Placebo, Hypnosis and Healing
By Eric Greenleaf PhD

Hypnosis and hypnotherapy have long been thought of as placebo treatment options. In the narrow sense , that is to say physically inert substances or physically neutral interventions or manipulations which, nevertheless, effect the patient in positive ways. The classic “sugar pill” is one such placebo, “a mother’s kiss ” another famous example of healing without biological or physico-chemical substances entering the body.

A more medically correct and also modern definition of placebo attests that the placebo effect is a major part of all phychological and medical interventions that help patients heal . As Kirmayer says Journal of Mind Body Regulation 2011, 1, #3 “Placebo responses may be understood as social phenomena that depend on embodied experience, socially distributed or embedded knowledge, and situated practice.”  In this sense, placebo refers to a healing social situation, not to a chemical compound.

What does this imply? Well, we know that we can feel better with more responsive and compassionate medical care. We know too that hypnotic rapport, the relationship with the hypnotherapist , is of the essence of hypnotic effectiveness with patients. We know, as with hypnotherapy , that much of healing is outside of conscious control and awareness .

In the social context of healing, or the interpersonal “container” of hypnotic therapy , our own brain, though affected, is not the agent of change; nor, is our therapeutic “technique” the healing item. Rather, placebo effects – measurable, recognizable , brain and body effects of healing – result from the unselfconscious rituals of psychotherapeutic and medicinal practices. These practices are metaphorical, narrative and persuasive.

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Research shows both that metaphors emerge from bodily experience and that metaphor and ritual and persuasive speech and expectation change and affect bodily experience, action and thought . When we go to a dance, we dress the part , expect to dance and mentally go over the steps. We prepare to enjoy ourselves . When we are troubled or ill , we expect individual concern and caring treatment for our pains and methods to relieve our pains and resolve the ills we suffer, physical or emotional .

In the common practices of hypnosis there are situated practices which ritually invite trance states , persuasive speech to stimulate healing and change , and appeals to experience, both embodied and embedded , as well as unconscious to effect healing in the patient. As with the ancient dream incubation practices of Asclepian Athens, so in modern hypnotic practice, the patient is led through a ritual, allowed to rest peacefully , and encouraged to reassess and rearrange experience to bring on change, recovery and growth . With good placebo outcomes come self-value and approval – the healthier person esteems their own life more easily than does the troubled one. As a hypnotherapy patient of mine wrote, “Thank you again for what-ever-the-hell-it-is that you do – as I have benefited greatly.  Most notably in my improved perception of self .”

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The “whatever” is hypnotic conversation, hard to grasp consciously because its meanings are distributed through relationships; metaphorical and allusive , so, tough to pin down as “technique.” The benefit is clear; the means are ritualized, murky . And, without discussion of “self,” the treatment eventuates in improved self-valuation.  A placebo without sugar pills or sugar-coating can help with all manner of therapeutic and medical goals.