In deep hypnotic sleep, a person completely obeys the will of the hypnotist … Stop! There are two fundamental mistakes in this short phrase.
For a long time, hypnosis was really considered a special form of sleep. From the beginning to the middle of the twentieth century, it was generally accepted that the great Russian physiologist I. P. Pavlov's explanation of the mechanism of hypnosis: monotonous stimuli - visual, sound, tactile (heat from passes - movements of the hypnotist's hands) - create a focus of inhibition in the cerebral cortex, which, in accordance with the long-known and still generally accepted laws of neurophysiology, radiates (spreads) to others departments, and the brain, together with its carrier, falls asleep. Only the “watchpoint” does not sleep, which provides rapport - a connection with the hypnotist (about the same that allows the mother to sleep with any noise, but instantly wake up with the quiet whimpering of the baby). But with the advent of electroencephalographs, it became clear that no inhibition occurs during hypnosis,and the bioelectrical activity of the brain of a somnambulist (a person in a state of deep hypnosis) practically does not differ from an EEG during wakefulness. Studies of recent years using functional magnetic resonance imaging did not add clarity to the question of the physiological mechanisms of hypnosis: the work of individual brain structures differs both from sleep and from wakefulness, but what these differences mean is still unclear.it is not clear yet.it is not clear yet.
The now generally accepted definition of hypnosis looks streamlined: “A temporary state of consciousness characterized by a narrowing of its volume and a sharp focus on the content of suggestion, which is associated with a change in the function of individual control and self-awareness. The state of hypnosis occurs as a result of the special effects of a hypnotist or purposeful self-hypnosis”(BD Karvasarsky. Psychotherapeutic encyclopedia). But although in theory hypnosis is not a dream, in practice, in classical hypnosis sessions, doctors use the same techniques as their colleagues 100, 200, and even thousands of years ago: focusing their gaze on a shiny object, lulling monotonous stimuli and monotonous speech with an emphasis on key points: "You sleep deeper and deeper" and "You hear my voice, my suggestions."
In a state of deep hypnotic sleep (a generally accepted incorrect but convenient term even among professionals), all those miracles take place, from which the impression was formed that under hypnosis people lose free will. The last, somnambulistic stage of hypnosis, even under the guidance of an experienced hypnotist, can be reached by about one person in five to seven. But he can already jump around the stage like a frog, shy away from a scarf, sincerely believing that it is a snake, lie for a long time in the so-called cataleptic bridge, leaning on the backs of chairs only with the back of his head and heels, with pleasure gnawing a vigorous onion, without crying and feeling the taste of an instilled apple … Variety magicians and early researchers of the phenomenon of hypnotic suggestion tried everything that came into their heads - and indeed, under hypnosis, a person can carry out any order of the hypnotist. Almost anyone.
Crime and Punishment
Under no hypnosis can a person be forced to do something that is at odds with his sense of self-preservation or moral principles. For example, you can inspire the somnambulist that he (s) does not see anyone present. If this invisible person picks up a vase on the table, the hypnotist will be sincerely surprised that it took off by itself and hangs in the air. He will also "believe" that the room is completely empty, but after being ordered to walk in a straight line, he will neatly bypass tables and chairs. He can sincerely agree that in front of him is not a window on … the eleventh floor, but a door, "to see" people (or, if you like, unseen animals) entering through it, but he will categorically refuse to go through this "door". And if the somnambulist agrees to harm his neighbor (for example, pouring acid on the hypnologist's assistant), there is never any certainty thatthat out of the corner of his mind he does not understand that this is pretend. True, in one of the old books a case is described when the subject, having struck with a dagger an “enemy” lying on the couch, after coming out of a trance, did not remember anything that happened to him, as expected, but fell into depression, lost his appetite and sleep … and he stopped drying only after, in a state of hypnosis, he was shown a scarecrow pierced with a dagger and inspired that he had not killed anyone.
Programs to create "zombies", most likely, were really carried out in the NKVD-MGB-KGB, and in the CIA, and in similar institutions in other countries. But rumors about the mysterious suicides of everyone involved in the information about the "gold of the party", that the assassins of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King acted under the influence of suggestion, etc., look like sheer fiction. Moreover, hundreds of attempts by criminals, known in the history of forensic science, to justify themselves by the fact that they acted not of their own free will, but under hypnosis, were not confirmed. Only in a few cases were hypnotists really inspiring crimes (and even that of property), but the perpetrators could clearly have been incited to do the same in reality.
Post-hypnotic suggestion is possible, but the less bizarre the task, the more likely it will be completed. An hour after the end of the session, take a certain book from the shelf, open it on a given page and read a passage aloud - please! Why he was drawn to do this, the subject will not be able to explain or come up with something plausible. And to the reminder “don't you want, my friend, to crawl under the table and cough three times”, even a perfectly hypnotizable subject will most likely admit that this stupid thought had just occurred to him, but he immediately discarded it.
Hypnosis is useless for detectives too. Attempts to obtain testimony under hypnosis from suspects in crimes led to the fact that the person under investigation invented what, as it seemed to him, the hypnotist wanted from him, or continued to insist on his innocence, and with insistent demands for confession, he began to fight in a hysterical fit. In most countries, including Russia, such methods of investigation are prohibited. From time to time, lawyers try again and again with the help of hypnosis to help witnesses remember forgotten details, but it is never known whether he remembered them or imagined them. In any case, only operational information can be obtained in this way, and the evidence obtained in any altered state of consciousness has no legal force.
But to powder the brains in order to seize material values, you can use the techniques of hypnotic influence (although not as effectively as the authors of the horror stories describe it).
Speak teeth
Verbal suggestion acts not only on thoughts and feelings, but also on such physiological functions that absolutely defy conscious control. The most striking example of this is the inhuman experiment described in many books on hypnosis and suggestion on a criminal sentenced to death, who was announced that he would be executed by bleeding from his veins, blindfolded, scratched his wrist with something sharp and sent a stream of warm water down his arm. … Subject died shortly after, with all external symptoms of blood loss. The original source of this story was lost in the retellings - maybe this is a tale, but it is quite plausible. Blisters, indistinguishable from real burns, also appeared in volunteers, who, in deep hypnosis, were taught that a "hot iron" (in fact, a pencil) was applied to their skin.
In less dangerous experiments, hypnologists have studied the effect of suggestion on a variety of physiological functions. In a person who has "drunk" a liter of the suggested water, urine excretion increases, and it is light and with a low density. And from an imaginary sweet syrup, the concentration of sugar in the blood increases, and in proportion to the amount drunk. Suggestion even affects unconditioned reflexes - for example, pupillary: if a somnambulist in a semi-dark room is taught that he sees a bright light, his pupils will narrow (and vice versa, will expand in the light when darkness is suggested). The number of leukocytes in the blood changes in accordance with the instilled feeling of satiety or hunger - and so on: in thousands of articles and books, dozens of studied physiological and biochemical effects of suggestion and autosuggestion are described. One of the effects of suggestion, well known to specialists, is to stop bleeding due to spasm of smooth (not controlled by consciousness!) Muscles of blood vessels and a rapid increase in the number of platelets in the blood. Hypnotic anesthesia is quite commonplace: complex, including abdominal, operations under hypnosis were performed a century and a half ago, at the dawn of scientific hypnology. True, "chemistry" turned out to be more reliable and simpler.
The expression "to speak teeth" was once used in the direct (and quite positive!) Sense. And the word "doctor" goes back to the Old Church Slavonic "lie" - "speak": from time immemorial, all peoples had conspiracies and incantations obligatory, if not the only method of treatment. Suggestion and self-hypnosis help to cure not only neuroses and more serious diseases from the section "nervous and mental", but also those that, it would seem, have nothing to do with the state of mind. No miracles: almost half of all bodily ailments are fully or partially psychosomatic, and many organic diseases, especially severe ones, lead to depression. Suggestion can break the vicious circle of mutually supportive and mutually reinforcing painful states of body and soul. It is by suggestion (and not by biofields at all,energy of qi and cleansing of chakras) explains the results of healings with the help of psychics, hereditary magicians, charged newspapers, amulets, absolutely useless, and even obviously harmful drugs, etc. Quite often, especially with purely psychosomatic diseases, all this really helps. But being treated by charlatans is about the same as downloading hacked programs from suspicious sites. It is much easier for a layperson to get some kind of complication like hypnosis (and many healers deliberately induce it in patients). And most importantly, a psychotherapist with a medical diploma is unlikely to miss a disease with which one has to run to surgeons, oncologists, cardiologists, etc. During the "treatment" of charlatans, this happens all the time: subjectively, the patient feels an improvement, and the disease progresses to death the outcome.
There is nothing new under the sun
By the end of the 19th century, hypnosis had become a generally accepted method of psychotherapy, and nothing extraordinary happened in this area for a hundred years. A revolution in hypnology almost took place in the 1980s: all over the world (and in the USSR that had just peeped out from behind the "Iron Curtain") there was a noise about neurolinguistic programming.
In fact, NLP is nothing more than another psychological theory, no worse, but no better than a couple of dozen others. It grew out of attempts to decompose the methodology of the American psychotherapist Milton Erickson, a truly brilliant doctor who could achieve in one session the same thing that in classical psychoanalysis required several years of weekly lying on the couch. Cases from his practice are no less exciting reading than the most twisted detective.
The fact that the therapeutic effect of suggestion can be achieved not in a somnambulistic state, but in the earliest stages of hypnotic trance, has been known for a long time. Erickson used superficial trance as the only method of hypnosis, and also generalized the known and developed a number of new techniques that allow the patient to quickly and effectively “speak his teeth” and unobtrusively introduce the necessary thoughts and actions into his head. Another secret of Ericksonian hypnosis is the personality of Erickson himself. The pills prescribed by the Luminary of Medicine work much better than those prescribed by the GP. And in such a shaky and inaccurate area as psychotherapy, this "brand effect" is much more noticeable, so that the rays of the Founder-Father's glory continue to warm his followers a quarter of a century after his death. But, as in any other art,to achieve at least something similar to what Erickson was able to do, in addition to talent, years of study and work are also required.
Psychotherapists apply the theoretical principles of NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis with the same, no more and no less, success than other theories and classical methods of hypnotization: the effect here does not depend on the specific school, but on the doctor's art.
Surely in various "secret centers" training in NLP methods is included in the curriculum, but it is unlikely that the most trained agent can fool anyone he meets better than a skilled gypsy. And short-term courses for everyone … Would you go for a two-month violin course with the guarantee of Paganini's mastery? Many people attended similar NLP classes …
No hypnosis
Have you noticed that the terms "hypnosis" and "suggestion" are used almost interchangeably here? For suggestion - an uncritical perception of other people's ideas as one's own - hypnosis, by and large, is not needed. And this, too, is not news at all: it is impossible to say better about everyday suggestion than the famous Russian psychiatrist and neurologist V. M. wrote in the brochure "The Role of Suggestion in Public Life" more than a century ago. Bekhterev: “Suggestion is reduced to the direct grafting of certain mental states from one person to another … which occurs without the participation of the will (and attention) of the perceiving person and often even without a clear consciousness on his part … At the present time, so much is generally spoken about physical infection in through … microbes, which, in my opinion, is worth remembering about … mental infection, the microbes of which, although invisible under a microscope,but nevertheless, like real physical microbes, they act everywhere and everywhere and are transmitted through words, gestures and movements of people around, through books, newspapers, etc., in a word, wherever we are, in the society around us, we are already exposed to the action of psychic microbes and therefore we are in danger of being mentally infected."
In the second edition (1908) of the brochure, Bekhterev quotes the book “The Psychology of Suggestion” by the American philosopher Boris Sidis, translated into Russian in 1902: “In the middle of the street … a merchant stops and starts pouring out streams of chatter … praising his goods … A few more minutes - and the crowd begins to buy things about which the merchant instills that they are "beautiful, cheap" … His proofs are absurd, his motives are despicable, and yet he usually carries the masses with him …"
Perhaps the invention of television did not greatly enhance the role of suggestion in public life. And the saying "who is forewarned is armed" was invented in Ancient Rome.
Alexander Chubenko
