Research on Hypnosis

Most people can be easily hypnotized, but the depth of the trance varies widely. A profound trance is characterized by a forgetting of trance events and by an ability to respond automatically to posthypnotic suggestions that are not too anxiety-provoking. The depth of trance achievable is a relatively fixed characteristic, dependent on the emotional condition of the subject and on the skill of the hypnotist. Only 20 percent of subjects are capable of entering somnambulistic states through the usual methods of induction. Medically, this percentage is not significant, since therapeutic effects occur even in a light trance.
Hypnosis can produce a deeper contact with one's emotional life, resulting in some lifting of repressions and exposure of buried fears and conflicts. This effect potentially lends itself to medical and educational use, but it also lends itself to misinterpretation. Thus, the revival through hypnosis of early, forgotten memories may be fused with fantasies. Research into hypnotically induced memories in recent years has in fact stressed their uncertain reliability. For this reason a number of state court systems in the U.S. have placed increasing constraints on the use of evidence hypnotically obtained from witnesses, although most states still permit its introduction in court.
Hypnosis has been used to treat a variety of physiological and behavioral problems. It can alleviate back pain and pain resulting from burns and cancer. It has been used by some obstetricians as the sole analgesia for normal childbirth. Hypnosis is sometimes also employed to treat physical problems with a possible psychological component, such as Raynaud's syndrome (a circulatory disease) and fecal incontinence in children. Researchers have demonstrated that the benefit of hypnosis is greater than the effect of a placebo and probably results from changing the focus of attention. Few physicians, however, include hypnosis as part of their practice.
Some behavioral difficulties, such as cigarette smoking, overeating, and insomnia, are also amenable to resolution through hypnosis. Nonetheless, most psychiatrists think that fundamental psychiatric illness is better treated with the patient in a normal state of consciousness.

HYPNOTISM --- PARASYCOLOGY

Hypnosis is a mental state (state theory) or imaginative role-enactment (non-state theory) usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary instructions and suggestions.Hypnotic suggestions may be delivered by a hypnotist in the presence of the subject, or may be self-administered ("self-suggestion" or "autosuggestion"). The use of hypnotism for therapeutic purposes is referred to as "hypnotherapy".
The words 'hypnosis' and 'hypnotism' both derive from the term "neuro-hypnotism" (nervous sleep) coined by the Scottish surgeon James Braid around 1841. Braid based his practice on that developed by Franz Mesmer and his followers ("Mesmerism" or "animal magnetism"), but differed in his theory as to how the procedure worked.  Hypnosis, altered state of consciousness and heightened responsiveness to suggestion; it may be induced in normal persons by a variety of methods and has been used occasionally in medical and psychiatric treatment. Most frequently hypnosis is brought about through the actions of an operator, the hypnotist, who engages the attention of a subject and assigns certain tasks to him or her while uttering monotonous, repetitive verbal commands; such tasks may include muscle relaxation, eye fixation, and arm levitation. Hypnosis also may be self-induced, by trained relaxation, concentration on one's own breathing, or by a variety of monotonous practices and rituals that are found in many mystical, philosophical, and religious systems.
         Hypnosis results in the gradual assumption by the subject of a state of consciousness in which attention is withdrawn from the outside world and is concentrated on mental, sensory, and physiological experiences. When a hypnotist induces a trance, a close relationship or rapport develops between operator and subject. The responses of subjects in the trance state, and the phenomena or behavior they manifest objectively, are the product of their motivational set; that is, behavior reflects what is being sought from the experience.

Investigations on parasychology

Among the early achievements of the British group was the investigation of hypnotism , a field later claimed by medicine and psychology. The society also investigated phenomena produced at spiritualistic séances and the claims of spiritualism. Psi phenomena to be investigated were classified as either physical or mental. The physical effects, or PK, include the movement of physical objects or an influence upon material processes by the apparent direct action of mind over matter. The mental manifestations, or ESP, include telepathy, which is the direct transmission of messages, emotions, or other subjective states from one person to another without the use of any sensory channel of communication; clairvoyance, meaning direct responses to a physical object or event without any sensory contact; and precognition, or a noninferential response to a future event.

One of the first specific investigations in the field was the examination, by the British chemist and physicist Sir William Crookes, of the phenomena produced at séances held by the Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home. Home, a physical medium, generally used some type of lighting during his séances, and the validity of the paranormal phenomena he produced has never been successfully impugned. The contents of verbal utterances by mental mediums were also studied. Significant early research involved the American medium Leonore E. Piper, whose apparent psychical gifts were discovered by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. Other lines of investigation dealt with psychic experiences that seemed to occur spontaneously in everyday life, and involved the controlled testing of persons with apparently outstanding ESP abilities.

While the results of such experiments are regarded by some parapsychologists as having demonstrated the existence of some forms of psychic abilities the consensus of the scientific community is that psychic abilities have not been demonstrated to exist. Critics argue that methodological flaws may explain any apparent experimental successes

Research On Para-psychology

In the U.S., one of the earliest groups to become active in parapsychology was the Parapsychology Laboratory of North Carolina's Duke University, which began publishing literature in the 1930s. There, under the direction of the American psychologist Joseph Banks Rhine, methods were developed that advanced psychical investigations from the correlations of isolated and often vague anecdotal reports to a mathematical study based on statistics and the laws of probability.

In the experiments dealing with ESP, Rhine and his associates used mainly a deck of 25 cards, somewhat similar to ordinary playing cards but bearing on their faces only five designs: star, circle, cross, square, and wavy lines. If a subject correctly named 5 out of the shuffled deck of 25 concealed cards, that was considered pure chance. Certain subjects, however, consistently named 6 out of 10 cards correctly; so Rhine and his associates concluded that this demonstrated the existence of ESP. In their experiments on PK, the group used ordinary dice that were thrown from a cup against a wall or tumbled in mechanically driven cages. In these tests, an apparent relationship was found between the mental effort of subjects to “will” particular faces of the dice to appear upward and the percentage of times the faces actually did so. The results obtained in many individual experiments and in the research as a whole, Rhine and his workers decided, could not reasonably be attributed to the fluctuations of chance.

Rhine retired from Duke University in 1965 and transferred his research to a privately endowed organization, the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man. Since that time parapsychology has become better established in other universities, as illustrated by the offering of credit courses in the subject in increasing numbers. In addition, independent research centers continue to be founded, among them the American Society for Psychical Research, with headquarters in New York City. The Parapsychological Association, an international group of scholars actively working in the field, was formed in 1957 and was granted affiliation status by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1969

Para-psychology

Parapsychology, scientific investigation of alleged phenomena and events that appear to be unaccounted for by conventional physical, biological, or psychological theories. Parapsychologists study two kinds of so-called psi phenomena: extrasensory perception (ESP), or the acquiring of information through nonsensory means; and psychokinesis (PK), or the ability to affect objects at a distance by means other than known physical forces. Psychical research also investigates the survival of personality after death and deals with related topics such as trance mediumship, hauntings, apparitions, poltergeists (involuntary PK), and out-of-body experiences. The name of this field of investigation is taken from the Society of Psychical Research, founded in England in 1882 and in the U.S. in 1884; both groups continue to publish their findings today.

Although parapsychologists are increasingly employing and refining scientific methodologies for their observations, one of the chief criticisms of their work is that experiments in psi phenomena can rarely be duplicated. Under the most rigorous laboratory controls, for example, experiments on phenomena such as out-of-body experiences—in which individuals demonstrate an apparent ability to locate their center of perception outside their bodies—indicate that even reputable psychics are rarely able to duplicate earlier, high-scoring performances. The scores of such individuals, in fact, tend to drop to the level of probability the more the experiment is repeated. Nonparapsychologists find psi experiments even more difficult to repeat, and a majority of conventional scientists dismiss parapsychology findings as unscientific or at best inconclusive.

A similar criticism is based on the claim by most parapsychologists that psi phenomena occur beyond the law of causality, which is one of the fundamental premises of any scientific investigation. Indeed, results of psi experiments often turn out to be far from or even contradictory to the original predictions. Parapsychologists admit that psi phenomena fall so far outside ordinary comprehension that they are often unsure whether an ESP event or a PK event has occurred; Rhine himself stated that one kind of event could not occur without the other. Because these phenomena are difficult to define or isolate when they appear to happen—and, further, because the phenomena occur only for a select group of observers—most scientists think that psi investigations fall far short of the rules of objectivity required by the scientific method. As a result, many parapsychologists, rather than trying to demonstrate the reality of psi phenomena to a skeptical scientific community, have turned to exploring how such phenomena might actually work; they even have drawn on quantum physics for empirical support. Some workers in the field object to the very notion of repeatability of experiments as foreign to the nature of psi phenomena; they consider the scientific method, as currently understood, too restrictive a formulation for exploring the unknown

Social Psychology

Social Psychology , the scientific study of how people think, feel, and behave in social situations. This area of specialization draws on two disciplines: sociology, which focuses on groups; and psychology, which centers on the individual.
Social psychologists seek to answer a wide variety of questions, among them: Why do we help or ignore others in need? Why are people romantically attracted to each other? How do people form stereotypes about racial and ethnic groups, and how can they overcome them? What techniques of persuasion do advertisers use to sell their products? Why do people usually conform in group situations? What makes someone an effective leader?

As in other branches of psychology, social psychologists use a wide variety of research methods, including laboratory experiments, observations in the real world, case studies, and public opinion surveys. Some social psychologists conduct basic research to test general theories about human social behavior, while others seek to apply that research to solve real-world social problems.

Social psychology and sociology are often confused, because both fields study groups and group behavior. However, their perspectives differ. Whereas sociologists strive to understand group behavior in terms of society and social institutions, social psychologists focus on individuals and how they perceive, interact with, and influence each other. They study how individuals exert influence on groups and how group situations affect the behavior of individuals

Clinical psychology

Clinical psychology is dedicated to the study, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illnesses and other emotional or behavioral disorders. More psychologists work in this field than in any other branch of psychology. In hospitals, community clinics, schools, and in private practice, they use interviews and tests to diagnose depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses. People with these psychological disorders often suffer terribly. They experience disturbing symptoms that make it difficult for them to work, relate to others, and cope with the demands of everyday life.

Over the years, scientists and mental health professionals have made great strides in the treatment of psychological disorders. For example, advances in psychopharmacology have led to the development of drugs that relieve severe symptoms of mental illness. Clinical psychologists usually cannot prescribe drugs, but they often work in collaboration with a patient’s physician. Drug treatment is often combined with psychotherapy, a form of intervention that relies primarily on verbal communication to treat emotional or behavioral problems. Over the years, psychologists have developed many different forms of psychotherapy. Some forms, such as psychoanalysis, focus on resolving internal, unconscious conflicts stemming from childhood and past experiences. Other forms, such as cognitive and behavioral therapies, focus more on the person’s current level of functioning and try to help the individual change distressing thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.

In addition to studying and treating mental disorders, many clinical psychologists study the normal human personality and the ways in which individuals differ from one another. Still others administer a variety of psychological tests, including intelligence tests and personality tests. These tests are commonly given to individuals in the workplace or in school to assess their interests, skills, and level of functioning. Clinical psychologists also use tests to help them diagnose people with different types of psychological disorders.

The field of counseling psychology is closely related to clinical psychology. Counseling psychologists may treat mental disorders, but they more commonly treat people with less-severe adjustment problems related to marriage, family, school, or career. Many other types of professionals care for and treat people with psychological disorders, including psychiatrists, psychiatric social workers, and psychiatric nurses

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