thistle:
I’m not a beleiver in hypnosis. You are surrendering your free will and you have no idea what false memories or thoughts can be implanted during a session.
It is important to know and understand exactly what hypnosis is and what it is not.
There are two parts to any kind of hypnotic experience. The first is the trance. The second is the suggestion.
Trance is a normal everyday experience by everyone. It is simply a focus on one thing and the exclusion of other peripheral stimuli. If you read a book or watch TV or look at a movie, you are focused. If you exclude outside, peripheral “stuff” that is going on, then you are in a trance. Next time you go to the movies, glance around at the people around you; their eyes are glazed over and they are unaware there is anyone else around them.
If you missed your exit on the highway because you were “distracted”, then you were focusing on the “distraction” (another vehicle, the white line, or just daydreaming a mile away). You were in a trance.
Suggestion is the other aspect of hypnosis, which is why the Popes have warned against using hypnosis for anything other than a legitimate therapeutic treatment.
Consider Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If someone experiences a sudden violent stress (major car accident or being struck by an assailant, for example), the person goes into immediate shock and their peripheral vision goes away. They become totally focused on the immediate event. They can see and later recall the hood of the car start to crumple, they can see the paint on the hood of the car start to flake off and pop into the air, their other senses may diminish, they may not actually hear the event. Afterwards, their body tries shake off the shock and restore normal body functions.
But the memory may be stored in their mind in such a way that it “sticks” in short-term memory and repeats over and over. After a while, they become overwhelmed and may have difficulty functioning normally. PTSD.
One way of attempting to heal or treat PTSD is to talk it out, hundreds of times, over and over.
However, another way is the use of Eye Movement Integration (EMI) or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which basically create a trance and then put the event (as represented within the mind) into long-term storage where it is no longer an immediate disruption to normal everyday functioning.
Hypnosis is a legitimate quick drug-free treatment modality and is worthy of being seriously studied.
