Hypnosis, suggestion, and placebo in the reduction of experimental pain

Article Abstract:

The effects of hypnotic and placebo treatments upon laboratory-produced pain were compared in a group of volunteers. Two studies were conducted to assess the effects of three procedures in reducing pain: hypnosis, suggestion, and placebos. Pain was experimentally induced by exerting pressure on the index and middle finger of each subject. The first study used 48 men and 48 women college students who had been previously scored and rated on their susceptibility to hypnosis; they were classified as high or low hypnotizable subjects. The subjects were given either hypnotic analgesia or a placebo. Both methods were equally ineffective in controlling pain in the low hypnotizable subjects. The hypnotic analgesia proved to be much more effective than the placebo treatment in the highly suggestible individuals. The second experiment repeated this trial with a similar group of 44 male and 46 female students, but with the addition of nonhypnotic suggestion, which was used as an analgesia. All of the subjects reported more pain reduction with the nonhypnotic suggestion than with the placebo analgesia. This effect of nonhypnotic suggestion was comparable to that experienced by the subjects who were highly susceptible to hypnotic analgesia when hypnosis was used. Discrepancies were found in both studies regarding the amount of pain anticipated and the actual amount of pain experienced by each subject. The results of the second study are contrary to hypotheses that have asserted that response expectancies are controlled by the method of pain control that is used. In this second experiment, all of the subjects overestimated the intensity of pain reduction for the placebo method. Similar expectations were also evident among both high and low hypnotizables for the level of pain reduction that the hypnotic treatment would provide. It was concluded that response expectancies do not influence the level of pain that is experienced as was previously believed. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

Pain, Placebos, Mental suggestion, Autosuggestion

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Detection of simulated hypnotic amnesia

Article Abstract:

There are currently no effective methods for distinguishing between individuals who have amnesia and those who are merely simulating amnesia. This is often problematic in cases of violent crime, where the defendant may claim memory loss when it is to his advantage to do so. Previous research in this area has involved testing memory-impaired individuals and comparing them with subjects who are instructed to feign memory loss. This study has used subjects who were rated either highly hypnotizable or difficult to hypnotize. They were instructed under hypnosis to forget a list of words which they had already committed to memory. A portion of this group was not hypnotized, but instructed to pretend to not be able to remember. The subjects were classified as highly hypnotizable nonsimulators, high-, and low-hypnotizable simulators of hypnosis. The simulators had higher scores in recall and recognition amnesia compared with the nonsimulators. In particular, the results indicated that those who feigned memory loss recalled much less than would be expected by chance when compared with the nonsimulators. Conversely, the performance of the hypnotically amnesic subjects recalled more than expected by pure chance. No statistically significant differences were noted between the low- and high-hypnotizable subjects in any of the memory tasks. The consistent below-chance scores of the simulators may allow a means of detecting individuals who are only pretending to have a memory loss. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

Psychological aspects, Measurement, Testing, Memory, Recollection (Psychology), Amnesia, Recall (Memory), Hypnotic susceptibility, Simulated patients, Patient simulation

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Does counterpain imagery mediate hypnotic analgesia?

Article Abstract:

A study of 66 persons with high hypnotic susceptibility subjected to a baseline pain stimulus and two counterbalanced hypnotic analgesia conditions revealed the same moderate average pain reduction in both the conditions as compared to the pain rated in the baseline conditions. In high hypnotizable subjects, hypnotic analgesia proscribing counterpain imagery initiated average pain decline levels nearly identical to those evoked by the hypnotic analgesia that generated such imagery.

Analgesia

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