When I click my fingers...

My friend Val sent an email which contained the question:

"How would a scientific person like yourself explain what happens when a person who hears voices undergoes hypnotherapy. Apparently all that happens is that the person enters an altered state of consciousness (presumably) and has a conversation with the hypnotherapist. At the end of it, the person does not hear the voices any more.
So how would that interaction alter the mis-firing synapse? Is that a possibility? Is the filter altered? I am interested in your response. Don’t just go off on a long convoluted rant against quacks and hypnotherapy! I know it may not happen in every case, but it does in some. So how come? What processes occur? What is altered?

I’m not about to state that anything to do with hypnosis or hypnotism is fake. Far from it, having read up on the subject last year, I am convinced that hypnosis works on many levels.

I acknowledge the fact that some people who have used hypnosis as part of their healing process have recovered.

When my dad had his heart attack he was taken into hospital and operated on. After what seemed like ages, he made a recovery and was allowed to leave. Although he’s not exactly on top form after the event, he can be considered to be in no immediate danger and shows every chance of living to a ripe old age.

It was pyjamas, you see. As soon as he went into hospital, My step mum bought him a new pair of pyjamas. Have you ever smelled brand-new pyjamas? They smell sort of chemically, like a set of prints back from lab, or the pages of a magazine that nobody has read.

Usually, when we buy a new item of clothing we will wash it before we wear it. However, when somebody needs new pyjamas for hospital, they generally need them that night, so they get worn straight away, complete with their chemical smell.

Now it just so happens, that that week, there were seven other patients who made a full recovery as well, and every one of them had been given fresh pyjamas to wear.

So, the following statement can hold true: People who wear new pyjamas after a heart attack are likely to recover.

This is the circular logic of post hoc ergo proctor hoc. (After the event, therefore because of the event.) It is the same slight of hand that allows the makers of Shredded Wheat to claim “Most people with a healthy heart eat whole-grain cereals”. The statement is saying absolutely nothing, and is difficult to disprove. But do you remember what I said in Smoke and Mirrors? The fact that something cannot be DISproven doesn’t make it any more real.

The last time my car wasn’t working it was fixed by new spark plugs being fitted. I can prove it. I have the receipt and the mechanic let me keep the old, blackened stumps as a souvenir. After the plugs were replaced, my car ran (and still does run) like a dream. But when anybody else’s car goes, would it be right for the mechanic to say “I fixed David Steele’s car with new spark plugs, therefore yours will need the same.”?

Okay. Lets drag this back on target. It may seem flippant that I’ve made these shaky analogies, but I think it’s important that we look at the logic that is in play to support hypnosis as an alternative to conventional therapies. This is as much evidence as there is for hypnosis as “cure” for anything: People who have used hypnosis have recovered.

According to Dylan Morgan, hypnosis is a state in which the mind is open and receptive to new learning techniques. His claims are no more mystical than that. It is this relaxed state that can lead to a state of suggestibility, or allow the imagination to be given a free rein. I would whole heartedly recommend his excellent free ebook “Hypnosis for beginners” which was one of my favourite reads in Iraq.

According to what I’ll loosely call the Morgan Method, hypnosis works by allowing the mind to form links. For example, a hypnotist might say “I want you to imagine that the phone is ringing and that you have an itch on your nose… Imagine the sound of the telephone, and imagine your nose itching… Now, the next time your telephone rings, I want you to remember that your nose is itching….” Then you sit back and watch the fun as they scratch their nose when you call them on your mobile.

This isn’t as far fetched as it might seem. For example, whenever I smell diesel fumes, I always taste ice-cream. Why? Because the van that used to deliver it used to kick lots of smoke out. I’ve learned to associate ice cream with diesel. The same happens with commercials. Think about the number of links that have been forged while you’re relaxed and watching TV. If I were to say “It’s the real thing” Most of you would think coca-cola. If I said “Just do it.” most of you would think of trainers.

I believe that hypnosis is valid and it is has provable results. It can create negative associations to help smokers quit (Next time you smoke a cigarette you will feel sick). It can help those afraid of flying (Next time you are in a plane you will think of your warm bed). It can even help patients to overcome the pain of childbirth or chronic illness. So, since it affects the mental processes and cognitive functions in such a way, there is no reason to suppose that it wouldn’t be of value in certain mental health cases. One way hypnosis has been proven to work is by allowing what could be thought of as tangles in the mind to be smoothed out.

Take an instance where somebody has had a painful memory as a child. It is quite possible for a hypnotherapist to take a person through that experience, but this time re-write the incident with a happy ending. In cases such as this, it is apparently common for a patient to replace the unhappy experience with the new, sugar coated memory.

If this seems surprising, then consider more deeply the accepted wisdom that the memory of a human being is not black and white. It is not a compartmentalised series of pigeon holes full of facts that are held on file until required. The memory has been shown to be a dynamic and constantly re-evaluating process. According to articles in New Scientist (“Our Orwellian Memory”), the memory process is one that relies on constant reinforcement and revision. The very process of remembering requires that memories are effectively taken out and dusted off to retain their clarity. The effect of this is that when you remember an event from a long time ago, you are not remembering the actual event, but a play back of the memory of that event.

Effectively, the mind makes copies of incidents to replace the old memory stores, and in doing so, it is prone to revise facts, overlook details and even invent facts that never took place. It is quite possible for events in the memory to be little more than fantasies of what really happened. And with no frame of reference other than our own memories, we’re already on to a loser.

So, given that the memory, as a fluidic medium rather than a mechanical retrieval system and that it is open to persuasion, it should come as no shock that memory recovery is one of the most effective tools at a hypnotherapist’s disposal.

But hypnosis is also very much about using the imagination. No hypnotist would deny that. Much of the hypnotic process relies on the patient being able to use their imagination (I want you to imagine you’re in a warm place… I want you to listen to my voice and imagine yourself becoming more relaxed as I count down from ten to one…) and it is precisely this reliance on role play that leaves the whole process open to abuse and misuse.

There have been many, many cases where hypnosis has helped people to exorcise their own demons. There have also been many cases where people with certain personality disorders have been able to discover that the cause of these events lie in earlier events in their lives. Perhaps they had been abused and had repressed the unpleasant memory, or maybe they had been involved in some other sort of trauma and simply not been able to deal with such an event. The Recovered Memory Movement saw hundreds, perhaps thousands of patients across America and much of Europe suddenly unlocking very real and painful memories that had been lying dormant in their subconscious minds for so long. Patients suffering from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, even headaches were encouraged and advised that this therapy might be of use to them too, and pretty soon hypnotic regression became a very big business.

Of course, it wasn’t long before the litigious masses of the United States got their teeth into the matter. Soon there was no shortage of girls and boys in court claiming that Uncle Frank had raped and abused them, and that the nice man next door had actually sneaked into their bedroom in the dead of night wearing only a pair of sneakers and a satanic mask. Families were torn apart, careers were wrecked, lives were ruined and victims were being created faster than ever. Sooner or later it all had to stop. And the tide turned in spectacular fashion.

Wave after wave of once believed victims started stepping forward, ready to take back what they had been told to believe under guided hypnosis and put right the damage they had done. These people became known as the Retractors and actually began suing the therapists themselves. What became known as False Memory Syndrome is still very much alive and well today, as more and more people realise that there supposedly reliable hypnotherapy sessions were nothing more than guided roleplay and wish fulfilment.

It’s not surprising that those wishing to find deep seated answers to psychological problems would now look beyond their life times to find the answer to their woes. Since events in this lifetime can be cross referenced, double checked and refuted, it was only a matter of time before the New Age Movement offered an untestable solution that everyone could believe in, without ever once having to worry about all that nasty business of facts and evidence.

It was a logical step that hypnotic charlatans should decide to go beyond simple one life regression and head out into the realm of past lives. Now a client is free to roam across all their previous incarnations and find as many excuses for their neuroses as they see fit. The best part about this is that it offers so much scope to the would–be time traveller. Not happy about paying your taxes? Perhaps in a previous life you were Robin Hood. Spending your whole life slaving away? Perhaps in a previous life you were Caligula, and now you’re just trying to make amends.

Rimmer: …Because, believe it or not, Lister, he told me that, in a past incarnation, I was Alexander the Great's chief eunuch.
Lister: Do you know something? I believe you.
Rimmer. He didn't say that I was Alexander himself, which is obviously what I wanted to hear. But it explained everything: I'd lived a previous life alongside one of the greatest generals in history. No wonder the military's in my blood.
Lister: No wonder you're such a good singer.
Rimmer: Well, maybe it's rot, I don't know. But it's funny -- to this day, I can't look at a pair of nutcrackers without wincing. And why is it, whenever I'm with a large group of women, I have this overwhelming urge to bathe them in warm olive oil?
Lister: I have that urge, Rimmer. It's got nothing to do with past lives.

From the Red Dwarf episode: Marooned

There are two very important factors to consider when analysing why these sessions would work:

Factor one: Filling in the blanks – Confabulation. Imagine you’re telling a story about something that happened to you in a bookshop last week. You know it was in a public place but you can’t remember exactly where. To facilitate the story, let’s say that you arbitrarily state that it could have taken place in a library. Some weeks later, when telling the same story again, you might automatically place the story in a library for want of a better location. A year down the line, you might walk past the town library and recall the incident that you now believe actually happened there.

Factor two: The urge to please. It is often the case that patients feel obliged to “play along” with their hypnotist’s suggestions. Perhaps this might take place out of respect for their perceived authority, or perhaps simply because the patient might feel that a lack of result would be some sort of failure on their part. In the case of the recovered memory craze, Richard Webster made the following observation in his book “Why Freud was wrong”:

“In their pursuit of the hidden memories which supposedly accounted for the symptoms of these women, therapists sometimes used a form of time-limited group therapy. At the beginning of the ten or twelve weekly sessions, patients would be encouraged to set themselves goals. For many patients without memories of incest the goal was to recover such memories. Some of them actually defined their goal by saying “I just want to be in a group and feel I belong.” After a fifth session the therapist would remind the group that they had reached the middle of their therapy, with the clear implication that time was running out. As pressure was increased in this way women with no memories would often begin to see images of sexual abuse involving father or other adults and these images would then be constructed as memories or “flashbacks””

To my way of thinking, past-life regression is probably the most conclusive proof that much of hypnosis is based in role play. I would not be any more inclined to believe a testimony obtained under hypnosis than I would if it were obtained any other way. People under hypnosis have no magical constraint to tell the truth, they are merely more relaxed, better able to concentrate, and more likely to use their ability to visualise scenes in their imagination. Anyone wishing to claim otherwise would do well to take a look at the work of The Amazing Kreskin, who has offered a cool $100,000 to anyone who can prove that a subject under hypnosis can do anything that a non hypnotised person is capable of.

I remember using a guided hypnosis tape about four years ago, which promised to help me unlock experiences of my previous lives. “This is not an exercise in creativity” The West Coast accented woman told me. “This is a genuine remembrance of that which has gone before.”

I was told to imagine myself in a grey mist, and then look down at my feet. I was supposedly looking through the eyes of my previous self at this point. “Imagine the ground.” The Californian advised me. “See the detail of the earth beneath your feet, see your feet in this place, and now, very gradually, look up, and let the scene unfold around you.”

I imagined the scene as instructed. Just as anybody would, I imagined something. I saw heather at my feet, and looked out to see a Scottish coastal scene, complete with rugged coast line and the cottage where I had “lived” before.

Was I remembering a previous existence, or was I simply following instructions? I’m a creative, imaginative person. The vision came to me because I was told that it should. Which is the most likely? That I transcended space and time, and somehow reconfigured the synapses of my brain to replicate those of a long dead person and see through their long decomposed eyes, or that I simply made it up because it was a result I had expected and wanted?

I know that many people claim to use self-hypnosis as a substitute for anaesthetic at the dentists, but I don’t know many dentists who tell the same story. I’m not saying it’s all a pack of lies. I’m just saying that there’s always an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence for just about anything and very little substantial proof.

I’ve no doubt the new age tricksters are just as unwelcome to clinical hypnotists as they are to me. But they exist and they are not short of cash. But where does this leave hypnosis? I said myself that “I believe that hypnosis is valid and it is has provable results.“ How can I believe this and still poke fun at past life regression?

Put it another way. How can I possibly believe that there is any such thing as hypnosis when there are people who can exploit it to invent fantasies that put people in jail?

Well. I hate to drag up circular logic, but you left me no choice. Hypnosis works simply because people believe it does. When a therapist tells a patient “Your arm is so heavy that you cannot lift it.” They are likely to simply accept what has been said, simply because they believe that they are in a trance. The smoker believes he/she has the strength to give up smoking – and so he/she can. The agoraphobic believes he/she has the strength to walk down the street, and so he/she can The patient believes that it is possible to close their eyes and see through the eyes of a past incarnation, and so they can.

And that brings us back to the original question. A person who consults a hypnotist has within them a belief, or at least a desire, that this therapy can help them in some way. With a mental condition such as the one you have described, there is just a chance that somebody may have placed sufficient faith in the hypnotic process to heal them that it allowed what ever was mis-firing in the brain to stop doing so. At the end of the day what ever it was that happened “worked” in some way. Sometimes this is all that is needed. Homeopathy sometimes “works” when all a patient has been prescribed is stale water. Faith Healing sometimes “works” when all that has happened is a few words have been uttered.

If someone is made better by any process, then we can only say that somebody using that process got better. That doesn’t mean the process “works”. We can only say what we see, not what we would wish.

Please keep your comments coming. Long live the debate.