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Frequently asked questions on hypnosis

  1. what is it?
  2. will I sleep?
  3. will I yield?
  4. will I risk?
  5. is it therapy?
  6. does it work?
  7. is it long?
  8. where to go?
  9. who tells it?

What is it?

[up]. Hypnosis is just a very common and very personal experience (often spontaneous, but also facilitated), and it is based on unconscious individual (bodily, psychosomatic, emotional) learning rather than on conscious conventional (rational, cultural) learning. Thus, hypnosis depends only on that particular hypnotic subject, and not on the hypnotist (as shown by self-hypnosis and common everyday spontaneous hypnosis). The hypnotic experience is a creative moment, and since it uses whatever is offered by the situation, hypnotherapy is necessarily experimental, because each person is unique (20). In the clinical setting, hypnosis is not a cure effected by a therapist, but it is a self-healing where the hypnotist is just a facilitator of the trance. Many people have problems simply because they don't know how to use their abilities (1). Many famous physicians of the past (Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile, Elliotson, Liebeault, Bernheim, Charcot) have been ridiculed by their colleagues because they used hypnosis. Freud understood the deep importance of hypnosis for the personality, and expressed the hope to integrate it into psychoanalysis some day in the future (2). Pavlov proved that the psychic influence produces organic changes, and that hypnosis can effect structural changes like a medicine, with the further benefit of influencing also every aspect of the mental and spiritual life (3). For example, the healer's hands are not just a suggestive ritual, because the physical contact induces quickly the production of a protein (ornithine decarboxilase) that contributes to physical growth and cell maturation (4). Today we have the evidence that hypnosis is a lot more than just suggestion, placebo, or imagery. For example, the neuroimaging (fMRI) research has found that by simply imagining the pain nothing happens in the brain, but the hypnotic hallucination of pain is associated with a deep functional change in two parts of the brain, i.e. the thalamus and the frontal cingulate cortex (5). Hypnosis is very effective in pain control and stress management (two big medical problems), and it also helps in recovering a normal interactive communication that, when lacking, can cause very severe psychopathologies. Copyright (C) Alberto Torelli.

Will I sleep?

[up]. No. Definitely. Hypnosis can appear during the sleep (it's the somnambulistic behavior), but also during the waking state, because people in hypnosis not only retain all their normal abilities (reasoning, decision, will, emotions, etc.), but in addition they begin to show other abilities of hypnotic type, and thus the awareness appears altered or special. Actually, the awareness non only continues to be active, but it also doubles. For example, when at school a student doesn't pay attention to the teacher, actually (s)he is still listening unconsciously. In fact, as soon as the teacher says: "hey, you, what I'm talking about?", the hypnotic dream immediately vanishes. Therefore the attention has been unconscious rather than conscious. This is a two-fold functionality (certainly not a sleep), where a person can do two things at the same time by using two different parts of the mind: the conscious one and the unconscious one. Copyright (C) Alberto Torelli.

Will I yield?

[up]. Definitely no. In hypnosis the hypnotic subject has always the control of the trance. Hypnosis doesn't weaken the mind. On the contrary, it makes people more strong and independent. Hypnosis is a spontaneous phenomenon, and the hypnotist cannot control it. Only the subject's hypnotic activity can generate valid results. The hypnotist can just stimulate that activity and nothing more (6). The general opinion than the hypnotist has a considerable power on the subjects is wrong, because without the full collaboration of the subject nothing can be done (7). Moreover, by repeating the hypnotic inductions, the subjects not only don't become more susceptible, but also develop a growing tendency to lead the process (8). Any attempt to use hypnosis for antisocial purposes, or against the subjects' will, is always doomed to fail (9), and the subjects become angry and oppositive, showing an intense increase of self-defence abilities (10). When the trance arises, the subject tends to utilize it for personal purposes regardless of the will of the hypnotist (11). In the movies we see often some evil person that commands some other person using hypnosis, but this is pure fantasy, because it is impossible to do that. In stage hypnosis it is the same: as soon as the hypnotist notices some resistance in a subject, this subject is immediately asked to leave the stage, otherwise it becomes evident that the hypnotist has no hypnotic powers at all. Copyright (C) Alberto Torelli.

Will I risk?

[up]. Hypnosis is absolutely innocuous (12). The hostility against it comes from the difficulty to understand it (13). Since now, nobody has found damages imputable to hypnosis (14, 15), even in subjects hypnotized more than 500 (five hundred) times (16), and even in psychotics; in fact, hypnosis has been the only useful help for many schizophrenics (21), and several of them have been even able to leave the psychiatric hospital thanks to hypnosis (17). The alarmism is out of place. Hypnosis can be very beneficial even in presence of serious emotional disturbances, and without knowing the life or the personality of the patient. The alarmist is just an ignorant person, very insecure in dealing with patients' problems (18). The hypnotic subjects are always able to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and they never develop insane behaviors or escape mechanisms (19). Another false alarm is the prejudice (very common among therapists) that if one tries to correct a symptom, then another symptom, worse than the original, will arise; but actually the clinical experience proves that the patients improve or, at worst, they keep their old usual pattern (22). Therefore, those that shout and claim that hypnosis is dangerous are just liars. Copyright (C) Alberto Torelli.

Is it therapy?

[up]. No, it isn't. The ill or disturbed people must first ask help to physicians, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists. Only after that, if they want, they can add safely hypnosis as a complement to the therapies. In fact: 1) a therapy aims at curing a part that has been diagnosed as ill, and therefore it requires certain competencies, because if the diagnosis is wrong, then the therapy can be risky and harmful, while if the diagnosis is right then the lack or avoidance of the necessary therapies can be very dangerous; differently, 2) hypnosis aims to strengthen the healthy parts, hence there can be no risks nor harms, in fact today we know that hypnosis is absolutely innocuous, and this indirectly proves that hypnosis has a non-therapeutic nature. Many years ago the researchers incorrectly described hypnosis as a suggestive therapy, but from the 1970s on, the neurologists has found that it is a self-healing process, because it is mainly a neuro-physiological functioning present in both animals and humans, and it is often natural and spontaneous, so it goes far beyond the clinical interest. In fact, the modern "Ericksonian hypnosis" as a complement to therapies is very effective despite its non-orthodox approach (so called because it rejects the theories of the schools of thought, and it relies exclusively on the reality of the individual life). In short, hypnosis is universally and steadily placed among the "natural, complementary medicines", that are holistic, paramedical approaches. Several of these treatments are psychosomatic, and therefore they are also called "mind-body therapies". Typical examples are yoga therapy, relaxation therapy, massage therapy, and hypnotherapy. These approaches are very different from the conventional therapies, and they are valuable as natural complements (or as alternatives when therapies have failed). For example, on the irritable bowel (a psychosomatic problem) psychotherapy is almost useless, while hypnotherapy is very effective. Copyright (C) Alberto Torelli.

Does it work?

[up]. Hypnosis is certainly useful, but Italy is full of hypnosis charlatans (fake hypnotherapists). Unfortunately, some of them are therapists and therefore it is more difficult to avoid them. Some help comes from internet, where it is possible to find certain videos that are self-explanatory (secret technique, infallible method, instant hypnosis, and so on), and help the intelligent consumer to become suspicious, to get away, and to go elsewhere. The gullible user, on the contrary, is the typical victim of this marketing that attracts the suckers. Copyright (C) Alberto Torelli.

Is it long?

[up]. No. A short time (4-8 hours of work) not only is enough to get results, but it also reduces the feeling of dependence to treatments, it urges to do something immediately and concretely in daily life, and it prevents financial exploitations, which, in Italy, is particularly common. Copyright (C) Alberto Torelli.

Where to go?

[up]. To avoid the traps, follow the THREE following advices. Copyright (C) Alberto Torelli.
  1. physicians and psychologists are incompetent in hypnosis (until contrary proof), and also psychotherapists are hypnotically unreliable (until contrary proof), because as such they always come from schools of psychotherapy and not from schools of hypnotherapy.
  2. stage hypnotists have very often a personality which is not suitable for clinical hypnosis, hence the best thing to do is to avoid them even if they are doctors.
  3. people that claim to be expert in hypnosis are reliable only if they are members of a respectable association of hypnotherapy that has public listings of its members. In Italy there are no such associations because the hypnotherapy profession is not recognized, and therefore the public is exposed to any kind of quacks and also to fraudulent schools of hypnosis that train scammed students and future scammers.

Who tells it?

[up]. What I have written in this page comes from the scientific literature. Below you can find the sources corresponding to my numbered citations.
  1. Erickson e Rossi, Collected Papers, vol IV
  2. S Freud, 'Turnings in the ways of psychoanalytic therapy', Collected Papers, vol 2, London, Hogarth, and Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953, pp. 107-130
  3. FA Volgyesi, Menschen- und Tierhypnose, 1972
  4. EL Rossi, 2002, Psychosocial Genomics, in: Advances In Mind-Body Medicine, 22-30
  5. Neuroimage, 2004
  6. Erickson e Rossi, 1979
  7. MH Erickson, Dis of Nerv system, 1941, 2:1
  8. MH Erickson, J Abnorm Soc Psychol, 1932;37;321-327
  9. Int J Clin Exp Hypn; 1972, 2:61-79
  10. MH Erickson, Psychiatry, 1939;2;391-414
  11. MH Erickson, J Abnorm Soc Psychol, 1932;37;321-327
  12. MH Erickson, Dis of Nerv system, 1941, 2:1
  13. MH Erickson, Med Record, 1939, 19 lug, 60-65
  14. Hilgard, Int J Clin Exp Hypn, 1974, 22:282-298
  15. Am Psychologist; 1979, 8:673-681
  16. MH Erickson, J Abnorm Soc Psychol, 1932;37;321-327
  17. MH Erickson, Trends In Psychiatry, 1967,3(3):1-43
  18. MH Erickson e EL Rossi, Hypnotherapy, 1979
  19. MH Erickson, J Abnorm Soc Psychol, 1932;37;321-327
  20. MH Erickson, J Clin Exp Hypn, 1954, 2:261-283
  21. W Earl Biddle, 1967
  22. MH Erickson, UCLA Seminar, 1952
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