
Hypnosis has been used for centuries for pain control, including during the Civil War when Army surgeons hypnotized injured soldiers before amputations. Recent studies have confirmed its effectiveness as a tool to reduce pain. Among the leading researchers in the field is Guy H. Montgomery, PhD, a psychologist who has conducted extensive research on hypnosis and pain management at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he is director of the Integrative Behavioral Medicine Program.
In one study, Montgomery and colleagues tested the effectiveness of a 15-minute pre-surgery hypnosis session versus an empathic listening session in a clinical trial with 200 breast cancer patients. In a 2007 article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute(Vol. 99, No. 17), the team reported that patients who received hypnosis reported less post-surgical pain, nausea, fatigue and discomfort. The study also found that the hospital saved $772 per patient in the hypnosis group, mainly due to reduced surgical time. Patients who were hypnotized required less of the analgesic lidocaine and the sedative propofol during surgery.
"Hypnosis helps patients to reduce their distress and have positive expectations about the outcomes of surgery," Montgomery says. "I don’t think there is any magic or mind control."
In a 2009 article in Health Psychology (Vol. 28, No. 3), Montgomery and colleagues reported on another study, which found that a combination of hypnosis and cognitive-behavioral therapy could reduce fatigue for breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.
Research has also shown the benefits of hypnosis for burn victims. In a 2007 report in Rehabilitation Psychology (Vol. 52, No. 3), Shelley Wiechman Askay, PhD, David R. Patterson, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Washington Medical School found that hypnosis before wound debridements significantly reduced pain reported by patients on one pain rating questionnaire. "

Time magazine has an article entitled Is Hypnosis Real ? Here's What Science Says
BY MARKHAM HEID 

“There are many myths about hypnosis, mostly coming from media presentations,” like fictional films and novels, says Irving Kirsch, a lecturer and director of the Program in Placebo Studies at Harvard Medical School. But setting aside pop culture clichés, Kirsch says hypnosis is a well-studied and legitimate form of adjunct treatment for conditions ranging from obesity and pain after surgery to anxiety and stress. End Quote

The Mayo Clinic has an article entitled Hypnosis:
"Hypnosis, also referred to as hypnotherapy or hypnotic suggestion, is a trance-like state in which you have heightened focus and concentration. Hypnosis is usually done with the help of a therapist using verbal repetition and mental images. When you're under hypnosis, you usually feel calm and relaxed, and are more open to suggestions.
Hypnosis can be used to help you gain control over undesired behaviors or to help you cope better with anxiety or pain. " 

Conclusion: plenty of people including psychologists from places like Harvard and the Mayo clinic believe in hypnosis, study it and practice it. To say it is outdated is not really being, well, honest. It is at best disputed but not outright rejected by a consensus or near consensus.

Claim: Hypnosis has no scientific evidence and therefore as a claim presented without evidence can be rejected without examination.
Fact: numerous people including many medical doctors and psychologists have claimed that they have studied hypnosis and found it to genuinely affect people. Additionally we have several studies of a scientific nature with evidence for examination.
Supporting Evidence:

Here is the title of an article on this and selected quotes :

HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION CAN REDUCE CONFLICT IN HUMAN BRAIN

A NEW STUDY USING AN OLD, MISUNDERSTOOD TECHNIQUE -- HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION -- FINDS THE BRAIN CAN OVERRIDE RESPONSES EXPERTS HAVE LONG ASSUMED TO BE INGRAINED AND AUTOMATIC, SUCH AS READING.

THOUSANDS OF STUDIES HAVE FOUND THAT STROOP INTERFERENCE IS DIFFICULT TO OVERCOME UNDER CONVENTIONAL CONDITIONS, BECAUSE READING IS SO INGRAINED," SAID DR. AMIR RAZ, WHO LED THE RESEARCH WHILE A RESEARCH FELLOW OF PSYCHOLOGY IN PSYCHIATRY AT WEILL MEDICAL COLLEGE OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY'S SACKLER INSTITUTE FOR DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOBIOLOGY, IN NEW YORK CITY. DR. RAZ IS NOW ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CLINICAL NEUROSCIENCE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AND THE NEW YORK STATE PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTE.

"We've always thought of the Stroop effect as almost automatic, and that's why this study is so important," he said. "Watching a participant's brain activity using both event-related potentials (ERP) and functional MRI (fMRI) during the Stroop test, we could see that not only was the brain's conflict-resolution center turned off as a result of hypnotic suggestion, but also those areas of the brain that may be involved in recognizing written words," Dr. Raz said.
The findings suggest that Stroop interference is not the automatic, immutable process experts have hitherto assumed it to be.
"This means that, using suggestion -- in this case post-hypnotic suggestion -- we were able to 'un-ring ' Pavlov's bell," Dr. Raz said.
In the study, Dr. Raz and co-researchers Drs. Jin Fan and Michael Posner used standard tests to identify healthy, "highly suggestible" individuals (experts believe that about 10-15 percent of us are particularly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion).

 

These individuals first took the Stroop test in practice sessions. Then, under ERP and fMRI observation, the participants underwent hypnotic induction. During this condition, Dr. Raz told participants that "Every time you hear my voice talking to you…you will immediately realize that meaningless symbols will appear in the middle of the screen."

"In other words, the symbols were placed in a special context where the simple English words 'Red' or 'Blue' in the Stroop test appeared as gibberish," Dr. Raz said.
The result: The Stroop effect disappeared. The power of suggestion essentially "de-automatized" the participant's reading response, causing them to view the words in the way a pre-lingual child or non-English-speaker might.

This removed the essential conflict that usually occurs within the brain during the Stroop test, allowing participants to identify the color of the characters on the screen as efficiently as if they were simple blocks of color.

"What's more, fMRI showed activity in exactly those brain regions important to the test – centers of attention like the anterior cingulated cortex and areas thought to relate to processing of visual word-form in the brain's occipital region," Dr. Raz said.

From :http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2005/08/hypnotic-suggestion-can-reduce-conflict-human-brain
From Thrive Hypnotherapy
Yes, Hypnosis Works ! The Best Scientific Evidence 

nerve pain.jpgBefore the advent of modern analgesics and anesthetics, hypnosis was often the most effective approach for eliminating pain and increasing survival in major surgical operations. James Esdaile, a Scottish surgeon in the early 1800’s performed hundreds of surgeries and amputations using hypnosis as the pain reliever. James Braid was another surgeon famous for his speedy amputations. His use of hypnosis significantly reduced shock and dramatically increased his patients survival rates.
Even today hypnosis is still used in surgical situations. Below is a link to a video of a dental surgery being performed without any chemical analgesics.
One of the best endorsements of hypnosis is the summary of a paper by Mark P. Jensen and David R. Patterson of the University of Washington on the topic of using hypnosis for chronic pain. In fact, if you are really interested in how hypnosis can affect pain and you want even more research than my article will provide, I recommend reading all of the paper I'm about to quote. It shines it's light on every area of pain and how hypnosis can positively impact it.
"The empirical support for hypnosis for chronic pain management has flourished over the past two decades. Clinical trials show that hypnosis is effective for reducing chronic pain, although outcomes vary between individuals. The findings from these clinical trials also show that hypnotic treatments have a number of positive effects beyond pain control. Neurophysiological studies reveal that hypnotic analgesia has clear effects on brain and spinal-cord functioning that differ as a function of the specific hypnotic suggestions made, providing further evidence for the specific effects of hypnosis. The research results have important implications for how clinicians can help their clients experience maximum benefits from hypnosis and treatments that include hypnotic components" [7]
Beyond chronic pain, hypnosis is widely used in the area of natural childbirth. One study showed,
“Prenatal hypnosis preparation resulted in significantly less use of sedatives, analgesia, and regional anesthesia during labor and in higher 1-minute neonatal Apgar scores.” [1]
Hypnosis has been actively shown to reduce the pain associated with fibromyalgia.
“The patients experienced less pain during hypnosis than at rest.” [5]
It’s really important to realize that pain is a multifaceted experience. This next study shows that different suggestions work on different parts of that experience.
“Consistent with the Malone study, we found that different hypnotic suggestions differentially affect the two dimensions of pain. Specifically we found that hypnotic induction plus analgesia suggestion reduced the intensity dimension of pain significantly more than it reduced the unpleasantness dimension. Conversely, hypnotic induction plus relaxation suggestion reduced the unpleasantness dimension of pain significantly more than it reduced the intensity dimension. This demonstration of different pain interventions affecting different dimensions of pain is consistent with a growing body of literature in which pain is studied as a multidimensional experience.” [6]
Beyond pain there are other unpleasant sensations the body can endure. Often times during chemotherapy and cancer treatment, some of the other drugs given can cause severe nausea and vomiting. Hypnosis has been shown to actively reduce that.
“One of the first modern applications of hypnosis with cancer patients…[multiple] studies reported positive results including statistically significant reductions in nausea and vomiting.”  [3]

Hypnosis and Post Surgery Healing

surgery-hypnosis.jpgAnd the use of hypnosis to speed up the recovery time after surgery has been shown time and again. Two studies from Harvard Medical School show hypnosis significantly reduces the time it takes to heal. 
The first study showed that six weeks after an ankle fracture, those in the hypnosis group showed the equivalent of eight and a half weeks of healing. That effectively demonstrates that using hypnosis helped that group heal bone fractures 41% faster. [2]
The second study focused on people having breast reduction surgery. The group treated with hypnosis healed "significantly faster" than supportive attention group and control group. [2]
Hypnosis often works on multiple fronts. In this next study patients that went through surgery saw a decrease in pain as well as better outcomes overall.
“Hypnosis has been demonstrated to effectively control pain and emotional distress and to improve recovery…results revealed a significant, large effect size…indicating that surgical patients in hypnosis treatment groups had better outcomes than 89% of patients in control groups.” [3]
Hypnosis reduces pain and speeds up recovery from surgery: 

“Since 1992, we have used hypnosis routinely in more than 1400 patients undergoing surgery. We found that hypnosis used with patients as an adjunct to conscious sedation and local anesthesia was associated with improved intraoperative patient comfort, and with reduced anxiety, pain, intraoperative requirements for anxiolytic and analgesic drugs, optimal surgical conditions and a faster recovery of the patient. We reported our clinical experience and our fundamental research.” [4]

CITATIONS & SOURCES:

All citations are in AMA format when applicable. I highly recommend using Google scholar or Pub Med if you are interested in reading the full papers. They are incredibly interesting!
[1] Vandevusse L, Irland J, Healthcare WF, Berner MA, Fuller S, Adams D. Hypnosis for childbirth: a retrospective comparative analysis of outcomes in one obstetrician's practice. Am J Clin Hypn. 2007;50(2):109-19.
[2] Ginandes C, Brooks P, Sando W, Jones C, Aker J. Can medical hypnosis accelerate post-surgical wound healing? Results of a clinical trial. Am J Clin Hypn. 2003;45(4):333-51.
[3] Montgomery GH, Schnur JB, Kravits K. Hypnosis for cancer care: over 200 years young. CA Cancer J Clin. 2013;63(1):31-44.
[4] Faymonville ME, Defechereux T, Joris J, Adant JP, Hamoir E, Meurisse M. [Hypnosis and its application in surgery]. Rev Med Liege. 1998;53(7):414-8.
[5] Wik G, Fischer H, Bragée B, Finer B, Fredrikson M. Functional anatomy of hypnotic analgesia: a PET study of patients with fibromyalgia. Eur J Pain. 1999;3(1):7-12.
[6] Dahlgren LA, Kurtz RM, Strube MJ, Malone MD. Differential effects of hypnotic suggestion on multiple dimensions of pain. J Pain Symptom Manage. 1995;10(6):464-70.
[7] Jensen MP, Patterson DR. Hypnotic approaches for chronic pain management: clinical implications of recent research findings. Am Psychol. 2014;69(2):167-77.
[8] Barber J. Freedom from smoking: integrating hypnotic methods and rapid smoking to facilitate smoking cessation. Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2001;49(3):257-66.
[9] Johnson DL, Karkut RT. Performance by gender in a stop-smoking program combining hypnosis and aversion. Psychol Rep. 1994;75(2):851-7.
[10] Elkins GR, Rajab MH. Clinical hypnosis for smoking cessation: preliminary results of a three-session intervention. Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2004;52(1):73-81.
[11] Wynd CA. Guided health imagery for smoking cessation and long-term abstinence. J Nurs Scholarsh. 2005;37(3):245-50.
[12] University of Iowa, Journal of Applied Psychology, How One in Five Give Up Smoking. October 1992. (Also New Scientist, October 10, 1992.) 
[13] Kaminsky D, Rosca P, Budowski D, Korin Y, Yakhnich L. [Group hypnosis treatment of drug addicts]. Harefuah. 2008;147(8-9):679-83, 751.
[14] Frederick C. Hypnotically facilitated treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder: can it be evidence-based?. Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2007;55(2):189-206.
[15] Anderson JA, Dalton ER, Basker MA. Insomnia and hypnotherapy. J R Soc Med. 1979;72(10):734-9.
[16] Allison DB, Faith MS. Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy for obesity: a meta-analytic reappraisal. J Consult Clin Psychol. 1996;64(3):513-6.
[17] Clarke JH, Reynolds PJ. Suggestive hypnotherapy for nocturnal bruxism: a pilot study. Am J Clin Hypn. 1991;33(4):248-53.
[18] Pekala RJ, Maurer R, Kumar VK, et al. Self-hypnosis relapse prevention training with chronic drug/alcohol users: effects on self-esteem, affect, and relapse. Am J Clin Hypn. 2004;46(4):281-97.

Conclusion: Evidence involving scientific methodology regarding hypnosis does in fact exist and so the claim that "no scientific evidence regarding hypnosis exists" is clearly false. 

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