2023-06-25 06:12:00
Trance is a particular state of consciousness during which the individual experiences a feeling of being out of step with reality. It manifests itself in different circumstances, including moments of amazement, hysteria, euphoria or even artistic creation. In the 18th century, the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer was the first to use trance for therapeutic purposes. He postulated the existence of an animal magnetic fluid transmissible from one individual to another, the circulation of which, once disturbed, was likely to trigger disease. According to him, this fluid might be channeled and used by a magnetizer to induce hysterical trances following which the sick would be cured.
The fluid to which Mesmer referred does not exist. Nevertheless, the first steps of medical hypnosis are attributed to the German doctor. In a book of which he is the co-author, Antoine Bioy, professor at the University of Paris 8, scientific director of the Ipnosia center dedicated to training and study in hypnosis, specifies the personality and the “method” of this precursor: “Mesmer is described as a rigid personality, today one would say paranoid, who exerts a strong dominance over his patients: “You don’t talk, you don’t say anything, you don’t move, you close your eyes and now you sleep, I want it””. Under the weight of the religious beliefs of the time, the hypnosis sessions were assimilated, according to Professor Bioy, to “secular exorcisms performed by a scientist”.
Hypnosis, tricks and tricks
In show hypnosis, the highly directive behavior of the hypnotist is close to the domination exercised by Mesmer over his patients. Moreover, one of the most famous artists today, Quebecer Éric Normandin chose Messmer as his stage name. Show hypnosis relies both on suggestion, like therapeutic hypnosis, and on tricks and tricks. It is a question of selecting from the public, by means of a few suggestibility tests, the most easily hypnotizable spectators – 2 to 5% of the population. In addition, the first volunteer(s) invited to go on stage are companions. The hypnotist artist plays on mimicry: “When participants have seen what is expected of them, they tend to replicate it”. He himself took part in a report on the program Envoyé Spécial to decipher a live performance by Messmer. He noticed very quickly that one of the people invited on stage among nine others was an actor. “He was the only one who added information. However, in hypnosis, such behavior is impossible because the individual is no longer in logical reasoning.”
The film of an assault
The directive nature of stage hypnosis and the way in which the trance state is usually represented in works of fiction maintains in many the belief that the hypnotist possesses a power which he can use in order to exert hold over others. This tenacious prejudice is not in tune with the scientific dimension of medical hypnosis and hypnotherapy. Certainly, in a state of hypnosis, subjects see their cognitive abilities – reasoning, critical sense, etc. – decrease and their suggestibility increases. However, except in exceptional cases linked for example to an amorous grip, the hypnotic state never dispossessed of the consciousness of what is said and produced around oneself nor of one’s faculties of reaction to suggestions to which one would not adhere.
Since the publications of American psychiatrist Milton Erickson in the 1930s, therapeutic hypnosis has become less directive. Schematically and almost caricaturally, it is attributed two main categories of therapeutic indications: the sphere of certain psychic disorders and that of various somatic manifestations. The first includes depression, stress, anxiety, phobias, eating disorders, sleep disorders, drug and alcohol addictions and post-traumatic stress. In the case of depression, for example, hypnosis seems to have a favorable impact on secondary depression, that is to say consecutive to another pathology. Thus, work shows that a notable improvement can be obtained in cancer patients whose depressive state might initially be qualified as moderate intensity.
In the treatment of phobias, the interest of hypnosis seems demonstrated, as well as in that of bulimia. One indication for which the effectiveness of hypnosis seems well established is post-traumatic stress. Let’s take the example of caring for someone who has been the victim of a physical assault. A crucial but eminently destabilizing and anxiety-provoking therapeutic stage for him is the confrontation with the memory of the event experienced. Hypnosis should enable him to extract himself from his position as an actor in the “movie” of his aggression to become a spectator. In this way, his feelings are put at a distance and, with the help of the therapist, he will be able to work more easily on his relationship to anxiety, calm the emotions that assail him and return to the memory of his aggression as he really lived it. “Hypnosis makes it much easier to change points of view within therapeutic work than if it were carried out in an ordinary state of consciousness. Under hypnosis, the traumatic event is relived in the present, which accelerates its integration, while, in a “normal” state of consciousness, the traumatic scene can be recounted as it took place but without being completely relived, if it is only following several narrations.”
And salle d’op
Second facet of therapeutic hypnosis: medical hypnosis, used as a complementary approach in the management of various conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, degenerative pathologies – especially rheumatic -, cancer, chronic back pain or even autoimmune diseases. Managing pain, stress and anxiety is therefore a priority.
Take the case of pain. The therapist will play on attention, in connection with memory and emotions. Concretely, he can ask the patient to be attentive to the way in which the pain that torments him expresses himself, but also to “seek” other bodily sensations. So that he becomes aware that besides the parts of his body on which he focuses his attention because they are painful, others are not. If the patient wants to be relieved, it is essential that he internalizes what the absence of pain is, a necessary condition for the hypnotherapist to be able to work with him to soothe his pain in the body areas from which it emanates. “The suffering patient tends to consider that his body is no longer really his own, that he is his enemy. He has to reclaim it. What does hypnosis help?“Nevertheless, while the results are generally conclusive in acute pain, they are more uncertain in chronic pain.
Another medical field in which hypnosis is of interest is that of anesthesiology. Since the so-called hypnosedation technique was initiated in 1992 by Professor Marie-Élisabeth Faymonville, anesthesiologist at the University Hospital of Liège, thousands of patients throughout the world have undergone surgical procedures under local anesthesia that traditionally require general anesthesia. Indeed, hypnosedation combines Ericksonian hypnosis with intravenous sedation during which the patient remains conscious. The method, to which local anesthesia is added, is applicable to different types of surgical procedures, in particular full face lifts, the implantation of breast prostheses or even operations on the thyroid or the nose. Through his suggestions and metaphors, the anesthetist tries to accompany the patient in a pleasant experience that he previously said he wanted to relive. A holiday in the mountains, for example. In this way, his mind is kept away from surgical procedures. With the advantage of avoiding the risks associated with general anesthesia, of being able to eat and drink as soon as the operation is over, of being authorized to leave the hospital most often the same day, of feeling less postoperative pain or to recover faster.
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