Altered States
David Noonan Newsweek Magazine
Sept.
27 issue - At 27, Beth, an Indiana housewife, came down with chronic
diarrhea that plagued her for the next three years. "I knew where every
bathroom in town was," she says with a laugh. But it was no joke. "I
didn't really want to go out at night because it's just not fun." Doctor
after doctor told her it was stress-related. She tried diet changes and
medicines, but nothing helped. Then she went to see Dr. Marc Oster, a
Chicago-area psychologist.
After
12 sessions of hypnosis with Oster, during which Beth explored the
traumatic events that preceded her illness (including her husband's
agonizing two-week stay in a burn unit), the problem disappeared. Two
years later Beth (who asked that her last name not be used) tried
hypnosis during the birth of her second child. Three years after that
she went back again, this time to deal with her fear of flying. Could
there be more hypnosis in her future? "If the need ever arises, you
bet," says Beth, now 38.
Despite widely held misconceptions about hypnosis (in part because of
its long history as a type of entertainment), a growing body of research
supports the ancient practice as an effective tool in the treatment of a
variety of problems, from anxiety to chronic pain. Today, as
practitioners work to assess and refine the clinical applications of
hypnosis, they are also exploring its underlying mechanisms, using
state-of-the-art imaging technology to document changes in the brain
that occur when someone is in a hypnotic state. This increased
understanding of how hypnosis works and what it does makes it a
legitimate option for patients whose needs have not been met by more
traditional methods.
To
appreciate the therapeutic potential of hypnosis, you first have to
forget about things like swinging watches and hapless audience members
who prance around onstage, crowing like roosters. "One of the
interesting ironies about hypnosis is that old fantasy that it takes
away control," says Dr. David Spiegel, professor and associate chair of
psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and a leading
expert on the practice. "It's actually a way of enhancing people's
control, of teaching them how to control aspects of their body's
function and sensation that they thought they couldn't."
Hypnosis is "a form of highly focused attention," says Spiegel—an
induced state of mind that enables people to alter the way they perceive
and process reality. During a typical session, the doctor guides the
subject into a state of receptive concentration, asking him to imagine
he is in a safe and comfortable place.
Once
the patient is in a state of hypnosis, the practitioner makes specific
suggestions—a hockey player with back spasms was told that when his pads
touched his back, the muscles relaxed—to address the problem. (This
focus on a problem distinguishes hypnosis from more passive states, like
meditation.) The doctor then terminates the trance and teaches the
patient how to use self-hypnosis to reactivate and maintain the
therapeutic effect. The benefits can last for years.
Besides pain management and stress reduction, habit control is another
popular clinical application of hypnosis; it's routinely used by people
who want to quit smoking. It has also been used successfully as an
alternative to sedation during invasive medical procedures like
angiography. And at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine,
Dr. Peter Bloom, clinical professor of psychiatry and past president of
the International Society of Hypnosis, sometimes uses it to enhance
therapy sessions.
"Hypnosis allows us to interact with the people who seek our care in
more than one dimension," says Bloom. "It involves the totality of the
person. Clinically, when I get stuck, I use hypnosis and see if that
gives me a different way of linking up with them." As it is practiced by
medical professionals like Bloom and Spiegel, hypnosis is generally
safe, though there are occasional surprises, such as the unplanned
recall of a forgotten trauma (something a lay hypnotist might not handle
as well as a doctor or psychologist).
Practitioners often use vivid imagery when making hypnotic suggestions.
Dr. Olafur Palsson, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina,
developed a detailed, seven-session hypnosis protocol for the treatment
of irritable bowel syndrome, a disorder often accompanied by abdominal
pain.
"One
of the ingredients is visualizing your stomach and your intestines and
visualizing a strong protective coating being applied inside your
intestines," explains Palsson. "And this special protective coating only
allows pleasant sensations through, and keeps all uncomfortable
sensations out. And then it is suggested that this protective coating
grows stronger and thicker and harder day by day."
It's
well known that some people are more responsive to hypnosis than others.
Hypnotizability, experts say, is a trait, like eye color. As a rule, the
more "absorbed" a person is able to get in things—movies, sunsets,
daydreams—the more hypnotizable he is. (Researchers use standardized
measures to screen subjects.) People who describe themselves as more
trusting of others tend to be more hypnotizable, says Spiegel, while
those who are very logical and never take anything at face value tend to
be less hypnotizable.
Several studies using positron emission tomography (PET) have looked at
what goes on in the brain during hypnosis. In one, hypnotized subjects
had their hands immersed in "painfully hot" water but were told it was
comfortably warm. This not only altered their perception of the pain but
also altered blood flow in pain-related parts of the brain. In another
study, highly hypnotizable people were shown a black-and-white pattern
and asked to see color.
The
results: the regions of the brain normally activated during color
perception were activated in the hypnotized subjects. "It's not just a
fantasy," says Spiegel. "It's not just telling people things because
that's what you think they want to hear. If you think you are seeing
color, you actually see it, and your brain acts as though it's seeing
it." It's easy to see why, in the field of hypnosis these days, nobody
is getting sleepy. |
