'Hypnosis helped me get to sleep'

'Hypnosis helped me get to sleep'

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/insomnia/Pages/hypnosis.aspx


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How hypnosis can implant false memories (By Andy Ho)

The Straits Times, Dec 4, 2010, Saturday.

DAEDALUS

How hypnosis can implant false memories

By Andy Ho, Senior Writer

NEUROSCIENTISTS have recently shown that hypnosis has real effects on those brain regions which control attention. Thus, some hope, on the basis of skimpy evidence, to harness hypnosis to boost academic performance.

When I wrote about this recently, a psychiatrist friend upbraided me for not noting explicitly the dangers of hypnosis. He was particularly concerned about false memories being planted.

It is claimed that the memories of traumatic events which are repressed can be recovered under hypnosis. Doing so could help overcome the psychological ills that these memories can supposedly cause.

In fact, memories are not filed away neatly so that those which we dislike can be locked away forever. Actually, people can find it hard to forget bad memories.

This practice of uncovering so-called repressed memories, however, has given rise to claims of alien abduction and sexual abuse in childhood.

Abduction by aliens was given credence in the 1990s by the late Harvard University psychiatrist John Mack, who claimed to have elucidated repressed memories of alien abductions in hundreds of people whom he had hypnotised. Their 'experiences' were recounted in his best-sellers, Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens (1990) and Passport To The Cosmos: Human Transformation And Alien Encounters (1999).

He told his patients that the abductions were real and no cause for concern since the aliens were here to save the Earth. As expected, Harvard investigated him for 'therapeutic incompetence'.

If a psychiatrist had diagnosed schizophrenia, then sent the patient home, saying his hallucinations were real, he would undoubtedly be found guilty of medical malpractice. But Dr Mack's lawyer parlayed the issue into one of academic freedom, which the university could not deny him.

It has been repeatedly confirmed in the lab that adults can make up memories of life events which never really occurred. The more plausible these events are, the more convinced people can be that they really happened. Having accepted a false memory, a subject can then make up false details about it as well.

Still, ascertaining, even in clinical situations, whether recovered memories are genuine or not is often difficult, since the events allegedly happened long ago. The famous child psychologist Jean Piaget noted in his 1962 autobiography that he had a false memory of being almost kidnapped as an infant. It was only many years later that his nanny confessed that she had made it all up.

False memories are not quite so harmless if they lead one to be accused of sexually abusing children. In 1994, American Paul Ingram was accused of sexually abusing children and leading a satanic cult which caused the deaths of 25 babies. Though he denied the charges strenuously, he eventually gave in under repeated interrogation. Not only did he confess to all the charges, including new ones as they surfaced, he even provided graphic details for each alleged episode.

However, when he was presented with an entirely made-up episode, he also denied it initially, only to eventually confess to it later, and even provide details. Thus, he was shown to have false memories. Still, he served a number of years in jail.

Therefore, one cannot be sure if recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse are true or the result of false memories. More light may be shed, instead, by studying people with recovered memories of events which seem utterly implausible.

One such group would be those who describe realistic-sounding memories of being abducted by bipedal humanoids, who then subjected them to invasive procedures, usually of a sexual nature, on board some flying saucer. Hollywood's far reach assures that few people are unfamiliar with this sci-fi trope.

When such 'abductees' are tested with standardised psychological instruments, they have been shown to be more prone than control groups to recall and recognise words which have never been presented to them. If people with this tendency are repeatedly told under hypnosis to imagine the most implausible events which are said to have occurred to them in their 'past lives', they tend to soon believe these imaginary details to be genuine.

Should a false assertion be repeated often enough, the hearer will become increasingly familiar with it. Increasing familiarity tends to be interpreted as evidence of truth. This is why 'abductees' are convinced that they really were abducted.

But research since the mid-1970s has proven false the intuition that the more confident I am of my memories, the more accurate they must be. Under hypnosis, the susceptible person's imagination can blend reality with fantasy, the hypnotist suggests. Dr Mack was a New Ager who claimed to have 'travelled into past lives, emotions and events'. He would suggest abduction details to his patients under hypnosis. Planting these ideas was 'a co-creative intuitive process', he said.

This approach, he added, 'yields information that is... the product of the intermingling... of the (hypnotist and the hypnotised's) consciousness'. While this process could clearly distort the truth, he felt that 'the question of whether hypnosis... discloses accurately what literally or factually 'happened' may be inappropriate'. So much for reality and truth.

The John Mack story shows why an ethical hypnotist is key. But since hypnosis is unregulated, one can only go by word-of-mouth. That, however, can only take us so far.

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Should a false assertion be repeated often enough, the hearer will become increasingly familiar with it. Increasing familiarity tends to be interpreted as evidence of truth. This is why 'abductees' are convinced that they really were abducted.

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'Like taking a power nap' (a hypnosis experience) by June Cheong

I got myself hypnotised.

There was no swinging pendulum, no bewitched old lady wrapped in rags and no mysterious chanting.

In fact, being hypnotised was like taking a power nap - refreshing, comfortable and way too short.

My hypnotherapist, Ms Katherine Wong, director of Hypnae Center, ushered me into her dimly lit office.

The room had the usual doctor's office paraphernalia, like medical journals and a lone, plush chair. But something stood out amid the quiet setting: a CCTV camera staring down from the ceiling.

Ms Wong assured me that it was to ensure patients' safety by recording their and the hypnotherapist's actions on tape . She then put on a soundtrack filled with nature sounds and bird calls.

As I sank into the armchair, cosseted by two thick blankets, she took me through a series of relaxation exercises.

First, she got me to focus on my breathing and on slowing it down. Then she directed me to relax my muscles at will.

'Relax your face,' she said. Hmm. How do you relax your face? I tried to stop my lips from curling into a smile. That attempt resulted in a lopsided frown and I worked at unfurling my errant lips.

It seemed as if my lips - and the muscles around them - had suddenly taken on a life of their own. I began to worry that I could not relax enough to enter the hypnotic stage.

Ms Wong began counting from one to 20 and asked me to imagine a cloud coming towards me. I did.

Mine was big and fluffy from afar and dissolved into smoky wisps when I got closer. Together, the cloud and I made our way towards the hypnotic stage.

Once I felt my body sinking into soft slumber and my mind becoming more relaxed,
Ms Wong performed two tests to check that I was really in the hypnotic stage. She told me that my eyelids had grown heavy and I could not open them.

When I tried to open them, she immediately touched my arm and asked me to hold it up. She told me my arm was rigid and strong and would not move no matter how much pressure she applied on it.

While I doubted if my eyelids were glued shut, I felt that my arm did not budge when she pressed it down.

Next, Ms Wong started feeding me upbeat lines like 'I will not worry unnecessarily about the past or the future' and 'My mind will be calm'.

She continued talking in a slow, gentle tone and I drifted off. One part of me went off for a little dream while the other part struggled to stay with her placid words.

All too soon, the hypnosis session was over. I felt relaxed and refreshed. It felt like I had been under hypnosis for only 15 minutes but, in reality, the session had lasted an hour.

Apparently, losing track of time is a sure sign of hypnosis. Then again, so is falling asleep.
The next couple of days, I felt positive and I sweated less over the small stuff. Was it due to the positive phrases drummed into me during the hypnosis? It may have been a placebo effect.

But all I knew was I felt good.

By June Cheong in " Mind Your Body" of the Straits Times dated 10th December 2009