Hypnosis: Is it for Real?
Psychologists maintain that hypnosis is a state of heightened suggestibility to which people are subject in varying degrees. My question is as follows: Is it real, or is it all an act?
Hypnosis, which I did not believe earlier in the week, is actually legitimate and can be performed if a participant is willing to be participate. Hypnotized people, like unhypnotized people, may perform unlikely acts when told to do so by an authoritative person. Highly
hypnotizable people can focus attention totally on a task, become
imaginatively absorbed in it, and entertain fanciful possibilities. According to an article I was reading in Business Week, Hypnosis has gained more credibility as a result of more and more research showing that subjects have altered sensory perception as indicated by PET scans, MRIs, and EEG scans. Hypnosis can be a major breakthrough in terms of medical advancements in that you can alter a patients state of consciousness. People
hypnotized for pain relief may show activity in brain areas that
receive sensory information button in areas that normally process that
information. Those who reject the hypnosis-as-altered-consciousness view
believe that hypnosis is a by-product of normal social and cognitive
processes and that the hypnotized person is unknowingly acting out the
role of “good subject.”
Hypnosis, I therefore maintain, can be achieved if the participant is willing to be hypnotized. I personally do not really understand it, and I feel that I couldn't be hypnotized, but it would be too big of a conspiracy for hypnosis to not be real.
I see where you're getting at, and I agree that the participant needs to want to be hypnotized in order to actually be hypnotized. It may not make much sense when talking about it or when watching a video (which can easily be manipulated), but if you see it in person, like some of us have, you'll see that hypnosis can really work on some people.
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