Transcript from a radio program topic: What is Hypnosis?

INTRO
The use of hypnosis in mainstream medicine is increasing. It is being used as a complementary therapy for everything from asthma to post traumatic stress disorder. Doctors and scientists are beginning to have success in unlocking the mysteries behind hypnosis? but no one knows exactly how it works. In the third of a three part series, Benjamin Shaw reports that stage hypnotists and their methods have provided clues for the scientific exploration of hypnosis.

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On a cold January night, over 500 students gather in a large auditorium at Wesleyan University to see hypnotist Dan Larosa.

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Ambient sound of crowd in auditorium.

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Larosa has been entertaining people with hypnosis for 18 years. Not everyone is hypnotizable he says? but he doesn?t leave to chance the selection of participants. Before the show begins, Larosa sits in the last row looking over the audience and explains his method.

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LAROSA: I do suggestions from the audience first, testing and then I select the ones that I think will be the best and say you, yeah you, yeah you?

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DOC SOUND: Ohm Music up with following narration

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The show begins. The stage is bare except for a row of 20 chairs. Larosa walks through the audience, a wireless mic his only prop. He starts with the first test.

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LAROSA: Here we go. We?re going to do a couple quick tests? and this test involves your imagination. What I?d like you to do is to lock your hands together over your head? (FADE UNDER)

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He has the audience imagine their hands are stuck together with crazy glue. Some of the students struggle to unclasp their hands. Others release them with ease.

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LAROSA: If your hands locked tight and you?d like to volunteer, raise one of your hands.

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Twenty-five volunteers run up on stage. Larosa tells them he is looking for the most hypnotizable subjects, not to be offended if he sends them back to their seats. He conducts a couple more tests and whittles the group of volunteers down to five? then spends the next two hours entertaining the crowd by having these people dance, forget their names and flirt with strangers.

After watching Larosa hypnotize their classmates, two sophomores try to comprehend what they?ve just seen.

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TWO BOYS: If you believe it it?s real. It?s like on Sinefeld when George says ?It?s not a lie if you believe it.? Hypnosis is mind control. If they want their minds to be controlled, it works and it?s funny and it?s impressive. I mean, it?s perfect for college students to enjoy.

NARRATION
In 1958 the American Medical Association recognized hypnosis and suggested it be taught in medical school. Doctors and therapists use it in a clinical setting on a daily basis and while many questions remain unanswered? science is getting closer to understanding hypnosis.

Dr. Herbert Spiegel is a New York psychiatrist and a leading expert in medical hypnosis. He and his son, Dr. David Spiegel, wrote the definitive textbook on the subject. ?Trance and Treatment: Clinical Uses of Hypnosis.?

Dr. Herbert Spiegel first realized the power of hypnosis while treating soldiers during the Second World War. For 22 years, he taught medical hypnosis at Columbia University. And at 89-years-old, he still treats patients in his East Side office. Two doors lead into a large comfortable room and keep outside noise at bay. A couch and two leather recliners surround a coffee table.

Dr. Spiegel says he appreciates the skills involved in stage hypnotism, but worries it?s misleading.

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HERBERT SPIEGEL: The old fashioned notion of hypnosis was that they thought that the hypnotist was projecting something onto the patient. We now know that the hypnotist projects nothing at all, he stimulates the capacity that the person has.

NARRATION
He says stage hypnotists are very good at quickly identifying who is? and who isn?t hypnotizable.

For over 50 years Dr. Spiegel has worked to standardize the use of hypnosis in a clinical setting. One of his major contributions to the filed is a simple test that measures hypnotic ability.

Early in his career, Spiegel realized that particularly hypnotizable people can roll their eyes so that nothing but the whites will show. Spiegel was able to develop a five second eye roll test as a quick way to measure hypnotic capacity. He demonstrates the test on a visitor.

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HERBERT SPIEGEL: Without moving your head look all the way up to the top of your head, look way up as high as you can. And as you look up, slowly close your eyes while you?re looking up. Now on a zero-to-four scale, you score two, so you would be on the low midrange in your hypnotic capacity.

NARRATION
No one knows why there is a correlation between eye flexibility and hypnotic capacity. But Spiegel says roughly 15 to 20 percent of the population is on the low end of the scale, 50 percent are midrange, 25 percent are highly hypnotizable? and about 5 percent of the population is not hypnotizable at all.

Dr. David Spiegel, Herbert?s son, is a psychiatrist and professor at Stanford University?s School of Medicine. He defines hypnosis as a focused state of concentration, more akin to daydreaming than mind control. He says hypnosis is a naturally occurring phenomenon? one that is much more common than most people realize.

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DAVID SPIEGEL: Hypnosis is something like looking through a telephoto lens in a camera. What you see you see, with great detail but you are less aware of the context. People are in states like that when they watch a good movie and get so caught up in it that they forget they are watching a movie. Or people in states of performance, you know athletes or performers who are really into their role or their game.

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WARNKE: If you want to see a large group of men who are experts in self-hypnosis turn on the NBA game any weekend and watch someone taking a foul shot.

NARRATION
Jim Warnke is a psychotherapist who uses hypnosis in his practice. He says we needn?t look far to find examples of trance in everyday life.

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WARNKE: You will watch them taking deep repeated breaths you will watch them having an eye fixation on the hoop. The crowd, while there, is a blur. The sound, while probably heard, is muffled, why because it is a state of hyper-concentration. That?s a form of trance.

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Warnke says people often go into trance when listening to the radio. He says the best mass hypnotist he knows is Garisson Keillor.

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GARRISON KEILLOR: It?s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown?.

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WARNKE: He is a master hypnotist. When he does the news from Lake Wobegon, his voice is different from the time he uses it at any other time in the broadcast.

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KEILLOR

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WARNKE: He?s like a jazz singer

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KEILLOR

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WARNKE: He?s actually doing it like some people do scat, only because it?s mid-western you don?t notice it. But it?s like a jazz singer, it?s breathy and soft and it?s up close to the microphone and so in a very soft voice you can get incredible inflection.

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KEILLOR: And that?s the news from Lake Wobegone.

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WARNKE: That tells you the trance is over. He ends it the same way. It?s like saying 10, 9, 8, 7.

NARRATION
Dr. David Spiegel is using new technology to examine what differentiates hypnosis from typical brain activity. PET scans allow doctors to see what regions in the brain are activated during specific mental tasks. Dr. Spiegel and his colleagues are using PET scans to study what happens in a patient?s brain during hypnosis.

In August of 2000, Dr. Spiegel published a study in The American Journal of Psychiatry reporting how hypnosis can alter visual processing in the brain. Eight highly hypnotizable subjects were asked to look at color pictures and imagine them as black and white.

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DAVID SPIEGEL: We showed them a series of grids, that looked like the Mondrian painting, in the pet scanner so we could record blood flow in specifics parts of the brain that actually process color vision. Then we hypnotized them and we instructed them hypnotically to drain the color from the color grid and in another condition to imagine they were painting color into the black and white grid and make it look colorful.

NARRATION
Dr. Spiegel and his colleagues found that when the hypnotized subjects imagined they were looking at color their brains acted as though they were looking at color? and when they imagined they were looking at black and white, even though they weren?t, their brain acted as though they were looking at black and white.

Dr. Spiegel says he?s not yet able to look at a PET scan and determine if someone is in hypnosis or not?

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DAVID SPIEGEL: ?But we are getting to a point where we can say there?s brain activity that occurs when you do certain tasks in hypnosis that you just don?t see without it.

NARRATION
The old notion of hypnosis was that people perceived things normally? but simply thought about them differently.

Dr. Spiegel says his study is helping to prove that hypnosis is a unique psychological state with distinct brain activity.

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DAVID SPIEGEL: Hypnosis allows people to actually alter the way they perceive stimuli? hypnosis changes not just want we think about what we see or feel, but actually it helps us to change what we see and feel?So, in this sense, the study showed that believing is seeing.

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DOC SOUND: Ohm Music

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Stage hypnotists, such as Dan Larosa, are experts at making people see what they believe. Towards the end of his Wesleyan show Larosa gives a suggestion to one of the volunteers? and instantly she is in the presences of her favorite TV heart-throb.

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LAROSA: Look at me. I am Ashton Kutcher? Oh, my God? Oh, my God

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Science is just beginning to understand the phenomenon that stage hypnotism showcases so well? Dr. Herbert Spiegel says that in many ways modern medical hypnosis is indebted to the quacks and vaudeville performers? for stage hypnotists are the ones who kept the art form alive when scientists and doctors ignored it.

Hypnosis has been with us for hundreds of years. Today, accurately measuring hypnotic capacity allows clinicians use it reliably. In the future, a fuller understanding of hypnosis will allow even more doctors and patients to take advantage of this powerful technique.

For Columbia Radio News, I?m Benjamin Shaw.