Interesting book (Multiple Personalities & False Memorie

[Fluid]

[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1557983402/qid=1141245334/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-2123563-5099201?s=books&v=glance&n=283155]Amazon link[/url]

While it's more about the concept of patients imagining things and creation of false memories, part of the book is dedicated to a critical analysis of the hypnotic method and if it can really bring people into a "different state". What is argued is that there is no physiological basis for a state of hypnosis, but is instead a sociocognitive phenomenon. All in all, a good skeptical analysis of the concepts commonly associated with hypnosis. Spanos has gone into more detail in other works, but those were mostly research papers, not books.

[nuit09]

well there is no "physiological basis" for the placebo effect or tibetan monks controlling their body temperature (which has been demonstrated under laboratory conditions) either. be very suspicious of scientists who say there is no physiological basis for this or that. Or medical studies that first say this or that is good for you and then say it is bad a few years later... it is normally a way for them to dismiss something they disagree with. OTOH they sometimes take the opposite tact like Susan Blackmoore claiming that all NDE visions can be explained by the brain starving of oxygen from the brainstem outward or that the night hag phenomenon is due to awareness during REM state paralysis...

[nuit09]

And how can doctors who knew that diebetes can come about when any part of the insulin pathway is blocked, that it arises when insulin producing cells are defective or absent and also when the receptors to take it up in cells are broken or absent....how can they knowing this for decades not realize that anyother illness related to secretions in the body has the same potential pathology? Yet for years they have maintained that the only biological excuse for obeisity is a thyroid that does not produce TSH-4? how about the receptors that take up that hormone? how about TSH-3?

I guess it should not suprise me... the same doctors claimed to know for certain ulcers were psychosomatic and not caused by H pylori bacterium and recommended the victim drink milk for the symptoms even if it intesified the agony of the patient.

In short doctors are ignorant quacks and snake oil salesmen of the first order. the only difference between them and tabloid ad charlatans is they are sanctioned by a massive credentialling mafia.

[nuit09]

you give a person credentialing, cede expert authority power, to him and he instantly begins to think he has to have answer for everything even if he knows jack about it. So he instantly goes about making half baked pronouncements on this or that and he is often spectacularly wrong.

LDL is good for you.... Ooopsie! No it it's not.

Folic acid prevents heart attacks! ....oopsie! No it doesn't...in fact it raises the risk...

and so on and so on...

and never an apology for damage done and reason assaulted....

[nuit09]

This dude doesn't happen to discuss opioid receptors and drugged states like sodium pentathols does he? obviously a person in certain drugged states is suggestible. so since there is a physiological basis for intoxication and hypnotism appears to be identical to certain drugged states that same physiological basis can be responsible for what we see in hypnosis only without the drugs.

anyone can write a book these days...

[CuriousG]

raging against the doctors, eh?

You'd better hope you never get sick.

[nuit09]

Oh I got plenty o' rage against the doctors who misdiagnosed me for years until too much scar tissue had built up for my problem to be repaired. But really i'm just saying that doctors are often giving little better than a guess. they are human. they have a a field of specialized knowledge that both causes people to cede authority to them and thier own egos cause them to believe they are due that power. this is called power due to expertise or expert power. And it makes them careless and prone to diagnose common problems when the real problem may not be common at all. It also makes them arrogant and condescending of things not necessarily in their perview. like hypnosis. This author claims there is no physiological basis for hypnosis. yet hypnosis appears to have much in common with drug induced altered states and there is a physiological basis for that. also we enter dream states when asleep there are physiological differences in EKG and EEG reading in those states and there is clearly a physiological reason or basis for those different readings.

Thus it appears this author has published as true some sort of biased opinion without any basis in actual biology. and that pisses me off.

[Fluid]

Up until his death this guy has done research in the field of hypnosis, including multiple experimental settings comparing what was accepted as a real hypnotic method, and a placebo condition making people believe they were being hypnotized. He found hardly any difference across conditions, and has repeatedly criticized the hypnotic method that many psychotherapists accepted as a cure-all. Which they were, naturally, not very happy with. I think the real ones making the grand claims in this case were the psychotherapists that he attacked.

Some of the cases he described only continued to be convinced they had a mental illness because of continuous reinforcement by popular culture.

[nuit09]

It appears to me that since hypnosis is permissive by nature that there might not be a difference. but that is hardly the same as there being no physiological basis for it. for an expert he seems to leave a lot of obvious gaps in his thesis. for example placebo effect and hypnosis may be equivelent. so what? what is the placebo effect other than belief in a efficacy of a inert ingredient as a powerful drug? what is hypnosis other than voluntary belief in an false statements such that it has actual effects on the believer and the false statment becomes a real effect?

[Fluid]

Some historical context may be necessary to explain his position. While placebo effects can be as potent as real treatments, many psychotherapists at that time (and some still do) believed that there was some sort of physically different magical hypnosis state in which the impossible was possible, and that they achieved this state through their hypnotherapy techniques. What Spanos tried to show was that no fundamentally different state of consciousness was involved, as people who were asked to simulate being hypnotized were able to do everything a "real" hypnotized person could.

A comparison could be drawn to alternative treatment methods such as magnetizing. Many people may have benefited from such treatments, but wether this benefit depends solely on the treatment method is a very questionable matter indeed. So yes, placebo effects may be beneficial. It's just that no mystical properties should be ascribed to such treatments.

[nuit09]

well then he may be less off than i thought but he is wrong about a few things. for example; i cannot simulate rigidity and immunity to pain that deep hypnosis can be made to bring on. you order me (in simulated hypnosis) to go rigid and try to bend my arm you will succeed in bending my arm. you poke me and i will feel pain and react. that is not true of actual hypnosis. further in simulated hypnosis i doubt the EEG and BP readings would be the same. hence there are physiological differences between the states.

[nuit09]

Oh, and as to there being no mystical states involved; how can you tell? the placebo effect appears to be magickal. it can cause real phsiological changes with no basis in biochemistry or pharmocological cause. the trouble with antagonism towards mysticism is that renaming something does not alter it's fundamental nature. renaming magick "the placebo effect" does not change the fact that something that the mystics described and predicted happens. The same thing applies to "bioelectrical fields surrounding living tissue." calling it that does not make mystics wrong when they call it an "aura."