Hypnosis vs. Voodoo

January 1, 2023 Health & Healing No Comments

Hypnosis has a scientific aura — journals, conferences, departments, and handbooks. Nevertheless, is the science valid? Or is it just a Western kind of unsubstantiated belief — a folie à multiple?

As Galenic medicine has been for 1600 years in Europe before being debunked in the last two centuries.

“The definition of hypnosis is an everlasting work in progress.” [Facco, 2024]

Meanwhile

Practitioners of both hypnosis and voodoo deserve as much respect as they show openness, also depending on the possibilities each culture provides.

However, nothing is an excuse to stop striving for openness. Possibilities come with responsibilities ― especially if these diminish comfortable numbness.

Two tales of two cultures

Voodoo accords more to African culture from where it was transported to the Americas. I know it firsthand – more or less – from the Afro-Brazilian variant called candomblés in Salvador da Bahia.

In candomblés, the gods (orixas) take possession of an entranced person. To a Western rational mind, of course, this brings only a semblance of explanation.

Hypnosis 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.

Later on, a history of hypnotism/hypnosis evolved with competing schools, but none came with an explanation beyond “and now happens something weird.” Of course, just using the term ‘hypnosis’ doesn’t diminish the weirdness. Besides, it clearly is no ‘hypnos’ — no sleep. The term ‘hypnosis’ should not be used as a magical wand. Nobody gets ‘in or under hypnosis’ as also nobody gets ‘in or under the spell of the orixas.’ Of course, one can use the terminology one likes, but by itself, ‘hypnosis’ brings only a semblance of explanation. Herein, we find the first similarity with voodoo.

More similarities

In both, one can see concrete results stemming from what happens in a ‘special state of trance.’ 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’s written – in the same book – that everything is correct what is written in this book ― Ha!

In both, a suggestive environment creates an expectation effect that is necessary for any result. No expectation — no effect. Especially, in both cases, this suggestion causes the trance, not vice versa.

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.

Both have been called and treated as ‘a kind of hypnosis’ by Western researchers. Could African healers call both of them ‘a kind of voodoo’?

In both, susceptible (‘trance-able’) 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.

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’s a placebo.

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

Then why accept hypnosis as scientifically valid, and not voodoo?

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.

Westerners may point out that believing in the orixas is clearly false, while hypnosis doesn’t 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 – as said – one just opens oneself to the experience ― nothing profoundly special involved. Moreover, I think that the supposedly profound ‘specialness’ is precisely what draws some Westerners to hypnosis.

One might say that ‘hypnosis’ is a – frequently well-meant – 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.

Looking into the brain

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

No brain imagery has been done in the voodoo case. It would be interesting to see the differences and similarities with hypnosis.

American Psychological Association – Definition of hypnosis

According to the APA – Division 30, hypnosis is “A state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion.” [Elkins et al., 2015]

This is, in my view and experience, the state in which two people are dancing — say, the Argentinian tango. Is the leader an Argentinian Svengali? Is the follower under hypnosis? I don’t think so. Do I hypnotize the lady if I give suggestions as to which next move we can take? In my view, I invite. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be dancing but just making moves together. Even more, upon my invitation, the lady invites herself — 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 autosuggestion.

Nevertheless, one might say that hypnosis is ‘nothing special.’ [Of course, a lovely tango is always something special.] I mean, nothing beyond the very natural.

OR, one might say hypnosis is a ‘special state beyond the very natural,’ etc. But in this case, it’s at the level of a Western kind of voodoo.

Give me a break. Keep it to the first option, to which the APA definition also conforms if correctly understood.

My conclusion, semi-quoting Lavoisier: “I see no need for [hypnosis/voodoo] as a hypothesis.”

Why talk about hypnotic/voodoo suggestions if they’re basically the same as any suggestions?

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?

Why talk about altered states of consciousness if we are continually in different states of consciousness?

Why put up with the idea that, at the same time, everything and nothing is hypnosis?

Why put up with many weird ideas about hypnosis inside and outside of the ‘world of scientists’?

Why put a placebo-veil over something that should be made open as much as possible for the benefit of many?

Why use a hypnotic scale (with many variants) if this only measures itself?

Why derive the existence of ‘hypnosis’ from such a scale while, of course, we could do the same thing with voodoo?

Why make it unnecessarily more difficult to get scientifically accepted?

Why act as if hypnosis/voodoo causes anything in reality?

Something does cause many things: suggestion.

We should continue scientifically investigating this as well as possible.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to use the term ‘hypnosis’ as a synonym, then it’s only very confusing.

―

Bibliography

[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, 63(1744–5183 (Electronic)), 1–9.

[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, J.H. Linden, G. de Benedettis, L.I. Sugarman, and K. Varga (Eds), Chapter 2, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, USA.