Hypnosis: The Science Behind the Mysterious Phenomenon

Although the field of hypnosis is still to be cultivated, it has been widely used as a means of medical treatment in practical fields such as justice, education, and sports. In the eyes of scholars, hypnotherapy is a process of self-realization by the hypnotist, not a process suggested by the hypnotist. The most important thing about hypnosis is not to control others to reach a certain state, but to stimulate people's potential, get rid of bad habits, and overcome long-term psychogenic diseases.

　　Enter other people's dreams and implant new memories - with the popularity of "Inception", hypnosis has once again become a hot topic.

　　What exactly is hypnosis in the scientific sense, how has it undergone changes, how can it be applied clinically to psychotherapy for the benefit of the public, does it have an intersection with our lives? Or how to see through criminals who use hypnosis to achieve evil purposes Molecules? These are the topics that this article tries to discuss with you.

　　From deception to medicine

　　Hypnotism used to be called Maxima. Maxima is an Austrian doctor. He has a very special treatment method: he uses a large oak barrel filled with iron filings, etc., and has the patient sit around the barrel, which is placed in a dark, mirrored room full of mystery. Atmosphere. Maxima himself wore special, bizarre clothing. After this treatment, many people recovered.

　　This method of treatment caused a sensation in Paris at the time, and at the same time aroused opposition from the scientific community, especially the medical community. At that time, King Louis XVI of France ordered the establishment of a commission of inquiry including the great chemist Lavache and the US ambassador to France Benjamin Franklin. The Commission of Inquiry believed that the patient's recovery was not due to the so-called animal magnetic current, as Mesmer said, but to the patient's "imagination". Since Mesmer himself could not explain this phenomenon, in the eyes of the scientific community, he was a charlatan. He had to leave Paris and failed to be understood and recognized by the scientific community for the rest of his life.

　　Just as Wundt brought psychology into the laboratory to gain a new lease of life, it was a man named James Breed who brought hypnosis into the halls of science. He is known as the founder of hypnosis. It was he who coined the term "hypnotism". He was a serious medical scientist. In 1841 a man named La Fontaine publicly performed Maxie in Manchester. Breed was there, and at first he accused La Fontaine of being a liar. But he carefully observed and stabbed the subjects with needles and found that the subjects did not respond to pain, and various other observations led Brad to admit this fact.

　　But he did not believe that the effect was caused by the magical power of the caster. He studied the phenomenon from a physiological point of view, arguing that fatigue in the frontal lobe of the brain produced these effects.

　　After Braid proposed the physiological explanation of Mesmeric, hypnotism was gradually accepted by the medical community, and began to attract the attention of the scientific community as a physiological and psychological issue.

　　Later, experimental psychologists conducted relatively close research on hypnosis, and the research covered a correspondingly wide range. In 1933, American psychologist Clark L. Hull published the book "Hypnosis and Suggestion", which cleared people's misunderstandings and prejudices about hypnosis, and introduced hypnosis into the psychology laboratory, which made the research on hypnosis enter a new stage.

　　Revealing the "mind-body relationship"

　　So what is the explanation of hypnosis and hypnotic state in modern psychology? Some contemporary hypnosis theories are roughly divided into two categories.

　　A type of state of consciousness theory called change. This type of theory holds that the hypnotic state is fundamentally different from other states of consciousness. For the hypnotic state in the general sense, it is considered to be a state similar to sleepwalking. For example, you are about to fall asleep but not yet asleep, which is a natural state to enter. The other is introduced by others, and the hypnotist uses scientific methods to bring the hypnotized into a subconscious state.

　　Another type of theory is called the theory of non-altered state of consciousness, also known as the theory of doubt, which believes that the hypnotic state is not fundamentally different from the normal state of consciousness, and the hypnotic phenomenon can be explained by the psychological knowledge we are usually familiar with.

　　Hypnosis can separate a person's "knowledge" from "action" in a special state. For example, after the hypnotist brings the hypnotized person into a hypnotic state, you ask him to add, how much does one plus one equal? Of course he knows it equals two, but if the hypnotist implies to him that the number two does not exist at all. Then, he can only say a number other than two. This is the separation of action and perception.

　　In the hypnotic state, the subject can even make the subject have positive hallucinations and negative hallucinations through different suggestive words. Positive hallucination refers to making the subject perceive things that do not exist objectively, such as smelling a fragrance that does not exist, hearing a sound that does not exist, etc. Negative hallucination refers to making the subject treat something that actually exists as if it does not exist.

　　In addition, the question of "mind-body relationship" is also a question worth exploring in hypnosis. In a sense, hypnosis shows us the interaction between mind and body in a more intuitive and obvious way.

　　For example, hypnotic suggestion can relieve pain, treat psoriasis and remove warts. Platonov and others in the former Soviet Union reported that hypnotized people ate a lot of sugar, and their blood sugar increased by 20% to 30% thereafter. There are also hypnotic cues that can cause scalding blisters on the skin. Although some are only from clinical reports, further confirmation is needed. However, the fact that psychological cues under hypnosis can have a physiological impact is generally recognized.

　　In fact, there are many people who are exposed to awake hypnosis in real life. For example, advertisements, some advertisements make you want to buy something, which can be said to hypnotize you, in fact, this is the psychology of advertising; another example is movies, some plots in movies make you cry and make you laugh, is a kind of hypnotic state.

　　But if it evolves into being used by others and produces vicious effects, it is very dangerous. For example, when you receive a phone call saying how much money you have spent inexplicably in so-and-so places, you start to get nervous, and this is the beginning of being hypnotized.

　　Repeatedly banned pyramid schemes also use hypnosis to achieve their evil purposes. Imprisoning people in a special place, taking away their mobile phones, and not being able to contact the outside world, surrounded by pyramid schemes, many people in it lose their judgment. In a larger sense, the cults and military organizations that launched wars in history, as large as Hitler and Mussolini, as small as Asahara in *****, and Jones in *****, all took advantage of the weaknesses in the essence of human nature to achieve their evil purposes in a certain sense.

　　It can be seen that hypnosis is a double-edged sword, and only a good in-depth study can avoid its dangers.

　　The essence of hypnotherapy

　　Professor Xu Youxin, a psychotherapist, once used the words "through empathy, overcoming resistance" to summarize the essence of psychoanalysis, which in my opinion can also be used to reveal the essence of hypnotherapy.

　　First, let's talk about the connotation of these eight words: the hypnotized person is generally unaware of his potential in a normal state, and he cannot find a specific and effective way to release his repressed potential, and even He didn't even know that he had such a thing as "potential". But in the process of hypnotherapy, he overcame his inner resistance by empathizing and projecting towards an authority (that is, a hypnotherapist), and this resistance was exactly what tightly bound people's potential in the first place.

　　It is worth noting that there is an authority in the hypnosis process, which is to make the hypnotist an idol in the mind of the hypnotized, that is, the hypnotist can control the hypnotized, the hypnotist can adjust the conscious and subconscious modification of the hypnotized, and the hypnotist can adjust the hypnotized. Let the hypnotized person stimulate their potential in blind worship. Director Zhang Yimou likes to use new bees, and new bees perform well, why? This is how new actors inspire their potential through the worship of well-known directors.

　　Second, let's talk about the extension of these eight words: after overcoming the pressure, your potential is released, but the potential is still yours, and it is yours in the first place, not the authority. Therefore, when the relationship between people becomes more and more equal, hypnotherapy becomes a process of the hypnotized person's own enlightenment, rather than the process suggested by the hypnotist. This is the change in interpersonal relationships during the development of hypnosis. Why did Freud give up hypnosis? Because he does not like to use manipulation, but likes to let the hypnotized person gradually wake up, realize, and become aware of his own energy in free association.

　　So far, the scientific community's understanding of the nature of hypnosis is still very insufficient, and this is a place full of mysteries to be cultivated. Let's explore bravely with an open heart and a critical mind.