Contemporary hypnosis : the journal of the British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis最新文献

This study compared responses to a deafness suggestion amongst subjects administered one of three conditions: hypnosis and suggestion (i.e. reals), simulating instructions (i.e. simulators), or the suggestion alone without hypnosis (i.e. cognitives). Reals and simulators were administered a hypnotic induction, followed by a unilateral, left-ear deafness suggestion and the cognitive group was given the unilateral deafness suggestion without a hypnotic induction. All subjects were administered the Stenger Test of Audition (Stenger, 1907) during the deafness trial, and again on a final post-deafness trial. The Stenger Test is designed to assess the degree and veracity of deafness reports. Reported changes in deafness levels were indistinguishable amongst high-reals, low-cognitives and high-cognitives; all three of these groups reported lower levels of deafness compared to the simulating group. The latter demonstrated a pattern of response consistent with faking deafness, a response for which the Stenger Test is designed to measure. The findings lend support to the hypothesis that deafness does not uniquely characterize highly suggestible hypnotized subjects. In addition, the differences between reals and simulators reflect contextual demands on real subjects to report their deafness experience accurately. Copyright © 2004 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

This is a study of a case of post-herpetic neuralgia treated successfully with the use of self-hypnosis and client generated imagery in three sessions, the total treatment time being two hours. Paramount in the resolution was an acceptance of the symptom. Copyright © 2004 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

This study investigated the relationship between reported out-of-body experiences, certain psychological variables and personality characteristics. One hundred and sixty-seven participants completed a series of questionnaires to investigate differences amongst those participants reporting out-of-body experiences and those who were classified as believers or non-believers on: fantasy proneness, paranormal beliefs, psychological absorption, psychological association, somatoform dissociation, certain personality characteristics and OBE experience sensations. The findings revealed that experients were more fantasy prone, higher in their belief in the paranormal and displayed greater somatoform dissociation. Psychological absorption and dissociation were higher for believers than for either experients or non-believers and in relation to experients, fantasy proneness, paranormal beliefs and the personality dimensions of institution and feeling were significantly related, as were psychological absorption, psychological dissociation and somatoform dissociation. Copyright © 2004 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

Due to severe pain and anxiety in burn patients, especially in procedures such as physiotherapy, and because of the adverse effects of pain on the outcome of physiotherapy, application of adjunctive methods are necessary for achieving pain relief. Right now, no certain method of pain reduction is available. This study evaluated the efficacy of hypnotherapy in reducing pain and anxiety in burn patients through a randomized clinical trial. From amongst women hospitalized in a burn unit, 44 patients were selected and divided into intervention and control groups. The intervention group underwent four hypnotherapy sessions and the control group remained without any hypnotherapy intervention. Procedural pain and anxiety related to physiotherapy were evaluated with Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) contemporaneously in both groups. The degree of pain and anxiety caused by physiotherapy decreased significantly in the intervention group, as compared to the control group (P < 0.001). Hypnosis is recommended as a complementary method in burns physiotherapy. Copyright © 2004 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

Since conversion disorder was thoroughly described by Pierre Janet psychiatric findings have traditionally been the only available source of contribution to the clarification of the phenomena. Some recent cognitive approaches though, have tried to explain conversion paralysis in terms of a disconnection phenomenon supposedly causative of degeneration in motor information processes. These approaches though relevant are purely theoretical, and only in recent years has neurological research provided sufficient evidence to commence developing a neuropsychological theory of conversion paralysis. Defined cortical regions like the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) have been found to be related to conversion and hypnotic paralysis, while on the other hand, psychological evidence linking hypnotizability and conversion has also emerged. This paper attempts to relate some neurological and psychological evidence in a first step towards a general theory of conversion paralysis. Copyright © 2005 British Society of Experimental & Clinical Hypnosis. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

From 444 studies published until 2002 that investigated the efficacy of hypnosis, 57 randomized clinical studies were selected that compared patients treated exclusively by hypnosis to an untreated control group (or to a group of patients treated by conventional medical procedures). The 57 studies were integrated into a meta-analysis that yielded a weighted average post-treatment effect size of d = 0.56 (medium effect size). For hypnotic treatment of ICD-10 codable disorders (32 studies) the calculation of the weighted mean effect size resulted in d = 0.63. These estimates are conservative since all variables of a given study were used. Most of the studies employed methods of the classic approach to hypnosis. In order to obtain an estimate to which extent non-clinical factors (design-quality, way of comparison of dependent variables) have an influence on the effect sizes, effect sizes were computed for all studies of the original 444 studies that reported the necessary statistical information (N = 133). For those studies with an average effect size of d = 1.07 a massive influence of non-clinical factors was demonstrated with a range from d = 0.56 for randomized studies with group comparisons to d = 2.29 for non-randomized studies using pre-post-comparisons. Out of the 57 randomized studies, only 6 reported numerical values for the correlation between hypnotic suggestibility and treatment outcome with a mean correlation of r = 0.44. Copyright © 2003 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis