Hypnosis: had any experience of it?

[Pup]

Originally Posted by Halfcentaur

When a person has a heart attack from being scared of something they imagined, they aren't faking anything. They are under the impression something is happening and reacting to what they think is happening.

I don't have any hypnotism anecdotes, but I do have one that illustrates how complicated it is. May even have posted this a long time ago, but...

I hate the taste of beer. Yuck. Ugh. Horrible. But I had to portray a role of someone who liked beer, so I was sitting at a table, with a glass of near-beer in front of me, working up courage to drink it as if I actually enjoyed it, while waiting for the other couple to arrive and the performance to get underway. I was determined not to show the least sign that I hated the taste of what I was going to be drinking.

The other couple walked up, sat down, and during the usual distractions of remembering what to say and do, I picked up the glass and drank. To my complete surprise, it actually tasted good. I couldn't spend much attention on the flavor because so much else was going on, but the change from what I expected was so vivid and startling that I noticed, and can still remember it to this day.

After everything was over, there was another can of the same beer, from the same six-pack, sitting where we were packing up, and I thought, wow, apparently that's one kind of beer I do like. So I opened it, took a drink, and yuck! Ugh! Horrible.

I was shocked.

My first thought was that it was a bad can, so I opened another. Same thing. I couldn't believe it.

Apparently, I had imagined I was a person who liked beer well enough, that for a moment, I'd actually liked beer, but the moment was gone.

So during the performance, was I fooling myself that I liked beer, or did I actually like beer? If someone knew I hated beer, and saw me drink it as if I liked it, they would assume I was just a good actor, and wouldn't realize that I actually liked it at that moment. If they didn't know I hated beer, they would assume I wasn't even acting. And I actually wasn't acting, because it really did taste good. Temporarily. Because I was acting so well that I'd even fooled myself, apparently.

It's complicated.

[Olowkow]

Originally Posted by Pup

....

After everything was over, there was another can of the same beer, from the same six-pack, sitting where we were packing up, and I thought, wow, apparently that's one kind of beer I do like. So I opened it, took a drink, and yuck! Ugh! Horrible.

I was shocked.

My first thought was that it was a bad can, so I opened another. Same thing. I couldn't believe it.

You drank the first beer from a glass, and the rest from cans. Any chance the can was responsible for your impression of the horrible taste?

[epepke]

I only have experience with self-hypnosis/guided imagery. It is useful.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Orphia Nay

Read Mark's post again. Your friend believed she was hypnotized; his friend believed he was possessed. The similarities are apt.

My friend believed she was on the ceiling. Mark's friend believed his delusions.

The reason my friend believed she was on the ceiling was because she was hypnotized.
(While I don't have enough facts on the deluded friend), schizophrenia was possibly the cause of Mark's friend's delusions.

There are similarities but the issue he seemed to be contesting was whether Teri's belief was evidence the hallucination real, (a straw man), not whether the hallucinations were real to the person experiencing the hallucination.

I can't quite parse the contortion that by believing one is hypnotized a person actually believes they are on the ceiling therefore a hypnotized person is faking it.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Are dreams real to the person dreaming? Pretty much. It's hardly a stretch then to hypothesize hypnosis, when successful, can put a person into a dream-like state that is real enough one actually experiences the dream.

While we are all familiar with the process of falling asleep, why couldn't there be alternate mechanisms by which people reach that state? Certainly narcolepsy is an example it is possible.

In narcolepsy the person can experience:

Quote:

Dream-like hallucinations between sleep and wakefulness. They involve seeing or hearing, and possibly other senses.

They may also have sleep paralysis but that doesn't mean a hypnotized person would have all symptoms that accompany sleep. Sleep walkers don't have sleep paralysis during dreaming.

[quarky]

Originally Posted by Howie Felterbush

How big was your sample, again?

By sample I mean your sister.

ETA: quarky, do you have any more crap for sale? I'm all out.

Dang it, no. i had to burn it all, due to the cost analysis of storing it and attempting a re-hypnotic effort.

Hypnotism doesn't grow on trees, as they say.

[abaddon]

Originally Posted by Lanzy

I have done a lot of past life regressions with people that were really interested in their past lives, they were all successful but the number of past famous people is huge.

LOL, This always amuses me, no-one ever has a past life as an uneventful transylvanian turnip farmer, born, raised, farmed, possibly married and had kids, died.

Oh no, Everyone is the reincarnation of Rasputin, or Gandhi, or whatever.

[xtifr]

Originally Posted by abaddon

Oh no, Everyone is the reincarnation of Rasputin, or Gandhi, or whatever.

I used to claim that I was an igneous rock in my last incarnation.

[Jontg]

I've been practicing since I was a kid, and yes, it's a thing that happens. It's also purely suggestion--messing with your head is the whole point, and the head is a pretty powerful thing.

[AdMan]

Originally Posted by Jontg

...yes, it's a thing that happens.

Undoubtedly.

[Halfcentaur]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

My friend believed she was on the ceiling. Mark's friend believed his delusions.

The reason my friend believed she was on the ceiling was because she was hypnotized.
(While I don't have enough facts on the deluded friend), schizophrenia was possibly the cause of Mark's friend's delusions.

There are similarities but the issue he seemed to be contesting was whether Teri's belief was evidence the hallucination real, (a straw man), not whether the hallucinations were real to the person experiencing the hallucination.

I can't quite parse the contortion that by believing one is hypnotized a person actually believes they are on the ceiling therefore a hypnotized person is faking it.

If you're talking about the basis of my doubts being a strawman, that assumes I was formally arguing with you over what was happening. I was expressing my doubts and explaining why I doubted it and further describing what I believed to be happening. I was not trying to prove you wrong with counter points to your points. How you construe my skepticism as a straw man confuses me.

The largest indication to me in your anecdote that this is all nothing more than self induced coercion is that the girl was hysterical over being on the ceiling. Why get hysterical over something like that instead of just agitated or frightened? Hysterics suggest to me she was a victim of an imagination that lacked subtlety. I don't think I'd go into hysterical convulsions and mindless terror from thinking I was upside down 6-8 feet in the air, and because of this I am suspicious.

I am intrigued by physiological claims about blood coagulation being altered, but when it comes to hallucinations I do not consider the evidence compelling. I'm actually strongly biased when it comes to people talking about hallucinations, because I have a lot of experience with them, both induced and natural. They don't tend to happen at all like people portray them in media or like many people suppose they seem to be like. Perhaps this bias is making me over skeptical to your anecdote, but I don't think it is.

I remain open to the idea there is more to hypnosis than self delusion, but so far I doubt it in the majority of cases.

I apologize for doubting your acquaintance was literally hallucinating that she was on the ceiling in vivid realistic detail, but I don't think her being an innocent and honest person is enough to suggest such a thing can be achieved through the suggestion of another person using unexplained mechanisms within hypnosis.

That you are stating the experience of your friend as unwavering and unquestionable fact seems out of character for you.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Are dreams real to the person dreaming? Pretty much. It's hardly a stretch then to hypothesize hypnosis, when successful, can put a person into a dream-like state that is real enough one actually experiences the dream.

While we are all familiar with the process of falling asleep, why couldn't there be alternate mechanisms by which people reach that state? Certainly narcolepsy is an example it is possible.

In narcolepsy the person can experience:They may also have sleep paralysis but that doesn't mean a hypnotized person would have all symptoms that accompany sleep. Sleep walkers don't have sleep paralysis during dreaming.

I am open to this. Sleep paralysis and hypnagogic dreams are the closest thing I've experienced that could come close to such a vivid altered state of perception, indistinguishable from reality.

But I would think such an induced state would be simple to demonstrate analyzing brain waves. Perhaps they have been and I am ignorant of the matter.

I'm not for a second suggesting I am doing anything but guessing here.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Halfcentaur

If you're talking about the basis of my doubts being a strawman, that assumes I was formally arguing with you over what was happening. I was expressing my doubts and explaining why I doubted it and further describing what I believed to be happening. I was not trying to prove you wrong with counter points to your points. How you construe my skepticism as a straw man confuses me.

Whatever you were trying to get at, your analogy made no sense to me. Were you arguing your friend believed something that wasn't true or your friend was faking it and just made up a lie they believed [x]?

What does any of that have to do with my assessment that my friend's reaction was extremely unlikely to have been faked for the reasons I've given.

Originally Posted by Halfcentaur

The largest indication to me in your anecdote that this is all nothing more than self induced coercion is that the girl was hysterical over being on the ceiling. Why get hysterical over something like that instead of just agitated or frightened? Hysterics suggest to me she was a victim of an imagination that lacked subtlety. I don't think I'd go into hysterical convulsions and mindless terror from thinking I was upside down 6-8 feet in the air, and because of this I am suspicious.

You are welcome to your assessment.

Originally Posted by Halfcentaur

I am intrigued by physiological claims about blood coagulation being altered, but when it comes to hallucinations I do not consider the evidence compelling. I'm actually strongly biased when it comes to people talking about hallucinations, because I have a lot of experience with them, both induced and natural. They don't tend to happen at all like people portray them in media or like many people suppose they seem to be like. Perhaps this bias is making me over skeptical to your anecdote, but I don't think it is.

Do you recall any dreams that seemed real to you?

What do you mean by don't occur like people think they do?

Originally Posted by Halfcentaur

I apologize for doubting your acquaintance was literally hallucinating that she was on the ceiling in vivid realistic detail, but I don't think her being an innocent and honest person is enough to suggest such a thing can be achieved through the suggestion of another person using unexplained mechanisms within hypnosis.

That you are stating the experience of your friend as unwavering and unquestionable fact seems out of character for you.

The reaction to being on the ceiling was instantaneous, severe, and nothing anyone would have ever expected Teri to come up with if she was faking it or just going along. If you think you cannot judge a genuine reaction in a person to anything ever, how do you get through the day?

Originally Posted by Halfcentaur

I am open to this. Sleep paralysis and hypnagogic dreams are the closest thing I've experienced that could come close to such a vivid altered state of perception, indistinguishable from reality.

But I would think such an induced state would be simple to demonstrate analyzing brain waves. Perhaps they have been and I am ignorant of the matter. ...

They have been and some of the research is documented in the thread.

[dlorde]

Originally Posted by Halfcentaur

... I remain open to the idea there is more to hypnosis than self delusion, but so far I doubt it in the majority of cases.

I'm not sure it's necessarily a question of a difference between hypnosis and self-delusion, but the level of that self-delusion (as good a description as any). The model that seems most plausible to me is that the subject is induced to allow simple suggestions to bypass higher level critical analysis and influence the 'deeper' levels more directly than is usual. There is already good evidence that priming below conscious awareness can affect subsequent behaviour, and it seems to me that hypnosis is a crude but explicit and direct means of priming the subconscious with suggestion, more effective in people who can surrender or subdue their critical faculties, or perhaps, who believe it can be effective.

Of the people I know who've been involved, the more thoughtful introspective types seem less susceptible, and the more spontaneous, communicative types seem more susceptible - although it's a very small sample (7 or 8).

[tuoni]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

My friend believed she was on the ceiling. Mark's friend believed his delusions

*facedesk*

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by tuoni

*facedesk*

What's is your point? I'm sorry but I totally don't get it. We are talking about hallucinations, not people floating on ceilings.

[tuoni]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

What's is your point? I'm sorry but I totally don't get it. We are talking about hallucinations, not people floating on ceilings.

I thought we were talking about hypnotism?

[quarky]

I've watched people get hypnotized during Amway recruiting events.
Shouldn't pick on Amway; any mlm scheme will do.
Some people walk away from those shows with a new sense of purpose and hope.
They gloss over all the questionable parts and hone in on the up-beat, positive change that's about to come to them.

Crazy part is, for the hypnotist (i.e., the insider junk bond trader, etc) they really are pretty up-beat, and they really are raking in some dough.

We can all be above average, if we just put our minds to it.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by tuoni

I thought we were talking about hypnotism?

Are you trolling? You are the one who put your face on the desk. I repeat, what do you mean?

[Orphia Nay]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

My friend believed she was on the ceiling. Mark's friend believed his delusions.

Exactly. You're nearly getting it.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

The reason my friend believed she was on the ceiling was because she [believed she] was hypnotized.

Agreed, with an edit in red.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I can't quite parse the contortion that by believing one is hypnotized a person actually believes they are on the ceiling therefore a hypnotized person is faking it.

Straw Man. No-one's saying she's faking it. If she believes it, she believes it.

What mechanism makes hypnosis different from "consensual role-play that your brain convinces you is real"?

[Skwinty]

What fascinates me about hypnosis is:

I witnessed a friend under hypnosis develop blisters on his skin from a piece of cork. The hypnotist suggested the cork was a glowing ember and placed it on his arm.

The explanation for this neural mechanism is what I would like to hear.

[Pup]

Originally Posted by Olowkow

You drank the first beer from a glass, and the rest from cans. Any chance the can was responsible for your impression of the horrible taste?

It's possible, but since I drank the beer from the can immediately on opening it, I don't think it would have gotten any "canny" taste the way things sometimes do in open cans. Normally I'm fine with drinking from cans--I'm drinking a chocolate shake from a can right now, actually--so I'm not primed to dislike things just because of cans.

The flatness vs. carbonation also didn't seem to be the issue, because pouring it could certainly change that. But it was definitely the flavor. I've always said that beer tastes to me like horse pee smells, whether canned or bottled (the beer, not the horse pee).

[Pup]

Originally Posted by abaddon

LOL, This always amuses me, no-one ever has a past life as an uneventful transylvanian turnip farmer, born, raised, farmed, possibly married and had kids, died.

Oh no, Everyone is the reincarnation of Rasputin, or Gandhi, or whatever.

Wish I could remember the title of the book, but I read a paperback years ago, written by a hypnotist who had done hundreds of past life regressions of clients. She (I think she was female) had categorized them, and by far the majority were remembering anonymous people, whose lives were demographically just what you'd expect for their eras, nasty brutish and short. They also fit the global population, so even though she was doing regressions in the U.S. (I think, maybe England), there were plenty of African and South American lives in obscure tribal villages.

It's not really worth trying to remember the name of the book, though, because all it would do is show that a hypnotist who wanted a bias toward proper demographics could suggest it in her subjects, so it doesn't really prove anything, but it was an interesting change from the usual famous people.

There's also the even more cynical conclusion that if a hypnotist wants to present examples of genuine past lives that can't be easily dismissed, it's easier for the average person to answer questions as if they were a girl who died at the age of 10 in a jungle in 5,000 BC, than as if they were, for example, Henry Clay.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Orphia Nay

Exactly. You're nearly getting it.



Agreed, with an edit in red.



Straw Man. No-one's saying she's faking it. If she believes it, she believes it.

What mechanism makes hypnosis different from "consensual role-play that your brain convinces you is real"?

This is a bizarre semantics argument to me. How are you splitting hairs here because I don't see the difference between believing one is on the ceiling and not really being hypnotized only believing one is?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Skwinty

What fascinates me about hypnosis is:

I witnessed a friend under hypnosis develop blisters on his skin from a piece of cork. The hypnotist suggested the cork was a glowing ember and placed it on his arm.

The explanation for this neural mechanism is what I would like to hear.

After coming out of hypnosis, was the blister painful like a thermal burn? Did it go away? What happened to it?

[Skeptic Ginger]

While past life regressions have been debunked, there are plenty of non-famous lives recalled in these fantasies.

[Olowkow]

I have heard this "blister" claim pretty often, and I even tried it a few times on good subjects, but I have never seen it happen. I suspect it is a myth.

There was a JREF thread on this subject a while back:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=34272


http://www.innertalk.com/articles/mi...sis_intro.html

Quote:

A hypnotist can suggest a burn, place an ice cube on the arm, and a blister will almost immediately appear. As a practicing hypnotherapist, I personally witnessed phenomena that illustrates the mind's control over the body to the degree that suggesting a simple runny nose is, as Sherlock would say, "Elementary!" But in order to tie this suggestibility of alpha states in to the problems posed by television viewing, we should also take a look at another area of scientific enquiry that may surprise you.

But this PhD guy seems to know a fair amount about the subject, and he kind of claims he witnessed it. So who knows?

[Olowkow]

There is all kinds of literature out there about suggestions and blisters, if one is interested. A quick skim reading of this article might be worthwhile. The summary of results gives examples of blisters under various conditions, but they took 11 hours or thereabouts to form...not instantaneously.

The Production of Blisters by
Hypnotic Suggestion: Another Look

Quote:

This paper presents a critical evaluation of reported attempts to produce nonherpetic
skin blisters through hypnotic suggestion. Even though the majority of these reports are
grossly lacking in controls, experimental design, etc., and are subject to alternative explanations,
the author concludes that skin anomalies have been produced by suggestion
in some instances. Additional studies of psychogenic vascular changes add credence
to the possibility of central control of these phenomena. It is also concluded that
these reactions do not appear to be limited only to hypnotized [subjects]

[Skwinty]

I witnessed this blistering about 25 years ago. When the subject was told about the "hot cork" and touched on the arm, he yelped and withdrew his arm

After the hypnosIs, there was a reddish spot and he kept complaining about the burn.

I saw a blister on his arm the following day.

I have wanted on many occasion to be hypnotised but to no avail.

I think that the answer is that some people have the ability to allow the subconcious mind to overIde the concious mind and hypnotists exploit this in the susceptible.

[quarky]

Is there a slow version of hypnotism?
Like, brain-washing?

what caused me to drink the Kool-Aid?

i think it was the pitcher and the red coloring in the commercial.
Without the added coloring, would anyone drink the Kool-Aid?

Well, who knows.

(I'm off to save lots of money on my car insurance. later, gators.)

[leon_heller]

When I studied for a psychology degree at Birkbeck, University of London, many years ago, psychology wasn't mentioned once and there were no books on it in the college library. I have met psychologists subsequently who claimed that it existed, and one even offered to hypnotise me. I declined the offer.

[Olowkow]

Originally Posted by leon_heller

When I studied for a psychology degree at Birkbeck, University of London, many years ago, psychology wasn't mentioned once and there were no books on it in the college library. I have met psychologists subsequently who claimed that it existed, and one even offered to hypnotise me. I declined the offer.

Not much of a cheese shop is it!

[leon_heller]

I don't think it was mentioned in any of the text books I read at the time, either.

[Pyrts]

Originally Posted by Johnny Brant

Has anybody here been hypnotised? I haven't and would like to know what it's like.
Do people enter a different state of 'reality' or what?
For example a stage hypnotist made one guy believe that an onion was an apple, and the guy happily ate it.
When they're brought out of it do they remember what they did and said while under it?
Any possibly harmful long lasting sde effects?

I researched it, I learned how to do it, and I was hypnotized.

It's a very subjective thing -- in general, the "hypnotist" is actually just putting you into a trance state; the kind of trance you fall into if you start staring at an aquarium full of fish or a lava lamp (for example) or any other sort of similar state.

Depending on where your "locus of control" is, you can be easy to hypnotize or hard to hypnotize. I'm very hard to hypnotize (I like to be in control, in other words.)

It's a consensual state -- if the hypnotist makes a suggestion that is "wrong" somehow, you WILL snap out of it immediately. The wrong imagery (talking about a beach when you loathe the water, for instance) will also push you out of a trance.

Some people (hypnotized or not) will go along with what a stronger personality suggests. We see this on crime stories in the newspaper all the time and we see it with "pack behavior" in crowd situations and in the famous Stanford "prison" experiment.

It can help you modify your behavior (strengthen your "will" to do something.) It can help you overcome pain. I had hypnosis because I'm pretty resistant to anesthetics and I *have* awakened during two separate operations. This was no fun. Hypnosis helped with keeping me in a "sleeping" state during another surgery, and I would use it again if faced with another surgery.

[Jontg]

Originally Posted by Orphia Nay

What mechanism makes hypnosis different from "consensual role-play that your brain convinces you is real"?

From one perspective, there is none--that's exactly what hypnosis is. It's the deliberate and ritual invocation of the placebo effect for medical, psychiatric, or recreational purposes. What's interesting is just how far this effect goes.

I'm currently headdesking over my failure to keep a record of this conversation, but not too many months ago I hypnotized a woman who later got into a traffic accident and suffered a concussion and associated memory loss. The post-hypnotic triggers I had planted in her mind were gone, as was her recollection of the trance itself, among other memories leading up to the crash.
After a few tries, I was able to guide her back into a trance--and all of the above came flooding back. I honestly have no idea how this happened, or what mechanism explains it, but I know that I was getting all-hail-hypno-Christ jokes out of it for weeks.

[Jeff Corey]

Originally Posted by Pyrts

.
...Some people (hypnotized or not) will go along with what a stronger personality suggests. We see this on crime stories in the newspaper all the time and we see it with "pack behavior" in crowd situations and in the famous Stanford "prison" experiment.
...

You are wrong about the so called Stanford "experiment". This makes me doubt anything else you claim.
People who want to know what actually happened in Phil Zimbardo's non-experiment can read this. http://www.prisonexp.org/

[Jeff Corey]

Originally Posted by Olowkow

Not much of a cheese shop is it!

Wensleydale?

But seriously. the poster meant to type "hypnotism" but wrote "psychology" instead, because of a post hypnotic suggestion.

I call BS on the blister raising right after ice cube, whatever, touching the skin with the suggestion that it was a burning hot object.
My search of a bunch of peer reviewed journals shows absolutely no evidence for this claim.
So I request that I be enlightened by anyone who can provide scientific evidence for the claim.


Where is Claus Flodin Larsen when I need him?

[Biscuit]

When I was in college a hypnotist came to our dorm for a performance. I was one of the lucky ones called on stage. I recall knowing I shouldn't be doing this silly things he was telling me to do but doing it anyway. It was a weird experience.

[Jeff Corey]

Did he turn you into a mime?

[quarky]

I may like cake.

[Halfcentaur]

Originally Posted by Biscuit

When I was in college a hypnotist came to our dorm for a performance. I was one of the lucky ones called on stage. I recall knowing I shouldn't be doing this silly things he was telling me to do but doing it anyway. It was a weird experience.

And the funny thing is someone with no experience at hypnotism with no technique at all can get the same effect by putting someone on a stage in front of an audience, someone that is having fun and willing to do things for fun, simply by putting you under the impression they are doing something we call hypnosis.

It's like how Ouija boards work sort of I think.

It's not easy to talk about hypnosis in skeptical contexts because we can't really say or agree on what the claim is in the first place.

If you (not you Biscuit) want to tell me someone is going to get physically burned by cork, I am not going to accept it is truthful without some extra blue evidence. Not just any evidence, but evidence that is blue, and extra blue. Sagan knows what I'm talking about.