Home | Health | Alternative Medicine
Your awareness about hypnosis probably came from a number of fiction novels, science fiction movies, and TV shows. Some people view hypnosis as a paranormal event, but is it? The Encyclopedia Britannica defines the word "hypnosis" as the state wherein sleep is induced by one person, called the hypnotist, to another person. Through the process, the hypnotist manipulates the actions and thoughts of the other person. A hypnotized person readily accepts suggestions and orders of the hypnotist because he is in a state of subjection or vulnerability. Proper reasoning and normal thinking is set aside. It is to be noted that the history of hypnotism can be traced back into the ancient ages when sorcery was very popular. The famous Sigmund Freud used hypnosis when he was studying the state of being unconscious. Eventually, the practice of hypnotism has come to be widely used in the disciplines of psychology and medicine. Some practitioners even hypnotize patients to calm them or anesthetize them, modify unlikely behaviors, and ultimately, uncover repressed personality or memories. Still, there is no exact or generally accepted explanation for hypnotism. Below are various attempts and theories that try to pacify the unending questions and curiosity about the concept. 1) Theories On Dissociation And Neo Dissociation Pierre Janet, a French physician and psychologist of the 19th century, had a theory on dissociation, which is the state when components of consciousness are split off. Through Dr. Janet's experiments and observations, hysterical patients were pacified through dissociation, which is practically hypnosis. In 1977, American psychologist Ernest Hilgard developed a neo dissociation theory, which was a spin-off to Dr Janet's dissociation concept. According to Dr. Hilgard, there are components of one's personality that are further dissociated from other sub-components through an amnesic blockage. Therefore, orders and commands from a hypnotist would alter one's perception and eventually, behavior. 2) Theory Of Role-playing The theory of role-playing states that people are all playing roles. Any alteration from a hypnotist would provide a wake up call or induce reality. Thus, the theory is primarily dependent on the kind of rapport developed between the patient or subject and the hypnotist. 3) Hysteria Another psychologist named Charcot has postulated that hypnosis can only be effective when people experience hysteria. However, modern breakthroughs have challenged the idea because hypnosis is found to take effect also on people who do not exhibit hysteria. 4) Partial Sleep An early psychologist named Ivan Pavlov tried to explain the nature of hypnosis by defining it as a state of being partially asleep. The theory explains the reason why a hypnotized person seems to lose his sense of own thinking and depends on the instructions of the hypnotist. Otherwise, hypnosis would not be possible because normal thinking would resist subjugation to other people's control. Overall, a handful of professionals and experts attempted to explain and expound on the nature and dynamics of hypnotism. Some people still think of hypnotism as a form of a paranormal activity. A number of movies and fiction stories depict hypnotism as evil. Some people now perceive the concept as a creepy idea. Above all, hypnotism is a way of understanding the complex and confusing facet of the human mind and consciousness.
Information and Articles: http://www.mastersmba.com
Providing Information on various topics, please browse our other Articles for more informative resources, we house information on every topic imaginable so regardless of your needs you can be assured to find the answer here. If you wish to reprint this on your own website, simply click the "Web Version" in the right menu, and you are presented with a pre-formatted document to use.
A lot of the information is written by the Master Article team, and published exclusively on the MastersMBA.com website, and we do our best to research all information to ensure it's as accurate as possible. However at times we also publish documents given to us by other sources, we do examine these documents to ensure they are as accurate and correct as possible however at times they discuss highly specialized fields making it hard to authenticate the validity of every fact in the document. These are written by specialists in their respective fields, and we do trust their integrity and judgment however it's always a good idea when doing any research to consult a number of sources and form your own conclusion based on a number of view points.
