What is it useful for?

Hypnosis is used medically for many things. Studies say that it works well for :

1. Treating nausea and stress-related bodily symptoms.
2. Managing some aspects of addictive behavior.
3. Treating pain from small incisions, burns, or breakage, and pain from cancers or ulcers.
4. Immediate or short-term relief from the pain of migraine headaches.
5. Reducing the level of drug use for cases of chronic pain (like, say, pains of the back or of misaligned hand or jaw joints).
6. Treating those who regress or go back to behaviors from their childhood.
7. Short-term concentration on one specific thing.
8. Accessing repressed or hidden memories.

Hypnosis' impact is mild, on-and-off, or on only a small proportion of people, for:

• Managing behaviors caused by depression and some other mental disorders.
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
• Managing moderate-to-strong fears and anxiety, working on both symptoms and spontaneous behaviors.
• Certain kinds of rote study and memorization.
• Relaxation.
• Anesthesia. A century ago, hypnosis was widely used in Asia when doing large operations, including amputations, but its usefulness for that kind of pain was not consistent or lasting. Better ways (ether, acupuncture, and then modern anesthetic drugs) soon took its place.

Some people claim that hypnosis works for these, but most evidence says not :

• asthma,
• heart disease,
• reducing the cancer itself (rather than just its pain),
• medium- or long-term relief from the pain of migraine, backache, arthritis, etc.,
• long-term weight loss,
• chronic sleeplessness,
• physical strength,
• sexual performance,
• getting others to want sex,
• healing of skin lesions or shingles not caused by stress,
• socialization,
• overall confidence-building,
• prompting obedience or submission when not under hypnosis,
• creating coherent thought amidst confusion,
• overall healing,
• root psychological problems,
• achieving understanding of a subject.

Please remember that on these kinds of subjects, reports in the popular press, word-of-mouth, paranormal blogs, and promotional materials are almost always untruthful in some way. Hype abounds. Even press reports on solid medical tests are often written by those who have little understanding of testing or the subject tested, and thus they give a surface interpretation of the tests.

Hypnosis' most controversial use is on repressed memory. It works, and works well, by bypassing the methods we use on ourselves to stifle and stamp out a painful or traumatic incident or accident (like a rape, or a car accident where a loved one died). Once the incident comes out, both patient and therapist can work on it. But those inner controls are there for good reasons, and often hypnosis simply bypasses these reasons when it bypasses the controls. In the hands of careless or unscrupulous therapists or untrained self-appointed hypnotists (and there are many of each), false memories are created, or existing fantasies are mistaken for reality. These can be as weird as UFO abductions or as serious as false accusations of sodomy and sexual attack (as happened with the accuser of Cardinal Bernardin). In such cases the false memories add yet another trauma to the pile the patient already has. The most dangerous situation is when a hypnotist says something which triggers the hypnotic subject's active phobia (an extreme, irrational fear of a particular thing).

There are forms of altered consciousness that are called 'self-hypnosis', and it has its uses too, though it is not as useful as its proponents sell it to be. In a way, nearly all hypnosis is really self-done, just that it is usually done with someone's guidance. "Self-hypnosis" is the version that uses your own guidance. The hypnotic state takes away many kinds of self-generated distractions, and improves concentration. It's also helpful as a self-treatment for recurring pains. It can be downright dangerous for use by those prone to self-deception, delusion, mutilation, fantasies, or denial -- a part of the population that's larger than you think, and might include you. Hypnotism can be a part of self-brainwash, of talking ourselves into something we ought to know better than to do. Some religious neo-devotionalists actually find the idea of 'brainwashing toward God' attractive, but that's not the way the God of the Word wants us to think, and not the way the Spirit chooses to work.

The clinical use of hypnosis is as a means of suggestion. Some people love to give orders, but most of us communicate what we want done by suggesting and asking. Jesus sometimes gave orders, but more often suggested. So did your mother. The devil doesn't have much command power; he usually works through twisted suggestions and nagging whispers. Advertisers also make suggestions. By using repetition and cleverness, they can sometimes get their way. This suggests a subtle but evil potential in anything that enhances suggestion. But the truth is that hypnotism by itself is not of much use as a mind control tool. It would have to be one among a wide range of measures to control what is happening to the person, done together to gain some level of control or leverage.