Placebo, Hypnosis and Healing
By Eric Greenleaf PhD
Hypnosis and hypnotherapy have long been considered as placebo treatments. In the narrow sense , that is to say physically inert substances or physically neutral manipulations or interventions which, nevertheless, effect the patient in positive ways. The classic “sugar pill” is one such placebo, “a mother’s kisses ” another famous example of healing without biological or physico-chemical substances entering the body.
A more modern and more medically correct definition of placebo attests that placebo effects are a major portion of all phychological and medical interventions that help patients grow well . As Kirmayer says Journal of Mind Body Regulation 2011, 1, #3 “Placebo responses can be understood as social phenomena that depend on embodied experience, socially distributed or embedded knowledge, and situated practice.” In this sense, placebo refers to a healing social situation, not to a chemical compound.
What does this imply? Well, we know that we can feel better with more compassionate and responsive medical care. We know too that hypnotic “rapport,” the relationship with the hypnotherapist , is of the essence of hypnotic effectiveness with patients. We know, as with hypnosis , that much of healing is outside of conscious control and awareness .
In the social context of healing, or the interpersonal “container” of hypnotic psychotherapy , our own brain, though affected, is not the agent of change; nor, is our therapeutic “technique” the healing item. Rather, placebo effects – measurable, recognizable , brain and body effects of healing – result from the unselfconscious rituals of medical and psychotherapeutic practices. These practices are metaphorical, narrative and persuasive.
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Research shows both that metaphors emerge from bodily experience and that ritual and metaphor and persuasive speech and expectation affect and change bodily experience, thought and action . When we go to a dance, we dress the part , expect to dance and mentally practice the steps. We prepare for the enjoyment of the dance . When we are ill or troubled , we expect individual concern and caring treatment for our pains and strategies to ease our pains and resolve the ills we suffer, physical or emotional .
In the common practices of hypnotherapy there are situated practices which ritually invite states of trance , persuasive speech to stimulate healing and change , and appeals to experience, both embodied and embedded , as well as unconscious to effect healing in the patient. As with the ancient dream incubation practices of Asclepian Athens, so in modern hypnotic practice, the patient is led through a ritual, allowed to rest peacefully , and encouraged to reassess and rearrange experience to induce change, recovery and growth . With good placebo outcomes come self-value and approval – the healthier person esteems their own life more easily than does the troubled one. As a hypnotherapy patient of mine wrote, “Thank you again for what-ever-the-hell-it-is that you do – as I have benefited greatly. Most notably in my improved assessment of self .”
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The “whatever” is hypnotic conversation, hard to grasp consciously because its meanings are distributed through relationships; metaphorical and allusive , so, tough to pin down as “technique.” The benefit is clear; the means are ritualized, murky . And, without discussion of “self,” the treatment eventuates in improved self-valuation. A placebo without sugar pills can help with all manner of medical and therapeutic goals.
