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Hypnosis
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In this episode, Megan and Frank examine hypnosis. What evidence is there that hypnosis is a real phenomenon, and why does hypnosis have a dubious reputation? Does hypnosis alleviate pain, or just mask it? What is the nature of hypnotic consciousness? And does hypnosis prove there’s no true self? Thinkers discussed include: William James, Ernest and Josephine Hilgard, Derek Parfit, Sigmund Freud, and Tim Bayne.
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Hosts' Websites:
Email: [email protected]
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Bibliography:
Uncovering the new science of clinical hypnosis
The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis
Hypnosis and Conscious States: The Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective
Hypnosis to quit smoking: What to know
Neural functional correlates of hypnosis and hypnoanalgesia: Role of the cingulate cortex
Hypnotic Suggestion and the Modulation of Stroop Interference
Hypnosis in the Relief of Pain
Mary Haight, Hypnosis and the Philosophy of Mind
Hypnosis in History - American Hypnosis Association
Hidden observer - Oxford Reference
Hidden Observer APA Dictionary
The split brain: A tale of two halves | Nature
Derek Parfit. Here's why he mattered. | Vox
Tim Bayne, Hypnosis and the unity of consciousness
Tim Bayne - The Unity of Consciousness | Oxford Academic (oup.com)
Bilingual “I Hear a Pickle/ Oigo Un Pepinello” (kidizen.com)
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Cover Artwork by Logan Fritts
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Transcript
Introduction to Hypnosis and Episode Overview
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Philosophy on the Fringes, a podcast that explores the philosophical dimensions of the strange and the mundane. We are your hosts, Megan Fritz and Frank Cabrera. On today's episode, we're talking about hypnosis. Does hypnosis alleviate pain or just mask it? What's the nature of hypnotic consciousness? And does hypnosis prove there's no true self?
Personal Updates and New Projects
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome back to the show. We have finally returned after a almost exactly four month hiatus. I don't know if you guys could hear that. ah That baby just burped in the background. um She is in fact the reason for the hiatus, as many of you know. um We had a baby and we just kind of wanted to give ourselves the summer to adjust to that um and work on some other stuff. And we were also working on something else, which we're actually really super excited for.
00:01:08
Speaker
um Frank and I, actually Frank, do you want to tell them? Well, we have just signed a contract with Audible, that's the audiobook arm of Amazon, to produce six episodes of a lecture series entitled From Aliens to Bigfoot, A Philosopher's Guide to the Strange, which which is inspired by our podcast. And it's Audible in, Audible and the Great Courses. Right, they partner with the Great Courses, the teaching company,
00:01:34
Speaker
So we're really excited about that. It's going to be six episodes. Four of them are going to be based on episodes we've already done. And then there's going to be two ah episodes that are entirely new material. It will be free to listen to when it comes out, which I think will probably be sometime next summer. That's what I said.
00:01:51
Speaker
And so it'll be free to listen to, which is great. You don't have to pay for it like most things on Audible. So we're really hoping that a lot of you can join us when those drop. So that's another thing that we have been working on this summer and another reason why it's taken us four months to get you new content. But here we are
Understanding Hypnosis: Definitions and Misconceptions
00:02:08
Speaker
today. We are talking about hypnosis.
00:02:10
Speaker
So we chose hypnosis because um it's a very, I want to say like aesthetically strange thing. Like when you think of hypnosis, when you think of someone being hypnotized, at least and unless you are like a hypnotizer or someone in the medical field, you probably Imagine a person sitting on a chair in front of another person who's also sitting in front sitting on a chair and they're dangling a little stopwatch ah in front of the other person's face and telling them that they're going to start feeling really sleepy. And suddenly they have zombified the person who's been watching the stopwatch move back and forth then and they're at their beck and call.
00:02:50
Speaker
um They have created a little zombie for them to control. ah So hypnosis sounds scary, weird. it It seems strange when it's portrayed in movies. But Frank, you're telling me that that's not really what hypnosis is. Yeah. So hypnosis seems like it's the kind of like a magic trick almost the hypnotist.
00:03:08
Speaker
convert someone into into a zombie gets them to do weird things and you know you pay money to see this at the club or whatever. ah But ah practicing hypnotists and hypnotherapists, I think they like to distinguish between what's called stage hypnosis, the thing you just described, and what we might call medical or or clinical hypnosis. So hypnosis seemed like this is weird thing that that's only kind of like a magic trick But actually, it's something that is studied by ah medical practitioners, it's studied by psychologists. It's taken pretty seriously by people in various academic communities. I was actually surprised to learn this. I had this kind of prejudiced view of hypnosis that is just sort of a magic trick, like a fun thing you go see or whatever. But it's actually something that's taken very seriously by medical communities.
00:03:53
Speaker
I like how you said at the club. The club, you know, like the comedy club, ah the hypnosis club. I thought you meant like a dance club or some weird dance club. No, I didn't go to the club like Ricky Riccardo would to go to. Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of club. So the American Psychological Association has an entry on hypnosis, which they define as just a state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion.
00:04:22
Speaker
Which is, like you said, a really watered down version of what we normally think of. it's I mean, it's not completely unrelated. the People who are hypnotized or in a state of hypnosis do have an ah enhanced capacity for response to suggestion, but they're not like a little zombie that the hypnotherapist can just make them do whatever they want them to do. Yeah, that's right. And in addition to those other features you just mentioned, in a state of hypnosis, there's also heightened capacity for imagination and like somewhat of a loss of critical thinking, sometimes called executive function in in these discussions. And that's also how ah various practitioners of hypnosis think of this. So I found one
00:05:03
Speaker
a hypnosis clinic in Toronto called the Morpheus Clinic. That is an epic name. yeah I just sort of clicked on it at random. I'm not sure how it was linked there. And they have a nice FAQ on their website. And one other their question is, what happens during hypnosis? And here's how they describe it. If you've ever been absorbed in a good book or a lecture, then you've experienced a light state of hypnosis. It feels relaxed, inwardly focused, and positive. It feels like you're a kid who's listening to his or her favorite storyteller. That's the right feeling.
00:05:31
Speaker
This is sometimes compared to meditation or daydreaming or driving. Sometimes when you're driving, you sort of zone out like you're still driving. You're not in danger, but you're thinking about something. You're not directly paying attention to the road in a sense, but you're not like not paying attention. You're in into this kind of like trance like state. You're on ah autopilot almost.
00:05:51
Speaker
So to me, this kind of sounds like, and sorry if there's any young kids listening to this, but to me, this kind of sounds like you're like psyching yourself into like getting stoned. Like that's kind of how this reads to me. I'm not sure it's that extreme. I guess we should have gotten hypnotized for this for this episode. That would have been awesome. We didn't have time. We didn't have time. ah But Megan, you actually have some experience with with hypnosis, I guess.
Megan's Hypnobirthing Experience
00:06:14
Speaker
you and You were engaged in some practice called hypnobirthing. So when you were pregnant and you were you know getting ready to give birth. You were you were doing something called hypnobirthing. I've never quite learned what it was. Do you want to tell me now and the listeners what this is? Yeah, sure. um I also never quite learned what it was. Yeah, so basically when I was
00:06:36
Speaker
Pregnant for a variety of medical reasons not just for fun. I I wanted to try to give birth without pain medication and so to do this what I Studied I guess you could say I studied was a technique of pain, not pain reduction, but like can I don't want to say pain control either. kind it's it's a It's a method of being able to bear more pain and and they call this hypnobirthing or I guess there's a couple of different names for it, but usually it's referred to as hypnobirthing.
00:07:07
Speaker
And basically what it is, is it's it's learning to kind of put yourself into a trance or at least a a state where you're able to completely tune out everything that's happening outside of you to the extent that you like will lose track of time. You won't hear people talking even if they're kind of talking right in front of you. And and and basically you do this by just practicing a bunch of mindfulness techniques over and over and over every single day.
00:07:36
Speaker
so um so So I did this, I trained for it. um I think to some extent I was successful during labor. it it it It got me through, but I'm not sure that I felt in that moment like a kid listening to her favorite storyteller. I didn't feel relaxed, but I did feel extremely inwardly focused.
00:08:01
Speaker
So yeah you can you give the listeners like an example of what are called but the hypnotic induction? Like what sorts of things does the hypnotist say to get you to be in this kind of trance like state? So they'll coach you through things like make sure make sure you're relaxing your eyes. If you open your eyes, they'll say, oh, no, no, don't don't do that. Keep them closed. Relax the muscles. Now let this kind of warm water of relaxation run down to your toes, through your feet, into your toes.
00:08:31
Speaker
So they're kind of giving you like a mental image, but it's an image that needs to be able to catch like all five of your senses. So you can really engage all of your senses on focusing on this picture that they're giving you. And it's normally a picture of something happening ah inside your body because the point is to turn inward and tune out the outside world.
00:08:53
Speaker
I see. And then once you're in that state, you're more liable to you're more suggestible is is the idea because you're so relaxed and more open to new perspectives or something like that. That's what they say. I have to say um that my only experience with this, which was in fact during childbirth, I do not know if I was open to suggestion more because no one was suggesting anything to yeah me, obviously. But maybe I was. Who knows? Well, yeah, that that brings up an important point that it is not the case that everyone can be hypnotized. So um according to what I've read is something like only 10 to 15 percent of healthy, alert individuals can be hypnotized.
00:09:30
Speaker
um So that that's still ah yeah a fairly interesting, significant
Hypnosis and Consciousness: Susceptibility and Effects
00:09:34
Speaker
number. So it's it's not a phenomenon that occurs for everybody, but it occurs for an appreciable amount of people. So I don't have a question for you on this, Frank. Do you think it would make sense to think of hypnosis as like coming in degrees?
00:09:50
Speaker
Because if only 10% to 15% of people can really reach like the actual state of hypnosis, yet say things like hypnobirthing or hypnosis for as a kind of like analgesic, um which is used in the medical world, that those seem to work for more than 10% of the population. Maybe these people aren't fully hypnotized, but maybe there's some level of hypnosis that they reach that is doing something for them.
00:10:16
Speaker
I think that's probably right. And in some of my research, I saw a different distinction. So there's in some of the studies, they'd have people that were classified as highly suggestible, and those are that were classified as less highly suggestible. So I think i think there are different degrees of of hypnosis. So some people are more more likely to be able to do it, and some people are somewhere in the middle, and maybe some people not at all. So in the in the book that I got this number from, which by the way is called ah Hypnosis and conscious states the cognitive neuroscience perspective published with ah Oxford University Press. So they say that for 10 to 15% of healthy, alert individuals, they're able to to demonstrate profound alterations in many aspects of their conscious experience through these kinds of hypnotic induction. So maybe that's just like the most extreme kind of hypnosis, but maybe so everyone to some degree is is hypnotizable. I wonder if it has, like, if your personality, when you're un-hypnotized, has me bearing on how successful... Yeah. Maybe they're really cynical and you just sort of can't take the the hypnotic induction seriously. Like, you just can't pay attention. You can't play along. Maybe that ah kind of gets in the way. Yeah. I felt like that during reading the this hypnobirthing book, I was like, this is ridiculous. And then I was like, wait, no, I have to be a little bit more credulous or else this isn't gonna work. Yeah.
00:11:32
Speaker
So you've already mentioned that it's used for medical purposes. or The primary use of hypnosis is for medical purposes. like right So we're putting aside like ah stage hypnosis. So it's used primarily to as a kind of supplement to anesthesia as it as an analgesic, as you mentioned, for pain relief, ah stress and anxiety, sometimes phobias, insomnia. I saw one study that showed that suggested it could be used to treat hot flashes during menopause. ah Another prominent one is that it's sometimes thought to be able to help people quit smoking. ah So, yeah, any thoughts about these sorts of things, Megan?
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah, so you mentioned it's used um as a supplementary anesthetic and as ah as an analgesia, supplementary being ah the primary word here, because at at least for me, and I have read for most people, ah this kind of hypnotic induction does not take away pain.
00:12:32
Speaker
And I want to say it doesn't it doest really like lessen pain at all, but what it really does, I think, um is it changes how you respond to it. So rather than being like, oh, my pain is reduced, you might you might think, well, I'm still feeling the same things, but I don't feel the need to push back, to run away from it, to fight back against it.
00:12:57
Speaker
And so in that way, you were able to kind of just like let yourself go along with at least larger amounts of pain. At least that was my experience. And I've read that this is the experience of other people who use this in yeah for pain release, as it were. So it it makes you like a be able to ignore the pain or not not care about it.
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah, well, I don't want to say not care about it, but maybe, yeah, you do lose a kind of like impetus to to push back against it. And I think that there's a neuroscientific reason behind this, right? And this the sense that hypnotic induction, at least they think, it has an effect on a particular region of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. Yes, that's right.
00:13:39
Speaker
So the anterior cingulate cortex, if I'm correct, is it is a region of the brain that's majorly responsible for modulating the subject's response to pain data from the different nerve endings of the body. This data, overly simplified, but you get this data that comes in from the nerves of your body, goes to your brain through the anterior cingulate cortex and the that that guy says, ah, yes, that's some damage. We should we should get away from this.
00:14:07
Speaker
or Or, you know, maybe it doesn't say that. Maybe it says, oh, this is this is a sensation similar to pain, but actually we need to push through it. Like maybe if you're training through a marathon or something. Anyway, it kind of interprets this data for us and as as far as I understand. And hypnosis has some kind of effect on this region of the brain. What does it do? Does it increase blood flow to it or something?
00:14:28
Speaker
So that's pretty interesting because if if that's true, if that's how it works on pain, then it's really similar to, um sorry, I'm talking about my birth so much in this episode, but another thing that I use during labor, which is laughing gas because laughing gas does the exact same thing. Did you know this, Frank? I did not.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah, it increases blood flow to the anterior cingulate cortex and it it helps you get into this kind of state um where you're like, well, you know, there's the pain, but ah here I am and I just don't really care about getting away from it quite as much as I did before.
00:15:02
Speaker
yeah This thing about pain is is important because I think this is a great way for the fans of hypnosis to push back against the skeptics. The neuroscientists have done a lot of studies like of people under hypnosis and they've you know they've done the um MRIs and looked at what parts of their brain light up and they've done a pretty good job mapping out the the neurological correlates of the hypnotic state. and yeah and A lot of times that you can see these effects in the anterior cingulate cortex that Megan mentioned. so So yeah, there is a discernible region or discernible regions in the brain that change during the hypnotic state. So it does seem to be some genuine reality to the phenomenon. So some people, skeptical so hypnosis might say, well, hold on in these kinds of, you know, ah cases of hypnosis, people are just sort of playing along. They're playing a kind of social role playing game. A lot of times we'll connect this to
00:15:55
Speaker
those studies in psychology, like the Stanley Milgram shocking experiments, you can get people when they're in a study and there's a person in a lab coat, you can get them to like behave in ways that they might not ordinarily behave. So too, in the case of hypnosis, the skeptic might say, I might say, well, they're just sort of acting. But no, there's there's evidence that the brain does change in predictable, ah uniform ways under hypnosis.
00:16:22
Speaker
Right, right. So does hypnosis work to reduce pain? Well, you might say it kind of depends what you think pain is. ah If pain is just those bodily sensations that you feel, then no. But if pain is more than that, if it's not only those sensations, but also how we feel triggered to respond to them, ah then yeah. And that might be a really that maybe that's something that should be more utilized. I don't really hear about it outside of childbirth and there's all kinds of weird stuff that goes on there. Yeah.
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah, so it seems from my research that the the use of hypnosis for pain is probably its most credible use.
Hypnosis in Pain Management and Memory Issues
00:16:55
Speaker
Some of these other ones are the evidence is a little more ambiguous. So in the on the the FAQ for the Morpheus Clinic, they they claim that you can use hypnosis to cure or to get people to quit smoking.
00:17:07
Speaker
ah i've I've seen some studies that suggest it's more or less placebo or or whatever. So for for a lot of these, the evidence is kind of ambiguous. Maybe there is something to it. It probably needs some more research. But but but when it comes to pain, there is quite a bit of empirical backing for the effectiveness of hypnosis to treat pain, at like at least as a kind of supplement. And this is this is kind of significant, I think,
00:17:31
Speaker
for present day society. So in the United States, we have this sort of opioid epidemic, right? You go to the doctor because you have some, um you you break your arm, you they sign they they prescribe you some opioids, you get addicted to those, it's terrible, right? That kind of thing. Well, it'd be great if there were other alternatives for the treatment of chronic pain that don't necessarily lead to addiction. and So you know, this is really important for that kind of So I'm really interested in the use of hypnosis to treat phobias um as some of our listeners might know. And as Frank, unfortunately, definitely knows, I have an absolutely debilitating phobia. um And I would love to be able to hypnotize my way out of it. Do do you think that that's promising, Frank? I totally support you getting hypnotized so you're not afraid of bees. yeah and I support it. Let's do it.
00:18:19
Speaker
It's worth a try, right? I mean, if it doesn't work, you know, I'm not anywhere soft. I want to mention one purported use of hypnosis that ah that i has been widely discredited. So hypnosis is not affected in recovering lost memories. And ah if you recall what we said earlier, this makes a lot of sense because when you're in the hypnotic state, you're faculties of imagination are heightened. Your mind is an open basin. Yeah. so And that's a really great way to lead to false memories. ah you go and You go in the hypnotic state, the hypnotist tells you, oh, do you remember getting abducted by aliens? And then you lead the hypnotic state and you're like, yeah, you know what? I do.
00:19:02
Speaker
ah So this is actually one one tool that some of these proponents of ah UFO abductions have used. So that this might explain something we were kind of puzzled about and ah in a previous episode. what What explains these UFO abduction reports? Well, at least part of it is explained by this this use of hypnosis by some of the UFOologists to recover lost memories, which actually led to confabulation and the creation of false memories.
00:19:31
Speaker
This is a favorite technique of Fox Mulder on the X-Files. He calls it, I think, deep memory hypnosis. yeah and And he loves using that. So that's that's a bummer for him. Yeah, totally bunk. There's one more piece of evidence for the reality of hip ah hypnosis that I wanted to mention. So I found this super duper interesting. So there's this phenomenon in attention psychology and the research on attention called the Stroup effect.
00:19:59
Speaker
So the stroup effect ah is ah it documents a phenomenon that I think we're pretty familiar with, or it'll make a lot of sense once I explain it. So suppose I have ah three words written out, ah green, red, and blue. And suppose the the that the font color matches the name of the color. So green is written in green, red is written in red, and blue is written in blue. Well, you're going to be able to name the color of the font a lot quicker than were there an incongruity in the color of the font and the name of the font.
00:20:28
Speaker
So the green were written in red and red where were written in blue and blue were written in purple. And I ask you to name the color of the font. The fact that the the name doesn't match the actual color is going to cause a delay in the processing of of the of the question. And this is a very documented phenomenon. it's its We're much quicker at reading or telling the name of the color of the font when the color matches the name of of the word. Makes a lot of sense, right?
00:20:54
Speaker
um So this is this is an effect that can actually be diminished under hypnosis. So what happens? Well, the person is hypnotized and there's a kind of post-hypnotic suggestion that the the words that they're about to see are meaningless, all right? So the words about to see are meaningless. These words are meaningless. It doesn't actually say green. And then after the suggestions, you ask the person, to tell, say, the color of the font, ah that the stroup effect goes away. So this is one way of ah eliminating this this very highly documented effect under under hypnosis. You tell the person, under hypnosis, the words are meaningless, and they read them as meaningless, and then the delay in processing goes goes away. So this also seems to suggest that there is really something to this, to hypnosis, that it is a genuine reality, because it can eliminate a kind of thing that is observed in in human beings. So this only works without like one to 2% of people I've read. So not everyone can be hypnotized in such a way that the stroup effect goes away, but it is possible.
00:21:57
Speaker
When you were telling me about this, I find this really interesting because like obviously what's going on in the cases where you're messing up, right ah is you're you're you're reading the words involuntarily and that's calling to mind yeah um the color. um Which by the way, if you're interested in this, you should look it up. um It's hard for us to like describe it because of the use mentioned confusion of these color words. yeah But anyway, so obviously what's going on is you're just automatically reading these words. And I was like experimenting with myself. I was like, all right, Megan, the the words don't matter. Just look at these things on the page and just look at them for their shape. Don't read them. And it was not possible. Yeah, it's it's really hard. it's It's involuntary. You can't help but read the meaning of the word. Yeah. And actually the only way I was able to do it was by staring at a word for so long that it started to look weird to me. And then I could kind of start to just see the shape and not the word. But didn't you also tell me that they were able to catch spies? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so they use this during the Cold War to catch Russian spies. So what they would do is they'd give them the Stroop test in in Russian. So if if if they're pretending to be American
00:23:06
Speaker
and they actually read Russian. You're going to be able to observe a delay in processing when you give them you know the word red in Russian, um but it's actually you know colored blue or something. well What if they just learned Russian like to read? Well, okay. I imagine, yeah, I knew you were going to say that. I imagine you know they'd ask him but you'd ask the person, do you know Russian? They would say no, right? But the Stroup effect could could catch them, right? Because if if they do know Russian, there's going to be this delay in processing when there's an incongruity in the in the font color and the name of the color. ICIC. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. That is. That's a really, really creative approach. Yeah. Okay. So most of what we've talked about has been pretty clinical, pretty sciency. So I guess why, how come this isn't more well known? Why does the word hypnotism still call to mind like this weird, spooky, kind of like parlor trick sort of thing? What do you think?
Historical Perspective: Franz Mesmer and Hypnosis
00:24:01
Speaker
Well, I did a little bit of research on the history of hypnosis and I think it's the kind of prejudice that you see among people. And I admit that I had this prejudice too. i'd really I really not did not think there was much to hypnosis until I started doing some research.
00:24:14
Speaker
I always knew hypnosis was legit. yeah Yeah. But I think it goes back to the origins of hypnosis. So the origins of hypnosis are kind of dubious. And it's it's really interesting origin. I'll try to say too much. I love the history of science and all that, but I'll try to say too much. ah the the the So hypnosis begins in the in the modern era with this guy named Franz Mesmer. so he is a german German physician living in the 18th and early 19th century. ah He was educated in Austria and he had this really interesting controversial theory about human health. um So his idea was that there was this fluid that flowed through the universe and flowed through the bodies of of living things called animal magnetism. So it's
00:24:57
Speaker
on the model of the magnetic force, or it's kind of an instance of the magnetic force, not sure, but there's this invisible fluid or invisible force that flows through everything, flows through our body, and it's responsible for health. So when you're unhealthy, there's a kind of blockage of your your animal magnetism. And when you're healthy, things are flowing really well. So he thought this was true. And he thought that the the way to restore people to health was to manipulate the the animal the animal magnetism fluid in you with magnets and other kinds of implements. So what he would do is he would get people in in a room, he would walk around with a kind of metal rod, or he would have people sit around these weird kinds of ah wooden bathtubs where there would be these metal rods protruding out of the bathtub and in the bathtub was magnetized water filled with iron shards, things like that.
00:25:51
Speaker
And people would touch the poles or he would use his is magnetic wand to kind of manipulate the fluid the the animal magnetism fluid in people. And here's one report from a contemporary English doctor describing like what would happen during these kinds of performances. They were very performative.
00:26:09
Speaker
ah you know He would get dressed up and in purple you into purple suit, he'd be playing the glass harmonica, be very ethereal, dim the lights, very performative. ah But one of these English doctors said the following, so one person became hysterical, then another. One was seized with catalepsy, others with convulsions, some with palpitations of the heart, perspirations and other bodily disturbances. So people would go get hysterical when he would do his thing, when he would try to manipulate the magnetic fluid ah in them. Sometimes they would get into a trance. So he got really popular in in Paris, where he where he moved to. He hit he mesmerized the Marie Antoinettes. yeah He's mesmerizing a lot of people in the aristocrats.
00:26:51
Speaker
ah But eventually, the people got a little suspicious. There was ah a royal commission commissioned by King Louis XVI. This is like pre-revolutionary France, like 1784. He sponsored this royal commission to investigate mesmerism to investigate whether this animal magnetism thing was real. ah This was led by Ben Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, a famous chemist, and they concluded through things we would recognize now as kind of blind testing that this this force was not was not real. They would they would have people they would have ah Mesmer's disciples do their thing, like magnetize people with their wands, but then they wouldn't tell them and and the people being experimented on.
00:27:36
Speaker
and then they wouldn't react and then in then then vice versa. right They would have people be be blindfolded. They would say that that they're being magnetized but they actually weren't and they would display the effect. So it was concluded that this wasn't this wasn't really genuine and Mesmer's reputation was was ruined.
00:27:53
Speaker
so ah So I think it's something like this. right something the the The origins of hypnotism are are here. People after Mesmer, they they concluded that this this force wasn't genuine, but there was something going on here. Everyone thought there was something going on.
00:28:08
Speaker
and people eventually concluded it was a kind of subjective phenomenon. You can manipulate people in these sorts of ways, but it's not because of the exchange or transfer of any magnetic fluid. It's just through the power of of suggestion, through the power of the mind. ah So that's the origin. Eventually, the the reputation of of hypnosis was was improved. But I think something like that probably explains like why it seems so weird. It has a very dubious origin. He's got the kaborka, Jerry.
00:28:37
Speaker
ah Okay, so yeah, I mean, I guess that doesn't really sound Mesmerizing doesn't to me sound like even the idea of stage hypnosis that we have now but I guess once they separated this idea of Whatever was working from the theory of substance and all magnetism you start to see ah maybe an improvement ah or a more ah legitimate Medical seeming ways of using what Mesmer was doing Because people did say they felt better after Mesmer did his thing, right? After he used his want his magnetic wand to manipulate people's animal magnetism. They did seem like they felt better. ah so And there is an instance of a mesmerist even using mesmerizing as a a way of relieving pain, right? Even in the early 19th century. Yeah, yeah, yeah. so Dr. Cloquet.
00:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, so there were uses, ah medical uses of it, but it had a kind of dubious reputation, and its reputation had to be rebiilt rehabilitated. But I think this this the the origins are kind of dubious, and yeah it' still the the but this prejudice probably still persists for that reason.
00:29:45
Speaker
Okay, so um getting back to kind of contemporary uses of hypnotism, we we picked this episode for a reason. It's not because we ultimately think hypnosis is a boring clinical thing, but there's actually a lot of extremely strange phenomena that can be observed in when someone's in the state of hypnosis, one of those being um something that's called the hidden observer effect.
Philosophical Implications: Consciousness and Identity
00:30:09
Speaker
So the hidden observer effect occurs in cases of hyp in some cases of hypnosis where it seems like there is like a second person yeah within you that the hypnotist communicates with. So Megan has ah a quote from the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology that describes this in more detail. I want you to read that so that our listeners have a better sense of this.
00:30:30
Speaker
Alright, so, the hidden observer effect. In a person who's hypnotized, it's a part of the mind that functions separately, experiencing things of which the hypnotized person appears to be unaware. For example, a person under hypnotic analgesia who is subjected to cold, presser pain may report no pain sensation and may appear quite undisturbed.
00:30:50
Speaker
But if the hypnotist says, when I place my hand on your shoulder, I shall be able to talk to a hidden part of you that knows things that are going on in your body, things that are unknown to the part of you to which I'm now talking, then the hidden observer may emerge and the person may report strong pain sensations. So it's like the hypnotist has to or they're able to talk to both the normal you and the the hidden you that lives inside of you ah that knows things that your hypnotized regular self doesn't know. Yeah. What's most interesting about this philosophically, I think, is that, and these are just, you know, these are standard sources, Oxford you know references, APA dictionary of psychology. They talk about it as though it's like a little person, like homunculus inside of you. So the APA dictionary of psychology refers to this as
00:31:39
Speaker
an intra-psychic entity with awareness of experiences that occur outside of an individual's consciousness. It's not just sort of like a part of you or you, but you're in a strange state. They talk about it as though there's like a little person that's also in there.
00:31:55
Speaker
Do you have any idea of when this effect was first noted in history? of hit Yeah. So actually, it was noted by William James first. So the psychologist and philosopher in 1899. So he he he noticed this kind of thing, too. And it was, I guess, written, it was most famously explored in in the literature by a 20th century psychologist named Ernest Hill guard. So he has a book called ah hypnosis in the relief of pain. So co-author with his wife, Josephine Hill guard, who was also a a psychologist. So, yeah, I think it was most explored by them. And there's some I looked at the chapter where they talk about this and they provide some like clinical evidence for this hidden observer thing. And some of it's like pretty weird. right So they have a person who they hypnotize and made hypnotically deaf. And they demonstrated this person was temporarily deaf by like clapping and making loud noises. And the person didn't react.
00:32:50
Speaker
So the person's hypnotically deaf, but then they they say they say the following to them while that person's in hypnosis. although you are hypnotically deaf perhaps there is some part of you that is hearing my voice and processing the information if there is i should like the index finger of your right hand to rise as a sign that this is the case What do you know?
00:33:08
Speaker
When they said that, the person lifted up their finger even though they were hepararily hypnotically deaf. And then the person being hypnotized says, please restore my hearing so that you can tell me what you did. I felt my finger rise in a way that was not a spontaneous twitch. So you must have done something to make it rise. And I want to know what you did.
00:33:26
Speaker
And in subsequent sessions, it seemed like they could tap into that hidden part, that intra-psychic entity, that hidden observer. ah They would say things like this, when I place my hand on your arm like this, I can be in touch with that part of you that listened to me before and made your finger rise with the hand on the subject.
00:33:43
Speaker
um That happened, and when the hand was off the subject, the subject claimed to know nothing about what was going on. So it looks like what's going on here is there's like two people in a single person, in a single body, and this is revealed by hypnosis, this hidden observer. so The reason I asked you about the history of it, and I i guess that it would be kind of around that time, because what this makes me think of is the like the Freudian understanding of the self. You have the ego, the part of yourself that you present to the world on a day-to-day basis, the super ego, yeah which lies below that. Maybe it's like the things that you want to do, but hold yourself back from doing.
00:34:21
Speaker
And the id, which is the deepest part of yourself, all of these ah desires and fears that are completely sublimated, you're not even aware of them. um So I do kind of wonder, I mean, you said James was interested in this. I do wonder if this was influential on Freud as well. Yeah, I'm not quite sure so much about about the history there. I think I've seen people draw connections between mesmerism and and psychoanalysis. You can sort of, you you know, you fill in the details, count the dots, you can sort of see connections, yeah connections there.
00:34:48
Speaker
But what I'm wondering is, so in order to confirm the results of something like, say, hypnotic deafness, right, we are kind of relying purely on behavior there. We don't have any actual way to confirm that there's that the the hypnotized subject doesn't have any auditory perceptions at all. It could just be that they're not responding to them. Yeah, that's right. And and and another part of the book, Hildgaard's talking about the pain issue. And so he's so he's he's considering a skeptic who's like, well, look, this person still is displaying a lot of the physiological markers of pain, heightened heart rate, that kind of thing. ah So how can you say they're not in pain? So this question even arises with the respect to the pain question.
00:35:30
Speaker
um Yeah, so there's always this looming doubt that maybe there's dishonesty at play, maybe there's mere social role-playing at play. um But let's suppose, let's just take it ah seriously, right? Let's suppose that there is this hidden observer effect. The person who was hypnotically deaf wasn't lying, right? Or wasn't acting, right? What should we, what do we make of this philosophically? I mean, there's a philosophical position that would still vindicate the results of this experiment, which is something like behaviorism, right? um Like we are experiencing things like pain or we are experiencing love just in case we are acting like someone would who was experiencing those things or whatever. So if you're not acting like you're hearing stuff or you're not acting like you're in pain, then heck, that's just what it means to be in pain or to be hearing stuff. Yeah, i'm I'm not sure most of the, I don't think Hilgar was a behaviorist, but yeah, that is worth mentioning. So one thing that the the hidden observer effect then challenges is the so-called unity of consciousness. So ever since like Immanuel Kant, people have argued that consciousness maybe necessarily is unified. There's a kind of unity to consciousness.
00:36:39
Speaker
And this kind of thing is understood in a lot of ways, but I think the most vivid example of the unity of consciousness, of conscious states, can be observed if you consider what's going on when you observe something in the world, like like a stream, right? you're You're out there in the forest, you observe a stream.
00:36:56
Speaker
You're having a bunch of different experiences along various sensory modalities. or You can touch the water, or you can hear the water, you can smell the water. And all of these things, these like little experiences, are all part of one single experience. They're all unified in like one single phenomenal field.
00:37:16
Speaker
Her daughter has a book called I Hear a Pickle, and actually the plot of this book is that a pickle, there you there's parts of a pickle that appeal to all five of your senses. yeah You can smell, touch, taste, ah see, and in fact hear when you bite into a pickle at the same time, proving the unity of consciousness. yeah they're not all separate experiences. They're unified in like one single experience. and And similarly, like my experiences are mine, yours are yours. They don't float freely. So this is a ah feature of consciousness that that is is significant. One might wonder, is this contingent? Is this necessary? Can the unity of consciousness be broken?
00:37:52
Speaker
And it looks like in the hidden observer experiments, if you take them seriously, that it is. And this is this is what James thought, in fact. He said, in certain persons, at least the total possible consciousness may be split into parts which coexist but mutually ignore each other and share the objects of knowledge between them. So he's interpreting these kinds of hidden observer ah experiments as they're being a split in consciousness.
00:38:19
Speaker
And this is an effect, so you're getting kind of via hypnosis, the same kind of effect that we get in what I guess are called split brain experiments, but they're more just like split brain surgeries where surgeons have to split the corpus callosum, I don't know how to say that, but whatever, that part of the brain ah that connects the right lobe to the left lobe, and this is normally in people who have epileptic seizures, and a lot of weird stuff happens when you do this, ah similar to the a hidden observer effect. Yeah, there's various experiments. Don't go into them because that's not our topic, but it looks as though
00:38:55
Speaker
the two hemispheres of the brain are processing information separately. And one natural conclusion that some people draw from these split brain experiments is that there's two different streams of consciousness. It's like two people in one brain. Yeah. Yeah. and And this is something that plays a bit a pretty large role, these split brain experiments, in discussions of personal identity. and and And hypnosis doesn't play as large role in these conversations, but it it could, right? Because the hidden observer effect is getting at a similar point.
00:39:25
Speaker
it's and it And actually, it might be even more interesting because it doesn't seem to require these like the physical separation of various brain fibers. If if the hidden observer effect can be elicited in normal, everyday people who haven't had their brains modified, maybe that's more significant.
00:39:41
Speaker
Well, but except with hypnosis, only 10 to 15% of people can successfully be hypnotized. And I wonder if the question that I asked you earlier about why does hypnosis still have this really like mysterious reputation. I mean, after doing all this research for this episode, to me, this is the most mysterious part. Like what is it that's really going on? that Like what's the mechanism that gets people into this state that works in some people and doesn't in others? Like that just still seems like a really big black box.
00:40:11
Speaker
There have been, as I mentioned earlier, have been lots of attempts to map out the the neurological correlates of of hypnosis. So maybe there is some answer out there. I'm i'm not quite sure of it. And I'm not quite sure how common the hidden observer effect is too. So just because 10 to 15% of people can get ah profound alterations in their consciousness through to through hypnosis, that doesn't necessarily mean that 10, 15% of the people demonstrate the hidden observer effect um either.
00:40:36
Speaker
Hm, fascinating. So I guess a big philosophical question, going back to the um hidden observer and its connection to the split-range experiments, you know, maybe this is like a worry. If I'm going to go get hypnotized to try to cure my phobia of flying, stinging, buzzing things, should I be worried about a breach of my personal identity?
00:40:57
Speaker
Some people might think this. So, for example, Derek Parfit, a super, super famous philosopher who lived, I guess he just passed away a few years ago. He had this theory of personal identity that something really crucial to me staying me throughout my whole arrow of time existence is that my consciousness is is not disrupted. It's continuous. My conscious experience is continuous. And A worry then maybe is that if I were to, say, ay you know, be hypnotized really well, they do it so well that the hidden observer comes out. So now it's the hidden observer and not normal Megan, me, talking to the hypnotherapist. Now there's been a break in my stream of consciousness. I don't, it it's paused and I have to wait to be unhypnotized for it to come back again. So on Parfit's theory of personal identity,
00:41:53
Speaker
that and that would be a loss for me. My personal identity would be gone. Now, I i need to say to characterize Parvit accurately, ultimately, Parvit didn't think personal identity mattered or at least it shouldn't matter to us. He didn't think that was important. So Parvit himself probably would not have been concerned about being hypnotized. He would probably say something like, well, yeah, maybe this is a breach in my personal identity, but the the the subject of these experiences isn't going to know the difference. So who cares?
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, so I think he'd probably say something similar to what he says about the split-brain experiments. And so like so when we have these split-brain experiments, we have all these questions. Is there a single person with a divided mind? Is there a single person with two minds? Are two people sharing control of one body? ah There's all these questions one might ask about the split-brain experiments. like How many people are there?
00:42:42
Speaker
And Parpet's gonna say, ultimately, a lot of these questions about personal identity, whether you go out of existence in these kinds of cases, ah they don't there's they there's no real fact of the matter here, because you can always just describe in impersonal terms that is not using the the word, personal identity, what's going on. You can describe all the brain states, you can describe all the psychological states. There's there's this further question you have here, like, am I the same person as the hidden observer? Or or do I go out of existence temporarily when the hidden observer is unlocked? ah you don't need to you can You don't really need to ask those questions. and
00:43:17
Speaker
I like to always compare this to this, ah I think this is an example from Gilbert Ryle and the concept of mine. So you have someone you're taking someone to see the university and you show the person every building on the university, you show them the library, the student center, all the faculties. And then after you show get them the tour of the university, the person says, oh yes, I so i know that you showed me the gym and the library and the student center, but where's the university?
00:43:41
Speaker
Right. Clearly, this person is making a mistake. They're making a category mistake because the university isn't something over and above all the parts of all the buildings. It just is ah those things. So I think Harvard wants to say something similar about the question of personal identity. Who's me? Where am I? That's not really a question you need to ask. You can just describe all the brain states, all the psychological states, all all of that. And then you've said all you need to say.
00:44:07
Speaker
But let's say we don't agree with Parfin on that and we are concerned that maybe the the Megan that comes out of hypnosis won't be the same Megan that went into it or whatever. I don't know Frank, what do you think personal identity matters and if so, do you think ah that we should be a little bit concerned about these instances of hypnosis?
00:44:28
Speaker
Well, yeah, I guess it certainly seems to matter because it it matters for how we conceive of ourselves. Like, am i am I a bundle of perceptions, like the the Scottish philosopher David Hume said, or am i do I lack a self, like the Buddhists say, or am I like a persisting entity? so that That seems to matter, but also matters for questions of ah moral responsibility and and agency. ah You have lots of interest in those sorts of questions, Meghan, as a practicing action theorist. So you want to get into any of that? I don't practice anymore.
00:44:59
Speaker
um Just kidding. I sometimes do. ah Yeah. So my questions about personal identity related to hypnosis, I guess I i don't have the the theory of personal identity that Parfit has. Even though he doesn't care about personal identity, he still has this theory of it. I don't think that theory is right. So these cases of hypnosis don't bother me that much. But what does seem a little bit concerning to me is what exactly is going on when you're a little hidden self, the little id or homunculus or whatever. Love that word, homunculus. Yeah, I know. That's your favorite word. So when that and guy comes out, what exactly is going on? So if you are in a state of hypnotic suggestion and someone tells you, hey, you know walk over to the window and pick up a glass of water and drink it and you
00:45:45
Speaker
Or, you know, I guess that's begging the question a bit. But you know your body does this, ah what the therapist has told you to do. In that case, who is acting? Is it is it you? ah Is it you too? you i don't yeah is it Is it the homunculus? Is it your regular self? So there's all these theories of um how to understand human action and particularly intentional human action. One ah ah one criteria that's pretty popular among action theorists is at least being necessary for some things being an intentional action is that when you're asked why you did whatever they're asking you about, you can give a reason for it. This isn't the case in things I do that are involuntary. So if I'm like breathing or blinking or if I'm talking in my sleep and someone asks me, why did you do those things? I can't really give an answer. I'd be like, I don't know. I just did. So that indicates that that's not an intentional action. That's not something I did on purpose.
00:46:43
Speaker
But walking over to the table, getting a glass of water and drinking it, that looks like an intentional action. That doesn't look like something involuntary, really. you know In one sense, we can give a reason. You're doing it because the hypnotherapist told you to, but I think the person under hypnotic suggestion can't give an answer. And also, they can't give an answer when they snap out of it.
00:47:06
Speaker
So it's a little unclear what's happening agency-wise. Their agency seems in like this really deep radical way to be totally suspended, even though they're still doing stuff. But the the the hidden observer, remember, you can kind of talk to them if you if you if you do things right. So then when you talk to them, they give you the answer.
00:47:23
Speaker
So would they say something like, because the therapist told me to do it? Or would they say something that seems to rationalize their action, like because I was thirsty? It would be fascinating if, and I think I read or you read to me or something, some cases where there was a kind of post hoc rationalization given to these actions undertaken.
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah, similar in to the split-brain experiments where the subject will give these kinds of confabulations. They'll tell stories to explain why it looks like they're doing behavior that's that that makes no sense, or or they can't articulate why it is. They've they've done it.
00:47:59
Speaker
See, that's really fascinating to me because it shows that at least in some cases, they understand what they did as an intentional action, even though it seems like it wasn't because the reasons they're giving aren't real reasons. Yeah. so Well, they have to try to make sense of the action. and So they try to give they try to give reasons, but the reasons are just sort of made up.
00:48:17
Speaker
Right, right. So they need to understand it as an action, but it's unclear if if if it actually was. In fact, to me, it seems like it was not. So I find that really interesting and also I also find it a little bit, I don't know, I don't want to say concerning, but it raises some ethical questions, right? Just on the ethics of any kind of a treatment that would like radically limit someone's agency or deprive them of it completely. um it's It's really putting them, so you always hear hypnotherapists say things like,
00:48:46
Speaker
We can never make you do something you don't want to do, which maybe that's true, although I don't. it Is there any reason to think that I don't think that's true? I feel like people in some of these experiments that I've read, they're doing stuff that like that got the the Hilgards hypnotically deaf person, um it makes sense to say that the the hypnotist made that person lift up their index finger like, come on.
00:49:07
Speaker
Right, right, right. Yeah, they probably weren't like, oh yeah, I feel like being momentarily deaf for a few minutes. That sounds great. um Yeah, so I'm not really sure I believe that because it does really seem like once you're put in that state, you don't have any kind of meaningful agency, you know maybe especially moral agency.
00:49:23
Speaker
Yeah, so I think we've highlighted that there's lots of philosophically interesting aspects to hypnosis. And I was kind of dismayed to see that philosophers don't really write too much about it. I did a little search on Phil papers to see if I can find anything published on hypnosis in philosophy. And there wasn't too much, but there is actually one philosopher, a philosopher of mind who does take hypnosis seriously, writes a lot about the hidden observer thing. That's Tim Bain.
00:49:52
Speaker
at Monash University. So he wants to defend the unity of consciousness against these kinds of counter examples like the split brain experiments and also the hidden observer experiments. He takes that seriously as a potential counter example to the unity of consciousness thesis. So he has a he has some interesting work on this kind of stuff. I thought it'd be worth mentioning some of the alternative theories you might have about what's going on in these hidden observer experiments. So the one theory, which we already mentioned, he calls the two stream model. There's an actual split in consciousness, two streams of consciousness, either at at once or in in succession. ah There's another theory you might have, he calls the zombie model, whereby the hidden observer actually isn't any conscious agent. There's no conscious states there. ah they're they're They're a philosophical zombie.
00:50:39
Speaker
They're sort of just react. It's sort of just a reaction. it's it's it's more It's more akin to, I don't know, just sort of like a reflex or something. I know that's kind of strange because the hit you can talk to the hidden observer. But the idea here is that's not actually a conscious entity. These are unconscious states. It's like sleep talking, I guess.
00:50:57
Speaker
And the third model is his preferred one, which he calls the switch model. And here he thinks of consciousness as his kind of this isn't his metaphor, but this is how I understand it. He thinks of consciousness as a kind of flashlight and it shines its light on various contents of consciousness. And so what's going on in these hidden observer cases is that the the consciousness is rapidly and seamlessly switching its contents. So it looks like there's two streams of consciousness here.
00:51:27
Speaker
but it's really just consciousness rapidly switching from one stimulus to another. Maybe and maybe the hypnotist gets you to pay attention to a neglected stimulus and it seems as though it's like ah a different person, like a hidden entity, but it's really just a result of consciousness rapidly switching to something else. Wait, so I have some thoughts about these three. yeah but before you Before you cut to which one Tim Bain actually thinks is right, I want i want to say what I think first.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, so the two stream model to me seems ridiculous. that seems like yeah and there's there I think there's no evidence for that. like what what one of One of my little guys is just sitting there quiet while the other guy talks and he's like, oh, it's my turn now. yeah um Yeah, that one doesn't make any sense to me. The zombie model seems like it would have really crazy philosophical implications. I mean, if there were real philosophical zombies.
00:52:20
Speaker
this Sometimes taken... It's sort of a metaphor. its just the the Really, the thesis is that they're unconscious states. Oh, okay. So they're not actually zombies? No. Okay, got it. Never mind then. Yeah, so I guess... i So, Bain accepts the switch model. yeah Just hearing these described briefly, that's what it sort of seems like to me and it reminds me of people who have like multiple personality disorder, um where in different instances, different personalities will come up and it seems like the other one just... you know they did They clock out. Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's also a thing I think he he tries to account for on his in his defense of the unity of consciousness. That's another kind of challenge to the unity of consciousness, right dissociative identity disorder that that also suggests this kind of two stream of consciousness model as well.
00:53:05
Speaker
So have there ever been any instances where someone had a hard time snapping out of their hypnotic state? Well, now that you mention it, I did find this really crazy story from ah Canada. It's always Canada. This was in Montreal. So here's the headline. Second hypnotist rescues students stuck in trance. Private school show unfurls after hypnotized students don't snap at it. This was in a school? This was in a school, yeah. Like a primary school?
00:53:34
Speaker
uh no there were 12 and 13 middle schools there were 12 and 13 year old girls they were stuck in hypnosis like the hypnotist got them in the state of hypnosis he tried to snap them out of it he couldn't so he had to call back up to get them to get snapped out of it um so This is a weird story. That is terrifying. I don't know. I'm not doing the hypnosis, I think. That that freaks me out. yeah Being stuck in that state where you're just you're just at the mercy of your a therapist or your homunculus. Here's what one of the the girls said. she She described it as follows. I don't know how to explain it. It's like you're no longer there. You're spaced out.
00:54:10
Speaker
Kind of scary. That's horrible. I really hate that. And I wish I hadn't asked you, but I guess it makes for some good podcast content. I did not know this before I asked him this question. So great. So maybe yeah any listeners out there considering hypnotherapy, just, just keep that in the back of your mind. Make sure you go to someone with a good reputation. That's all the time that we have for this episode. Join us on our next episode where we will be celebrating the spirit of Halloween by talking about ghosts, ghouls, and hauntings.