Subjectivity

In a conversation with Ben recently he commented that after hypnotising an alternative therapist by chance during his lunch hour he had been invited to become a member of a alternative therapies centre.

I replied to this asking whether hypnotherapy really is an alternative therapy. Hypnotherapy can be shown to work, and isn't the reason why alternative therapies are called "alternative" that if they did actually work they'd just be called "therapy".

Ben has since commented that Wikipedia says that it is not an alternative medicine because it was considered a genuine state and therefore an "orthodox" therapy. It's interesting to consider though why hypnosis seems to fit into that "alternative" category in many peoples minds.

This subject came up after I recently watched a couple of documentaries by Professor Richard Dawkins looking at the rise of an "epidemic of superstition" in modern culture, especially in healthcare. It's called "Enemies of reason" and is available on Google Videos, YouTube and 4oD; well worth watching.

The irrationality of some of the beliefs that people will attach themselves to is quite an eye opener, especially when that belief appears to satisfy some emotional need they have. What becomes very worrying though is the thought that such individuals may go to an alternative therapist instead seeing a doctor.

A lot of this comes from the rise of relativism, which is arguably derived from our living in an increasingly socially liberal and multicultural society in recent decades. I believe both of these attributes to our culture are on the whole a good thing, but whilst allowing for tolerance of others one has to be very careful not to let relativism to stray into the realm of what should always be considered objective.

Relativism should allow for an appreciation and respect of other people's subjective experiences of the world, which will by definition be different from those of others. If for example someone were to tell me that they thought red was nicer to look at than blue, or that fries taste better with salt on them, I would not be in a reasonable position to decry that assertion as wrong, because it is a subjective one. That statement is true for them, but not necessarily for anyone else.

The danger with relativism comes when people who merely have a subjective belief in something conclude that their assertion is of equal weight to a position based on objective evidence from peer-reviewed work done by scientists. One cannot take objective scientific fact and simply say "that's true for you, but not for me". It doesn't matter what you believe; the ball will fall if I drop it, all life on earth did evolve from single celled organisms, the universe is billions of years old.

I heard Richard Dawkins refer to relativism in a lecture he gave at Harvard University in 2003 in what I think is a fantastic quotable line:

"[I shall not] lose any time on fashionable claims that science is just the western patriarchal dead white male view of truth. Science works. That is why, when you go to an international conference on cultural relativism, you go by Boeing 747 rather than magic carpet."

This point is extremely important and should not be understated. Science is concerned with the objective nature of the universe that can be measured in experiments that can be re-produced and demonstrated to others. It is most definitely not on a par with assertions based upon subjective experiences; any hypnotist reading this will know just how crazy and irrational those can be, especially after a few choice words.

Indeed, whilst I do have a great deal of respect for Richard Dawkins and agree with him on the vast majority of the material his commentary covers, probably because I have firm grounding in science and the scientific method in my chosen calling in life as an engineer, I do perhaps diverge a little as a consequence what I understand about hypnosis. I think that whilst it is important to try to prevent subjective assertions from undermining scientific fact it is also important not to underestimate the importance of subjective experiences and perception - not least because 100% of the universe yet perceived by humans has been done so in this way.

Watching that documentary through the eyes of a hypnotist, as opposed to the more objective position that I used to occupy, brings up some interesting thoughts. For example there is quite an amusing scene where Dawkins is sat in a room full of people who are sat with their eyes closed calling out a mystical chant and looking quite absorbed in it all.

A year ago I would have laughed and dismissed what those people were doing as silly, ridiculous, and wonder what on earth they were hoping to achieve because it was plain to see that nothing was happening. That was, however, before the word "somnambulist" had entered my vocabulary. Now I can look at those people as they quite obviously put themselves into a trance and know that there almost certainly is something going on and that they are probably really experiencing something, although of course nothing supernatural.

Give me a sufficiently suggestible individual right now and I could sit them down somewhere comfortable, perhaps get them to stare at a candle, have them relax, and within minutes I could have them experiencing practically anything they could imagine, and especially if they came to me with the expectation of having that experience. I would know the what it was I was doing, the spiritualists who do it may not, but either way the effect of hypnotic suggestion is just as real and just as profound to the person experiencing it.

I doubt that Richard Dawkins would be a good hypnotic subject, as I suspect he would suffer from much the same critical faculty problems I seem to have.

One part of the documentary that I found particularly interesting was the part about a double blind experiment to see whether dowsers, through the use of divining rods, really could detect the presence of water. I was once given a set of divining rods as a present when I was about 10 year old and spent an afternoon playing with them in my parents back gardern. I was amazed by the way in which, sure enough, if held parallel they would cross over if held over water.

A plausible scientific explanation for a dowser's ability to find water is that through their natural senses they become aware of the location of water, maybe only subconsciously, and that this manifests itself through the ideomotor effect causing the divining rods to move at the right time. My 10 year old self soon surmised this much of course, mostly because I couldn't understand any scientific reason why the rods would move. The wonderful word "ideomotor" eluded me for many years afterward, but I understood the concept at least.

If, however, my upbringing hadn't encouraged me to question why things worked in the way they did I might have been like the dowsers in the program, trying to find reasons why my rods had suddenly stopped working in a controlled scientific experiment. As, I might add, all paranormal phenomena somehow seems to do.

Suggestions put to the subconscious mind and the belief systems that those build up are very important because they shape the way in which an individual perceives the world. For example there seems to be a tendency for the human mind to interpret information in such a way as to fit with existing models and beliefs. This is something that a hypnotist can take advantage of; when they, say, tell a subject that their hand is stuck to the table the subject will take it as read that their hand will not move and then interpret the evidence from their senses in such a way as to build their interpretation of reality around the initial premise.

This tendency not to stop and re-consider a deeply held personal belief can, however, lead to potentially frustrating disagreements between highly idealistic individuals. For example I once came across someone who, presumably as a response to environmentalists telling him that his lifestyle of commuting 30,000 miles a year in his car might not be particularly agreeable to them, had convinced himself in a kind of polarity response that cars could do no wrong in the world. His ability to interpret any evidence presented to him in such a way as to confirm his own position was in the right (at least to himself) had turned him into a legend on the local news website on which he posted.

For example he once insisted that a cyclist will produce more CO2 per mile travelled than a motorist in a car because a cyclist would be breathing hard whilst a motorist would be resting. I find it hard to imagine anyone else, regardless of their views on climate change politics, agreeing with that statement.

He went on though. When challenged about the car's engine he would argue it was modern and thus very efficient. When asked about fossil carbon and how it doesn't generally feature in the diet of cyclists he would argue that the vegetarian cyclist's green beans had obviously been flown across the world and thus the cyclist would have the food miles to answer for. Asked about where the petrol for the car was sourced from and how it got to the pump he would have none of it. No rational evidence would shift this individual from his position. He genuinely believed in the validity of his own argument and his subconscious was there loyally shaping all the information entering his mind into a form that would support it.

In fact I'm not sure if there is any way such individuals can ever be brought to re-consider a personal dogma; they are perhaps too far gone. It serves as a strong example to me of the power of belief and its influence on the critical faculty of the mind.

Becoming a hypnotist has given me a much better understanding of something that science never could explain to me, and that is the importance of the subjectivity. Humans are by their very nature irrational beings and it's hard to understand why so many people act in the way they do without taking a moment to consider the world from their perspective. Irrational beliefs and ideas may have no foundation in science, but they can manifest themselves physically in the world we live in.

For example the power of suggestion to affect an individuals health is a well established in scientific fact. There are very few people who have not heard of the placebo effect. There is no doubt that if someone believes that, say, taking a sugar pill will improve their health this will have a positive effect. Similarly personal morale is a very important factor in terms of keeping good health. I once heard Kev Sheldrake, a regular contributor to UncommonForum make an interesting comment about placebos. He said words to the effect that a placebo was just a suggestion, and that the suggestion will work without the pill, but the pill won't work without the suggestion.

Suggestion is, of course, responsible for the majority of the positive effects that alternative medicine is able to convey. There are other effects too such as regression toward the mean and cognitive bias which also play their part in building belief systems. Creating mystical fairy tales or pseudo-science with no basis in fact is, sadly, centre stage to creating these suggestions.

Something that I like about hypnosis is the way in which it uses the same mechanisms as a lot of the mumbo jumbo that's out there, but it isn't under any illusions that it's something mystical or beyond the reach of science. The way hypnosis actually works is probably as difficult to understand as human consciousness, but it seems to me that hypnosis does stand up to scientific scrutiny. It is real, and it works.

Perhaps hypnosis only works because people believe that it does, or perhaps that is just part of it and there is much more to it than that. Either way most hypnotists aren't making up nonsense about Chi Meridians or Emerald Spirits; they don't need to.