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ChristianKl comments on Need some psychology advice - Less Wrong Discussion
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Can you decide to fall asleep? I can't. I can't do it consioucsly but I still fall asleep every night. I just lie in bed and sooner or later my brain decides to switch to sleeping mode.
Switching pain off is similar. Human's are quite capable of switching it off. At the same time few people can just do it because they want the pain to stop. Hypnosis allow people to switch off pain signals from their body completely.
If a human mind understands on a deep level that feeling the pain has no use, than it stops.
I've heard claims to this effect, but the results of the research I've found along those lines are rather less impressive. Bad Science has a short section on it, the gist of which is that most of the claims which are bandied about with respect to hypnotism are exaggerations of the findings of actual research, in which people have demonstrated an ability to tolerate levels of pain which we normally avoid subjecting people to in ordinary medical procedures, but which are not, in fact, greater than people have already been found able to tolerate without hypnotism.
Some people are better at dealing with pain than others, and it's an ability that can be improved with practice, but if it were possible for humans in general to block out the experience of pain entirely through hypnotism, the military would probably be utilizing that in the training of commandos to resist torture. The influence of the First Earth Battalion is such that this is the sort of prospect the military is very receptive to.
I'm not claiming that formal hypnosis is the only way that people can switch off pain perception. People can tolerate a lot if they have no other choice.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-560534/The-hypnotist-snubbed-anaesthetic-sent-trance-painful-bone-cutting-surgery.html would be an example of a hypnotherapist who went for a 83 minute operation without anesthetic and said that he felt no pain as the doctors chiselled out a walnut- sized chunk of bone from his wrist.
I grant that the guy isn't an average patient but had years of training in going into trance. The example still shows that the human mind is in principle capable of disassocing such pains.
I think you have a misconception about how torture works. It's not about inflicting a maximum of pain in the shortest amount of time.
A soldier that went through good military training shouldn't break after 5 minutes of maximum pain. The soldier is taught to make up plausible lies to his torturers.
The US used waterboarding to torture. Waterboarding has the advantage of not only inflicting pain but also triggering a feeling of being drowed. Even if the victim would be able to deal with the pain they still feel the reflex of wanting to avoid drowning.
There are many human drives besides the desire to avoid pain that a torturer can use to coerce his victim. Teaching soldiers to buy time by telling the tortures lies seems to be the best strategy for the military.
There nothing inherently New Agey about hypnosis. Mid 20st-century The US made hypnosis for medicial purposes by people without a medical degree illegal. Midwives were allowed to give their patients pain killers but weren't allowed to use hypnosis to reduce pain. Hypnosis would have a different standing today when it wouldn't have been effectively prosecuted.
The Daily Mail is a tabloid, I'd take its reports with a hearty dose of salt.
The military does have courses in enduring torture, beyond simply making up plausible lies, as part of commando training, but it doesn't entail hypnosis.
Not everything that spun out of the New Earth Battalion's influences is "inherently new-agey." Some of it is grounded thoroughly in hard science, and works quite well for its intended purposes. The influence of the New Earth Battalion has brought about a lot of investigation into outside-the-box, non-mainstream methods and technology for warfare, including but not limited to a lot of stuff that isn't well supported by evidence.
For most people who don't want to show off there little reason to use hypnosis without also using other anesthetica at the same time. Especially if you have to get past an ethic board. I wouldn't expect many scientific papers to exist that investigate the issue.
Self-induced hypnosis for bilateral ankle arthroscopy would be one case report with describes a patient who got 3 orthopedic intervention without conventional anaesthetic.
Most trials that do exist use hypnosis in addition to other anesthetica and find that as a result you need less anesthetica. A meta-analysis says about them: Meta-analysis of 18 studies revealed a moderate to large hypnoanalgesic effect, supporting the efficacy of hypnotic techniques for pain management.
I don't want to argue that making up plausible lies is the only feature of those courses but as far as I understand it's a crucial part of them. The soldier is trained to reach a state where he can tell those lies. He's not trained to simply shut off.
I'm not sure that the kind of pain reduction that I think is possible through hypnosis would be of high use for training soldiers to resist torture in a cost effective way.
On the flipside, those who ask to use self hypnosis in lieu of anesthesia will tend to be those who want to show off. A news article like the one in the Daily Mail (which has a well established history of not investigating its reports thoroughly, particularly in the areas of health and science, to ensure that they're actually true) is tremendously good business for a hypnotherapist. If the reality were that it hurt like a motherfucker, but he was able to tough it out, if he could arrange to get an article like the above into print it would still be much to his benefit.
I wouldn't be surprised if hypnotic techniques can mitigate pain; it's a mental coping mechanism. You can also get quite good at dealing with physical pain simply by practice. It may be possible for a person to block out the experience of pain entirely through the use of mental techniques, some mental techniques do have very significant effect, but the degree of evidence I've found available isn't enough to disabuse my skepticism. If I were a hypnotherapist who wanted to convince people that my abilities were much more profound than they really were, I would start looking for ways I could trick people into giving a favorable report. If I were a hypnotherapist who really did have abilities which were that profound, I would want to prove it in as high profile and fireproof a manner as I could manage.
Training in self hypnotic techniques was one of the initiatives that came out of the New Earth Battalion; many of the techniques investigated (such as the ability to kill animals by staring at them for extended periods) were not realistically practical for military applications even if they had turned out to work. But it does not seem that soldiers capable of entirely blocking out pain ever materialized.
It's difficult to know what another person really feels when you don't trust them to tell you. I know quite a few people who allowed needles to get sticked into their hands and didn't feel any pain because of hypnosis.
You assume that it's a good business strategy for a hypotherapist to try to convince skeptics. In reality, there are many people who aren't skeptics out there. For a hypnotherapist it's much more effective to focus on winning those people as customers.
A lot of skeptics also have low hypnothic suggestibility in the first place with doesn't make them the best clients for a hypnotherapist.
You also shouldn't underrate the difficulty of finding a doctor that's willing to operate a patient without real anesthetics. A hypnotherapist who wants to demonstrate profound hypnotic power has a much easier time doing stage hypnosis. If you want an example of stage hypnosis producing such an effect, take a look at http://youtu.be/oC9J6O6soHA?t=11m35s .
I assume it's a good business strategy for a hypnotherapist to try to convince many customers. Getting in a tabloid with high circulation is a good start, getting on television is better.
You don't need to wait for occasions where you need surgery, having an ability to render yourself impervious to pain is begging for "Okay, prove it" challenges.
For pain beyond the ability of ordinary people to tolerate which won't produce lasting injury, I'd go for challenges involving capsaicin or an Active Denial System.
Finding skeptics willing to challenge your ability to do this under rigorous conditions would be a good way to get publicity, and if you're willing to place bets on it, a lot of money.
I think you overrate the effect of being on TV. I was involved with a few Quantified Self TV productions in Germany and in general they didn't brought more than a few new people to the QS meetups. Personal referrals do much more than mainstream media.
I also know a hypnotherapist who was on TV in a session where he cured a women of a phobia of taking pictures. It was nice for him but it didn't bring him hundreds of new clients.
Capsaicin sounds nice in principle. The problem is that most people don't know what a specific amount of capsaicin would do to a person. What kind of dose would you propose? Both that the dose isn't so high to deal real damage but at the same time that skeptics are convinced that the dose is high enough?
Do you really think that a skeptic would be willing to bet a lot of money on this? It's not like you are demonstrating telekinesis.
Well, it takes a hell of a lot more capsaicin to do lasting damage to someone than it does to cause fairly intolerable pain. If I wanted to demonstrate that I was impervious to pain, I would probably get some Sixteen Million Reserve, and dissolve it in front of an audience at, say, a 1:10 solution. Then I'd split that into two vessels, and dilute one of them a further ten times, and have a panel of other people willing to take the challenge insert swabs into that, and stick them up their noses. Let the audience see what it does to them. Then do the same myself, with the ten times more concentrated solution. Let them see that regardless of what inflammation occurs, I show no signs of pain.
I'd sooner use the Active Denial System though. Once you've subjected yourself to a dose of capsaicin, there's pretty much nothing you can do but bear it, regardless of how stoic you may or may not be. But an Active Denial System will send people running in seconds. If I could stand blithely in front of one while a whole crowd of people was dropping everything to get away, that would be a pretty compelling demonstration.
Shop around for one who will. I'd look up someone high profile like James Randi and ask "do you believe I could do this? Are you willing to bet I can't?" If you can get enough skeptics admitting they do believe you can do it, it's good publicity to capitalize on.