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Comments, criticisms, advice, relevant anecdotes, and so on are welcome on any papers on this website. Please email them to m.heap@sheffield.ac.uk and I shall post them here, I hope within a few days of receipt.
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From Margaret Jackson, USA
Hello Mr. Heap,
I stumbled across your website when reading a reference note for 'The Straight Dope' about NLP. I work in the Mental Health field as well and have truly enjoyed reading your thoughts on the subject. I just finished reading 'Pathological Beliefs and Anomalous Phenomena' and I feel comfortable interpreting your statements through the realm of my experience to support my pre-existing suspicions: we are all a little nutty. If one runs afoul of the law or displays too much socially unacceptable behavior, you won't get to be just 'nutty' any more. AND I'm perfectly average in my belief that magical elves steal my pens.
On a professional note, thank you for your statements on the language of responsibility. As a secretary, I am often asked to rephrase statements to 'make them sound better'. More often than not, I am being asked to deflect the responsibility. I am so glad I read your paper because it encourages me to be conscious of the impact of that kind of word -smithing. I'm sure I can find ways to make taking responsibility sound like a good thing.
With much appreciation.
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From Ivan Martin
Having contacted your website after sending the email below part of my query was answered, in as much as I now know Peter Casson has died. I imagine you can appreciate that at the time very few had experience of hypnosis. I read all the comments about him on your web page with interest although much of it was less than complimentary. However, what I saw him do that night was quite remarkable and I remember the parts of the show I have commented on most clearly. The Sunday papers after the war, as I mention in the email, were most impressed with his performance. I trust the email below is of interest to you as you may not be aware of his early days.
Very best wishes
Dear Editor
The article ‘Quackery or Medical Miracle’ (Mail) relating the claims and experiences of Dr John Elliotson with what then was called mesmerism reminded me of the experience I had whilst assisting back stage in a ‘ship’s concert’ during my naval training in Douglas on the Island of Man during the 2nd World War.
A young 21-year-old Royal Marine demonstrated what to me, and others, was at that time an extraordinary performance of hypnosis. He firstly invited members of the audience onto the stage from which he selected several to take part by asking them to fall rigidly backwards for him to check their fall at the neck. Those who he felt had full confidence in him were selected for the show. After continually telling them they felt so tired and to sleep they would appear in a trance. He then proceeded to push large needles through the top of participant’s arms, having no adverse effect during or after the demonstration; a slightly built sailor having his neck and ankles supported on two chairs was told he would remain completely ridged; this he did, as the 11-stone marine sat on his stomach without any movement from the sailor. Several of those on stage were asked to read extracts from the paper of a Churchill speech. Firstly, telling them how serious it was, they all cried inconsolably. Then they were told the same passage was hilarious and as they read it they literally did fall about laughing.
When I returned to my quarters my messmates, who had not attended the concert, would not believe what I told them, implying that I was naive. Some years later I read in a Sunday paper about an amazing performance by the Great Peter Casson. I recognised his name as the marine from the ship’s concert. I have often wondered what became of him.
Ivan Martin
Reply from M. Heap
Dear Mr Martin,
Thank you for your email. Just out of interest, the 'human bridge' stunt to which you refer, whilst it looks very impressive, does not depend on the participant's being hypnotised. The same performance is observed when the person is exhorted to try his best, use the full power of his imagination, etc. There is also likely to be a strong effect due to audience pressure. The same goes for all the other things that stage hypnotists do. In fact I know of at least three stage hypnotists who make a point of never using hypnosis (i.e. they don't do an induction and emphatically tell their volunteers that they are not hypnotised or in a trance. (At least one of these stage hypnotists does this in order to circumvent the licensing laws that govern stage hypnosis). So all this business of laying the volunteers out on the stage is not necessary. (If you Google "Martin Taylor" "stage hypnosis" you can read more about this.)
Best wishes
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From Nick Greaves
Michael
I have just come across your website. You might care to glance at my website, put out on the Internet a few months ago 'www.mindandmemory.net.Perhaps we have something in common in that my first introduction to the problems of the mechanism of the mind was via seeing a stage hypnotist at work when I was 20 as a student in Dublin.
I was so staggered at the time by what I saw despite the hypnotist concerned was a pretty appalling example of humanity, that I was tempted to give up my law studies in order to read up on hypnosis instead. But of course I did not, but later managed to take two years away from the office from 1976 during which I developed a hypothesis for the operation of memory, intuition and a few other less established phenomena besides which could be explained to some extent on the same grounds. One of the assumptions I made in doing so, and a fairly crucial one at that, was what happened to the mind in trance, which interest stemmed originally from that incident in Dublin.
Some of the conclusions I reach, or maybe most of them, you will not much care for from what I read of your website, but I have only skimmed through the latter as I write this note so maybe my pessimism is not well founded. I will take more time to trawl through yours in due course. If you find the first few sections heavy going since they are based on principles of physics (though I am no physicist by profession) then jump to section G, the narrative account of the way in which I came to my conclusions over number of years and what I was doing at the time to cause me to do so. Much more interesting than cold exposition of theory, I always find.
Fortunately I do not make a living from this spare time interest, which is why I have not pushed it much other than a couple of publications in esoteric journals, but my conclusions are almost identical to those of Rupert Sheldrake albeit from a completely different direction, and rather more specific in conclusion, as you will see. But he is so wonderfully articulate, well qualified academically and pellucid in exposition that I have left that side of things to him thus far. But now I have more time on my hands, I can perhaps push myself forward a little more than I have bothered in the past.
Reply from M. Heap
Dear Mr Greaves,
I have had time to browse through your website. You've put a lot of work and thought into it. Although I am not qualified to judge your work, it looks exciting and I hope that people who ARE qualified will engage with you and help you develop your ideas. To do justice to your work I'd have to set aside more time than I am able at present. I have read a few books on quantum physics but I don't understand it enough to be able to evaluate your ideas as they apply to the human mind.
Concerning stage hypnosis, I have always been interested in this as a psychologist (few others are). The behaviour, experiences and beliefs of the participants in a good stage hypnosis show (the volunteers, the hypnotist and the audience) provide rich material for social and cognitive psychologists to get their teeth into. In your treatise you mention the occurrence of amnesia amongst participants in a stage hypnosis show. A minority of highly susceptible hypnotic subjects have a dense spontaneous post-hypnotic amnesia and there is evidence that the incidence is higher in subjects of stage hypnosis (although it usually lifts over time). I have consulted world authorities about this (it occasionally comes up in legal cases that I have been involved in) but so far have not been able to provide a satisfactory explanation. Some day I shall sit down with an expert on memory and I hope he or she will resolve this for me.
Nowadays there is a lot of interest in brain mechanisms and hypnosis, as revealed by modern dynamic scanning methods. I think this work is useful, but I do not believe that an understanding of hypnosis comes from this kind of reductionism. The locus of a good account of the behaviour and experiences of the hypnotic subject lies in social and cognitive psychology.
I don't think that stage hypnosis really has any place in your theories; probably hypnosis doesn't either but, if you are going to include hypnotic phenomena in your theory, then you should take into account the findings of modern research.
I hope these comments are helpful.
Reply from Nick Greaves
Thanks for your note.
My work is speculative and my knowledge of quantum physics is no higher than it can be with maths to university entrance level which is a major handicap in credibility when using principles of physics to back up a hypothesis. However I have read enough about the subject in general terms to ascertain that the experts disagree on enough major points of difference amongst themselves constantly, and this convinces me that the whole subject will have to be revised radically in the next decade or two as observations, probably on the astrophysical side, lead to major amendments.
If the experts have only recently discovered that a large percentage of the universe is dark matter and/or dark energy, this means that some of their basic understanding of the nature of matter and inertia needs to be revised before they can make any seriously useful progress. But I read little discussion amongst the physicists that they appreciate this sort of point. Perhaps they are embarrassed by these new observations or perhaps I do not read technical enough journals, although there is certainly one brave soul, Dr. Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute whose latest book I have just read who makes this point.
As for stage hypnotism, it was experience of this aged 20 that instigated my interest on the whole subject of the mind, but I have not taken research much further into it as a subject, and might later attempt to do so as you suggest, time and energy allowing. I have to say it is one of my larger assumptions that in the trance state the synapses in the brain must be firing randomly, although this does not seem at all unreasonable as assumptions go. I also assume that if the randomicity is comprehensive enough it can act to exclude the intake of stimuli from the external world via the senses, which I note can happen under hypnotic trance.
I then use what I have read abut the physics of random motion to show how this might be a large part of the operation of eidetic memory and from that, intuition. But yes, it is only a conjecture and not based on any research other than wide general reading, observations and of course intuition. I understand that some psychologists and other experts on the brain refuse to admit that intuition exists or that the term has any useful value, and therefore to say I reached my conclusions intuitively is a contradiction in terms. I disagree since I give an indication of the mechanism behind the operation of intuition, which in turn allows me to say I reached my conclusions intuitively, as indeed does everybody else, but it is just the size of the intuition jumps that differ. Small ones are regarded as logical steps: large ones inspired guess work and sometimes poetic licence.
I showed my work some time ago to an academic cyberneticist and he said the point of trance and random motion being a major part of memory's operation was interesting and that I should write a paper in this respect for a specialist cybernetics journal. I replied they would never publish from a rank outsider and he said they probably would since it was a very original idea, but of course I have not bothered to do anything about it. So much to do, as you obviously have also, and so little time available, in which case I appreciate you bothering to look over my work and comment.
From Donald Robertson
Dear Dr. Heap,
I'm a hypnotherapist with an interest in the history of psychotherapy. It seems a lot of (James) Braid's writings have gone almost completely unnoticed by subsequent writers on hypnosis. In particular, it seems to me that Braid moved increasingly toward a non-state orientation. I've found a very striking passage by J. Milne Bramwell, his main proponent and commentator, which says things like, 'The essence of the whole condition, then, is an increased suggestibility; the production of a preliminary imitation sleep is not necessary, and is simply waste of time.'
Braid specifically says that only 10% ('one in ten') of his subjects actually entered into a 'somnambulistic' state that he even thought it meaningful to call 'hypnosis.' In the rest he merely induced increased 'concentration', if anything. From the 1850s onwards he clearly describes the use of a variety of suggestion styles, used with or without 'induction', though he seems to equivocate at times.
Reply from M. Heap
Dear Mr Robertson,
Many thanks for your comments. I confess that I have woefully neglected my study of the history of hypnosis, including the writings of Braid. I have always suspected that a lot of the things we argue about today when we discuss hypnosis were also aired in the pages of the nineteenth century writers. I believe that Braid shifted to more of a non-state position with his concept of monoideism (which also brought suggestion and suggestibility more to the fore). What is also interesting is, so I understand, his emphasis (and that of others) on (spontaneous) post-hypnotic amnesia as a defining quality of hypnosis. What has happened to this now?
I looked at Bramwell's book when I was a teenager and was intrigued by his account of experiments in which subjects were given the post-hypnotic suggestion that in, say, 3,300 minutes' time they would carry out a specified action. Many did, even though they were uneducated peasants. However, such experiments would not be accepted as of a sufficiently robust design these days.
Bernheim is another historical figure who advanced the role of suggestion rather than trance state as central to hypnotic phenomena.
The trouble I think was that the study of hypnosis was initially undertaken by doctors and it tended to be conceived of as a medical or even pathological condition rather than as part of normal psychology. Clark Hull was a leading research psychologist in the mid-20th century who did a lot of laboratory experiments on suggestion in normal human subjects and I think this paved the way for a more scientific study of hypnosis.
Reply from Donald Robertson
Thanks for taking the time to reply. Braid equivocates about the term 'hypnosis.' He seems undecided whether he should use the term loosely, to refer to any form of intensified suggestion, or restrict it to states accompanied by total amnesia. (I'll send you a passage by his main disciple Bramwell where he seems to say he's dropped the concept of sleep-trance but retained the word 'hypnosis'.) Like Braid, he seems to shift progressively toward the looser definition, perhaps realising that the term had become popular and reluctant to abandon it, though very aware of its misleading nature. Braid specifically states that only 10% of his subjects exhibit spontaneous amnesia, and most were fully aware during the process. (Statistics from other Victorian writers also suggest spontaneous amnesia was less common than their anecdotes imply.) What you seem to get in Braid are the rather interesting twists and turns of a man obviously struggling to pin down the phenomena under observation.
(With reference to the experiments reported by Bramwell) I doubt any of these 19th century experiments are of much value except rough, 'anecdotal', indications for further research. I find them interesting because they approach the subject from a more naïve perspective and (very) occasionally that means they try things or ask questions modern researchers wouldn't even think of. For me, the real importance of early hypnosis is, to be honest, historical and rhetorical. It's useful to say to 'sceptically'- minded people that the founder of hypnotism was famous in his day as a sceptic, empiricist, and critic of complementary therapies and pseudo-science. Braid is actually a little like a Victorian James Randi, most of his work revolved around debunking the Victorian equivalents of modern 'energy therapies.' It's also useful to say to people who think hypnosis is spooky altered state that 'not even the guy who originally coined the term hypnotism believed that!' It's ironic that hypnotherapy is now lumped in with 'complementary therapies' of the very kind which Braid spent his career debunking. TFT/EFT are modern versions of phreno- magnetism, Reiki is very similar indeed to Mesmerism, magnet therapies are back, crystal healing, etc.
Bernheim, toward the end of his career, acknowledged Braid as the father of suggestion therapy. I believe, though at first he had rather neglected Braid. The French and Germans had access to a summary of Braid's final opinions on hypnosis, which were never published in English. We know him mainly through Neurypnologywhich is his first and least interesting book.
I'm very familiar with Hull's book. Did you know Hull clearly states back in 1933 that his experiments show recovering memories in hypnotherapy is unreliable and dangerous? Hypno-analysts just ignored that though and carried on regardless. Bernheim says that 'retro-active hallucinations' (false memories) are surprisingly easily installed in hypnosis, in the very book translated from French to German by Freud - but Freud ignored that and initially assumed recovered memories were true.
I think the 'medical model' has profoundly warped our whole perspective on hypnosis. In the 1920s Emile Coué was one of the first popular practitioners who tried to depart from the medicalisation of hypnosis and portrays it instead as a form of skills training (even insisting 'I'm not a healer!', just a teacher) in a way that I think pre-empts modern cognitive-behavioural approaches (e.g., CSTP). 'Patients' are passive, by connotation, but 'students' have an active role in their own studying and learning.
(See also comments on NLP papers,and Some stories about hypnosis.)
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From Joseph
Dear Dr Heap,
Firstly I'd like to thank you for your excellent website. It has linked me to some wonderful sources of information on hypnosis that I was unaware of before. I would like to give you a little background to myself as it may be useful for my query.
I began my interest in hypnosis and psychology by originally training as a 'lay' hypnotherapist. I then had the wonderful opportunity to attend a workshop by Dr Michael D. Yapko, who I'm sure you are familiar with. He mentioned some concerns with the organisation I was then with and their practices, concerns that I had shared and voiced many times at that time, to deaf ears. It was then I realised I needed to do a degree in psychology to separate 'fact from fiction'. I have achieved that, and am currently hoping to embark on an MSc in Applied Psychology and, perhaps, further clinical training. I hope to be able to do a study involving hypnosis, in some manner, for my MSc……..
My question relates to NLP. In many ways, it was my acquaintance with NLP that got me interested in psychology and hypnosis in the beginning. I have spent years trying to figure out my views on the matter. During my degree, I gained access to several of the reviews on NLP (such as Sharpley) and read them avidly. I was informed, but not entirely satisfied with most of the studies. Eye-accessing cues as currently formulated seem overblown and nonsensical, but in relation to Kosslyns (this is off the top of my head at present, so forgive if I spell his name wrong!) research on visual perception and scanning, the idea that eye-movements may reveal some kind of imagistic thought (whatever the modality) seems interesting and not entirely nonsensical.
More relevant to my query, I still find the notion of sensory predicates in relation to thought (not a fixed PRS per se) of interest. One of your papers remarks that the participants changed predicates depending on mode of thought. This is precisely what intrigues me, that predicates CAN reliably reflect thought processes. I draw on the work of psycholinguists Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors We Live By), who showed, to my satisfaction at present, that language is not arbitrarily constructed, but rather reveals a coherent structure. Can some of NLP's notions not be salvaged in relation to that? Furthermore, I find the criticisms against NLP to be overblown. I suspect it may have faired better were it designed by 'psychologists and/or psychiatrists' and not individuals outside and on the fringe. When psychoanalysis, gestalt, and other approaches are still in vogue and taught at the world's most prestigious universities, can NLP be seriously derided? At least it is amenable to SOME testing? I have read remarks about NLP being pseudoscience, yet psychoanalysis, despite being criticised and regarded as a 'closed system, is still taught in the most prestigious circles.
I find this state of affairs baffling. From a constructivist point of view, one could argue that NLP teaches a kind of psychological rhetoric. (I've noticed how NLPers are little different from the ancient Greek sophists). If language is taken as primary, perhaps NLP is nothing more than rhetoric that can CONVINCE people they are well? Like some ancient philosophers stated, 'If they think it, is it not so?' This of course is just a perspective I find interesting, I mention it in a 'devils advocate' kind of way.
After perusing the research, a brief look at the research on psychotherapy in general reveals that NLP is not alone in a 'lack' of support. Since Eysenck's review, others have still voiced issues as to whether psychotherapy is effective. Then one also has the 'Dodo' effect and the idea that it may just be the therapeutic alliance that is the important factor. Taking all this into account, I wonder why NLP is so strongly criticised (when it can be at least tested), and said to lack 'evidence', when other 'psychotherapies/approaches' tend not to fair a great deal better (if they can even be tested). I'm a fan of CBT, yet I really do see little that differs CBT from NLP in many ways.
How can the scientist-practitioner model of clinical psychology justify itself when methods, such as gestalt/psychoanalysis/TA etc are difficult to test, if not untestable? TA especially is rather childishly primitive (no pun intended), compared to NLP, with its notion of child/adult/parent. In a strictly Popperian sense, psychoanalysis isn't even science! I find myself looking at the field I love and yet being very annoyed by the contradictions and seeming hypocrisies. I'm not saying that psychoanalysis should NOT be taught (although I have strong criticisms of it), but I find some criticisms of NLP, when placed against the mainstream psychotherapy field within psychology, to be strangely evident of tremendous blindsight.
As an expert in hypnosis and a Clinical Psychologist, what do you think of the above?
I'm tempted to train in NLP, since it originally set me on the road to psychology, just to finally see for myself. I have read most of the materials, but I find I still feel the need to 'see for myself'. It may be a waste of money, or it may genuinely have something to say (perhaps like psychoanalysis?).
Any reply would be most appreciated.
Kind regards,
Reply from M. Heap
Dear Joseph,
Thank you for your email. I am pleased that you have found my website useful for you.
It's a long time since I had anything to do with NLP and I don't feel able to answer your questions with any great authority now. I know one or two mainstream clinical psychologists who have done the training and are fans (and are often very keen on other, rather odd procedures) but, unlike the lay or privately trained therapists, there appears otherwise to be an overwhelming lack of interest in it or even knowledge of the subject. (The same goes for the phenomenon of Milton Erickson; even American psychologists tend only to be vaguely aware of him.)
Limited observation of trainee clinical psychologists is that those who have an interest in hypnosis tend to leave a lot of it behind as the undergo training. The most influential therapeutic approach now is the cognitive and behavioural but it seems that there has been a gradual acceptance of psychodynamic ideas (such as with Cognitive Analytic Therapy and Schema-Focused Therapy). Another key word is 'integrationist' which means incorporating ideas from various approaches - I do this all the time. The practice of psychotherapy is very much influenced by the preferences and the philosophy of the individual practitioner rather the evidence base, but the latter is not to be ignored.
The number and range of therapies is bewildering and there are several reasons for this that would take along time to go into but which have usually little to do with what works best for the client or patient.
I'm afraid this is the best I can do at the moment. Yours sincerely,
Reply from Jospeh
Dear Dr Heap,
Thank you for the reply. What I can appreciate in NLP is the methodology of curiosity and its attempt to find patterns across therapeutic approaches in a much more sophisticated way than, say, Prochasta's (I believe) stages of change. I also like the fact that it deals, in some cases, with experience itself - with the phenomenology of the person. In my own background I have been astounded at how simply changing an aspect of experience (submodalities in NLP terms) can bring about a change. I find that, in some ways, their approach is very interesting and entirely complementary to CBT. I am starting to see cognitive restructuring as being simply one way to change one's phenomenology. I'm strongly influenced by Lakoff and Johnson's (L & J) work expounded in Metaphors We Live By, and how hypnosis may tie in to that. The NLP idea that our senses are represented in our language is very similar to L & J's work, although they see it, perhaps more correctly, as being a metaphorical concept of 'seeing is understanding' rather than the literal interpretation of NLP. (I'm fairly sure the NLP view is very similar if not identical to a view expounded by Aristotle!). NLP would see adding kinaesthetics as expanding the persons world model, whereas L & J would see it as changing the conceptual metaphor and hence the conceptual system. The end result, however, would be the same - a change in experience and understanding. I find this of interest and rather parsimonious, unburdened by more presumptuous, in my opinion, notions of psychodynamic 'forces' etc. I've also spoken to a member of the BSECH, a medical doctor, who believes that NLP helped improve his understanding of hypnosis, while at the same time it is not the approach, in his opinion, to use for more severe problems.
I agree with many who say NLP has evangelical connotations, and I find much of it concerned more with materialistic gain; nevertheless I'm starting to accept that it is, as the founders themselves state, just a model - that may or may not be useful. I can also appreciate its focus and awareness of language.
Much of the above just stems from my interest in hypnosis and hence my wish to improve my skills and understanding in that area. I'm of the opinion that every clinical psychologist could benefit from training in hypnosis, if only to become aware of the effects of language and of how experience is malleable. Hypnosis has certainly made me optimistic about the possibility for change (but not necessarily 'cure') in any experience/condition.
On a different note, I noticed you were one of the main authors of the 'Nature of Hypnosis' article. I'm fastly becoming of the opinion that the 'ethics' of the International Society of Hypnosis, and the BSECH, is almost itself unethical. 'Forcing' members to not 'deal' with the lay community of hypnotherapists seems to me to be a great way to bury one's head in the sand and to not engage and educate these people on matters of memory and suggestion, for example. Furthermore, in light of the Home Office findings on stage hypnosis, on what grounds can one say (or strongly imply, as the code of ethics does) that such activities are unethical? One may dislike such activities, but that's hardly a statement of 'ethics'. Moreover, I'm interested in performance magic. A field of magic is 'mentalism', which has a long history of language use and even suggestion (Derren Brown, who you may be aware of, has taken it to a new level). The code of ethics would perhaps view any member engaging in such activities as using 'hypnosis' (whatever that word means – read artful language etc) for 'entertainment'. I don't believe 'entertainment', including the use of hypnosis in entertainment, is necessarily a horrible and demeaning experience. Furthermore, in my view, I would see such an activity (for example Derren Brown) as being in the realms of performance art. I'm bemused that the International Society of Hypnosis would, by the looks of things, have a problem with a member being involved in what is an artistic pursuit. I would hope to join one day, but the criteria seems to me to be elitist and unfounded, not to mention to be counter to what psychologists should do, namely to educate the public community and to engage with these issues. If mainstream society views hypnotherapists as legitimate therapeutic practitioners, and hypnotists/magicians as valued roles within society for entertainment or artistic reasons, who are we to find fault with that definition to the point that we form a code of 'ethics' and force any party interested in hypnosis to abide by statements and rules that run counter to the society's own norms?
What would your opinion on this be?
Kind regards,
Reply from M. Heap,
Thank for your last email
Regarding ethics and 'lay hypnotherapists' (an ill-defined category) my own attitude has always been 'live and let live'. I have not had much to do with the lay sector but this has little to do with ethics. My interest has always been in understanding and practising hypnosis from the standpoint of modern psychology and its related disciplines. This is reflected in the 4th Edition of Hartland's Medical and Dental Hypnosis, which is very different from the previous ones of John Hartland and then David Waxman. Also, whenever I have trained others, such as on the courses at the University of Sheffield and University College London, it has always been with the limited aim of enabling the trainees (psychologists, medics, dentists, speech therapists, etc.) to use hypnosis within their existing professional work.
When BSECH (now,in collaboration with the former BSMDH, BSCAH - the British Society of Clinical and Academic Hypnosis) was founded 30 years ago, we made it clear that it was not a society of 'hypnotherapists' but one for people who were already in a profession and who had an interest in hypnosis and its application to their professional work (or who were academics who wished to pursue research into the subject.) The ISH guidelines (as least when I was a member) also reflected this. However, I am aware that some ISH members went outside of their professional brief, and members in our own society (and in particular the BSMDH) occasionally liaise with 'lay practitioners'. I think people have a more tolerant attitude these days.
Regarding stage hypnosis: there is certainly hostility to this practice in ISH and BSCAH but is also true of lay societies and individual lay practitioners. I have been involved in a number of legal cases (civil) since the early 90s. I have always been hired by the Defence (although this does not effect the opinions I give). I have written three papers on the subject, one a review. The 'dangers of stage hypnosis' have been grossly exaggerated but the entertainer has a duty of care to his participants and there is scope for causing harm (at least acute upset - I'm not convinced by claims of long-standing mental disorders).
Reply from Joseph
From Andrew Bradbury,Hi Michael, I'm in a hurry, so I must be brief. Thank you for the replies. I may have more questions at some point! If you are still involved with the training of hypnosis, I hope to one day be present. I don't like stage hypnosis either, as I feel it's just not very skilled or aesthetic. But I have had an idea for an art exhibition involving 'mundane' still life paintings, and the use of suggestion to allow viewers to feel and even taste (in the case of a bowl of fruit) the representations. This I would see as artistic, but the ISH may see it (wrongly in my view) as just 'entertainment'. That's my issue with such 'ethics'.
Kind regards,
Thank you for the pdf of “Neurolinguistic [sic] Programming – an Interim Verdict” (NLP – AIV). Taken together with your paper “Neurolinguistic [sic] Programming: What is the Evidence?” (NLP:WITE?) I believe I can explain why so few of the researchers got positive results; and why your own conclusions are seriously misjudged. And the answer – which I do not mean pejoratively – is simply that everyone concerned seems to have been working under a rather crucial misapprehension. (One which I shared when I started to study NLP.) (Neuro-Linguistic Programming should always include a hyphen - but many authors, including Bandler and Grinder, forget it from time to time.) Anyway, in the hope that you are still with me, I’d like to explain exactly what I mean. Firstly, the most obvious clue – if I’ve understood you correctly - is in assertion (iii) on page 122 of “NLP:WITE?” where you write: “This hypothesis has been investigated by first observing the presumed PRS of Ss in their choice of predicates or in their eye movements and then subjecting Ss to an analogue counselling interview in which the counsellor is instructed either to use the predicates which are congruent with S’s designated PRS or to deliberately mismatch the PRS.” Secondly, we need to refer to a sentence in the NLP – AIV paper (page 274), and then I will offer some relevant observations. “Finally, Hammer (1983) has reported a favourable influence on perceived empathy of interviewer, if the latter tracks the predicates (i.e. matches them individually) of the interviewee rather than matches a single presumed PRS.” In a nutshell, only Hammer and those who adopted a similar approach were actually studying the claims made by Bandler and Grinder albeit, apparently, more by luck than good judgement. Everyone else, I’m afraid, was simply wasting their time and money because they had the wrong end of the stick right from the off. Here’s why:Reply from M. HeapOn top of these basic points, which are, I suggest, sufficient in themselves to demolish the assumed validity of most of the studies you surveyed, there is the fact that all these experimenters were investigating NLP-associated techniques – NOT NLP itself. (NLP is a specific modelling method, nothing else.) Thus even if the PRS model or the eye accessing cues model had been invalidated, those are the ONLY things that would have been affected – NOT the entire field of NLP.) Given these facts I feel that your claim that “the assertions of NLP writers concerning representational systems have been objectively and fairly investigated ...” requires some re-evaluation. On a slightly different tack, you are of course right to say that Bandler and Grinder ignored the work of other researchers into the effects of eye movements on behaviour and/or cognition. What you maybe don’t know about is the reason for this choice. In brief, Bandler and Grinder were deliberately limiting their studies to behaviour that had, within their own experience, proved effective in day-to-day situations. Thus the original NLP-associated techniques were usually arrived at by learning to replicate observed behaviour rather than by forming and testing hypotheses based on observations, as in the scientific method. This automatically excluded evidence drawn from laboratory experiments, which, as far as I can tell, they perceived as being theoretical and unauthentic. Bandler’s motivation was a serious antipathy to the “academic psychology” he saw in his university course, as compared with the “practical psychology” he had seen in his work as editor of a book on the work of Fritz Perls, and later when studying Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson. The two men made it perfectly clear that they were using this pragmatic approach on purpose, and made no claim to being scientific. Indeed, in the days when they were working together as NLP trainers they would often end a seminar with one saying, “Everything we’ve told you is true” and the other saying “Everything we’ve told you is a lie.” Which simply meant “Don’t take our word for it, go out and try this stuff for yourself.” Perhaps not surprisingly, this attitude did little to recommend Bandler, Grinder or NLP and it’s associated techniques to the orthodox portion of the “psychological community.” But then again, winning the approval of the academic world seems to have been of little or no interest to them. Note: These statements are based on an involvement of over 15 years with the field of NLP, during which time I have read and reviewed some 150 or more books on NLP and the various NLP techniques, including everything (bar two exceptions) published by Bandler and/or Grinder. I have also written a short introduction to the use of NLP in a business context, published by Kogan Page and now in its third edition, as well as producing a reasonably well-known (within the NLP community) website: “Honest Abe’s NLP Emporium” at http://www.bradburyac.mistral.co.uk. This includes, in FAQ 9, a fairly detailed commentary on the “eye accessing cues” and difficulties involved in trying to scientifically investigate what I do not believe is a genuinely scientific subject. (I do have a degree in social psychology from Sussex, and I don’t regard that as a “science” degree.) (By the way, ‘Abe’ refers to my initials, not to the famous American gentleman, though I admit that I borrowed his sobriquet, to make my website name more memorable.) Hope this is of use/ interest. Even though I understand that you are longer actively engaged in investigating this topic, through no fault of your own your findings are still parroted quite frequently around the web as though you had delivered the coup de grace to NLP in its entirety.
- Bandler and Grinder have always, as far as I’m aware, made it absolutely clear that NONE of their techniques were guaranteed to work every time, in every context, for every practitioner with every client. Thus the assumption that any of their techniques would produce the same results every time, even with the same subject, let alone a group of subjects, was always a complete non-starter.
- Grinder and Bandler have further explained that none of the “cues” they identified – eye movements, breathing patterns, predicate usage, etc. – should be thought of as stable. In fact Grinder has stated quite explicitly, and on several occasions, that an NLP practitioner should be “calibrating” (I'd guess this is the equivalent of Hammer's "tracking") those cues on a very regular basis, because a person may sometimes switch between modalities quite frequently - within as little as 20-30 seconds at a time.
- Moreover it is not correct to assume that a person will always be using a single PRS. Quite obviously we use all of our senses all of the time, at least whilst we are awake, and depending on the context it is not unknown for a person to be using two or even three senses as their PRS, even if only in such quick succession that the processing appears to be simultaneous.
- ALIGN = JUSTIFY>Although there is what might be called a “standard eye accessing cues chart” included in many books on NLP, Bandler and Grinder have both made it plain that the real skill is not to assume that this is a “one size fits all” deal, but to calibrate the other person’s eye movements early on in an interaction to find out where that particular person moves their eyes for “visual recall”, “kinaesthetic”, “auditory construct”, etc.
Thank you very much for your extensive comments on NLP, primary representational systems and direction of eye movements. As you are aware I have done no experimental research into this subject: my papers are reviews of experimental work largely undertaken in the US in the late 1970s. It would probably be best to look at some of the original papers to see what NLP sources the authors based their investigations on. I am aware about this business of calibration but I believe the experimental work represents a fair test of the NLP doctrine at the time, certainly as espoused in the available texts and workshops that were being run in the UK. I seem to recall that Bandler & Grinder claimed that they had made their observations while studying video tapes of a limited number of therapists whom they regarded as particularly effective. To validate the kind of assertions that you are stating about thinking and communication and their relationship to eye gaze would involve an immense amount of careful, painstaking work by more than one group of investigators over of period of years and subjecting their evidence to critical scrutiny. Real, authentic, reliable knowledge about the world does not come easy, as history has shown.
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From Morten Clausen, Denmark
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've learned several kinds of 'complementary therapy' and I had a good hearty laugh reading your generic therapy description (by itself very good therapy). It's so true. Quackery and wishful thinking abounds. Which is also why I've stopped playing with it. But I got myself quite a few good treatments along the way so for me it balances out nicely.
From Dr Brian Robinson, Retired psychiatrist, Milton Keynes, UK
Mike,
I enjoyed this article very much. It reminded me of an article published some 14 or 15 years ago by Prof Irving Kirsch called, I think, ‘Hypnosis as a non-deceptive placebo’. I was never very convinced by Kirsch's title, although the article itself was most helpfully insightful (as I recall). I'm now retired, but if I gave my patient a sugar-pill (I think it might now be illegal and I'm not suggesting that I ever did) it would be to give him or her a nothing-substance; but hypnosis (whatever it is) is not ‘a nothing’. Whether it works through physiological changes in the patient, or whether it works through some socially contextual convention, it's a ‘something’ in a way that a sugar pill isn't. But maybe I'm missing the point. After all, the same Kirsch has recently claimed to have shown that orthodox antidepressants (or many of them) prescribed by ‘proper’ doctors don't work much better than placebo anyway.
I've remembered (and put to good use) many of the things you taught me in the clinical hypnosis diploma course at UCL 15 years ago, and one of the most useful (and most often used in an ordinary conversational way during a clinic) was, while handing the patient the prescription, ‘Many people have found this very helpful’ (an occasional variant was ‘Many of my patients have found ... ‘ etc And that was certainly no lie (whether it worked in the Kirsch-placeboid way or according to the then best pharmacodynamic theories).
When you were writing your article, how much about hypnosis was in your mind? Do you think hypnosis is a placebo? But even that is to beg a question because it's assuming that the word 'placebo' is pejorative. 'Placebo' is a shorthand for 'suggestion' or 'suggestibility'. And any treatment based on exploiting it is simply another variant of helping the vis medicatrix naturae - perhaps comparable to the way a surgeon places a broken leg in plaster after aligning the fragments and then leaves the bone cells to heal themselves. A lot of the hypnosis I used was helping the patient to find within him- or herself resources of strength, and amplify them.
Thanks again for another thought-provoking piece.
Best wishes
Reply from M. Heap
Dear Brian,
I am very pleased that you have found my article useful and I'd like to put your comments and these on the 'Comments' page of my website.
In response to your question, I did have hypnosis in mind at times when I wrote the piece.
'Is hypnosis a placebo?' Does the question refer to hypnosis as a treatment or hypnosis outside of the clinic - the process of giving suggestions to people willing to participate? If it's the latter then we would predict that susceptible individuals, as measured by the suggestibility scales, would be good placebo responders. I can't locate the evidence but I believe that this has been demonstrated not to be the case, and it is what I would myself predict. (I have just remembered that hypnoanalgesia is not opiate-mediated - naloxone does not extinguish it - but placebo analgesia is). So, hypnosis as a process is not placebo.
I have some disagreement with Irving Kirsch over his use of the term 'placebo'. He tends to equate it with response expectancy (which he also regards as the essence of hypnosis). However, in clinical practice there is more to placebo than this. You have a patient - i.e. 'a suffering person' - who wants something that will make him or her feel better. Hence any plausible treatment comes with reassurance, which in itself is therapeutic.
Whatever the case, in therapy you would expect that the outcome of any treatment involving hypnosis would be related to the measured suggestibility of the patients but the relationship is only weak (I think it is probably strongest for acute pain) and is absent for a lot of problems. So, we have to conclude that the efficacy of 'hypnotherapy' is in large measure not due to hypnosis in the strict sense!
There is bound to be an element of placebo and in fact Irv and his colleague did a meta-analysis of published clinical trials of hypnosis in the treatment of obesity and concluded that the inclusion of hypnosis in treatment was of placebo value only. (Kirsch, I., Montgomery, G., and Sapirstein, G. (1995) Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive- behavioral weight loss treatments: Another meta-reanalysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63, 214-220.) I should say that another meta-analysis questioned whether there was an effect due to hypnosis at all (Allison, D.B. & Faith, M.S. (1996) Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy for obesity: A meta- analytic reappraisal. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 513- 516.)
In fact I really do question the value of the concept of placebo in psychological therapy and counselling. You as the therapist are seeing a person over a period of time; there are usually ups and downs in his or her progress and it's often only after a while that you can be confident that things are improving. In many cases, for progress to be made, clients have to be actively engaged in changing their behaviour and thinking, and even their environment. I don't think you can compare this process with the passive acceptance of a sugar-pill placebo however convincingly administered.
All the best
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From David Chiu
I am astonished by the stories as I was told in some lecture referring to hypnosis that the client being hypnotized knows what is going on and can stop at any time. The stage hypnosis assault, the post-hypnotic suggestions and even the indecent assaults by the ObGyn doctor using hypnosis really astonished me.
Reply from M. Heap
OK David, many people are astonished. But the point is that it's not hypnosis itself that is responsible for the passive and obedient behaviour exhibited by the people involved. Without hypnosis people will respond in the same way.
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