You are falling into a deep sleep…
Hypnosis has often been considered as a procedure to relieve anxiety or mood disorders. Used by clinicians and health professionals, it can be used to make changes in sensation and perception to greater attention to thoughts and feelings. While there is skepticism on whether the procedure is effective, many studies published in scientific literature has shown that hypnosis can in fact be useful in clinical settings to improve quality of life, anxiety and depression.
Some professionals say that more intelligent people are easier to hypnotize while some studies show that it is difficult to say who is more susceptible. Several scales and measures such as the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility and the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales have been created to test whether subjects can easily be hypnotized. These scales include specific instructions for the administration of testing just as any other psychological tests. Participants are subject to a number of hypnotic procedures that include the promotion to eye closure, hallucinations of a fly and even the induction of amnesia.
These scales are, however, hard to show reliability as it has been argued that susceptibility is largely based on attention during the procedure. It has also been said that hypnosis will happen if you want it to but won’t if you don’t think it will work. This can be problematic for between subject differences as well as test-retest reliability where participants may have different feelings about the efficacy of hypnosis at different points in time. Fears, concerns and misconceptions can play a role is whether people believe in hypnosis on not. It is therefore difficult for clinicians to prescribe the use of hypnosis to help a patient.
The Society of Psychological Hypnosis under the APA is busy researching and developing ways to improve the standards of hypnosis. In the mean time, we can make use of videos like the one below to get a better idea of whether or not hypnosis would work on us. It may not be completely accurate but is definitely interesting to try out.
