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Emma Blair

Professor Johnson

ENG 1201

July 9, 2021

How is Hypnosis Present and Useful in Our Lives?

I was not sure how much academic research I would be able to find on hypnosis,

however I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Sinclair Library had a great deal of material.

My topic is not simply hypnosis, but how it can be used in our daily lives and where it might

already be impacting us. Over the last year, I decided that learning about hypnosis may help me

to not be weary and fearful of it, so I did just that. While I have not had a great deal of time to

research this topic, I look forward to having this chance with my final research paper. In my

initial research, I discovered that hypnosis may be found in daily life much more than we realize

and it also may be useful in many areas of our lives. While hypnosis has been present for a long

time, it seems that there has been a recent spike in academic research of the topic within the

last fifteen years. My goal is to explore this idea further. In this literary review, I will be

summarizing the findings of five academic writings and briefly touching on the credibility of

each. While I will be conducting more research on my topic, this was a nice start, and I feel that

I learned a great deal.

The first article was titled “Myths and Misconceptions about Hypnosis and Suggestion:

Separating Fact and Fiction.” It was compiled by four experts and was featured in Applied

Cognitive Psychology, which is a peer-reviewed journal. The article was followed by about three

pages of citations from other scholarly sources. This article was best suited to a large adult
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audience of at least a high school education level. It was written in a way that was easy to

understand if one is not acquainted with the field of hypnosis. The audience for this piece is the

widest out of the five. This piece focused on twenty-one myths and misconceptions that plague

peoples’ perception of hypnosis. A few of the myths centered around the usefulness of

hypnosis as a treatment and peoples’ responses to it. Other sections discussed the skill and

credentials required to hypnotize someone. There were also parts talking about what trance is

and is not. At the beginning the authors wrote about the damage that the movies and social

media have done to the impression that people have about hypnosis (Lynn). Several individual

movies were mentioned as well as the myths that they portrayed in relation to this topic.

The second piece of literature that I analyzed was from the European Journal of Clinical

Hypnosis and was peer-reviewed as well. The article is titled “Trance and Hypnosis Defined with

Modern Logic.” This was the most technically written article out of the five. In order to

comprehend the meaning of this piece, one would need to be aware of hypnotic jargon and

terminology. Much of this paper was spent discussing the correct definitions of trance and the

hypnotic practice. The middle section focused on the importance of language in hypnosis. Not

only does the hypnotist use very structured and purposeful language patterns, but the way the

patient talks is also very important (Altena). Those in hypnotic trance typically communicate

through first-order logic (Altena). The importance of this language pattern was impressed on

the reader as well as many examples of what this looks like. The reader was provided with

several hypnotic conversation templates. When someone is not speaking simply, but rather

forming complex sentences, then there is a good chance that they are not in trance (Altena).
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This article provided a great deal of interesting information as well as reports on the results of

using these language patterns in hypnotherapy sessions.

Anesthesia, Pain and Intensive Care is the journal in which I found my third piece. This

was a case report by Doctor Muhammad Rafiq titled “Headache Management through

Hypnosis: A Case Report.” While this article could have a large audience. I believe that it was

geared towards the Middle Eastern culture as there was a seal at the top of the work that

contained writing that appeared to be Arabic. However, I believe that the general American

public would also be able to read and understand the basic ideas expressed. The introduction to

this paper talked about how hypnosis can be used to help pain management. It went on to

discuss its applicability in both physiological and psychological pain. Dr. Rafiq discussed the

difference between people who are physically suggestible and those who are emotionally

suggestible as well as the differences in hypnotic induction that this results in. One main case

was discussed in which a lady was hypnotized and then asked to draw in a circle until her pain

stopped (Rafiq). She did so and felt confident and relaxed after the treatment (Rafiq). The

article also briefly touched on how neuroimaging supports their conclusion that hypnosis can

be effective for treating headaches (Rafiq).

My fourth article was written by Marcin Zelezik and Marcin Sadowski who are faculty of

Medicine and Health Sciences at Jan Kochanowski University. As with the others, this article

ended with a myriad of references from other academic sources. The piece was titled “Hypnosis

as a Part of Holistic Medical Treatment: A Systematic Review.” It appeared to be written for a

scientific and mathematically minded audience. The results given contained a great deal of

scientific vocabulary and equations. This was a collection of a variety of academic reports on
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the usefulness of hypnosis as a medical treatment. The results stated that while hypnosis is very

useful in a variety of medical fields, they found it most helpful in pediatrics and

gastroenterology (Żelezik). Hypnosis was mostly used in pain, anxiety, and depression

treatment both before and after the procedure (Żelezik). There was also a discussion of the two

ways that the depth of hypnotic trance can be measured by. The paper ended with the review

of about thirteen studies on this topic and what the results mean.

“The Effect of the Hypnotic-Suggestive Communication Levels of Advertisements on

their Effectiveness” was the last article that I analyzed. It seemed to have been created for a

somewhat scientific audience. There was a great deal of time and attention spent focused on

the specifics of how the experiment took place and what the factors in it were. This article was

written by Oren Kaplan for a journal called Contemporary Hypnosis. Kaplan is a professional in a

variety of fields and has a doctorate in psychology. In addition to his qualifications, he used a

wide variety of references when compiling this work. The piece centered on determining how

useful hypnotic-suggestion is in advertisements. “This study is therefore aimed at exploring

whether the rules for phrasing effective hypnotic suggestions in psychotherapy might also be

used as a guideline to examine such suggestions in advertising.” (Kaplan, 2007) The study found

that advertisements containing a large amount of hypnotic-suggestion were much more

favorably received than those with only a little (Kaplan). Also, the researchers determined that

people were left with unfavorable opinions and feelings of the advertisements that did not use

much hypnotic-suggestion (Kaplan). Therefore, it would appear that not using enough hypnotic-

suggestion when advertising can actually hurt a company more than simply not advertising

would (Kaplan).
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Each of these articles has given me even more information about hypnosis. I was

surprised to find that many of the articles had sections discussing how to induce hypnosis, and I

now feel that I have a better idea of it. For my future research, I will continue to use the Sinclair

Library, but am going to focus on self-hypnosis benefits and how it is used in marketing as these

seem to impact more daily aspects of life. I will also explore how hypnosis helps people manage

headaches and create healthier sleep patterns. It seems that my research may lead to the

answer that hypnosis is throughout our daily lives and can help us to live happier, more

productive lives when utilized correctly. These articles featured a good mix of highly academic

work to papers that could be easily understood by someone new in the field. It was interesting

to see the difference in writing levels and styles expressed in these papers. Overall, I feel that

this assignment has greatly assisted me in preparing further research for my final paper.
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Works Cited

Altena, Klaas. “Trance and Hypnosis Defined with Modern Logic: Applications to

Hypnotherapy.” European Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, vol. 5, no. 3, Aug. 2004, pp. 43–

54. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=146657

29&site=ehost-live. Accessed 8 July 2021.

Kaplan, Oren. “The Effect of the Hypnotic-Suggestive Communication Level of Advertisements

on Their Effectiveness.” Contemporary Hypnosis (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), vol. 24, no. 2,

June 2007, pp. 53–63. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/ch.333. Accessed 8 July 2021.

Lynn, Steven Jay, et al. “Myths and Misconceptions about Hypnosis and Suggestion: Separating

Fact and Fiction.” Applied Cognitive Psychology, vol. 34, no. 6, Nov. 2020, pp. 1253–

1264. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/acp.3730. Accessed 8 July 2021.

Rafiq, Muhammad. “Headache Management through Hypnosis: A Case Report.” Anaesthesia,

Pain & Intensive Care, vol. 22, no. 2, Apr. 2018, pp. 227–230. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=131441052&site=ehost-

live. Accessed 8 July 2021.

Żelezik, Marcin, and Marcin Sadowski. “Hypnosis as a Part of Holistic Medical Treatment: A

Systematic Review.” Neuropsychiatry & Neuropsychology / Neuropsychiatria i

Neuropsychologia, vol. 15, no. 1/2, Jan. 2020, pp. 21–32. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.5114/nan.2020.97399. Accessed 8 July 2021.