A mysterious man rocks a pocket watch back and forth, repeating the words “You feel more and more sleepy, very sleepy”, and issuing a series of absolute commands to his hypnotic object – popularculturehypnosis is often portrayed in this way, although this is not how hypnosis is actually practiced. Influenced by popular culture, not only do the public have many misunderstandings about hypnosis, but even some professionals’ understanding of hypnosis is inaccurate.
according toUnited StatespsychologyThe American Psychological Association defines “hypnosis” as the process by which a professional or researcher suggests that a person is experiencing changes in feeling, perception, thoughts, or behavior when treating them. Hypnosis is often used to treat some psychologydisease, such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, insomnia,dietobstacles, etc. whereasnerveImaging studies have shown that the effect of hypnosis is that it stimulates the hypnotized person to be consistent with suggested events (such as hallucinations of objects).cerebrumAreas (such as visual processing areas).
“Hypnosis” is also often found in various popular cultures, especially in film and television works. The “hypnosis” expressed in these works is usually magical: for exampleMovieIn “Amazing Thieves”, magicians can use hypnosis to manipulate people’s subconscious minds and guide hypnotic subjects to perform specific actions; In “Master of Hypnosis”, the psychiatrist uses hypnosis to put the patient into a special state, allowing him to shuttle back and forth between the real world and the inner world; In “Get Out”, the hypnotist can imprison a person’s mind through hypnosis, thereby depriving the hypnotized person of control of the body, and so on.
Of course, these magical effects are more pop culture about hypnosisartProcessing, with realityChinese medicineThere are many gaps compared with the hypnotherapy used in science. On the one hand, this gap has paved a layer of mystery on hypnosis, and on the other hand, it has also caused many misunderstandings about hypnosis among the public.
Misconceptions about “hypnosis”
Steven Jay Lynn is an expert in hypnosis and a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He believed that hypnosis had many beneficial clinical applications, but the fallacy about it limited its full exploitation and exploitation.
Recently, Lynn and two colleagues published an article in BJPsych Advances titled “PassscienceReconciling myths and misconceptions about hypnosis with scientific evidence, in which they set out several false views and misconceptions about the characteristics and practices of hypnosis that are common and widely circulated in popular culture. The article’s press release summarizes several of the most common misconceptions about hypnosis:
Myth 1: People who are deeply hypnotized will “blindly obey”
Popular culture often conveys the idea that “hypnosis is a specific act performed on the hypnotized person and can be used to control others.” Therefore, many people believe that people who are deeply hypnotized will exhibit a state of “blind obedience” – they will automatically obey whatever the hypnotist suggests. But in fact, people in a hypnotic state do not lose control of their own behavior, and they can resist or even oppose hypnotic cues – depending on whether they have the intention and expectation to retain self-control.
Myth 2: The hypnotized person enters a special state of unconsciousness
Hypnosis is often misinterpreted as a special state – the psychological defense mechanisms of the hypnotized person are weakened, in a “state of physical relaxation, conscious unconsciousness”, penetrating deep into one’s own subconscious.
However, in fact, even if a person is riding a bicycle in the gym and is conscious, he is able to respond to hypnotic cues. The expression “conscious unconscious state” is inaccurate, because even the most easily hypnotized person is fully awake and able to perceive his surroundings in a hypnotic state. A more accurate understanding of hypnosis is to see it as a series of programs in which verbal cues are used to regulate a person’s consciousness, perception, and cognition—rather than unnecessarily stimulating a “special state”.
Myth 3: A person can either be hypnotized or cannot
Although everyone’s sensitivity to hypnosis is relatively certain, the assumption that “a person can either be hypnotized or not” is not accurate. The same person’s ability to respond to different hypnotic cues can vary greatly – he may respond to some specific hypnotic cues but not others. However, most people’s response to hypnosis is sufficient to support their actual benefit from therapeutic hypnotic cues.
Myth 4: Hypnotists have special abilities
Many people think that hypnotists are like wizards with special abilities that can hypnotize anyone. But this widely circulated claim is completely absurd. In fact, hypnotic induction and precise cuing do not require any special abilities, only sociability and basic skills required for experimental and clinical procedures (such as the ability to build rapport) – although hypnosis can only be used by trained professionals in specific situations.
Myth 5: The hypnotized person can recover past life memories through hypnosis
This is also a plot that often exists in film and television works: hypnosis can help the hypnotized person recall a distant past lifelifeExtremely accurate memory. In real life, there are indeed some people who claim to have regained their past life memories through hypnosis. However, relevant research has found that these so-called “past life memories” come more from the information obtained by the hypnotized person and their own imagination, and actually reflect their perception of the given personhistory(e.g., 10th century AD) expectations, fantasies, and beliefs about one’s past life experiences and identities (e.g., different races, cultures, and genders).
“Fallacies” do not only exist in the public
These misconceptions about hypnosis exist not only among the general public who do not understand hypnosis, but also among professionals, and even some fallacies are widely spread among clinicians and hypnosis educators.
In 2021, also in the journal BJPsych Advances, several researchers published a paper titled “Update on hypnotherapy for psychiatrists”, which made a very wonderful summary of the clinical application of hypnosis and some mechanisms in neuroscience, but some explanations of hypnosis still made some of the above mistakes.
Lynn and colleagues’ “Reconciling Myths and Misconceptions About Hypnosis Through Scientific Evidence” is a critical article for the above paper. They cited existing research evidence to correct some inaccuracies or inaccuracies in the paper: for example, the paper also described hypnosis as a special “conscious unconscious state”; and the advice of the doctor who thinks that the hypnotized person will “blindly obey”.
Regarding these misconceptions about hypnosis among the masses and professionals, Lynn and colleagues mention in the article: “Spreading misinformation about hypnosis creates unscientific and inaccurate views about hypnosis and pushes the field of hypnosis away from the evidence base, which in doing so has potentially adverse consequences for how clinicians apply hypnosis.” They hope the review article will “draw more attention to the common discrepancies between clinical practice and the evidence base, and further promote the training and certification of psychiatrists in hypnosis, a valuable but often misunderstood technique.”
