Hypnosis, Placebo and Healing
By Eric Greenleaf PhD
Hypnosis and hypnotherapy have long been regarded as placebo therapies. In the narrow sense , that is to say physically inert substances or physically neutral interventions or manipulations which, nevertheless, effect the patient in positive ways. The classic “sugar pill” is one such placebo, “a mother’s kiss ” another famous example of healing without biological or physico-chemical substances entering the body.
A more modern and more medically correct definition of placebo holds that the placebo effect is a major part of all medical and psychological interventions that help patients grow well . As Kirmayer says Journal of Mind Body Regulation 2011, 1, #3 “Placebo responses can be understood as social phenomena that depend on embodied experience, embedded or socially distributed knowledge, and situated practice.” In this sense, placebo refers to a social, healing situation, not to a chemical compound.
What does this imply? Well, we know that we can feel better with more compassionate and responsive medical care. We know too that hypnotic “rapport,” the relationship with the hypnotherapist , is of the essence of hypnotic effectiveness with patients. We know, as with hypnosis , that much of healing is outside of conscious control and awareness .
In the social context of healing, or the interpersonal “container” of hypnotic psychotherapy , our own brain, though affected, is not the agent of change; nor, is our therapeutic “technique” the healing item. Rather, placebo effects – measurable, recognizable , brain and body effects of healing – result from the unselfconscious rituals of medical and psychotherapeutic practices. These practices are metaphorical, narrative and persuasive.
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Research shows both that metaphors emerge from bodily experience and that ritual and metaphor and persuasive speech and expectation change and affect bodily experience, thought and action . When we go to a dance, we dress to dance , have the expectation of dancing and mentally practice the steps. We prepare to enjoy ourselves . When we are troubled or ill , we expect individual concern and caring treatment for our pains and strategies to ease those pains and resolve the ills we suffer, emotional or physical .
In the common practices of hypnotherapy there are situated practices which ritually invite trance states , persuasive speech to encourage change and healing , and appeals to experience, both embodied and embedded , as well as “unconscious,” to effect healing in the patient. As in the ancient dream incubation practices of Asclepian Athens, so in modern hypnotic practice, the patient is led through a ritual, allowed to rest comfortably , and encouraged to rearrange and reassess experience to induce change, recovery and growth . With good placebo outcomes come self-value and approval – the healthier person esteems their own life more easily than does the troubled one. As a hypnotherapy patient of mine wrote, “Thank you again for what-ever-the-hell-it-is that you do – as I have benefited greatly. Most notably in my improved perception of self .”
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The “whatever” is hypnotic conversation, hard to grasp consciously because its meanings are distributed through relationships; metaphorical and allusive , so, hard to pin down as “technique.” The benefit is clear; the means are ritualized, murky . And, without discussion of “self,” the treatment eventuates in improved self-valuation. A placebo without sugar pills can help with all manner of therapeutic and medical goals.
