The Uses of Hypnosis

Hypnosis has been a hard-luck kid among medical techniques. A century ago, it was just beginning to win acceptance as a painkiller when ether anesthesia was discovered and hypnosis was discarded. It was making a comeback 60 years ago when Freud hit upon the idea of psychoanalysis, and the experts again lost interest in hypnosis. Now, the third time around, it is once more winning the support of reputable men in both the physical and psychic areas of medicine. To help put hypnosis over the top for good, eleven doctors have assembled the first comprehensive textbook in the field, Hypnosis in Modern Medicine (Thomas; $7.50), with Psychiatrist Jerome M! Schneck as editor.

For Cautious Doctors. The big difference between modern medical hypnosis and old-fashioned mesmerism or "magnetism" is that doctors nowadays do not think of it as a treatment in itself, but as a handy tool to help them give other, conventional forms of treatment. Typically, under "eye fixation," the patient goes into a trance and soon tells about his Doubles. Before he is "awakened," the hypnotherapist tells him whether or not ie is to remember, on awakening, what he has said. If the decision is in favor of remembering, there will then be a conscious discussion of the problems. Sometimes the business of banishing symptoms of illness may be done by suggestions made during the trance period.

After sounding the usual professional notes of caution (a bungling hypnotist can do "irreparable harm," and no hypnotist should tackle a case on the borderline of severe mental illness), Dr. Schneck's contributors get down to cases.

Psychiatrist Harold Rosen cites this one: a man of 26 had been having severe spells of nausea and dizziness. He was in a hospital and was being considered for ear-nerve surgery. A psychiatrist suspected an emotional basis for the illness, but could not track it down. It took eight minutes to hypnotize the patient, and while in the trance, he had one of his spells, with "the shakes." In a second session he reported seeing a shipwreck, but tried to ignore it. At last, prodded by the therapist, he recalled and relived his own shipwreck of seven years before, when many of his buddies died in a torpedo attack. Conscious again, he admitted that he had been brooding and dreaming about that attack. He was shown that his spells were a device to shut it out. Instead of surgery, he was told to go back to the psychiatrist for more treatment.

Editor Schneck and his colleagues recommend using hypnosis to get at a wide range of psychosomatic illnesses--from stomach upsets, headaches and skin disorders to menstrual troubles, morning sickness and difficulties with breast feeding. In surgery, they say, hypnosis can be not only a valuable anesthetic, but can serve to distinguish between true & false complaints of physical illness. (In the case of the shipwrecked sailor, it served a dual purpose.)

Children up to 15 can be hypnotized almost without exception, and Psychiatrist Gordon Ambrose of London recommends using the technique in both anxiety reactions and hysterical reactions. He goes further and suggests that it would be worthwhile to see how much good it might do for the juvenile delinquent.

For Painful Dentists. Dentistry, says Harlem Hospital's Dr. Jules Weinstein, may offer more scope for hypnosis than any other branch of medicine, because 1) nearly all dental operations are painful; 2) the patient usually has to go back for more; and 3) "dentistry retains the taint and stigma of its early . . . crude and torturing methods." But patients who can get by without hypnosis should not have it, says Dr. Weinstein; it should be reserved for those who feel that they need it because they cannot face up to the pain of even routine dental work, and for others who may have to be convinced that they should have it because of a low pain threshold, gagging or fainting.

For all that they have learned about hypnosis and when to use it, Dr. Schneck and his collaborators still have very little idea of what the hypnotic state really is. When that is better understood, hypnosis will have a better chance of being more widely accepted.

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