An Introduction to the Study and Application of Hypnosis for Pain Control

Abstract

Hypnosis is essentially a communication of ideas and understandings to a patient in such a fashion that he will be most receptive to the presented ideas and thereby motivated to explore his own body potentials for the control of his psychological and physiological responses and behavior. The average person is unaware of the extent of his capacities of accomplishment which have been learned through the experiential conditionings of this body behavior through his life experiences. To the average person in his thinking, pain is an immediate subjective experience, all-encompassing of his attention, distressing, and to the best of his belief and understanding, an experience uncontrollable by the person himself. Yet as a result of experiential events of his past life, there has been built up within his body, although all unrecognized, certain psychological, physiological, and neurological learnings, associations, and conditionings that render it possible for pain to be controlled and even abolished. One need only think of extremely crucial situations of tension and anxiety to realize that the severest of pain vanishes when the focussing of the sufferer’s awareness is compelled by other stimuli of a more immediate, intense, or life-threatening nature. From common experience, one can think of a mother suffering extremely severe pain and all-absorbed in her pain experience.