General remarks about hypnosis

Dr. Walter Schulze, Germany

What is hypnosis?

During the normal state of consciousness, many different stimuli and sensations are perceived and processed at the same time. In hypnosis or trance the attention is focussed just on one point and the rest of the environment loses importance. As this happens quite often in everyday life, to do something like "in trance" can be seen as a common thing. A kind of a trance-state is experienced during jogging, while reading an exciting novel and during concentrated phases of working.

In the clinical setting these skills regarding spontaneous trance-states are utilized and encouraged to facilitate their use for solving mental and physical problems. The different kinds of modern clinical hypnosis as it is used today are characterised by distinctive features:

- to go into and out of trance is a totally deliberate act; your intention to do or not to do something is by no means restricted in any way,

- if you reach deeper levels of trance a kind of automatism is developed by which you are encouraged to act without effort and to discover new potentials and possibilities in yourself.

-These are common and non-spectacular experiences - similar to the impression you get, when you go jogging and suddenly realize that your legs and feet are running automatically - when you find yourself in a state, where shifting of personal bounds and limitations becomes possible.

What can hypnosis do and who can profit from it?

States of trance can be utilized very favourably in medicine, dentistry and psychotherapy. In chronic diseases for facilitating unpleasant examinations (e.g. gastroenteroscopy), to prepare anaesthesia for surgery. In dentistry to reduce anxiety and to make longer treatments more tolerable, to achieve hypnotic analgesia, treat myoarthropathy, mandibular joint problems, and to make treatment possible when there is an excessive gagging response. In psychotherapy for the treatment of many neurotic (e.g. anxieties and phobias, depression, PTSD) and psychosomatic disorders (e.g. colon irritabile, high blood pressure, psoriasis, allergies, headache and migraine, chronic pain, and cancer) as well as in eating disorders, insomnia, and unhealthy habits like smoking. In trance it is also possible to find the sources of a problem via age regression and to go into the future to experience a new way of living without the symptom. Other kinds of treatments (e.g. behaviour therapy) can be significantly facilitated.

How does it work?

During the induction of trance, concentration is distracted from external stimuli and directed to internal sensations. Usually a state of physical relaxation is achieved as a first sign. Hypnosis is not a stereotyped "relaxation programme" but is tailored individually. Relaxation in hypnosis is associated with a calming of biological rhythms like breathing and heart rate. This makes it possible for every patient to individually focus on inner experiences. If hypnosis is employed to facilitate a distressful examination or treatment (maybe in surgery or dentistry), the focus will be directed to positive and pleasurable episodes and experiences the patient can choose for himself (maybe scenes from a trip to the seaside or a temporal mental involvement in some kind of sports). The more realistic these episodes are experienced, the more dissociated the outer world will become. Hypnosis promotes the ability to relax during various treatments and thus to take responsibility for one's own well-being.

In psychotherapy it is often achieved to create a kind of "alternative reality" to control symptomatic behaviour. In the realm of mental reality the modification or extinction of symptoms is experienced so intensively, that finally this hypnotically imagined reality becomes a part of everyday life.

The vivid re-experiencing of traumatic events in the past is the significant factor in causal treatment by age-regression. Forgotten or repressed parts and experiences can thus be remembered and - seen in a different perspective - be reframed and evaluated in the light of present-day knowledge. Formerly disturbed ways of mental and emotional processing can be corrected in hypnotic trance.

About stage hypnosis:

Medical hypnosis is often confused with stage- or show-hypnosis that is presented in the media and designed for entertainment. These things have nothing in common. Modern clinical hypnosis is a serious method applied in medicine, dentistry and psychotherapy intended to promote mental and physical health in responsible patients. A precondition for therapists using hypnosis, is profound training and the professional use of it according to ethic guidelines only to restore and foster health.

Stage-hypnosis uses simple tricks to produce superficial effects - without respecting dignity or individual needs of people. This is the main reason for a prohibition of entertainment shows involving hypnosis in many countries.