Hypnosis :: essays research papers

Hypnosis     The British Medical Association and the Ameri give notice Medical Association hascalled it "a temporary causation of change attention in the overmaster that maybe induced by another person," (Comptons Multimedia Encyclopedia) but there isstill much almost hypnosis that is not understood. Because it resembles normalsleep, it was studied and was found that the brain waves of hypnotized peopleare more similar to the patterns of deep relaxation than eachthing else. Ratherthan a psychic or mystical idea, hypnosis is now looked upon as a form ofhighly focused concentration in which outside influences are ignored.     The most known feature of the hypnotic trance is that hypnotized personbecomes easily influenced by the suggestions others-usually the hypnotist. Theyretain their abilities to act and are able to walk, talk, speak, and respond toquestions but their perceptions can be altered or distorted by externalsuggestion s. At the command of the hypnotist, subjects may lose all feeling ina place on the body, and any kind of pain will not cause them any pain. Theheartbeat can be slowed or quickened, and a rise in temperature and perspirationcan be created. They can be commanded to experience visual or auditoryhallucinations or live the past as if it were the present. Also, recently ascientist discovered that the dash the subjects mind experiences time can bealtered so that hours or even weeks can pass in second, from the subjects pointof view. Subjects may forget stir up or all of the hypnotic experience or recallthings that they had forgotten. The hypnotist may also make "posthypnoticsuggestions" that are instructions to the subject to respond to a something later on awakening. For example, the hypnotist might suggest that, after thesubject wakes up he will have an urge to remove his left shoe, and the more thesubject resists, the greater the urge to remove it will be, and once it isremove d the urge leaves. These suggestions are sometimes used by specialiststo repress or suggest off symptoms in a patient such as anxiety, itching, orheadaches.     Hypnosis is produced essentially by creating a deep relaxation andfocused concentration in the subject. They past become mostly unresponsive toordinary forms of stimulation, and although they are sometimes told to sleep,they are also told to listen and be ready to respond to commands made by thehypnotist. The rallying cry sleep is used in hypnosis not to induce actual sleep, butin practice it is understood that sleep is simply the hypnotic trance. Theprefix hypno- is named after the Greek god Hypno which means "sleep.