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Hi, pals~ Quite a long time~
First of all, my appreciation and gratitude to 猴哥 for the help in posting the last topic~
OK, today, we are gonna dip into a very small but interesting part in psychology field: Hypnosis.
The Speed part, beginnning with a tiny introduction about history of hypnosis and some term-differences in hypnosis, is mainly about one passage that in my opinion, covers almost the most of the fundamentals in hypnosis.
In the Obstacle part, the gist is the value of hypnosis in pain control. As far as I am concerned, the author's intented readers might be those psychologists or shrinks, because many methods are provided. Anyway, it may be a good try for us, too.
Here we go~
Part 1 Speaker [Rephrase1]
Rules and Regulations
[dialog: 6:06]
Mp3:
Transcript:
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/general/sixminute/2013/10/131010_6min_rules.shtml
Part 2 Speed
Article 1(Check the title later)
Early Hypnohistory
[TIME2]
People have been entering hypnotic-type trances for thousands and thousands of years; various forms of meditation play an important role in many cultures' religions. But the scientific conception of hypnotism wasn't born until the late 1700s.
The father of modern hypnotism is Franz Mesmer, an Austrian physician. Mesmer believed hypnosis to be a mystical force flowing from the hypnotist into the subject (he called it "animal magnetism"). Although critics quickly dismissed the magical element of his theory, Mesmer's assumption, that the power behind hypnosis came from the hypnotist and was in some way inflicted upon the subject, took hold for some time. Hypnosis was originally known as mesmerism, after Mesmer, and we still use its derivative, "mesmerize," today.
James Braid, a 19th-century Scottish surgeon, originated the terms "hypnotism" and "hypnosis" based on the word hypnos, which is Greek for "to sleep." Braid and other scientists of the era, such as Ambroise-Auguste Liebeault, Hippolyte Bernheim and J.M. Charcot, theorized that hypnosis is not a force inflicted by the hypnotist, but a combination of psychologically mediated responses to suggestions.
In the proper nomenclature, hypnosis refers to the trance state itself, and hypnotism refers to the act of inducing this state and to the study of this state. A hypnotist is someone who induces the state of hypnosis, and a hypnotherapist is a person who induces hypnosis to treat physical or mental illnesses.
Article 2(Check the title later)
How Hypnosis Works
by Tom Harris
[Warm Up]
When you hear the word hypnosis, you may picture the mysterious hypnotist figure popularized in movies, comic books and television. This ominous, goateed man waves a pocket watch back and forth, guiding his subject into a semi-sleep, zombie-like state. Once hypnotized, the subject is compelled to obey, no matter how strange or immoral the request. Muttering "Yes, master," the subject does the hypnotist's evil bidding.
This popular representation bears little resemblance to actual hypnotism, of course. In fact, modern understanding of hypnosis contradicts this conception on several key points. Subjects in a hypnotic trance are not slaves to their "masters" -- they have absolute free will. And they're not really in a semi-sleep state -- they're actually hyperattentive.
Our understanding of hypnosis has advanced a great deal in the past century, but the phenomenon is still a mystery of sorts. In this article, we'll look at some popular theories of hypnosis and explore the various ways hypnotists put their art to work.
[Words: 162]
[TIME3]
What is Hypnosis?
People have been pondering and arguing over hypnosis for more than 200 years, but science has yet to fully explain how it actually happens. We see what a person does under hypnosis, but it isn't clear why he or she does it. This puzzle is really a small piece in a much bigger puzzle: how the human mind works. It's unlikely that scientists will arrive at a definitive explanation of the mind in the foreseeable future, so it's a good bet hypnosis will remain something of a mystery as well.
But psychiatrists do understand the general characteristics of hypnosis, and they have some model of how it works. It is a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination. It's not really like sleep, because the subject is alert the whole time. It is most often compared to daydreaming, or the feeling of "losing yourself" in a book or movie. You are fully conscious, but you tune out most of the stimuli around you. You focus intently on the subject at hand, to the near exclusion of any other thought.
In the everyday trance of a daydream or movie, an imaginary world seems somewhat real to you, in the sense that it fully engages your emotions. Imaginary events can cause real fear, sadness or happiness, and you may even jolt in your seat if you are surprised by something (a monster leaping from the shadows, for example). Some researchers categorize all such trances as forms of self-hypnosis. Milton Erickson, the premier hypnotism expert of the 20th century, contended that people hypnotize themselves on a daily basis. But most psychiatrists focus on the trance state brought on by intentional relaxation and focusing exercises. This deep hypnosis is often compared to the relaxed mental state between wakefulness and sleep.
In conventional hypnosis, you approach the suggestions of the hypnotist, or your own ideas, as if they were reality. If the hypnotist suggests that your tongue has swollen up to twice its size, you'll feel a sensation in your mouth and you may have trouble talking. If the hypnotist suggests that you are drinking a chocolate milkshake, you'll taste the milkshake and feel it cooling your mouth and throat. If the hypnotist suggests that you are afraid, you may feel panicky or start to sweat. But the entire time, you are aware that it's all imaginary. Essentially, you're "playing pretend" on an intense level, as kids do.
In this special mental state, people feel uninhibited and relaxed. Presumably, this is because they tune out the worries and doubts that normally keep their actions in check. You might experience the same feeling while watching a movie: As you get engrossed in the plot, worries about your job, family, etc. fade away, until all you're thinking about is what's up on the screen.
In this state, you are also highly suggestible. That is, when the hypnotist tells you do something, you'll probably embrace the idea completely. This is what makes stage hypnotist shows so entertaining. Normally reserved, sensible adults are suddenly walking around the stage clucking like chickens or singing at the top of their lungs. Fear of embarrassment seems to fly out the window. The subject's sense of safety and morality remain entrenched throughout the experience, however. A hypnotist can't get you to do anything you don't want to do.
But what is it that makes this happen? In the next section, we'll look at the most widely accepted theory of what's going on when you become hypnotized.
[Words: 589]
[TIME4]
What Lies Beneath
The predominant school of thought on hypnosis is that it is a way to access a person's subconscious mind directly. Normally, you are only aware of the thought processes in your conscious mind. You consciously think over the problems that are right in front of you, consciously choose words as you speak, consciously try to remember where you left your keys.
But in doing all these things, your conscious mind is working hand-in-hand with your subconscious mind, the unconscious part of your mind that does your "behind the scenes" thinking. Your subconscious mind accesses the vast reservoir of information that lets you solve problems, construct sentences or locate your keys. It puts together plans and ideas and runs them by your conscious mind. When a new idea comes to you out of the blue, it's because you already thought through the process unconsciously.
Your subconscious also takes care of all the stuff you do automatically. You don't actively work through the steps of breathing minute to minute -- your subconscious mind does that. You don't think through every little thing you do while driving a car -- a lot of the small stuff is thought out in your subconscious mind. Your subconscious also processes the physical information your body receives.
In short, your subconscious mind is the real brains behind the operation -- it does most of your thinking, and it decides a lot of what you do. When you're awake, your conscious mind works to evaluate a lot of these thoughts, make decisions and put certain ideas into action. It also processes new information and relays it to the subconscious mind. But when you're asleep, the conscious mind gets out of the way, and your subconscious has free reign.
Psychiatrists theorize that the deep relaxation and focusing exercises of hypnotism work to calm and subdue the conscious mind so that it takes a less active role in your thinking process. In this state, you're still aware of what's going on, but your conscious mind takes a backseat to your subconscious mind. Effectively, this allows you and the hypnotist to work directly with the subconscious. It's as if the hypnotism process pops open a control panel inside your brain.
In the next section, we'll see how this theory fits in with the characteristics of hypnosis.
[Words: 388]
[TIME5]
Suggestion Box
In the last section, we examined the idea that hypnosis puts your conscious mind in the backseat, so you and the hypnotist can communicate directly with your subconscious. This theory has gained wide acceptance in the psychiatric community, mostly because it explains all the major characteristics of the hypnotic state so nicely.
Hypnotists say that subjects under hypnosis are a lot like little kids: playful and imaginative, fully embracing bizarre suggestions.
It provides an especially convincing explanation for the playfulness and uninhibitedness of hypnotic subjects. The conscious mind is the main inhibitive component in your makeup -- it's in charge of putting on the brakes -- while the subconscious mind is the seat of imagination and impulse. When your subconscious mind is in control, you feel much freer and may be more creative. Your conscious mind doesn't have to filter through everything.
Hypnotized people do such bizarre things so willingly, this theory holds, because the conscious mind is not filtering and relaying the information they take in. It seems like the hypnotist's suggestions are coming directly from the subconscious, rather than from another person. You react automatically to these impulses and suggestions, just as you would to your own thoughts. Of course, your subconscious mind does have a conscience, a survival instinct and its own ideas, so there are a lot of things it won't agree to.
The subconscious regulates your bodily sensations, such as taste, touch and sight, as well as your emotional feelings. When the access door is open, and the hypnotist can speak to your subconscious directly, he or she can trigger all these feelings, so you experience the taste of a chocolate milkshake, the satisfaction of contentment and any number of other feelings.
Additionally, the subconscious is the storehouse for all your memories. While under hypnosis, subjects may be able to access past events that they have completely forgotten. Psychiatrists may use hypnotism to bring up these memories so that a related personal problem can finally be resolved. Since the subject's mind is in such a suggestible state, it is also possible to create false memories. For this reason, psychiatrists must be extremely careful when exploring a hypnotic subject's past.
[Words: 364]
[TIME6]
You're Getting Sleepy
Hypnotists' methods vary, but they all depend on a few basic prerequisites:
The subject must want to be hypnotized.
The subject must believe he or she can be hypnotized.
The subject must eventually feel comfortable and relaxed.
If these criteria are met, the hypnotist can guide the subject into a hypnotic trance using a variety of methods. The most common hypnotic techniques are:
Fixed-gaze induction or eye fixation - This is the method you often see in movies, when the hypnotist waves a pocket watch in front of the subject.
The basic idea is to get the subject to focus on an object so intently that he or she tunes out any other stimuli. As the subject focuses, the hypnotist talks to him or her in a low tone, lulling the subject into relaxation. This method was very popular in the early days of hypnotism, but it isn't used much today because it doesn't work on a large proportion of the population.
Rapid - The idea of this method is to overload the mind with sudden, firm commands.
If the commands are forceful, and the hypnotist is convincing enough, the subject will surrender his or her conscious control over the situation. This method works well for a stage hypnotist because the novel circumstance of being up in front of an audience puts subjects on edge, making them more susceptible to the hypnotist's commands.
Progressive relaxation and imagery - This is the hypnosis method most commonly employed by psychiatrists.
By speaking to the subject in a slow, soothing voice, the hypnotist gradually brings on complete relaxation and focus, easing the subject into full hypnosis. Typically, self-hypnosis training, as well as relaxation and meditation audio tapes, use the progressive relaxation method.
Loss of balance - This method creates a loss of equilibrium using slow, rhythmic rocking.
Parents have been putting babies to sleep with this method for thousands of years.
Before hypnotists bring a subject into a full trance, they generally test his or her willingness and capacity to be hypnotized. The typical testing method is to make several simple suggestions, such as "Relax your arms completely," and work up to suggestions that ask the subject to suspend disbelief or distort normal thoughts, such as "Pretend you are weightless."
Depending on the person's mental state and personality, the entire hypnotism process can take anywhere from a few minutes to more than a half hour. Hypnotists and hypnotism proponents see the peculiar mental state as a powerful tool with a wide range of applications. In the next section, we'll look at some of the more common uses of hypnotism.
[Words: 439]
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/hypnosis.htm
Part 3 Obstacle
Article 3(Check the title later)
Hypnosis and Pain Control
Mark Tyrrell
Hypnosis is an astonishingly effective way of reducing – and even removing – pain responses. Some of the most impressive footage you’ll see of hypnosis is where it is being used for pain control. I recently watched a program where a woman had two front teeth removed with only hypnosis for anesthesia – you can’t argue with that! But how is it done, and how can you begin to use hypnosis to reduce pain yourself?
Hypnosis has been used for centuries to control pain. From major amputations to the resetting of broken limbs, hypnosis is excellent for producing analgesia and anesthesia. ‘Analgesia’ is the absence of pain, whereas ‘anesthesia’ means absence of any sensation.
In the latter part of the last century, surgeon and master hypnotist Jack Gibson performed over 2,000 operations using hypnosis while working on an emergency ward in Southern Ireland. But he is but one example of hypnotists who, every day, all over the world, use the power of hypnosis to help people reduce pain levels.
Before I describe to you some excellent hypnotic approaches for lowering or banishing pain, I first want to consider the phenomenon of pain itself.
Pain is a signal that something needs attention. Pain should be taken seriously and never treated as just ‘all in the mind’. I only ever use hypnosis to help alleviate pain after the signal that something is wrong has been fully addressed. It’s vital that you – or anyone else – get checked out if you are in any kind of pain.
So let’s look at pain in a bit more depth. There are two main categories. First we have what is called acute pain. Acute pain may be very intense but the sufferer knows the pain is temporary and will end. If you stub your toe, it can be very painful indeed. But you know the pain will end soon, so you can bear it.
Imagine, however, what it would be like if you believed that the intense pain from that stubbed toe was never going to go away – or that it would sometimes go away and then always keep coming back, maybe even worse, for the rest of your life. You would then be experiencing ‘chronic pain’. So acute pain can be intense but we know it will end. Chronic pain has no prospect of ending.
Very young children who hurt themselves have no way of knowing that the acute pain they are experiencing is not actually going to be permanent. This is why they need reassuring and comforting while the pain subsides.
The point I’m building up to here is that a person’s psychological attitudes, beliefs, expectations and wellbeing all have direct effects on the way they experience pain. Depression, anxiety, boredom and relaxation all influence the intensity of physical pain. The mind and body influence one another. Hypnosis can be used to influence both psychological reference to the pain and physical experience of it.
So when treating someone for pain you need to discover how the person feels about their pain. Do they see it as something that is ruling their life, that will last forever and that they can do nothing about? Or do they feel that it is just a part of their current life but won’t last forever and is something they can control to some extent by their behavior?
You also need to let your client know – in no uncertain terms – that you know they are in pain. Let them describe their pain to you fully. You will notice how amazingly metaphorical and descriptive people become when in pain. For example, they might describe their pan as searing, scalding, boiling, stabbing, dull, sharp, electric, throbbing, pulsating, and so on. They really want someone to understand their experience of the pain. Remember the descriptive words they use, because you can use these metaphors to help them hypnotically.
Interestingly, and perhaps helpfully, pain is very ‘entrancing’. It captures and narrows our focus of attention just like a good hypnotist. If you have raging toothache it will get you focused internally no matter what’s on TV or how interesting your friend’s conversation might be. So how do we begin to alter the experience of pain?
The first place to look is at the metaphors your client uses to describe the pain. For example, ‘a stabbing pain’ can be ‘cushioned’. One man I helped in this way told me in hypnosis that he could still feel the stabbing, but it was now buffered by a comfortable cushion and no longer bothered him. A ‘burning pain’ can be ‘cooled’ and the pulse of ‘a pulsating pain’ can be slowed and eventually stopped altogether. In this way we are building rapport with the pain sufferer by inhabiting their pain metaphor and using that metaphor to modify their experience of the pain.
It’s also important not to mention the word ‘pain’ too often. It is a very hypnotic word and, alas, I need to use it many times in this article! In a session with a client, I refer to ‘the pain’ at first, but then I subtly and gradually begin to refer to ‘the levels of comfort’. I might ask ‘Where are you experiencing less comfort at the moment?’ This implies comfort as a possible experience and ‘the moment’ implies that things can change. This is very different from bluntly asking, ‘Where is your pain?’ Language is extremely important when dealing hypnotically with people.
Another key factor to bear in mind is that when we are in pain we naturally become highly emotional. Emotional thinking is always black or white, on or off, all or nothing! People are in pain and they want to be out of pain. And so it is often useful to introduce the concept of gradations of pain. For example, if 100% pain is the worst and someone tells you they feel they are 85% on that scale, you can talk about whether they will even notice consciously or not when that discomfort has gone down to an 84 or an 83.
This opens up the mind to the possibility that they can start to feel a bit more comfortable and takes off the pressure to switch off pain immediately and completely. It’s also a neat way of introducing the idea of their unconscious mind and its role in starting to make them more comfortable bit by bit.
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[The Rest]
There are four main strategies to use in deep hypnotic pain control. They are:
distraction
reframing
numbing
dissociation
I describe these as ‘deep hypnotic strategies’ but we can begin to use these approaches with people immediately before they enter deep trance.
Firstly let’s look at distraction. Now I don’t mean that we ask them to ‘try not to think about’ the fact they have just had their nose broken, or that a juggernaut has run over their foot. Nothing so crass! But the principle is amazingly effective. If a young child is in pain but then sees something wholly unexpected and amazing, notice how quickly that pain goes away!
When someone is in trance you can begin to direct their attention to other areas of their body, or other times and places when they were free from discomfort. This is a distraction technique. Distraction is enormously powerful. Soldiers distracted by the drama of an intense battle may not realize they are critically injured until after the battle because they were so distracted by the fighting; boxers may not realize a jaw is broken until after the final bell.
You only have so much attention to give to your pain. If you have hurt your right arm and squeeze your left arm, then some of your brain’s attention will be taken up with nerve impulses from the uninjured arm, diluting your experience of pain from the injured one. If I stub my toe, I will feel more pain if I just close my eyes and focus my attention on the injured toe while standing still. What I tend to do is shout and jump up and down. Now the pain is diluted by the sound of my own shouting, and the sensations engendered by jumping around the room.
The great Dr Milton Erickson once suggested to a cancer patient experiencing intractable pain that she should hallucinate a lion coming towards her. The major distraction of the lion enabled the pain to be switched off. Erickson taught her to selfhypnotically conjure up the lion whenever she needed to diminish her own pain.
We can use distraction by focusing the attention on nonafflicted areas of the body, or nonafflicted areas of the person’s life – like regressing them to a time before the pain was present. This also crosses over into dissociation, which I’ll cover below. We can distract people with ideas, images, expectation and physical touch such as massage, which can dilute the pain as the brain now has to deal with sensory impulses unconnected with the pain itself.
When I talk about reframing the pain, I mean turning the sensation of pain into a sensation that isn’t experienced as pain. Again, Milton Erickson helped a woman suffering terrible cancer pain reframe that pain into a chronic and then eventually a mild itch. I once worked with a man who had been disabled in a motor bike crash to reframe his pain from a ‘burning sensation’ into a lukewarm and then a comfortably cool sensation. It’s important to listen to the way people describe their pain, not just to build rapport with them but to use those descriptions in your hypnotic reframing of the pain later on.
It’s also important to note that numbing and dissociation happen quite spontaneously and naturally as someone enters the hypnotic state, because essentially hypnotic trance is akin to the rapid eye movement (REM) state we all enter when we dream. During nature’s hypnosis – or dreaming – you become completely dissociated from your body lying on the bed.
And because nature doesn’t want you actually acting out your dreams, you experience the temporary loss of feeling and paralysis known as catalepsy. We can make further suggestions for numbness by talking about playing in snow without gloves and hands freezing to numbness and so forth, or we can evoke times when we have sat for a long time until a leg goes numb, or after having slept on an arm and having it go numb – then we can suggest this numbness spreads into afflicted areas. We do all this using universal examples of experiences.
The natural hypnotic process of dissociation can also be encouraged by asking the person to see themselves on the chair or bed and have a hypnotic ‘out of body’ experience. The pain can be kept in the body ‘over there’ as they float free of the pain ‘over here’. I have worked with painwracked patients and got them to hypnotically hover above the earth – strange as that might sound – and thereby be pain free. I have then taught them to do this selfhypnotically so that they can really begin to control their own pain levels.
So, in summary:
Pain is an essential signal that needs addressing.
Pain can be regarded as acute or chronic.
We can break down black and white, all or nothing thinking around pain.
Hypnosis is a naturally cataleptic and dissociated state.
We can use distraction, reframing, numbing and disassociation to help relieve pain.
There are many other hypnotic approaches to pain control, but these are the main approaches which have proved highly effective for me over the years.
[words: 856]
http://www.uncommon-knowledge.co.uk/articles/uncommon-hypnosis/pain-control.html
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发表于 2013-10-20 22:47:35
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