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- 10. Stage hypnosis: hands on ! PUSH THE WALL !
- 21. Constructivism: the thinker (…and the application) Hands on!
- 26. Hands on !
- 31. Hands on !
Notes de l'éditeur
- The first evidence of use of Hypnosis goes back to Egyptian culture, where trance is mentioned. However, it appears that many different traditional cultures integrate trance elements in the process of healing. In Medieval Europe, it is the Kings’ power to heal specific sicknesses, solely by passing in front of his subjects. Paracelsus is the first one to mention “magnetism”, and during his therapeutic activities, he uses magnets to heal. Following his observations, Paracelsus is also the first one to hypothesize that human beings tend to be either in “attractive” or “repulsive” relationships .
- In the XVIIIth century, Mesmer is a physician who has his clients in Vienna. He discovers the animal magnetism in 1779, and has also a first intuition about hysteria. Indeed, he aims at healing a young blind pianist (Maria Theresia von Paradis for whom Mozart had composed the 18 th piano concerto), by “touching her and re-fluidifiying the ether that surrounds her”. As a consequence of his failure, he has to leave Vienna. He settles in Paris where he continues to practice the “animal magnetism”. Although he is accused of charlatanism by the Faculty of Medicine, he has influent patients such as La Fayette. In 1780, he invents the “basin”, a big device of oak wood, and filled with what Mesmer thinks to be the “animal magnetism”. This device is aimed at healing several patients at the same time. His reputation becomes such that he is known to heal crowds of people at once. Mesmer’s activities attract the suspicions of Louis XVIth. The King orders two commissions to enquire about Mesmerism. Although Mesmer refuses to share his knowledge with the “experts”, the enquiry takes place. Finally, the two commissions come to radically different conclusions. On the one hand, Bailly and Lavoisier have come to think that the practice of Mesmerism is highly “dangerous”, not only for the physical proximity of the Doctor and his patients (Mesmer’s individual therapy session’s involves close contact with the sitting patient. He has, for example, the “patients' legs squeezed between his knees” or presses his thumbs into to the palm of the client’s hand) but also for philosophical and political reasons, as Mesmer holds that all individuals are equal by birth and by condition. On the other hand, Jussieu concludes that a certain influence of one individual upon another one cannot be denied. The King finally decides to ban Mesmerism – but this ban notwithstanding, Mesmer continues to practice and to be highly successful with his patients.
- James Braid is a surgeon who witnesses a session of “animal magnetism” in 1841. Back in his home, he tries to apply what he has observed to his wife and his servants. However, he does not touch them, but tries to bring about the trance by fixing an object. Braid succeeds in inducing trance, and ipso facto is able to reject Mesmer’s theory of the presence of “ether” and “magnetism” supposed to surround individuals. Braids first hypothesis holds that trance is a kind of sleeping state, and therefore coins the term “hypnosis”, after the Greek god Sleep and the Master of Dreams. However, he later discovers that all hypnotic phenomena (catalepsy, anesthesia, amnesia) can be induced while the patient is fully awake. Braid also observes that he feels a certain sympathy for his patients, and that they, in turn, often try to imitate or please him. However, he is yet fully unaware of the psychological element that characterizes hypnosis.
- Bernheim is a Medical Doctor of the “Ecole de Nancy” (as opposed to the “Ecole de la Salpêtrière” of Charcot) who practices in the second half of the XIXth century. While Bernheim thinks that hypnosis is a state similar to that of the sleep where an individual becomes particularly suggestible, Charcot holds on the contrary that hypnosis is a pathological state, very much linked to hysteria. Bernheim introduces suggestions in order to help the patient to recover from illness. In his opinion, the Doctor is a mere “operator” whose suggestions are accepted by the patient’s brain. As he practices, Bernheim becomes aware of the fact that suggestions are also helpful while the patient is “awake” (not in trance). He names his new treatment “psychotherapy”, which means, in his understanding, “healing by the means of words”. Bernheim is the first to recognize the true psychological element in therapy and hypnosis. He is aware of the fact that the Doctor needs to be well intentioned in respect to his patient, and that he has to show a true interest in understanding the patient’s suffering, if psychotherapy is to be effective.
- Charcot, Breuer and Freud, at the Salpêtrière hospital, do research on hysteria patients and the effects of hypnosis on the symptoms. They practice partly in plenary sessions of medical students, with hypnotised patients, who can either be treated through hypnosis, or who show hysteric symptoms in trance. The practice of hypnosis is a profoundly authoritarian one. Freud later on considers that the initial symptoms of hypnosis show themselves in other terms (“migration” of symptoms). He becomes thoroughly sceptical of the therapeutic value of hypnosis, and gives up this kind of treatment after a few years. With Freud’s scepticism, the practice of hypnosis is hence widely rejected in the therapeutic and analytical community.
- Milton H. Erickson grew up in a modest farmer’s family, in Lowell, Wisconsin. At school age he was diagnosed dyslexia, arrhythmia and colour blindness. When he was 17 years old, he contracted a particularly severe form of polio, which left him entirely paralysed for many months. During this particularly painful time, Erickson’s only distraction was to observe his many siblings, analyze their non-verbal and para-verbal language, and their congruence with their words. He characterized many of his experiences of this time as highly hypnotic or auto-hypnotic. And it was through the observation of his baby sister who started crawling and walking that he could remember some of his body’s memories. Many of his therapeutic interventions (metaphors, ordeals…) draw on these early experiences and his youth is certainly one of the keys to the understanding of his approach in therapy. Later, Erickson became an avid learner as a medical student. When he worked in the psychiatric ward, his challenge was to reconstruct the patient’s records just from observing them, and only once imagined the origins of their current state of illness did he verify with the records. Erickson’s diagnosis is considered as being particularly precise and accurate. Although Erickson has substantially contributed to the renewal of therapy, the elaboration of brief therapy as well as family therapy, he never theorized much about his work but took throughout his practice an entirely empirical approach. For Erickson, the unconscious mind is separate from the conscious mind and has its own ways and abilities to generate new solutions to problems. It is the therapist’s task to be able to address the unconscious mind by means of particularly subtle and specific interventions.
- Stage hypnosis impresses still a large public, and contributes to a biased vision of hypnosis. It is based on the former authoritarian way of practice. However, very few individuals are as highly suggestible as to suit demonstration of stage hypnosis. The strategy of a hypnotist working on stage is to create a « yes set »: starting with a few very easy exercises, the public comes to accept the first suggestions of hypnosis, which is the premise for further hypnotisability. Therapeutic hypnosis is based on an entirely different paradigm, most frequently in a face to face setting, with all the necessary caution that any serious therapist would consider to be necessary.
- One of the first stage hypnosis exercises is the following one: Stand next to the wall, in a perpendicular position (side facing the wall) about 20 cm away. With a tightened up arm, and the back of your fist against the wall, push against it, with as much strengths as possible, for at least 2 minutes. Stand back from the wall, and just let your arm move. What can you observe? NB: this has nothing to do with hypnosis, it is rather a physical phenomenon labelled as hypnosis the first step to a « yes – set ».
- Identify a dilemma of choice. Close your eyes and find a term, a representation that suits each part of the dilemma. Hold your two cupped hands in front of you, and lay each representation of the dilemma in one of the cups. Observe what happens to your hands. Hypnosis does not need to happen with a deep transe.
- Relatively few individuals are highly suggestible, which is a pre-condition of hypnotizability.
- The constructivist approach is linked to the phenomenological approach in philosophy. For Erickson, it is the therapist’s ability to truly understand the patient’s reality that will contribute to the success of therapy. As such, the ontological reality does not exist, and a theory (like psychoanalysis) are only valid if they are operative enough to help the patient to create a new, more helpful understanding of the phenomena he or she is subject to. It is through this phenomenological lens that apply to the quotes in the following slides.
- Maturana : Autopoiesis : living systems are autonomous systems that are both endogenously controlled and self-organizing : “ An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.” 1972, see in Maturana, Varela, 1980 Autopoiesis and cognition, the Realization of the Living Varela: Maturana’s student. Human cognition can only be understood in terms of the enactive structures in which they arise, namely the body (as a biological system and as personally, phenomenologically experienced) and the physical world in which the body interacts.
- Stand in an upright position. While your body should stay straight, move up your arm in a horizontal position, on your side (not in front). Move your arm slowly towards your back, keeping it straight, as far behind as possible. Check which angle (your arm stretched out and moved back, compared to your straight body) you are able to achieve. Bring your arm slowly back alongside your body. Close your eyes, and do the same exercise again, but without moving your arm. Your arm stays alongside your body, while you try, in your mind, to imagine how your stretched out arm reaches still further behind than you did in reality, just before. Then, still in thoughts, bring your arm again down, along your body. Do this mental training again, twice, each time going a bit further. Open your eyes, and do the same exercise again, with your arms moving. Notice the difference in the achieved angle.
- Focusing, by Eugene T. Gendlin “ The felt sense” E. T. Gendlin. Focusing. Second edition, Bantam Books, 1982. ISBN 0-553-27833-9.
- Rossi technique