Something that I like about hypnosis is that whilst some may be inclined to label it as "alternative" healthcare it is different from the rest of this category in one very important respect.
There is a name for the parts of alternative medicine that have been proven to work beyond simply being a placebo, and that is "medicine". In medicine, the effects of any given treatment are put on trial, tested and evaluated to prove that it is effective for the patients that it is used on. If an easily available natural remedy actually works in a true medical sense it is most likely already in use; a good example is the drug asprin, which I believe is derived from the bark of the willow tree.
A placebo is a pill and a suggestion. For the treatment to work you can have the suggestion without the pill, but you can't have the pill without the suggestion. A nice illustration of this was given when James Randi, a stage magician, took a lethal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills on stage at a TED talk back in 2007. The video is definitely worth a watch.
Alternative medicine is the business of selling a diverse range of supposed remedies whose significant effects are derived solely through the suggestion put into the mind of the patient. In this sense I have absolutely no worries about placing hypnotherapy in the same category as homeopathy, crystal energy healing, and so on. They all work in much the same way.
The difference between hypnosis, specifically hypnotherapy, and these other alternative forms of treatment is that hypnosis doesn't need to claim to be anything that it isn't. There's no pseudo-science claiming that shiny crystals have psychic energy fields, or that a medicine is effective even when it's been diluted beyond the point of no longer having any medicine in it. There are no daemons to exorcise or pixies re-aligning your DNA. Nobody even needs to talk of secret ancient medical wisdom of a bygone age (conveniently omitting the bit about how in bygone times broken or infected limbs were routinely sawn off without anesthetic).
Hypnotherapy is simply about making the subject feel better through the power of suggestion, but in a pure undiluted form. The results are subjective, the treatment is subjective, the success is subjective. So many issues that medical doctors have to treat are not so much medical conditions as merely indicators of personal or lifestyle problems, and this is where hypnotherapists are able to help, whilst acknowledging that if a client has a genuine medical problem they should see a doctor.
What has all this to do with quantum physics I hear you asking? Well, whenever I hear a hypnotist start talking about quantum physics I sigh inwardly. I personally, being a mechanical engineer by trade, like to think I have a good grounding in physics, significantly better than most hypnotists, but I will admit that even I don't really have a clue when it comes to quantum theory. Furthermore I have yet to meet or hear from a hypnotist who also happens to be a theoretical physicist. Even then physicists themselves have a saying: "If you think you understand quantum theory, you don't understand quantum theory"
Talking about quantum physics is just one example of how so many hypnotists fall into the trap of being pseudo-scientists and I find it really depressing when I hear some hypnotist making what I consider to be dubious and untested claims about what one can do with hypnosis.
Seriously. There is no need to drop to the same level as the crystal healers and the homeopaths with their made up science. I have heard of hypnotists who claim they can cure cancer through the power of suggestion, or that they know people who have been able to repair broken bones by going into a deep trance for a couple of days.
Hypnosis can undoubtedly be used to cure phobias and give up bad habits, it can do a lot for pain control and of course positive mindset is most certainly an aid to recovery in any medical patient. However I think hypnotherapists are rather well advised to leave treating the broken bodies to the medical experts.
The same goes for other claims relating to the highly objective world of science. Hypnotists can, and I think should, talk philosophy and consider theories of mind. These are interesting topics about which I and others have talked for hours, but we should also remember that hypnosis is not a science, it is an art. It is by its essence highly complicated, inconsistent and contradictory, and mostly because it involves peoples' minds, which are also highly complicated, inconsistent and contradictory.
I think quantum physics does have one thing that hypnotists can legitimately steal for their own purposes, and that's the following expression:
"If you think you understand hypnosis, you don't understand hypnosis."
No comments:
Post a Comment