Walt McCoy / McCoy / Ph.D. Hypnosis De-Mystified

Imagine That!
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-62309-731-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

This book is written to be fun and entertaining, and is meant for both popular and professional audiences. It contains a great many case examples, with hypnotic scripts which are interesting and entertaining, even humorous. It begins with FAQs, and ends with practical applications of hypnotic principles to everyday life, and achievement. Chapters are included covering sports, performance, medical applications, several different approaches to trance induction, along with a new theory about how hypnosis works. Above all, it is a fun read.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Walt McCoy, Ph. D.

McCoy, Walt

Ph.D.,

Leseproben

Chapter II
A Theoretical Model of Mind
Part 1- Background. Let me digress about theoretical Psychology, just so that we are all on the same page. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) has been justly called the father of modern theoretical and clinical Psychology. He was a Physician who developed a model of mind functioning and of “neurosis” (a term no longer used), and a method of treating such, called Psychoanalysis. His prolific essays, containing “case studies” were the basis of almost cult-like popularity. His legacy and methods are still popular today. Moving from Vienna to the U.S. to escape the rise of Nazism, and to seek treatment for throat cancer (he was a chain cigar smoker), he became world famous. I spent a lot of time as a student studying Freud. Perhaps his most lasting contributions are his concepts of the unconscious mind, and his model of mind functioning. Others, before Freud, had discovered how to use the unconscious; they just didn’t have a name for it. For example; Diogenes, the Greek historian, wrote about a philosopher who composed philosophical treatises while “sleep walking”. Some of Schubert’s melodies came to him in dreams, and those seem to have been his favorites. Voltaire and Tartini had the same experience. Condorecet, the French mathematician, dreamed his way into solving formulas. Sir Walter Scott, when faced with “writer’s block”, would often just go to bed. He often discovered in the morning that he had dreamed of an idea, and then would continue writing. Schopenhauer once said that “My will is asleep when I do my most effective thinking, which is usually in a semi-trance”. Descartes, Leibnitz, Milton, and Rossini would stimulate their own creativity by meditating (hiding?) under piles of blankets. You might have done that at some time, also? `I have. Coleridge would sometimes fall asleep at his desk, and wake up to find that he had composed several hundred lines of verse. He said that he composed the entire “Kubla Khan” in a trance. Einstein said that “The only really valuable thing is intuition”. Beethoven composed the entire Divine Ninth, while totally deaf, and within his own mind! MLK said- “I have a dream”. Freud postulated just 3 minds; he called them as id, ego, and superego. Very briefly, the id is in charge of “wanting”. It can want anything and/or everything. It is “polymorphous perverse“. it has desires and impulses, many of which we are not aware. (because they may be naughty- those impulses may then become “repressed“.). Impulses or wants, both conscious and unconscious, are carefully watched by the superego, which contains (hopefully) a code of ethics and morality, derived from our role models. The superego dives a thumbs up or thumbs down to our impulses. Remember they we are probably not aware that this is going on, all the time. If we do it (or think about it) anyway, it can punish us, with shame and guilt. If we keep it up, it can cause emotional or even physical illness. If it’s OK with the superego, it is passed to the ego. The ego is the one that thinks, and uses conscious logic and words. The ego is the rational mind that we can exercise limited control of. Its job is to come up with a good plan for getting what we want. Freud saw “neurosis” symptoms as signaling extreme conflict among these 3 minds. As Red Skelton said, “If I dood id, it be bad.” It should be stressed that these “minds” should not be viewed as actual parts of the brain. You can’t find them with a n MRI scan. They are simply related clusters of functions, or abilities. You could call them metaphors, or analogies. We behave “as if” they actually existed. I remember in graduate school there was a comedy scientific journal called the “Worm Runner’s Digest”. It was published with a serious journal about Developmental Psychobiology. (Read as “animal brains”). To read the Worm Runners Digest, you simple turned it backwards and upside down, and turned the pages left to right. Anyway, there was one tongue-in-cheek article about rat brains. The authors were ablating rats (sucking out parts of the brains with a vacuum tube) just to see what would happen. So one group of rats demonstrated frenzied and continuous reproductive behavior. Their conclusion was that they had ablated the rats’ superegos. I can’t resist a word of caution to parents. Children are born with ids. They are naturally good at wanting stuff. The ego (thinker), ant the superego (judge), take some time to develop. The brain is not capable of carrying out these functions until after a process of neurological and social development. That is why trying to explain things to pre-schoolers is pretty much a waste of time. It also annoys both of you. It’s much like trying to discuss Hamlet with a Great Dane. They can learn a lot of words, but they don’t really use them to think with yet. And the development of the superego may not be complete until the mid teens. That’s why they often forget to obey as soon as you are out of sight. But today Psychoanalysis is nearly extinct, as are it’s practitioners. It has always been limited to the wealthy, not only because of very large fees for nearly daily sessions, but because it has explicit and measurable goals and no defined end point. Effectiveness can only be measured by client satisfaction and return; there is virtually no measurable symptom improvement. I became disillusioned and impatient with it early on in my career. The psychoanalytic model is too simple to reflect the human psyche. The infinite complexity of human individuals requires a potentially infinite model . We can do so much more, than jus merely want, and judge, and plan. Freud; himself, was forced to write as an apologist for Psychoanalysis, for the reasons I mentioned. He advocated many other forms of treatment, including injected cocaine and “Mesmerism”. (Franz Mesner, 1734-1815, is credited with discovering hypnosis. But he thought that the phenomenon was the result of “animal magnetism” and other spiritual and supernatural powers. In other words magic). Freud was enthralled with it, but his writings reveal that he misunderstood or did not understand it. His methods of Mesmerism seem hopelessly primitive today, and he eventually gave up on it. But he didn’t give up cocaine, because he and his patients were addicted to it. You see, Freud was trained as a research physician, rather than as a practicing clinical physician. He has been called a “pan-sexualist“, because he maintained dogmatically that sex was the root of all human motives. His own inner circle of theorists balked at this assertion, and he dismissed some of them. He also dismissed female rancor as “penis envy”. I am reminded of the old country/western song concerning what it’s all about, titled “Faster Horses, Older Whiskey, Younger Women, More Money”. By this measure, Freud would appear to have gotten one out of 4. I suppose batting .250 is pretty good for a pitcher. But now we know that there are any number of human motives and values, and they are all moving parts. Focusing on just one of them as the root of it all, actually leads us away from a full appreciation of reality. But back to the point, Freud deserves his place in history. His work in unconscious processes was a genuine breakthrough. However, it’s time to move on. Let me work up to a more adequate model by offering my first introduction to “glove anesthesia “. The meaning of that term will become clear. I was at a week long hypnosis seminar hosted by Don Aspromonte. We had a medical student in the class who was having academic problems because he kept falling asleep while trying to study. Now-other methods of psychotherapy would require a long process of diagnosis, treatment planning, team meetings, assigning of a primary therapist, and likely months of treatment! But Don took him/us on a trip. I’m going to summarize it, in order to save time and pages. After a quick hypnotic induction (for example, the one in our next chapter), we were on a mountain snow-packed trail (we were in Denver at the time). We could hear the crunch of the snow as we walked. There was a large log home up ahead, and we decided to explore it. Walking across the echoing porch and opening the squeaking door, (property rights don’t exist in dreams, and med students tend to become adept in listening/hearing mode) we saw a cheery blaze in the fireplace. We warm ourselves. We explored the halls and rooms. (The unconscious recognizes that a home is a metaphor/symbol for the self, and exploring a home provides a hint to the unconscious jouney of what our task will be). When we leave and walk back down the trail, (You may ask-what was the point of all that? The unconscious understands, we are making friends with it.) Don suggested that John (the unconscious minds know the first mind by it’s given name, in the 3rd person) place his hands in the snowdrift. Another suggestion acknowledged temporary discomfort from the cold, which will go away. We leave our hands in the snow as …“we begin to notice that our hands are losing feeling, becoming numb, and we allow that to continue until we don’t feel them.” (Facial muscles will tell you when this is complete. The muscles will visibly relax and skin color will change). “ I am going to touch one of John’s fingers”. (doing so). “I would like to speak...