DiracPool said:
What the biology behind this? Who knows and who cares, it works.
That's the slippery slope right there. In this case to say "who knows, who cares, it works" may seem harmless; but the exact same claim is routinely uttered in support of harmful and/or unscientific fads in diet, psychology, and medicine; not to mention in support of nonsense such as dowsing, psychic detection, etc. And you can be sure there is are unqualified, unethical hypnotists who give bogus explanations to their clients about how "it works." That is part of the danger of saying "who knows and who cares" - it gives license to the unqualified to manipulate the naive.
Regarding meditation and guided imagery and so on, it may seem harmless to say "who cares" about these practices in particular, because so many of us do meditate or use guided imagery; and whatever phenomena are involved seem both universal and for the most part safe; if we didn't have science we would still be meditating. But remember,
hypnosis is different than these other practices. Again, hypnosis has been misrepresented by stage acts & dubious practitioners ever since it was introduced by Mesmer; so we ought to be be careful and not shrug & say "who knows who cares"; that is not a useful attitude on a forum concerned with not only science but education and responsible use of science.
Even with meditation, we ought not to say "who knows, who cares." Myself, I meditate often; I use imagery; I practice relaxation exercises; etc. And I understand that these practices are historically ancient & validated in multiple cultures, e.g. meditation and mysticism have lengthy histories in both the East and West. But to go from that to saying "who cares" ? Let me tell you who cares:
I care; a lot of other interested laypersons care; a lot of medical professionals who draw on meditation skills to help with physical problems care; and many, many scientists care. All of these persons want to understand meditation better, as a way of improving its usefulness and making sure it is used safely (and yes, it is possible for meditation to be dangerous for the mental health of some persons - see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines/news/2017-05-26-does-meditation-carry-a-risk-of-harmful-side-effects/ for a non-hysterical review of this issue).
Beyond that, with many practices, other important phenomena are often involved that have been brought out and examined by science. For example, imagery exercises & relaxation exercises can be practiced in such a way (if a practitioner has the education to know to do this) so as to not only lower physiological arousal, but also build a conditioned response that increases the power of the exercises - for example, to help persons who suffer with insomnia associate doing the exercises with falling back to sleep. Building this sort of association can also reduce worry about falling back to sleep, something we know about via cognitive behavioral science. (Myself, I know all this because I have worked a sleep psychologist.) If science hadn't cared enough to investigate conditioned response and cognitive behavior, then we wouldn't have such knowledge; and our use of imagery and relaxation exercises would be that much less effective. We should be glad scientists in the area of behavior & psychology don't have a "who knows, who cares" attitude.
DiracPool said:
The bottom line is that hypnotherapy is not a hoax. The condition, though, is that you have to be willing to accept it and not be skeptical. If you are resistant to it then it won't work. It may not work in any case, but your best chance with it is to yield to the mystic.
Lastly, to attempt to give instruction to others about how to approach something like hypnosis, which
@DiracPool has done in his comment, is also a mistake. It has already been well-established in this thread (see my earlier comment) that people vary in their susceptibility; this is not a trait under their control, so they cannot simply will themselves to be open; here again actual science is more useful than personal experience based on an
n of 1. Obviously DiracPool meant to be helpful; but over time harm can be done by such statements by misleading people, e.g. telling them to expect something that may not be possible for them, thus leading them to feel it is their fault for not being "open" enough, etc. In a nutshell, if we are going to take hypnosis seriously, then please, let us not try to pretend we ourselves are expert practitioners and can ignore actual studies of hypnosis in telling other people what to do.
A final point which I feel is important: Unfortunately, here on PF, discussions that touch on psychology too often go downhill. The hard sciences of physics, chemistry, geology, biology, etc., along with mathematics and computer science, are treated with rigor; but the so-called soft sciences of economics, psychology, sociology, etc. are treated with a laissez faire attitude or even at times explicit disdain.
@jim mcnamara has been a rare and welcome exception to this trend, as he makes a real effort to introduce rigor to questions that involve physiology but verge on psychology as well. But the danger is always present that threads like this will stray away from science. If we truly do care about the underlying values that science & education represent, we should make an effort to honor those values even in fields where we are not personally knowledgeable.
