The International journal of clinical and experimental hypnosis
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Int J Clin Exp Hypn · Jan 1998
Case ReportsHypnotic pain control: some theoretical and practical issues.
Pain management programs assist patients to use their behavioral and cognitive skills for the purpose of rendering their experience of pain as more tolerable in some way. Hypnotic procedures may be included in this perspective. Thus, hypnosis may be best conceived as a set of skills to be deployed by the individual rather than as a state. ⋯ In this article, the authors present a minimal and atheoretical definition of hypnosis, and they list the basic properties of hypnosis that may be used in the treatment of pain. For a number of reasons, it is suggested that undertaking hypnosis as though the individual were indeed being placed into a special trance state may in some cases promote an effective outcome. However, it should be acknowledged that there may be instances when the relevant skills may be more effectively engaged at the expense of a strict special trance state by targeting the specific skills that are to be used for therapeutic benefit.
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Int J Clin Exp Hypn · Oct 1997
Review Historical ArticleHypnotic control of pain: historical perspectives and future prospects.
Hypnotic analgesia has occupied a pivotal place in experimental and clinical hypnosis. It emerged early in the 19th century when effective clinical techniques for pain management had not yet developed, and the relief of pain and suffering had not even become a well-defined social goal. Its acceptance was further complicated by political struggles surrounding the humanitarian transformation of medicine during this era as well as a redefinition of the physician-patient relationship that wrested control from the patient. ⋯ While the evidence for the powerful effects of suggestion and related variables has often been observed and reported in nonhypnotic contexts, their relationship to hypnotic phenomena has often not been appreciated. Since the mid-20th century, scientific information about hypnotic analgesia has grown substantially and has had significant influence on strategies for acute and chronic pain management. If recent calls for its wider application in pain management are to succeed, it will require additional data from clinical populations and a balanced and scientifically prudent approach by its advocates.
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Int J Clin Exp Hypn · Jan 1996
ReviewHypnosis treatment of clinical pain: understanding why hypnosis is useful.
Clinical and experimental research literature indicates hypnosis is very useful for severe and persistent pain, yet reviews suggest hypnosis is not widely used. To encourage more widespread clinical application, the author reviews recent controlled clinical studies in which hypnosis compares favorably with other interventions; links advances in understanding endogenous pain modulation to a neurophysiologic view of hypnosis and hypnoanalgesia; relates the neurophysiology of hypnoanalgesia to management of chronic pain; challenges the view that hypnotic pain control is only for the highly hypnotizable patient; and raises issues about how people learn to control pain with hypnosis. Training in hypnotic analgesia may usefully enhance nervous system inhibitory processes that attenuate pain.
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Int J Clin Exp Hypn · Jan 1994
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialLaser-induced pain-related brain potentials and sensory pain ratings in high and low hypnotizable subjects during hypnotic suggestions of relaxation, dissociated imagery, focused analgesia, and placebo.
Pain reports and amplitudes of painful argon laser-induced brain potentials were obtained for 10 high and 10 low hypnotizable volunteers following placebo and a randomized sequence of four hypnotically induced conditions of (a) neutral hypnosis, (b) deep relaxation, (c) pleasant dissociated "out of body" imagery, and (d) focused analgesia of the hand. Both high and low hypnotizable subjects exhibited significant reductions of reported pain during conditions of neutral hypnosis, relaxation, dissociated imagery, and focused analgesia. ⋯ Only the high hypnotizable group showed significant reductions in amplitudes when the data were recalculated to reflect relative changes compared to the average amplitude of the pre- and postconditions to compensate for a possible habituation effect indicated by the significantly lowered amplitudes in the posthypnotic condition. The results are discussed in light of a number of hypotheses concerning mechanisms of hypnotic analgesia.
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Int J Clin Exp Hypn · Oct 1993
The effects of direct versus indirect hypnotic suggestion on pain in a cold pressor task.
Past studies have investigated the usefulness of hypnosis in pain reduction. Although hypnotic analgesia has been found to be effective, it is generally only those subjects who are highly susceptible to hypnosis who benefit. Some experimenters have found that even low-susceptible subjects can use hypnotic analgesia, if the hypnotic induction uses indirect rather than direct hypnotic suggestions. ⋯ Findings suggest that high susceptibles experience greater pain reduction than do low susceptibles. However, no significant differences were found between the pain reduction in the direct versus the indirect hypnotic suggestion groups. Possible explanations for this lack of differences are discussed.