Hypnosis and Classical Conditioning

[esoteric]

I had an interesting thought the other day during one of my classes that I thought I would bring up for conversation. It seems to me a lot of hypnosis work is strongly related to classical/operant conditioning. For anyone not familiar with conditioning it was discovered, for lack of a better term, by the famous biologist Pavlov and his dogs. He trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell instead of a food, because they were conditioned to expect food after the tone of a bell. But of course this was the original work done in the field and it has become much more elaborate.

Back to my point, hypnosis/trance work seems to work on this principle. By having people visual situations with different outcomes and using suggests for new attitudes and associations, a lot of times people are learning to associate a stimulus with a different, ie. desired response. Smoking, allergies, pain management, etc. pop into mind as prime example. Perhaps due to the bypass of the critical factor hypnosis is a more effective and faster route in conditioning work.

I started thinking about this because we were talking about conditioning that has happened with cancer patients and chemotherapy. Chemo has the effect of taking down a persons immune systems, and a study conducted found that after repeated chemotherapy exposures (original stimulus) a person's immune system (response) goes down when they enter the hospital (new stimulus), even before they therapy is started. So, when hypnosis intervenes in similar situations it seems to be a similar state of conditioning. For example, with allergy treatment, hypnosis patients are trained generally, not to have the association of an allergic (new response) reaction with hay, cat, etc. (stimulus). I'm not sure how well I explained my reasoning, but I think I got my point across.

So, what do you guys think? Is a lot of hypnosis work conditioning done with people simply in a hypnotic state?

[Poodle]

We are all quite aware of Pavlov's methodology. However, in trance one does not "condition" the inner mind. There are no prizes, awards, treats, food or anything else offered in a hypnosis session. We do not operate with a carrot stick in front of the donkey theory. It is soooo simple. Trance is induced so that useful and beneficial suggestions enter the subconscious mind by passing the "Guard". The subconscious mind is what controls the a lot of the human body except for analytical, linear thinking. Inducing trance and telling a client's T-cells to act properly and stop attacking normal cells has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH CONDITIONING. At most it is putting the mind/body back into "normal" working mode. Maybe we are arguing sematics here. I dunno.

Panic attacks? -- Client has panic attacks around large groups of people. Reasoning behind this is probably the FIRST panic attack occured in a large group of people thusly linking the environment with the problem. Tracing the panic attack back to the origin is then the beginning of the healing. There is no conditioning here.

Want to weigh in on this one Merlin?

[skip]

estoeric,

This guy Pavlov, you speak of ... was he a local boy?

[Don]

No, he was the pilot on Star Trek...

:p

[skip]

So this classical conditioning is some sort of physical phitness regime?

[Terry (existing)]

So this classical conditioning is some sort of physical phitness regime? Yes, and it's classical because it's from Star Trek, and that is a modern classic...

[esoteric]

We are all quite aware of Pavlov's methodology.

I assumed most people on the board were, especially those I hoped to respond. But I wanted to include the info for anyone just glancing at the board who wasn't familiar with Pavlov. He was very interesting, and contributed a lot of good science. Better to over-educate than under-educate. ;)


Panic attacks? -- Client has panic attacks around large groups of people. Reasoning behind this is probably the FIRST panic attack occured in a large group of people thusly linking the environment with the problem. Tracing the panic attack back to the origin is then the beginning of the healing. There is no conditioning here.


We may be arguing semantics, these are abstract ideas to convey in short posts. Essentially, I would say, that some hypnosis (perhaps most) uses many concepts in conditioning. Specifically in visualizations, in these cases the conditioning is done with imagined situations and concepts instead of physical items such as food or a shock. I may be trying to extend basic conditioning to concepts that shouldn't fall under it's umbrella, but it really makes sense to me.

As for the panic attacks, I think a strong case could be made that conditioning is being done. The moment you are tracing back to was likely a strong case of conditioning, ie. they had a panic attack, for whatever reason, but it was in a group of people. Now they are more likely to have a panic attack in a group. As for the healing, conditioning may not cover it all, but part of the process I imagine is training the person not to fear groups and not to have panic attacks because of the groups.