The Power of Hypnotism

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The Power of Hypnotism

Let’s say you have some sort of problem or bad habit (as do most people I know) and you really want to overcome it. Maybe you are addicted to smoking, but no matter what you do, you just can’t resist the urge to go crawling back to your cigarettes and take another smoke. Finally, you see an ad in the paper for a hypnotist that says he (or she, of course) can help break addictions with a little hypnotic suggestion, and you decide that you might as well give it a try. You walk into small, quiet room and lay down on a comfortable sofa across from the hypnotist. He begins to calmly tell you to relax all parts of your body, and tells you to shut your eyes. “You are getting very sleepy.”

The next thing you know, you wake up from a deep sleep, and all of a sudden all your urges to smoke another cigarette vanish; your addiction is broken. Sounds ridiculous right? Maybe to some, but others completely believe this would be totally plausible. In fact, hypnosis is a very controversial subject in the field of psychology. The practice of hypnosis is actually about as old as the United States of America, as the earliest it is thought to have been used was around the time of the American Revolution (Rosen 2). However, many psychologists still argue about whether or not it is a true, practical process, and what it actually means to be hypnotized. Is it the bringing out of a hidden unconscious level of awareness, honing in all attention on a single stimulus, or simply a patient psychologically playing the role of an obedient hypnotized subject (“Exploring the mysteries of hypnosis”)? I believe that hypnosis really works, and is a viable technique that when used correctly, can be implemented to help people not j...

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stays.” Women’s Health Weekly 30 June 2011:22. Student Edition. Web. 9 Feb. 2012.

Myers, David G. Psychology. 8th ed. New York: Worth, 2007. Print.

O'Briain, Cathal. "Empowering your athletic abilities." USA Today [Magazine] May 2011:

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Rosen, Marvin. Meditation and Hypnosis. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2006. Print.

Sanders, Laura. "Eye movements indicate hypnosis: involuntary alterations suggest a true

trance can’t be faked." Science News 17 Dec. 2011: 10. Student Edition. Web. 9 Feb.

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