Millions of Americans have gone through the experience of being hypnotized to help them overcome a bad habit such as smoking or eating too much. An officially endorsed therapeutic method used in various medical, psychiatric, and dental fields, hypnosis is used for everything, including preparing people for anesthesia, pain management and smoking cessation programs.

The Catholic Church does not have an official position on hypnosis. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Church warns Catholics to be on their guard against the abuses of “magnetism and hypnotism” but “leaves the way free for scientific research.”

History

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the practice of hypnotism was begun in the latter part of the 18th century by a German physician named Franz Mesmer, who used hypnosis to treat patients. Mesmer believed that hypnotism made use of an occult force, which he termed “animal magnetism,” that flowed through the hypnotist and into the subject. Although he was eventually discredited, his method — named “mesmerism” after its creator — continued to interest the medical profession.

In the middle of the 19th century, an English physician named James Braid began to study the phenomenon, and it was he who coined the name “hypnosis,” after the Greek god of sleep, Hynos.

Hypnosis began to attract more widespread scientific interest by the end of the century, eventually attracting the attention of an Austrian physician named Sigmund Freud who began using it to help his patients recall whatever disturbing events were causing their neurosis.

Although Freud eventually abandoned the practice, it was used to treat soldiers who had experienced combat neuroses during World War I and II, and eventually went on to provide other limited uses in medicine.

Meanwhile, even though various researchers have posited different theories on what it is, and how it works, there is still no generally accepted explanation of hypnosis.

How it works

Techniques used to induce hypnosis are common: A subject is encouraged to relax, then is coached into falling into a state of profound relaxation or trance. The degree of the trance is different for everyone, ranging from light to profound trance states.

“The central phenomenon of hypnosis is suggestibility, a state of greatly enhanced receptiveness and responsiveness to suggestions and stimuli presented by the hypnotist,” the Britannica states. “Appropriate suggestions by the hypnotist can induce a remarkably wide range of psychological, sensory and motor responses from persons who are deeply hypnotized ….

“The subject can be induced to behave as if deaf, blind, paralyzed, hallucinated, delusional, amnesic, or impervious to pain or to uncomfortable body postures,” it goes on. “One fascinating manifestation that can be elicited from a subject who has been in a hypnotic trance is that of post-hypnotic suggestion and behavior; that is, the subject’s execution, at some later time, of instructions and suggestions that were given to him while he was in a trance.”

The process of hypnotizing someone is not difficult to learn and requires no particular skill, which means that it can be — and is — used by people who are not medically licensed or who use it for the purposes of entertainment.

The Britannica warns: “Hypnosis has been repeatedly condemned by various medical associations when it is used purely for purposes of public entertainment, owing to the dangers of adverse posthypnotic reactions to the procedure.

“Indeed, in this regard several nations have banned or limited commercial or public displays of hypnosis,” the encyclopedia continues. “In addition, many courts of law refuse to accept testimony from people who have been hypnotized for purposes of ‘recovering’ memories, because such techniques can lead to confusion between imaginations and memories.”

Past life regression

The greatest controversy surrounding hypnosis is its use for the recovery of memories. Most professional medical associations take a stand similar to that of the American Medical Association, which stated in 1993 that recovered memories are “of uncertain authenticity which should be subject to external verification. The use of recovered memories is fraught with problems of potential misapplication.”

Despite that lack of scientific support, a popular form of hypnotherapy, known as “past life regression” is prevalent in New Age circles.

It consists of hypnotizing a subject, then guiding the individual through alleged past lives. The practice requires belief in the non-Christian doctrine of reincarnation — and it enjoys even less scientific acceptance that repressed memory therapies.

In fact, a new study, conducted at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, found that patients who had undergone hypnosis in order to remember ...