{"id":14664,"date":"2023-01-01T20:28:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T20:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/?p=14664"},"modified":"2024-03-01T12:14:59","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T12:14:59","slug":"hypnosis-vs-voodoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aurelis.org\/blog\/healthcare\/hypnosis-vs-voodoo","title":{"rendered":"Hypnosis vs. Voodoo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hypnosis has a scientific aura \u2014 journals, conferences, departments, and handbooks. Nevertheless, is the science valid? Or is it just a Western kind of unsubstantiated belief \u2014 a folie \u00e0 multiple?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As Galenic medicine has been for 1600 years in Europe before being debunked in the last two centuries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe definition of hypnosis is an everlasting work in progress.\u201d [Facco, 2024]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Practitioners of both hypnosis and voodoo deserve as much respect as they show openness, also depending on the possibilities each culture provides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, nothing is an excuse to stop striving for openness. Possibilities come with responsibilities \u2015 especially if these diminish comfortable numbness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two tales of two cultures<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voodoo<\/strong> accords more to African culture from where it was transported to the Americas. I know it firsthand \u2013 more or less \u2013 from the Afro-Brazilian variant called candombl\u00e9s in Salvador da Bahia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In candombl\u00e9s, the gods (orixas) take possession of an entranced person. To a Western rational mind, of course, this brings only a semblance of explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hypnosis<\/strong> accords more to Western culture, where it evolved from strange ideas about animal magnetism around 1800. Notoriously, this was debunked by a scientific committee led by Benjamin Franklin who concluded there was no truth in animal magnetism beyond the effect of imaginative suggestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later on, a history of hypnotism\/hypnosis evolved with competing schools, but none came with an explanation beyond \u201cand now happens something weird.\u201d Of course, just using the term \u2018hypnosis\u2019 doesn\u2019t diminish the weirdness. Besides, it clearly is no \u2018hypnos\u2019 \u2014 no sleep. The term \u2018hypnosis\u2019 should not be used as a magical wand. Nobody gets \u2018in or under hypnosis\u2019 as also nobody gets \u2018in or under the spell of the orixas.\u2019 Of course, one can use the terminology one likes, but by itself, \u2018hypnosis\u2019 brings only a semblance of explanation. Herein, we find the first similarity with voodoo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More similarities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both, one can see concrete results stemming from what happens in a \u2018special state of trance.\u2019 Nevertheless, also in both cases, the causal factor within that trance eludes a directly rational explanation. Instead, it stays stuck in self-reference. Something like: This book is correct because it\u2019s written \u2013 in the same book \u2013 that everything is correct what is written in this book \u2015 Ha!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both, a suggestive environment creates an expectation effect that is necessary for any result. No expectation \u2014 no effect. Especially, in both cases, this suggestion causes the trance, not vice versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both, no outside effect (this is, apart from the trance itself) seems to need the trance in principle. Anything tangible that can be accomplished in a hypnotic (or voodoo) trance can also be accomplished without it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both have been called and treated as \u2018a kind of hypnosis\u2019 by Western researchers. Could African healers call both of them \u2018a kind of voodoo\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both, susceptible (\u2018trance-able\u2019) people are not only hysterical patients or otherwise gullible individuals (although for a long time, this idea was put forward regarding hypnosis) but basically anyone with a mindset open to the specific culturally determined setting. I am definitely one of these in both settings, although I believe in none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both, the relationship between the-one-who-does and the-one-who-experiences is a primordial part of the happening whereby in most cases, the-one-who-does performs ritual actions and uses a non-rational explanatory veil. In other words, it\u2019s a placebo<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both (and many other similar cases), if anything happens, it can thoroughly \u2013 no skating on thin ice \u2013 be explained as the effect of suggestion, which has a thorough neuroscientific explanation. Beyond this, no specific factor has ever been shown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then why accept hypnosis as scientifically valid, and not voodoo?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As yet, there is no scientifically sound reason for doing so. There is no intrinsic difference beyond cultural differences. Most probably, the future will look at both with the same degree of amazement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Westerners may point out that believing in the orixas is clearly false, while hypnosis doesn\u2019t entail any belief in gods. I, for one, do not believe in orixas, nor in hypnosis as a supernatural state, nor in hypnosis as anything beyond the very normal when \u2013 as said \u2013 one just opens oneself to the experience \u2015 nothing profoundly special involved. Moreover, I think that the supposedly profound \u2018specialness\u2019 is precisely what draws some Westerners to hypnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One might say that \u2018hypnosis\u2019 is a \u2013 frequently well-meant \u2013 attempt to bring something-that-works to the public using a term that speaks to people. Sorry, but that is a commercial, not a scientific take. It may help at first, but at the cost of science and it surely backfires. The voodoo subculture could use the same argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking into the brain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of hypnosis, no single neuronal signature has been found<\/a> that corresponds with that state \u2014 and which could elevate it to the level of natural kind objectivity<\/a>. Meanwhile, many things go on in the brain as they always do \u2014 certainly also in the case of voodoo, which is no proof of the orixas\u2019 existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No brain imagery has been done in the voodoo case. It would be interesting to see the differences and similarities with hypnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American Psychological Association \u2013 Definition of hypnosis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the APA – Division 30, hypnosis is \u201cA state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion.\u201d [Elkins et al., 2015]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is, in my view and experience, the state in which two people are dancing \u2014 say, the Argentinian tango. Is the leader an Argentinian Svengali? Is the follower under hypnosis? I don\u2019t think so. Do I hypnotize the lady if I give suggestions as to which next move we can take? In my view, I invite<\/a>. Otherwise, it wouldn\u2019t be dancing but just making moves together. Even more, upon my invitation, the lady invites herself \u2014 Shall I move this way or that way? (All in a fraction of time, which makes it pleasant.) That, as you have guessed, is my view of auto<\/strong>suggestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, one might say that hypnosis is \u2018nothing special.\u2019 [Of course, a lovely tango is always something special.] I mean, nothing beyond the very natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OR, one might say hypnosis is a \u2018special state beyond the very natural,\u2019 etc. But in this case, it\u2019s at the level of a Western kind of voodoo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Give me a break. Keep it to the first option, to which the APA definition also conforms if correctly understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My conclusion, semi-quoting Lavoisier: \u201cI see no need for [hypnosis\/voodoo] as a hypothesis.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why talk about hypnotic\/voodoo suggestions if they\u2019re basically the same as any suggestions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why talk about trance if this has been proven not to add to effectiveness beyond being absorbed in something as we all are in and out, day in, day out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why talk about altered states of consciousness if we are continually in different states of consciousness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why put up with the idea that, at the same time, everything and nothing is hypnosis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why put up with many weird ideas about hypnosis inside and outside of the \u2018world of scientists\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why put a placebo-veil over something that should be made open as much as possible for the benefit of many?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why use a hypnotic scale (with many variants) if this only measures itself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why derive the existence of \u2018hypnosis\u2019 from such a scale while, of course, we could do the same thing with voodoo?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why make it unnecessarily more difficult to get scientifically accepted?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why act as if hypnosis\/voodoo causes anything in reality?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something does cause many things: suggestion.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should continue scientifically investigating this as well as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to use the term \u2018hypnosis\u2019 as a synonym, then it\u2019s only very confusing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Elkins et al., 2015 ]Elkins, G. R., Barabasz, A. F., Council, J. R., & Spiegel, D. (2015). Advancing research and practice: The revised APA Division 30 definition of hypnosis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis<\/em>, 63(1744\u20135183 (Electronic)), 1\u20139.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Facco, 2024] Enrico Facco. On the Hard Process of Understanding Hypnosis Epistemological Issues in the Debate Between State, Trait, and Hypofrontality Theories. International Handbook of Clinical Hypnosis<\/em>, J.H. Linden, G. de Benedettis, L.I. Sugarman, and K. Varga (Eds), Chapter 2, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, USA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hypnosis has a scientific aura \u2014 journals, conferences, departments, and handbooks. Nevertheless, is the science valid? Or is it just a Western kind of unsubstantiated belief \u2014 a folie \u00e0 multiple? As Galenic medicine has been for 1600 years in Europe before being debunked in the last two centuries. \u201cThe definition of hypnosis is an Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n

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