HYPNOSIS MEDICAL, SCIENTIFIC, OR OCCULTIC?
by Martin & Deirdre BobganFROM SWORD & TROWEL
2001 No 2
Excerpted from the authors’ book, providing a superb overview of hypnosis
from a biblical standpoint
Hypnosis has been used as a method of mental, emotional, behavioural, and
physical healing for hundreds and even thousands of years. Witch-doctors, Sufi
practitioners, shamans, Hindus, Buddhists, and yogis have practised hypnosis, and now
medical doctors, dentists, psychotherapists, and others have joined them.
The hypnotic trance begins by focusing a person’s attention and produces
many results. According to its advocates, the practice of hypnotism may alter behaviour in
such a way as to change habits; stimulate the mind to recall forgotten events and
information; enable a person to overcome shyness, fears, and depression; cure maladies
such as asthma and hay fever; improve a person’s sex life; and remove pain.
Fantastic claims and the increasing popularity of hypnosis in the secular
world have influenced many in the church to turn to hypnotism for help. Various Christian
medical doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors are using hypnosis in
their practices and recommending its use for Christians.
Christians who support the use of hypnosis do so for some of the same
reasons medical doctors and psychotherapists recommend it. These Christians believe that
hypnosis is scientific rather than occultic when it is practiced by a qualified professional.
They distinguish between those who practise it for helpful purposes and those who use it
with evil intent. They believe it is a safe, useful tool in the hands of professionally trained,
benevolent individuals, even though hypnotism can be dangerous in the hands of
malevolent individuals or novices.
Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, authors of Understanding the
Occult, say, ‘If a person allows himself to be hypnotized, it should be only under the
most controlled situation by a qualified and experienced physician.’
Origins of modern hypnosis
Modern hypnosis evolved from an eighteenth-century phenomenon known as
mesmerism. The word hypnosis was coined in the 1840s by a Scottish
physician by the name of James Braid, who used the Greek word hypnos,
because he thought mesmerism resembled sleep.
Austrian physician Friedrich (Franz) Anton Mesmer believed he had
discovered the great universal cure of both physical and emotional problems. In 1779 he
announced, ‘There is only one illness and one healing.’ Mesmer presented the idea that an
invisible fluid was distributed throughout the body. He called the fluid ‘animal magnetism’
and believed it influenced illness or health in both the mental-emotional and the physical
aspects of life.
Mesmer’s ideas may sound rather foolish from a scientific point of view.
However, they were well received. Furthermore, as they were modified they formed much
of the basis for present-day psychotherapy. Through a series of progressions, the animal
magnetism theory moved to the psychological effects of mind over matter.
Although hypnosis had been used for centuries in various occult activities,
including medium trances, Mesmer and his followers brought it into the respectable realm
of Western medicine.
Hypnosis is merely contemporary mesmerism. Both the practitioners and
subjects believed that hypnosis revealed untapped reservoirs of human possibility and
powers. They believed that these powers could be used to understand the self, to attain
perfect health, to develop supernatural gifts, and to reach spiritual heights. Thus, the goal
and impetus for discovering and developing human potential grew out of mesmerism and
stimulated the growth and expansion of psychotherapy, positive thinking, the human
potential movement, and the mind-science religions, as well as the growth and expansion of
hypnosis itself.
The theories and practices of mesmerism greatly influenced the up-and-
coming field of psychiatry with such early men as Jean Martin Charcot, Pierre Janet, and
Sigmund Freud. These men used information gleaned from patients in the hypnotic state.
Hypnosis led to the belief that there is an unconscious part of the mind that is filled with
powerful material which motivates actions, a hidden powerful self that directs and controls
the feelings, thoughts and actions of individuals. Mesmer’s influence on Freud led him to
develop an entire psychodynamic theory. Freud believed that the unconscious portion of the
mind, rather than the conscious, influences all of a person’s thoughts and actions. He taught
that the unconscious not only influences, but determines what individuals do and think.
Freud considered this mental set to be established within the unconscious during the first
five years of life. According to his theory, traumas of the past, locked into one’s
unconscious, compel thoughts and control behaviour. He theorised that if one could tap into
this unconscious, people could be healed of neuroses and psychoses. Professor of psychiatry
Thomas Szasz describes Mesmer’s influence this way:
Insofar as psychotherapy as a modern ‘medical technique’ can be said to
have a discoverer, Mesmer was that person. Mesmer stands in the same sort of
relation to Freud and Jung as Columbus stands in relation to Thomas Jefferson and
John Adams. Columbus stumbled onto a continent that the founding fathers
subsequently transformed into the political entity known as the United States of
America. Mesmer stumbled onto the literalised use of the leading scientific metaphor
of his age for explaining and exorcising all manner of human problems and passions,
a rhetorical device that the founders of modern depth psychology subsequently
transformed into the pseudomedical entity known as psychotherapy.
[Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Psychotherapy]
The followers of Mesmer promoted the ideas of hypnotic suggestion,
healing through talking, and mind-over-matter. Thus, the three main thrusts of Mesmer’s
influence were hypnosis, psychotherapy, and positive thinking.
Mesmer’s far-reaching influence gave an early impetus to scientific-
sounding religious alternatives to Christianity. He also started the trend of medicalising
religion into treatment and therapy.
In medicalising hypnosis, Mesmer and his followers have made hypnosis
respectable to the general public and caused Christians to be more vulnerable to its claims
and promises. Therefore, Christians need to be informed and forearmed with answers to the
following questions: What exactly is hypnosis? Is it a natural experience? How are people
induced? Are they deceived? Can the will be violated? What happens during hypnosis? Is
hypnosis medical, scientific, or occultic? What does the Bible say about hypnosis?
What hypnosis does
Through hypnosis, practitioners and patients hope to uncover hidden realms
within themselves. Through these means they attempt to discover memories, emotions,
desires, doubts, fears, insecurities, powers, and even secret knowledge buried deep within
what they believe is a powerful unconscious, determining behaviour quite apart from and
even against conscious choice. The allure is to tap into what they believe to be a huge
reservoir for healing and for power.
In answering the question, ‘What is Hypnosis?’ The Harvard Mental
Health Letter (vol 7:10, Apr 1991) says:
Although it has become familiar through more than two hundred years
of use as entertainment, self-help, and therapy, the hypnotic trance remains a
remarkably elusive, even mysterious psychological state. Most of us may think we
know what hypnosis is, but few could say if asked. Although even experts do not fully
agree on how to define it, they usually emphasise three related features: absorption
or selective attention, suggestibility, and dissociation.
Confusion reigns in the field of hypnosis because there is so much
disagreement regarding what it is. William Kroger and William Fezler, in their book
Hypnosis and Behaviour Modification, say, ‘There are as many definitions of
hypnosis as there are definers.’
In his book They Call It Hypnosis, Robert Baker states the
issue concisely and precisely:
There is no single topic in the history of psychology more controversial
than hypnosis. From its beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century with Franz
Anton Mesmer to the present, the phenomenon has been mired in controversy.
Baker insists that the hypnotist ‘is important only as a transference figure’.
The hypnotist and client each assume a role in a relationship that gives the hypnotist all
power and authority over the client. Baker says that the hypnotist takes advantage of his
position as an authority figure and allows the client to fantasise that he has power over the
hypnotised person. The client thus believes that the hypnotist is the one who is responsible
for whatever happens during the trance.
Through this relationship with the physician or hypnotist ‘patients can and
will produce symptoms to please their physicians.’ According to this theory, hypnotised
people play a role to please the hypnotist. This very popular view opposes the view that
hypnotised people enter a distinct psychological state.
One group of researchers put this notion to the test. At the conclusion of
their research they say: ‘These findings support the claim that hypnosis is a psychological
state with distinct neural correlates and is not just the result of adopting a role.’ The authors
say, ‘hypnosis is not simply role enactment,’ but that ‘changes in brain functions’ occur.
Thus, hypnotised individuals do enter a distinct psychological state.
Research has indicated a degree of dissociation during hypnosis, in that, as
the hypnotised person focuses on one object or thought, competing thoughts or sensations
are ignored. He does not consider whether his actions make sense and fails to consider
consequences.
Many researchers thus conclude that hypnosis is an altered state of
consciousness, which may also be considered a trance state. Erika Fromm, who is a
psychologist at the University of Chicago and considered an expert on the clinical uses of
hypnosis, says (in The Dallas Morning News of Apr 13, 1987):
Most experts agree that hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness
involving highly focused attention and heightened absorption and imagery, increased
susceptibility to suggestion, and closer contact with the unconscious.
Trances, and altered states of consciousness
The following are definitions of hypnosis or the trance state from several
different sources:
Hypnosis is an altered condition or state of consciousness characterized
by a markedly increased receptivity to suggestion, the capacity for modification of
perception and memory, and the potential for systematic control of a variety of
usually involuntary physiological functions (such as glandular activity, vasomotor
activity, etc.). Further, the experience of hypnosis creates an unusual relationship
between the person offering the suggestions and the person receiving them.
[Joseph Barber, Hypnosis and Suggestion in the Treatment of Pain]
Persons under hypnosis are said to be in a trance state, which may be light,
medium, or heavy (deep). In a light trance there are changes in motor activity such
that the person’s muscles can feel relaxed, the hands can levitate, and paresthesia
[e.g., prickling skin sensation] can be induced. A medium trance is characterized by
diminished pain sensation and partial or complete amnesia. A deep trance is
associated with induced visual or auditory experiences and deep anesthesia. Time
distortion occurs at all trance levels but is most profound in the deep trance.
[Harold I Kaplan and Benjamin J Sadock, Concise Textbook of Clinical
Psychiatry]
Hypnotic ‘trance’ is not either/or but lies on a continuum ranging from
hypnoidal relaxation to ‘deep’ states of involvement. Although many patients make
favourable responses to suggestions when lightly hypnotized, for best results it is
usually considered wise to induce as deep a state as possible before beginning
treatment. The techniques of hypnotic induction are many, but most include
suggestions of relaxation, monotonous stimulation, involvement in fantasy, activation
of unconscious motives, and initiation of regressive behaviour.
[Raymond J Corsini and Alan J Auerbach, Concise Encyclopedia of
Psychology]
The following are the twelve most common phenomenological
characteristics of the trance experience:
1. Experiential absorption of attention
2. Effortless expression
3. Experiential, non-conceptual involvement
4. Willingness to experiment
5. Flexibility in time/space relations
6. Alteration of sensory experience
7. Fluctuation in involvement
8. Motoric/verbal inhibition
9. Trance logic
10. Metaphorical processing
11. Time distortion
12. Amnesia
[Stephen G Gilligan, Therapeutic Trances, Cooperative Principles in Ericksonian Psychotherapy]
The words imagery and fantasy appear often in
reference to hypnosis. By their very nature, imagery and fantasy involve visualisation.
However, before warning about the practice of visualisation and imagination involved in
hypnosis, we must say that there are ordinary, legitimate uses of the imagination. For
instance one may mentally see what is happening while reading a story or listening to a
friend describe something. Imagination and visualisation are normal activities for creating
works of art and for developing architectural designs and even scientific theories.
However, visualisation by suggestion through hypnosis may be so focused as
to move the person into an altered state of consciousness with the visualisation becoming
more powerful than reality. Other dangerous uses of visualisation in or out of a trance
would be attempting to manipulate reality through focused mental power. That is a form of
shamanism.
Hypnosis - Medical, Scientific or Occultic? consists of twelve chapters of careful review for Christian readers, including a wealth of information gleaned from leading works of psychiatrists and other practitioners.
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