steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (12/10/84)
** Dr. Milton Erickson is generally believed to have been the best medical hynpotist. Some of the things he has done with hypnosis are documented in several books. One book that is readily available is "Uncommon Therapy", by Jay Haley. Jay Haley is an academic type. He is one of the authors of the paper "Towards a Theory of Schitzophrenia" which appeared in a psychology journal and is reprinted in *Steps to an Ecology of Mind*, by Gregory Bateson, another author of that paper. This is the paper where they propose the "double bind theory of schitzophrenia." Erickson's hypnotic patterns are explored in the books *The Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Miltion H. Erickson, M.D. - Vols. 1 & 2* by Richard Bandler John Grinder Erickson was a remarkable person. One way I have consistantly heard him described is "frightening." There is some material in *Patterns* that is transcriptions of Erickson doing deep trance work like age regression with Aldous Huxely. One person that knew Erickson said that no one had a right to be that powerful. He could influence people so strongly, that his techniques present strong ethical question. These questions are explored in an essay in *Power Tacitics of Jesus Christ*, by Jay Haley. Erickson did what he did unconsciously, and though he wrote many essays on hypnosis and gave many lectures to doctors and psychologists, he did not know what he did. Bandler and Grinder managed to discover and characterize the verbal and non-verbal behavior that Erickson was using so that they could do the same thing and teach others to do the same thing. Richard Bandler has retired, but John Grinder is still teaching people Erickson's techniques. There was an article about him in "Science Digest" recently. I was first introduced to hypnosis by my family doctor who used it for relief of my poison oak. I have used self-hypnosis ever since to prepare for talks, solve problems, relax, change my moods, and many other valuable things. I started working with John Grinder four or five years ago, and in the course of or acquaintance I have come in contact with hundreds of people that practice or use hypnotic techniques in their day to day life. I have seen dozens of stage demonstrations where the audience was generally doctors, psychologists, and other professionals. Mark Twain wrote an essay about a stage hypnotist. In it he describes how he was not hypnotized at all and did not flinch as pins were stuck in him because of will power over the pain. An interesting question is: How did the hypnotist get this kind of behavior from young Twain? The key to understanding hypnosis is to realize that because of how we use the word, we are lead to believe that it is a "thing." We use the word to identify many different altered states. Cognative Psychology has the concept of "attention." There is much going on around you that you are not paying attention to. You cannot pay attention to everything at the same time. Pain can be relieved by simply directing attention to something else (well, if you know how). For some people, their internal world becomes so vivid that it overrides their external world. We lock them away when this happesn. We have access to past experiences. Everyone I have ever asked has had some experience where something internal, a memory, a possibility, or a feeling, became so strong that it temporarily blocked out the external world. In a hypnotic state, people can be lead to temporarily favoring a constructed or remembered "reality" over their external "reality." The brain wave called "alpha waves" are thought to be an indication of a hypnotic state. It is a state where beliefs are suspended and it is easier to shift the attention. Once I was hooked to an EEG at UC Davis (I have a brain injury that affects my vision and am often the subject of cognative psychology experiments). They said "relax", and I said, "you want alpha waves, right?" He said yes. I put myself into a light trance and bingo, he said "hey, look at all that alpha!" I was having a measurable physiological influence on my brain! If nothing else, an alpha state is a relaxed state and is supposed to be beneficial for stress relief. Many doctors, psychologists, and other helping professionals use hypnosis routinely with postive results (and so do salesmen, sad to say). My personal experience with hypnosis and the experience of many of my friends and acquaintences with hypnosis has been positive and effective. There are journals about hypnosis, countless books, and a regulatory agencies that regulate medical hypnosis. In short, if someone were to decide that there was "no such thing as hypnosis" they would have a hard time explaining to all the people who use and experience it every day that they are acutally doing something else. The effectiveness of hypnosis has been recently been recognized by the courts (in Calif.) who disallow witnesses that have been hypnotized to remember details of the crime because the person has way of knowing if they actually experienced something of if they imagined experiencing it under the direction of the hypnotist. Anyone who takes the time to learn to use hypnosis can learn about aspects of human communication that are not obvious at first. It can have a powerful influence on the way we relate to others and to ourselves. -- scc!steiny Don Steiny - Personetics @ (408) 425-0382 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 ihnp4!pesnta -\ fortune!idsvax -> scc!steiny ucbvax!twg -/