Hypnosis

hypnosis

Hypnosis is a process involving a hypnotist and a subject who agrees to be hypnotized. Being hypnotized is usually characterized by (a) intense concentration, (b) extreme relaxation, and (c) high suggestibility.
The versatility of hypnosis is unparalleled. Hypnosis occurs under dramatically different social settings: the showroom, the clinic, the classroom, and the police station. Showroom hypnotists usually work bars and clubs. Their subjects are usually people whose idea of a good time is to join dozens or hundreds of others in a place where alcohol is the main social bonding agent. The subjects of clinical hypnotists are usually people with problems who have heard that hypnotherapy works for relieving pain or overcoming an addiction or a fear, etc. Others use hypnosis to recover repressed memory of sexual abuse or of past life. Some psychologists and hypnotherapists use hypnosis to discover truths hidden from ordinary consciousness by tapping into the unconcious mind where these truths allegedly reside. Finally, some hypnotic subjects are people who have been victims or witnesses of a crime. The police encourage them to undergo hypnosis to help them remember details from their experiences.
Hypnosis: the common view challenged
The common view of hypnosis is that it is a trance-like altered state of consciousness. Many who accept this view also believe that hypnosis is a way of accessing an unconscious mind full of repressed memories, multiple personalities , mystical insights, or memories of past lives. This view of hypnosis as an altered state and gateway to occult knowledge about the self and the universe is considered a myth by many psychologists. There are two distinct, though related, aspects to this mythical view of hypnosis: the myth of the altered state and the myth of the occult reservoir.
Those supporting the altered state theory often cite studies that show that during hypnosis (1) the brain’s electrical states change and (2) brain waves differ from those during waking consciousness. The critics of the mythical view point out that these facts are irrelevant to establishing hypnosis as an altered state of consciousness. One might as well call daydreaming, concentrating, imagining the color red, or sneezing altered states, since the experience of each will show electrical changes in the brain and changes in brain waves from ordinary waking consciousness.
Those supporting the unconscious occult reservoir theory support their belief with anecdotes of numerous people who, while hypnotized, (a) recall events from their present or past life of which they have no conscious memory, or (b) relate being in distant places and/or future times while under hypnosis.
Most of what is known about hypnosis, as opposed to what is believed, has come from studies on the subjects of hypnosis. We know that there is a significant correlation between being able to be absorbed in imaginative activity and being responsive to hypnosis.* We know that those who are fantasy-prone are also likely to make excellent hypnotic subjects. We know that vivid imagery enhances suggestibility. We know that those who think hypnosis is rubbish can’t be hypnotized. We know that hypnotic subjects are not turned into zombies and are not controlled by their hypnotists. We know that hypnosis does not enhance the accuracy of memory in any special way. We know that a person under hypnosis is very suggestible and that memory is easily “filled-in” by the imagination and by suggestions made under hypnosis. We know that confabulation is quite common while under hypnosis and that many States do not allow testimony which has been induced by hypnosis because it is intrinsically unreliable. We know the greatest predictor of hypnotic responsiveness is what a person believes about hypnosis.
We also know that the usual personality traits measured on the typical personality inventory such as the Myers-Briggs or introversion/extraversion scales do not correlate well with hypnotizability:
There are 12 standard tests in the SHSS (Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale) which measure how well a subject conforms to the behavior of a classically hypnotized person. By these scales, about 5% of people are classically unhypnotizable, most people show moderate scores, and about 10% are hypnotizable to extreme depths and show the classical deep trance phenomena such as somnambulism, visual and auditory hallucinations, and ability to remain deeply in hypnosis with eyes open.
....hypnotizability does not appear to show any obvious correlation with any of the usual personality traits or characteristics. Not only is gullibility not directly correlated, but gender, extraversion/introversion, and neurotic tendencies have also been shown not to correlate well with hypnotizability.*
Hypnosis in its socio-cognitive context
If hypnosis is not an altered state or gateway to a mystical and occult unconscious mind, then what is it? Why do so many people, including those who write psychology textbooks, or dictionary and encyclopedia entries, continue to perpetuate the mythical view of hypnosis as if it were established scientific fact? For one thing, the mass media perpetuates this myth in countless movies, books, television shows, etc., and there is an entrenched tradition of hypnotherapists who have faith in the myth, make a good living from it, and see many effects from their sessions which, from their point of view, can only be called “successes.” They even have a number of scientific studies to support their views. Psychologists such as Robert Baker think such studies are about as valid as the studies which supported the belief in phlogiston or the aether. Baker claims that what we call hypnosis is actually a form of learned social behavior.
The hypnotist and subject learn what is expected of their roles and reinforce each other by their performances. The hypnotist provides the suggestions and the subject responds to the suggestions. The rest of the behavior--the hypnotist’s repetition of sounds or gestures, his soft, relaxing voice, etc., and the trance-like pose or sleep-like repose of the subject, etc.--are just window dressing, part of the drama that makes hypnosis seem mysterious. When one strips away these dramatic dressings what is left is something quite ordinary, even if extraordinarily useful: a self-induced, “psyched-up” state of suggestibility.
Psychologist Nicholas Spanos agrees with Baker: “hypnotic procedures influence behavior indirectly by altering subjects’ motivations, expectations and interpretations.” This has nothing to do with putting the subject into a trance and exercising control over the subconscious mind. Hypnosis is a learned behavior, according to Spanos, issuing out of a socio-cognitive context. We can accomplish many of the same things in a variety of ways: going to college or reading a book, taking training courses or teaching oneself a new skill, listening to pep talks or giving ourselves a pep talk, enrolling in motivation courses or simply making a willful determination to accomplish specific goals. In short, what is called hypnosis is an act of social conformity rather than a unique state of consciousness. The subject acts in accordance with expectations of the hypnotist and hypnotic situation and behaves as he or she thinks one is supposed to behave while hypnotized. The hypnotist acts in accordance with expectations of the subject (and/or audience) and the hypnotic situation, and behaves as he or she thinks one is supposed to behave while playing the role of hypnotist. This does not mean that the power of suggestion and belief, induced and enhanced by hypnosis, cannot have real physiological effects that may seem "magical." They can, of course, with or without hypnosis.
Spanos compares the popularity of hypnosis with the nineteenth century phenomenon we now call mesmerism. Furthermore, he draws an analogy between the belief in hypnosis and the belief in demonic possession and exorcism. Each can be explained in terms of sociocognitive context. The conceptions of the roles for the participants in all of these beliefs and behaviors are learned and reinforced in their social settings. They are context-dependent and depend upon the willingness of participants to play their established roles. Given enough support by enough people in a social setting, just about any concept or behavior can become adamantly defended as dogma by the scientific, theological, or social community.
Another psychologist, E.M. Thornton, extends the analogy between hypnotism, mesmerism, and exorcism. She maintains that hypnotic subjects are asked basically to take on “what really amounts to a parody of epileptic symptoms.” If some hypnotic or mesmerized subjects seem possessed, that is because possession involves a similar socio-cognitive context, a similar role-playing arrangement and rapport. The central beliefs differ and the dominant idea of an altered state, of animal magnetism or of invading demons, gives the experiences their distinguishing characteristics. Deep down, however, hypnotism, mesmerism, hysteria, and demonic possession share the common ground of being social constructs engineered mainly by enthusiastic therapists, showmen, and priests on the one side, and suggestible, imaginative, willing, fantasy-prone players with deep emotional needs or abilities on the other.
hypnosis: the good, the bad and the ugly
The godfather of the repression, Freud, wisely gave up using hypnosis in therapy. Unfortunately, however, hypnosis continues to be used in a wide variety of contexts, not all of which are beneficial. Using hypnosis to help people quit smoking or stick to a diet may be useful, and even if it fails it is probably not harmful. Using hypnosis to help people remember license plate numbers of cars used in crimes may be useful, and even if it fails it is probably not harmful. Using hypnosis to help victims or witnesses of crimes remember what happened may be useful, but it can also be dangerous because of the ease with which the subject can be manipulated by suggestions from the hypnotist. Overzealous police hypnotists may put conviction of those they think are guilty above honest conviction by honest evidence presented to a jury. Hypnosis is also dangerous in the police setting, because of the tendency of too many police officers to believe in truth serums, lie detectors, and other magical and easy ways to get to the truth.
Using hypnosis to help people recover memories of sexual abuse by their closest relatives or by aliens in spaceships is dangerous, and in some cases, clearly immoral and degrading. For, in some cases, hypnosis is used to encourage patients to remember and then believe events which probably never happened. If these memories were not of such horrible and painful events, they would be of little concern. But by nurturing delusions of evil suffered, therapists often do irreparable harm to those who put their trust in them. And they do this in the name of healing and caring, as did the priests of old when they hunted witches and exorcised demons.

Dreams

dream
Dreams, say all the wiseacres in Christendom, are to be interpreted by contraries....The rule, however, does not hold good in all cases. --Charles Mackay
A dream is mental activity (thoughts, images, emotions) occurring during sleep. Most dreams occur in conjunction with rapid eye movements; hence, they are said to occur during REM-sleep, a period typically taking up 20-25% of sleep time. Infants are believed to dream during about 50% of their sleep time. Dreams occurring during non-REM periods are said to occur during NREM-sleep.
Sleep researchers divide up sleep time into stages, mainly defined by the electrical activity of cortical neurons represented as brain waves by an electroencephalograph (EEG). The EEG records electrical activity in the brain by connecting surface electrodes to the scalp. The stages of sleep occur in sequence and then go backward to stage 1 and REM-sleep about 90 minutes later. This cycle recurs throughout the night with the REM period typically getting longer at each recurrence. Typically, a person will have four or five REM periods a night, ranging from 5 to 45 minutes each in duration. There is some evidence, however, that REM-sleep evolved before dreaming and that the two are independent of one another.1
The REM-dream state is a neurologically and physiologically active state. When a person is in deep sleep there is no dreaming and the waves (called delta waves) come at a high amplitude about 3 per second. In REM-sleep, the waves come at a rate of about 60-70 per second and the brain generates about five times as much electricity as when awake. Blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, etc. can change dramatically during REM-sleep. Since there is generally no external physical cause of these states, the stimuli must be internal, i.e., in the brain, or external and non-physical. The latter explanation--that dreams are a gateway to a paranormal or supernatural realm--seems to be largely without merit, although it is very ancient. Each of the following may have contributed to this misconception: dreams of dead persons, dreams of being in distant places or of traveling back or forth in time, dreams that seem prophetic, and dreams that are so strange, curious or bizarre that they call out for a paranormal interpretation. The fact that the part of the brain that controls REM is the pons, a primitive section of the brain stem that controls reflexes like breathing, would support the notion that the stimuli for the physiological changes that take place during REM originate internally.
Nowadays, hardly anyone believes that dreams are messages from the gods. But some parapsychologists, such as Charles Tart, believe that dreams offer entry into another universe, a paranormal universe of OBEs, cosmic messages, and blissful nirvana. His main evidence for this seems to be his personal faith and an anecdote about his baby sitter. He claims the unnamed baby sitter (he calls her "Miss Z") had the power to leave her body during sleep. He claims he tested his flying babysitter in his sleep lab at UC Davis after she told him that she "thought everyone went to sleep, woke up in the night, floated up near the ceiling for a while, then went back to sleep." Other psychologists might have been concerned for the mental well-being of "Miss Z" and the safety of his or her children. Tart was intrigued. He put a number on a shelf, hooked up "Miss Z" to an EEG machine and put her to bed. She claims that even though she didn't read the number on the shelf, she flew around the room the first few nights. She didn't get the number right until the fourth night. Skeptics think either Tart is making up the story or it took the girl four nights to figure out how to trick the scientist. (See Tart’s ‘A Psychophysiological Study of Out-of-the-Body Experiences in a Selected Subject,’ Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1968, 62, pp. 3-27.) Others have investigated the question of whether the mind is open to telepathic input during sleep and have failed to find evidence of psychic ability while dreaming. Scientific research by psychiatrist Montague Ullman and parapsychologist Charles Honorton in the early 1970s at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, obtained chance results after an initial testing that looked positive for psi (Baker).
It is possible that dreaming may be related to the OBE. In some dreams, the dreamer is an observer, even an observer of himself. Perhaps, the brain mechanism that controls spectator dreams versus first-person dreams is the same mechanism that controls the illusion of leaving one’s body in the OBE.
Tart and other parapsychologists who think that the dream state is a gateway to another world seem to think that the key scientific evidence for this is the distinct brain waves of the various stages of sleep. They seem to think that brain waves represent states of consciousness and that sleep is an altered state of consciousness. However, sleep is not a state of consciousness, but unconsciousness. Furthermore, brain waves represent not states of consciousness but electrical activity in the brain. Brain activity during dream-sleep is indeed curious. While dreaming, not only do we experience the equivalent of hallucinations, some of which would qualify as psychotic if we had them while awake, most of us feel like we are physically moving, acting and being acted upon, without the body actually moving. Brain stem mechanisms protect us during sleep from motor activities that could lead to self-injury or injury to others. That is, most of us are paralyzed during sleep. However, some people suffer a weakness or disruption of the brain stem that causes a sleep disorder where motor activities are not prevented. People who suffer from this disorder flail, sleepwalk, etc., and can be a danger to themselves or others. Such people do not leave their bodies, but they often leave their beds during sleep.
Another curious quality of brain activity during dreaming is that almost all dreams are forgotten. Dream amnesia is the norm. This is not due to anything paranormal or supernatural, but to weak encoding. Memory depends upon encoding the data of experience. Encoding depends upon connections in parts of the brain, which in turn depend upon connections in experience. An event with a strong emotional component is more likely to be remembered than one with no emotional component because emotional memories are recorded in one part of the brain while visual components are recorded in another. Neural connections link them. We are likely to remember dreams if we wake shortly after they occur. Even so, if we do not encode the dream by making some effort to remember it, we are likely to forget it. Some people assist memory by getting up and writing down the dream. Others find that an easier method is to stay in bed and create some associations. The easiest association is made by giving the dream a title and a purposive description. For example, a dream of being chased by a polar bear across the snow into a library might be labeled "Research the Polar Bear." Go back to sleep and you are likely to remember the dream by recalling the title.
Perhaps the most curious quality of dreams is that most of us most of the time are not aware that we are dreaming while we are dreaming. PET scans during dreaming have shown that there is reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex during REM-sleep and this might account for several features of the dream-state. The prefrontal cortex lies near the front of the brain and is where behavior planning and self-awareness reside. By dampening activity in this region, a person might not realize that events in a dream are unreal. This may also account for time distortion, lack of reflection on one's plight, and the amnesia that often follows waking.
Some researchers cite the lack of prefrontal activity as a sign that the function of sleep is restorative. Sleep gives a rest to the frontal lobes, the most active part of the brain while awake. And, it may well be that lucid dreaming--being aware of dreaming while dreaming--is possible for some people because their frontal lobes don't completely shut down during dreaming. Most parapsychologists, however, are not interested in the physiology of dreaming. They focus instead on the content of dreams, which they believe reveals a passage to the paranormal or the supernatural.
The prophetic or clairvoyant dream is perhaps the strongest reason for believing that dreaming is a gateway to another world. Some dreams seem uncanny. They seem to foretell events. If a significant number of dreams of just a single person corresponded to future events, this would be a great benefit to humankind and we should try to find out what mechanism is at work here. However, no such person has yet been found. Individual dreams that occasionally seem clairvoyant provide very weak evidence for clairvoyant dreams. I once had a very vivid dream of an airplane crashing nose first in San Diego (where I lived for 20 years). About ten years after the dream an airliner went down in San Diego. Am I clairvoyant? Would the case be stronger for clairvoyance if the airliner went down the day after I had my dream? I don't think so.
While it is admitted by most parapsychologists that some amount of coincidence is to be expected between what a person dreams and what actually happens, it is argued that there are too many cases of seemingly prophetic dreams to reasonably explain them all away as due to coincidence. It is true that not all prophetic dreams can be explained away as being due to coincidence. Most of them probably should be so understood, but many of them may be explained away as due to filling in memories of dreams after the facts and many others should be explained away as cases of lying. But the vast majority of prophetic dreams are probably coincidences. Such dreams are impressive to those who lack understanding of the law of truly large numbers, confirmation bias, and how memory works. If the odds are a million to one that any given dream is truly prophetic, then, given the number of people on earth and the average number of dreams people have during each sleep period (250 dream themes a night, according to Hines, p. 50), we should expect that every single day of our lives there will be more than 1.5 million dreams that seem clairvoyant. That is not including all the dreams had by cats, dogs and other animals, who may well be having apparently psychic experiences while they sleep, though to what purpose we can only guess. Furthermore, one would think that if dreaming were a gateway to the paranormal or supernatural, blind persons would not have their dream time restricted by their physical limitations any more than those with sight. Yet, people blind from birth do not have visual dreams.2
There are also those who think that the dream-state is a gateway to past lives. There are some who even think that the dreams we have today are due to the fears our hunter-gatherer ancestors had. Universal dream themes, such as being chased or falling are said to hearken back to our hunter-gatherer days. We have these dreams because our ancestors were chased by saber-toothed tigers and slept in trees. The evidence for such beliefs is negligible, if not non-existent, although a strong case can be made that the form rather than the content of such dreams might well be due to an evolutionary development linked to exercising instinctive behavior necessary for survival.
If the dream-state is a gateway to anything, it is probably a gateway to current personal fears and desires, rather than to ancient ones of other people. We assume dreaming has a purpose, but that purpose is more likely to be rooted in this life than in some other one. Any decent theory of dreams must try to explain why the brain stimulates the memories and confabulations that it does. It is most likely that dreams are a result of electrical energy that stimulates memories located in various regions of the brain. Why the brain stimulates and confabulates just the memories it does remains a mystery, though there are several plausible explanations. Explanations in terms of the paranormal and supernatural are not as likely to have merit as those that limit themselves to biological and emotional mechanisms linked to brain activity.
One such hypothesis for sleep-related rhythms is that they are the brain's way of disconnecting the cortex from sensory input. When we are asleep, thalamic neurons prevent penetration of sensory information upward to the cortex.3 This gives the cortex a bit of a rest and explains why people who suffer sleep deprivation suffer a loss of critical thinking abilities and are prone to poor judgment. Another hypothesis is that dreaming plays a role in memory processing, especially with emotional memories. During REM-sleep, the amygdalae, which play a role in the formation and consolidation of memories of emotional experiences, are quite active. A related theory is that dreams are "watchdogs of the psyche" (Baker). Dreams are mechanisms that inform and guide our feelings and emotions. In short, this theory maintains that dreams are a way for us to express our desires and fears that, for whatever reason, need to be expressed but are not expressed when awake. If this is true, it would seem to follow that only one very intimate with the dreamer should attempt to interpret a particular dream. Dreams are very personal and speak to the specific emotional life of the dreamer. The "surest guide to the meaning of a dream is the feeling and judgment of the dreamer himself or herself, who, deep down inside, knows its real meaning" (Baker). This theory seems to be based upon the fact that most dreams are about things that have occurred within the past day or two and reflect the dreamer's present life and concerns, including unresolved feelings. This theory also implies that the interpretation of dreams can play a significant role in self-discovery; for, dreams reflect feelings and desires of which we are not conscious when awake. We may have anxieties or desires that only our dreams can reveal.
Most of us would have little difficulty in finding examples of "anxiety dreams" or "wish-fulfillment dreams" from our own experience. We may not have been aware of our desires or fears until they were awakened by the dream. Sometimes our symbolic dreams are so clear that we do not need outside assistance to help us interpret their meaning. Yet, many dreams are so strange, irrational or bizarre, that we are at a loss to find meaning in them. We seek others who claim expertise in dream interpretation to help us ferret out the hidden meanings of our dreams. Those who engage in the interpretation of dreams should be especially careful not to impose their own pet theories onto the dreams of others. For example, the dream mentioned above of being chased by a polar bear into a library might be interpreted in many different ways, but only I, my wife and one or two other persons familiar with the experience that that dream is rooted in are in a position to interpret it "correctly." I don't doubt that there are many possible interpretations and that some of them might seem quite plausible. But the "correct" one is one that has meaning for the dreamer. It was a frightening dream, just as the experience of dealing with a close relative with bipolar disorder (manic depression) was frightening. The experience led me to the library and to bookstores to get as much information about this brain disorder as I could. I have no doubt that a Freudian or Jungian could find some latent or symbolic meaning here that I do not note, but I have no interest in their interpretations because I have no way to check them against reality and do not share their assumptions regarding the psyche. I have no idea why my brain confabulated this dream, arousing fear and disturbing sleep. Reality is bad enough without having our brains arouse more fears during sleep.
There are some people, however, who have experienced much more horrible things than I have, who dream about them every single night of their lives (Sacks). Why the brain should terrify its owner by repeating horrifying memories during sleep seems beyond comprehension. Such obsessive dreaming is of no more value than obsessive-compulsive behavior. Such people don't just have nightmares; they are too terrified to go to sleep. They need the help of a good therapist, but they are not in need of dream interpreter. If such dreamers are to be helped they must learn to control their dreams. There are various method used to control dreaming, most of them involving visual or auditory preparations prior to sleep. Some therapists claim success with victims of recurrent nightmares by treating what is loosely called "post traumatic stress disorder." Some patients claim that they have been helped to overcome the experience of repetitious nightmares by lucid dreaming. None have been helped by treating dreams as a gateway to some higher realm of consciousness.

Repressed Memory

repressed memory
...on critical examination, the scientific evidence for repression crumbles. --Harrison G Pope
In Freud's theory of "repression" the mind automatically banishes traumatic events from memory to prevent overwhelming anxiety. Freud further theorized that repressed memories cause "neurosis," which could be cured if the memories were made conscious. While all this is taught in introductory psychology courses and has been taken by novelists and screenwriters to be a truism, Freud's repression theory has never been verified by rigorous scientific proof. --John Hockmann
A repressed memory is the memory of a traumatic event unconsciously retained in the mind, where it is said to adversely affect conscious thought, desire, and action.
It is common to consciously repress unpleasant experiences. Many psychologists believe that unconscious repression of traumatic experiences such as sexual abuse or rape is a defense mechanism which backfires. The unpleasant experience is forgotten but not forgiven. It lurks beneath consciousness and allegedly causes a myriad of psychological and physical problems from bulimia to insomnia to suicide.
The theory of unconsciously repressing the memory of traumatic experiences is controversial. There is little scientific evidence to support either the notion that traumatic experiences are typically unconsciously repressed or that unconscious memories of traumatic events are significant causal factors in physical or mental illness. Most people do not forget traumatic experiences unless they are rendered unconscious at the time of the experience. No one has identified a single case where a specific traumatic experience in childhood was repressed and the repressed memory of the event, rather than the event itself, caused a specific psychiatric or physical disorder in adulthood.
The strength of the scientific evidence for repression depends on exactly how the term is defined. When defined narrowly as intentional suppression of an experience, there is little reason to doubt that it exists. But when we talk about a repression mechanism that operates unconsciously and defensively to block out traumatic experiences, the picture becomes considerably murkier.
Evidence concerning memory for real-life traumas in children and adults indicates that these events--such as the Chowchilla kidnappings, the sniper killing at an elementary school, or the collapse of skywalks at a Kansas City hotel--are generally well remembered....complete amnesia for these terrifying episodes is virtually nonexistent (Schacter 1996, 256).
Psychologist Lenore Terr, a defender of repressed memory therapy, argues that repression occurs for repeated or multiple traumas, such as a repeatedly abused child. Schacter notes that "hundreds of studies have shown that repetition of information leads to improved memory, not loss of memory, for that information." He also notes that people who have experienced repeated traumas in war, even children, generally remember their experiences. A person who suffers a great trauma often finds that she cannot get the event out of her mind or dreams. Terr's theory is that the child becomes practiced at repression to banish the awful events from awareness, and forgetting might aid in the child's survival. Her dissociative theory, however, is based on speculation rather than scientific evidence.
Most psychologists accept as fact that it is quite common to consciously repress unpleasant experiences, even sexual abuse, and to spontaneously remember such events long afterward. Most of the controversy centers around recovered memories during repressed memory therapy (RMT). Critics of RMT maintain that many therapists are not helping patients recover repressed memories, but are suggesting and planting false memories of alien abduction, sexual abuse, and satanic rituals.

unconscious mind

unconscious mind
The unconscious or subconscious mind, according to classical Freudian psychoanalysis, is a "part" of the mind that stores repressed memories. The theory of repression maintains that some experiences are too painful to be reminded of, so the mind stuffs them in the cellar. These painful repressed memories manifest themselves in neurotic or psychotic behavior and in dreams. However, there is no scientific evidence either for the unconscious repression of traumatic experiences or their causal agency in neurotic or psychotic behavior.
The unconscious mind is also thought by some, such as Jung and Tart, to be a reservoir of transcendent truths. There is no scientific evidence that this is true.
It would be absurd to reject the notion of the unconscious mind simply because we reject the Freudian notion of the unconscious as a reservoir of repressed memories of traumatic experiences. We should recognize that it was Freud more than anyone else who forced us to recognize unconscious factors as significant determinants of human behavior. Furthermore, it seems obvious that much, if not most, of one's brain's activity occurs without our awareness. There is no question that we sense many things without being consciously aware of them (see clever Hans phenomenon, for example). There is also no question that unconscious factors can affect behavior or motor action (see ideomotor action, for example). There is little question that many unconscious factors drive such complex phenomena as language ability. Consciousness or self-awareness is obviously the proverbial tip of the iceberg. But most interest in the unconscious mind has been restricted to potentially harmful memories that might be stored or stirring there, memories of bad experiences that influence our conscious behavior even though we are unaware of their impact. Others have shown interest in the unconscious mind as a reservoir of universal truths or a place where the "true self" dwells. Neither of these views seems well supported by the empirical evidence.
It is assumed that the unconscious is distinguished from the conscious by the fact that we are aware of conscious experience, but unaware of the unconscious. However, there is ample scientific data to establish as a fact that some conscious perception goes on without self-consciousness. It is possible to be unaware of having experienced something and unable to remember the experience, but still give evidence that one has had the experience. Several examples should suffice to establish this point.
1. blindness denial. There are cases of brain-damaged people who are blind but who are unaware of it. 2. jargon aphasia. There are cases of brain-damaged people who speak unintelligibly but aren't aware of it. 3. blindsight. There are cases of brain-damaged people who see things but are unaware of it. 4. oral/verbal dissociation. There are cases of brain- damaged people who cannot orally tell you what you just said, but they can write it down correctly. Furthermore, they can't remember what they wrote down or what it refers to.
5. sensing without seeing. There are many cases of people whose brains are not damaged who give evidence that they have seen or heard something even though they are not conscious of having seen or heard the item in question.
Somehow it does not seem appropriate to speak of the first four cases listed here as involving the unconscious mind, even though the perceivers are not aware of what they are perceiving. It might be less confusing to abandon talk of the unconscious mind in such cases and refer instead to "lost memory" or "fragmented memory" or "implicit memory" (a term coined by Daniel Schacter and Endel Tulving). It is not repression of traumatic experiences that causes memories to be lost. Memories are lost because of inattentiveness in the original experience and because the original experience occurred at an age when the brain was not fully developed. Memories are also lost because we have no recognizable need to reference the original experience. (Many fragments of pleasant experiences, such as the name of a place or a product, may be influencing present choices without one's being aware of it.) Memories are lost because of brain damage, loss of consciousness during an experience, neurochemical imbalance, cognitive restructuring, and sensory, emotional or hormonal overload. On the other hand, all the empirical evidence indicates that the more traumatic an experience the more likely one is to remember it. Novel visual images, which would frequently accompany traumas, stimulate the hippocampus and left inferior prefrontal cortex and will generally become part of long-term memory.
Neuroscience tells us that a memory is a set of connections among groups of neurons that participate in the encoding process. Encoding can take place in several parts of the brain. Neural connections go across various parts of the brain; the stronger the connections, the stronger the memory. Recollection of an event can occur by a stimulus to any of the parts of the brain where a neural connection for the memory occurs. If part of the brain is damaged, access to any neural data that was there is lost. On the other hand, if the brain is healthy and a person is fully conscious when experiencing some trauma, the likelihood that they will forget the event is near zero, unless either they are very young or they later experience a brain injury.
Long-term memory requires elaborative encoding in the inner part of the temporal lobes. If the left inferior prefrontal lobe is damaged or undeveloped, there will be grave difficulty with elaborative encoding. This area of the brain is undeveloped in very young children (under the age of three). Hence, it is very unlikely that any story of having a memory of life in the cradle or in the womb is accurate. The brains of infants and very young children are capable of storing fragmented memories, however. Such memories cannot be explicit or deeply encoded, but they can nevertheless have influence. In fact, there are numerous situations—such as cryptomnesia—where memory can be manifested without awareness of remembering. But such unconscious memories, even though pervasive, are not quite what Freud or Jung meant by the unconscious. "In Freud's vision, unconscious memories are dynamic entities embroiled in a fight against the forces of repression; they result from special experiences that relate to our deepest conflicts and desires. . . .[I]mplicit memories . . . arise as a natural consequence of such everyday activities as perceiving, understanding, and acting." (Schacter 1996, 190-191) Implicit memory may be far more mundane than Freud's dynamic 'unconscious mind', but it is more significant since it reaches into every aspect of our lives. As Daniel Schacter notes: "If we're unaware that something is influencing our behavior, there is little we can do to understand or contradict it." (191)
Most lost memories are lost because they were never elaborately encoded. Perception is mostly a filtering and defragmenting process. Our interests and needs affect perception, but most of what is available to us as potential sense data will never be processed. And most of what is processed will be forgotten. Amnesia is not rare but the standard condition of the human species. We do not forget in order to avoid being reminded of unpleasant things. We forget either because we did not perceive closely in the first place or we did not encode the experience either in the parietal lobes of the cortical surface (for short-term or working memory) or in the prefrontal lobe (for long-term memory).
Psychologist Jim Alcock relates two personal anecdotes that illustrate sensing without seeing (Alcock 1981), mentioned above in the list of items exemplifying experiencing something without awareness. In one, he was standing in line at the snack bar of a theater "and was idly recalling a conversation I had once had with the brother of a colleague. I had only met the brother once or twice and had not seen him in months." Alcock turned around and, lo and behold, there was the brother! The man has a very distinctive voice and Alcock had been hearing him without being aware of it. Others might think the experience is an example of ESP. The other story involves driving a friend from the airport and finding that both Alcock and the friend were simultaneously thinking of a college classmate. They retraced their route and discovered that they had passed a store window with a pendulum clock. This made them realize that even though they were not aware of having seen the clock in their earlier drive-by, they had both sensed it. The fellow they remembered was distinctive because he always walked around with a pendulum pedometer or some such device. Again, others might interpret this experience as paranormal.
To those whose lives are devoted to getting into the unconscious mind, either to find out why they have problems or to find some transcendent truth, I say you will be looking for a long, long time. You might better spend your time reading a book on memory or neuroscience.

Psychoanalysis

psychoanalysis
"I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador--an adventurer, if you want it translated--with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort" (Sigmund Freud, letter to Wilhelm Fliess, Feb. 1, 1900).
"By the 1950s and '60s, the master's warning had been drowned in a tumult of excited voices. Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists could cure even schizophrenia, the most feared mental disease of all, they claimed, and they could do it simply by talking with their patients" (Dolnick, 12).
"The person best able to undergo psychoanalysis is someone who, no matter how incapacitated at the time, is basically, or potentially, a sturdy individual. This person may have already achieved important satisfactions—with friends, in marriage, in work, or through special interests and hobbies—but is nonetheless significantly impaired by long-standing symptoms: depression or anxiety, sexual incapacities, or physical symptoms without any demonstrable underlying physical cause. One person may be plagued by private rituals or compulsions or repetitive thoughts of which no one else is aware. Another may live a constricted life of isolation and loneliness, incapable of feeling close to anyone. A victim of childhood sexual abuse might suffer from an inability to trust others. Some people come to analysis because of repeated failures in work or in love, brought about not by chance but by self-destructive patterns of behavior. Others need analysis because the way they are—their character—substantially limits their choices and their pleasures." (American Psychoanalytic Association)
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is considered the father of psychoanalysis, which may be the granddaddy of all pseudoscientific psychotherapies, second only to Scientology as the champion purveyor of false and misleading claims about the mind, mental health, and mental illness. For example, in psychoanalysis schizophrenia and depression are not brain disorders, but narcissistic disorders. Autism and other brain disorders are not brain problems but mothering problems. These illnesses do not require pharmacological or behavioral treatment. They require only "talk" therapy. Similar positions are taken for anorexia nervosa and Tourette's syndrome. (Hines 1990: 136) What is the scientific evidence for the psychoanalytic view of these mental illnesses and their proper treatment? There is none.
Freud thought he understood the nature of schizophrenia. It is not a brain disorder, but a disturbance in the unconscious caused by unresolved feelings of homosexuality. However, he maintained that psychoanalysis would not work with schizophrenics because such patients ignore their therapist's insights and are resistant to treatment (Dolnick 1998: 40). Later psychoanalysts would claim, with equal certainty and equal lack of scientific evidence, that schizophrenia is caused by smothering mothering. In 1948, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, for example, gave birth to the term "schizophrenogenic mother," the mother whose bad mothering causes her child to become schizophrenic (ibid. 94). Other analysts before her had supported the notion with anecdotes and intuitions, and over the next twenty years many more would follow her misguided lead.
Would you treat a broken leg or diabetes with "talk" therapy or by interpreting the patient's dreams? Of course not. Imagine the reaction if a diabetic were told that her illness was due to "masturbatory conflict" or "displaced eroticism." One might as well tell the patient she is possessed by demons, as give her a psychoanalytic explanation of her physical disease or disorder. Exorcism of demons by the shaman or priest, exorcism of childhood experiences by the psychoanalyst: what's the difference? So why would anyone still maintain that neurochemical or other physical disorders are caused by repressed or sublimated traumatic sexual childhood experiences or wishful fantasies? Probably for the same reason that theologians don't give up their elaborate systems of thought in the face of overwhelming evidence that their systems of belief are little more than vast metaphysical cobwebs. They get a lot of institutional reinforcement for their socially created roles and ideas, most of which are not capable of being subjected to empirical testing. If their notions can't be tested, they can't be disproved. What can't be disproved, and also has the backing of a powerful institution or establishment, can go on for centuries as being respectable and valid, regardless of its fundamental emptiness, falsity, or capacity for harm.
The most fundamental concept of psychoanalysis is the notion of the unconscious mind as a reservoir for repressed memories of traumatic events which continuously influence conscious thought and behavior. The scientific evidence for this notion of unconscious repression is lacking, though there is ample evidence that conscious thought and behavior are influenced by nonconscious memories and processes.
Related to these questionable assumptions of psychoanalysis are two equally questionable methods of investigating the alleged memories hidden in the unconscious: free association and the interpretation of dreams. Neither method is capable of scientific formulation or empirical testing. Both are metaphysical blank checks to speculate at will without any check in reality.
Scientific research into how memory works does not support the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious mind as a reservoir of repressed sexual and traumatic memories of either childhood or adulthood. There is, however, ample evidence that there is a type of memory of which we are not consciously aware, yet which is remembered. Scientists refer to this type of memory as implicit memory. There is ample evidence that to have memories requires extensive development of the frontal lobes, which infants and young children lack. Also, memories must be encoded to be lasting. If encoding is absent, amnesia will follow, as in the case of many of our dreams. If encoding is weak, fragmented and implicit memories may be all that remain of the original experience. Thus, the likelihood of infant memories of abuse, or of anything else for that matter, is near zero. Implicit memories of abuse do occur, but not under the conditions which are assumed to be the basis for repression. Implicit memories of abuse occur when a person is rendered unconscious during the attack and cannot encode the experience very deeply. For example, a rape victim could not remember being raped. The attack took place on a brick pathway. The words 'brick' and 'path' kept popping into her mind, but she did not connect them to the rape. She became very upset when taken back to the scene of the rape, though she didn't remember what had happened there (Schacter: 232). It is unlikely that hypnosis, free association, or any other therapeutic method will help the victim remember what happened to her. She has no explicit memory because she was unable to deeply encode the trauma due to the viciousness of the attack which caused her to lose consciousness. The best a psychoanalyst or other repressed-memory therapist can do is to create a false memory in this victim, abusing her one more time.
Essentially connected to the psychoanalytic view of repression is the assumption that parental treatment of children, especially mothering, is the source of many, if not most, adult problems ranging from personality disorders to emotional problems to mental illnesses. There is little question that if children are treated cruelly throughout childhood, their lives as adults will be profoundly influenced by such treatment. It is a big conceptual leap from this fact to the notion that all sexual experiences in childhood will cause problems in later life, or that all problems in later life, including sexual problems, are due to childhood experiences. The scientific evidence for these notions is lacking.
In many ways, psychoanalytic therapy is based on a search for what probably does not exist (repressed childhood memories), an assumption that is probably false (that childhood experiences cause the patient's problems) and a therapeutic theory that has nearly no probability of being correct (that bringing repressed memories to consciousness is essential to the cure). Of course, this is just the foundation of an elaborate set of scientific-sounding concepts which pretend to explain the deep mysteries of consciousness and behavior. But if the foundation is illusory, what possibly could be the future of this illusion?
There are some good things, however, which have resulted from the method of psychoanalysis developed by Sigmund Freud a century ago in Vienna. Freud should be considered one of our greatest benefactors if only because he pioneered the desire to understand those whose behavior and thoughts cross the boundaries of convention set by civilization and cultures. That it is no longer fashionable to condemn and ridicule those with behavioral or thought disorders is due in no small part to the tolerance promoted by psychoanalysis. Furthermore, whatever intolerance, ignorance, hypocrisy, and prudishness remains regarding the understanding of our sexual natures and behaviors cannot be blamed on Freud. Psychoanalysts do Freud no honor by blindly adhering to the doctrines of their master in this or any other area. Finally, as psychiatrist Anthony Storr put it: "Freud's technique of listening to distressed people over long periods rather than giving them orders or advice has formed the foundation of most modern forms of psychotherapy, with benefits to both patients and practitioners" (Storr 1996: 120).

About Sigmund Freud

SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939) - in full Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Austrian psychiatrist and founder of psychoanalysis, the most influential psychological theorist of 20th-century. Freud's theories, including the concept of the Oedipus complex, have had an enormous influence on art, literature, and social thinking. Freud's fundamental idea was that all humans are endowed with an unconscious in which potent sexual and aggressive drives, and defenses against them, struggle for supremacy. Freud once stated: "The only unnatural sexual behavior is none at all." It is often asserted that Freud "discovered" the unconscious mind. However, the idea is found in the work of many thinkers and authors from the times of Homer.
"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." (from The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900)
Sigmund Freud was born of Jewish parentage in Freiburg, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), the first of seven children. His mother Amalia Nathansohn was twenty years younger than his father, the wool merchant Jakob Freud; Amalia was his third wife. The family moved in 1860 to Vienna, where discriminating laws against the Jews had been canceled during 1850s and 1860s. Freud studied medicine at the University of Vienna under Josef Breuer, a Viennese physician. Breuer had with some success treated patients by encouraging them to "talk out" their past under hypnosis. In 1895 they coauthored Studies in Hysteria. It was an account of the treatment of "Anna O.", a hysterical patient, whom Freud himself never treated.
From 1882 to 1886 Freud worked at the General Hospital, and experimented among others with cocaine, also using it himself. He went to Paris in 1885 to study under Jean Martin Charcot at the Salpetrière Hospital. There the hypnotic treatment of women, who suffered from a medical state called "hysteria", led Freud to take an interest in psychiatry. After returning to Vienna Freud married Martha Bernays; they had six children. In 1886 Freud opened his private practice. Their address from 1891 was Berggasse 19, where the family lived until 1938.
By 1896 Freud had found the key to his own system, naming it psychoanalysis. In it he had replaced hypnosis with "free association." In 1900 Freud published his first major work, The Interpretation of Dreams, which established the importance of psychoanalytical movement. One of Freud's most famous early failures happened in the same year. In October he began treating an 18-year-old woman, Ida Bauer, better known by the pseudonym Dora. After 11 weeks, she stopped treatment, leaving much of the analytic work undone.
In 1902 Freud was appointed Ausserordentlicher Professor, and in 1905 appeared Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. At the suggestion of a disciple, Freud founded in 1902 the Psychological Wednesday Society, later transformed into the Viennna Psychoanalytic Society. After the Third International Psychoanalytic Congress in Weimar in 1911, Freud met Lou Andreas-Salomé, the Russian intellectual, who had been beloved by Nietzsche, whom she rejected, and was the traveling companion and lover of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Andreas-Salomé was still in her fifties youthful-appearing, and when Freud first encountered her, he warned one of his younger followers that she was "a woman of dangerous intelligence" but that "all the tracks around her go into the Lion's den but none come out." For a brief period, Andreas-Salomé was Freud's closest woman pupil and she was allowed to attend regularly the internal Wednesday gatherings at Bergstrasse 19. "Frau Lou" was also close to Freud's daughter Anna (1895-1982). Andreas-Salomé never questioned Anna's adoration of her famous father. Later Anna Freud, who never married, became a major force in British psychology, spezializing in the application of psychoanalysis to children. Among her best known works is The Ego and the Mechanism of Defence (1936).
In 1909 Freud travelled with Carl Jung in the United States, lecturing and meeting among others American philosopher and psychologist William James (SEE UNDER his brother, writer Henry James). Jung's close collaboration with Freud lasted until 1913. Jung had become increasingly critical of Freud's exclusively sexual definition of libido and incest. The publication of Jung's Symbols of Transformation (1912) led to a final break.
"I always recognized Freud's greatness and genius, but he was extremely headstrong. He came out of nowhere and the world was hostile towards him. He had to be obstinate to gain acceptance. Had he not been obstinate, his theory would have remained unknown... Once he said to me:we have to turn the theory of the unconscious into a dogma, to make it immovable. Why a dogma, I replied, since sooner or later truth will have to win out? Freud explained: We need a dam against the black tide of mud of occultism." (from C.G. Jung Speaking, ed. by William McGuire, and R.F.C. Hull, 1978)
By the beginning of the 1920s, Freud's writing had given rise to several associates of psychoanalysis. In his own life he was nearly muted: a series of operations for mouth cancer, beginning in 1923, made him unable to perform in public. He published Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), The Future of an Illusion (1927), and Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), all dealing with large cultural issues. In spite of the recognition of his work Freud was never awarded with the Nobel Prize, but in 1928 an attempt was made for his nomination. This was supported by Alfred Döblin, Jacob Wassermann, Bertrand Russell, A.S. Neill, Lytton Strachey, Julian Huxley, Knut Hamsun, Thomas Mann. Albert Einstein didn't join the campaign, although he had been in correspondence with Freud.
"Thomas Mann points out that Freud is deeply involved in the irrationalism of the beginning of the new century because of the nature of the material of his enquiry, the unconscious, passions, instincts and dreams. But Freud is really connected not only with this neo-romantic movement, in which the subterranean regions of the life of the mind are the central point of interest, but at the same time with the beginning and origins of the whole aspect of romantic thought which goes back to the pre-civilized and the pre-rational. There is still an abundant share of Rousseauism in the pleasure with which he describes the freedom of the uncivilized man of instinct." (Arnold Hauser in The Social History of Art, 1951)
After Hitler's seizure of power, psychoanalytic work came to an end in Germany, and Freud's books were burnt in Berlin. His views also were condemned in the USSR . At the request of the league of Nations, Freud collaborated with Albert Einstein in writing Why War? (1933) When Nazis invaded Austria, Freud was permitted to move to London after paying a large ransom. He died of throat cancer three weeks after the outbreak of WW II in 1939. His death on September 23, 1939 was eased by euthanasia - Freud asked his physician to give him a lethal dose of morphine. His last book, Moses and Monotheism (1939), was completed in England. In it Freud dismissed Jung's concept of a "collective unconscious" and offered instead his own idea of "archaic inheritance". According to Freud, Moses was an Egyptian, who gave to the Jews the religion of monotheism, and was murdered in the wilderness. "The founding of the Mohammedan religion seems to me to be an abbreviated repetition of the Jewish one," Freud wrote, but Islam "lacked the profundity which the Jewish religion resulted from the murder of its founder."
Freud's theories have been questioned by many scholars. The knowledge of brain's electrical behavior have brought new views in the interpretation of dreams. Freud, along with Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Albert Einstein (1879-1955), revolutionarized modern Western thinking. But when Marx's thoughts have become unpopular after the fall of the Soviet Union, psychoanalysis has not experiences similar decline. Like "dialectical materialism", psychoanalytic theories cannot be adequately tested or falsified.
One of the most passionate discussions of Freud's life and work arose in 1984. A young analyst-in-training, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, claimed in his provocative book Suppression of the Seduction Theory that many of Freud's patients were assaulted sexually in their childhoods by adults, but Freud did not analyze the genuineness of the abuse. Anthony Storr, a psychiatrist and the author of The Art of Psychotherapy and The Essential Jung, noted in his review of the book that "anyone who is at all familiar with Freud's writings will know that, in the early days of psychoanalysis, Freud considered hysterical symptoms to be the consequence of traumatic experiences, and these traumatic experiences were invariably sexual in nature." (New York Times, February 12, 1984) However, after self-analysis and discovering his 'Oedipus complex', based on fantasy, not on reality, he concluded that although assaults took place in childhood, it could not generally be considered the cause of hysteria or other neuroses.
Glossary: Castration anxiety: a boy's unconscious fear of losing his penis; Ego: the minds mechanism for keeping in touch with reality, it refers the conflict between id and superego; Freudian slip: a seemingly meaningless slip of the tongue that reveals an unconscious thought; Id: the part of mind from which primal needs and drives emerge; Oedipus complex: children in their phallic phase (ages three to six) form an erotic attachment to the parent of the opposite sex, and concomitant hatred of the parent of the same sex; Penis envy: girls try to deal with their "inferiority", they wish they had penis; Repression: the keeping of unacceptable ideas from consciousness - i.e. in the "unconscious"; Super-Ego: the self-criticizing part of the mind out of which the conscience develops
For further reading: Sigmund Freud: Life and Work by E. Jones (1953-57); The Ability to Mourn: Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse (1955); Freud: The Mind of the Moralist by Phillip Rieff (1959); Freud and Philosophy by Paul Ricoeur (1970); Psychoanalysis and Feminism by Juliet Mitchell (1974); Disillusionment and the Social Origins of Psychoanalysis by Peter Homans (1989); Freud and the Problem of God by Hans Kung (1990); The Cambridge Companion to Freud, ed. by Jerome Neu (1991); Freud and His Followers by Paul Roazen (1992, paperback); The Case of Sigmund Freud: Medicine and Identity at the Fin De Siecle by Sander L. Gilman (1993); Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond by Nancy J. Chodorow (1994); Drawing the Dream of the Wolves: Homosexuality, Interpretation, and Freud's 'Wolf Man' by Whitney Davis (1995, paperback); A Final Accounting: Philosophical and Empirical Issues in Freudian Psychology by Edward Erwin (1995); Back to Freud's Texts: Making Silent Documents Speak by Ilse Grubrich-Simitis (1996); Freud and the Passions, ed. by John O'Neill (1996, paperback); Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression by Jacques Derrida (1996); Dispatches from the Freud Wars: Psychoanalysis and Its Passions by John Forrester (1997); The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1998, paperback); Freud: A Life for Our Time by Peter Gay (1998, paperback); Early Freud and Late Freud: Reading Anew Studies on Hysteria and Moses and Monotheism by Ilse Grubrich-Simitis (1998, paperback); Dr. Freud, a Life by Paul Ferris (1998); Freud: From Youthful Dream to Mid-Life Crisis by Peter M. Newton (1999); Analytic Freud: Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, ed. by Michael P. Levine (2000); Freud's 'Megalomania' by Adam Phillips (2000) - NOTE 1: Freud's favorite writers in 1907: Gottfried Keller, Conrad Fardinand Meyer, Anatole France, Émile Zola, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Macaulay, Dimitri Merezkovski, Eduard Douwes Dekker (Multatuli), Theodor Gomperz, Mark Twain. Freud also enjoyed Agatha Christie's and Dorothy Sayers's mystery novels in later years. Other favorites: Goethe, Schiller, Heinrich Heine, Wilhelm Busch, Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig. - Freud's theories were also largely mocked in literature. Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar presented an idea, where a young man is happily married with his mother, but finds out that she is not really his mother and commits suicide. James Thurber and E.B. White published Is Sex Necessary? or, Why You Feel the Way You Do (1929), where they caricaturized psychoanalytical terms. - NOTE 2: Hogarth Press, Freud's publisher in England, was owned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. - FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Sigmund Freud - The Father of Psychoanalysis
Selected works:
ZUR AUFFASSUNG DER APHASIEN, 1891
STUDIEN ÜBER HYSTERIE, 1895 (with Josef Bauer) - Studies on Hysteria
DIE TRAUMDEUTUNG, 1900 - The Interpretation of Dreams - Unien tulkinta
ZUR PSYCHOPATHOLOGIE DES ALLTAGSLEBENS, 1901 - The Psychopathology of Everyday Life - Arkielämämme psykopatologiaa
DREI ABHANDLUNGEN ZUR SEXUAL THEORIA, 1905 - Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory - Seksuaaliteoria
DER WAHN UND DIE TRÄUME IN W. JENSENS GRADIVA, 1907 - Delusion of Dream in Wilhelm Jensen's "Gradiva"
EINE KINDHEITSERINNERUNG DES LEONARDO DA VINCI, 1910 - Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood
TOTEM UND TABU, 1913 - Totem and Taboo - Toteemi ja tabu
VORLESUNGEN ZUR EINFÜHRUNG IN DIE PSYCHOANALYSE, 1916-17 - A General Introduction to the Psychoanalysis - Johdatus psykoanalyysiin
JENSEITS DES LUSTPRINZIPS, 1920 - Beyond the Pleasure Principle
MASSENPSYCHOLOGIE UND ICH-ANALYSE, 1921 - Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
PSYCHOANALYSE UND TELEPATHIE, 1921 - Psycho-Analysis and Telepathy (published in 1941)
DAS ICH UND DAS ES, 1923 - The Ego and the Id
SELBSTDARSTELLUNG, 1925 - Autobiographical Study - Omaelämäkerrallinen tutkielma
HEMMUNG, SYMPTOM UND ANGST, 1926 - Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety
DIE FRAGE DER LAIENANALYSE, 1926 - The Question of Lay Analysis
DIE ZUKUNFT EINER ILLUSION, 1927 - The Future of an Illusion
DAS UNBEHAGEN IN DER KULTUR, 1929 - Civilization and Its Discontents - Ahdistava kulttuurimme
DER MAN MOSES UND DIE MONOTHEISTISCHE RELIGION, 1939 - Moses and Monotheism
GESAMMELTE WERKE, 1940-68 (ed. by Anna Freud, Edward Bibring, Willi Hoffler, Ernst Kris, Otto Isakower, Marie Bonaparte)
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 1953-1974 (24 vol., ed. by James Strachey, Anna Freud)
The Freud / Jung Letters, 1974 (ed. by William Mc Guire and Wolfgang Sauerländer)

History of Florence Goodenough (Draw a Man test)

A pioneer in psychology, Florence Laura Goodenough, was born on August 6, 1886 in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. This outstanding contributor to the field of psychology (as named by John Watson) got her beginnings as the youngest of the nine children making up her quaint farm family (URL1).
In 1908 Goodenough graduated from Normal School in Millersville, Pennsylvania with her Bachelor of Pedagogy. She began teaching and continued to do so for eight years.
The years of 1920-1921 were every eventful for Goodenough. In 1920 she earned her B.S. from Columbia University. During this time she was also the director of research at several New Jersey public schools. Her job description would today be considered that of a school psychologist. She studied the effects of environment on intelligence test scores and collected data on drawings of children. In 1921 Goodenough received her M.A., again from Columbia University, under Leta Hollingsworth. In was in this year that Goodenough began working with Lewis Terman developing the Stanford-Binet IQ test for children. This took place at Stanford University, of which the test is named. It was under Terman that Goodenough earned her Ph.D. in 1924. Goodenough was credited as a key researcher in Terman's longitudinal study of gifted children. This honorable mention is a rarity for a student of graduate status (URL1).
In 1924 Goodenough moved to her permanent location of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She began working at the Minneapolis Child Guidance Clinic. Within a year, she was appointed an assistant professor of the in Institute of Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota. Six years later, Goodenough was promoted to full professor in 1931. It was under this title that she spent the majority of her career.
Being appointed assistant professor was the marked beginning of much research resulting in numerous publications. Goodenough became interested in children, particularly the gifted and sought ways to measure intelligence. Finding the tools and means to do so unsatisfactory, Goodenough revised and invented tests for children. Studying exceptional children, child psychology in general, and anger and fear specifically were all points of experimentation for Goodenough's career, resulting in10 texts, and 26 research articles.
In 1947 Goodenough's title became professor emeritus, forced to take early retirement due to physical illness. This did not hinder her writing and publications. From 1947 to her death in 1959 she published four more texts, even though her degenerative disease stole her vision. On April 4, 1959 Goodenough died of a stroke in her sister's Florida home .

Contributions
Florence Goodenough spread her influence, research, and theory through her ample literary contributions beginning in 1925 with Genetic Studies of Genius. This was the first of many; in 1926 Goodenough published her first book: The Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings. The Measurement of Mental Growth appeared in 1931 as well as Anger in Young Children. The Handbook of Child Psychology followed in 1933. After her early retirement, Goodenough built upon her portfolio with four more major works: Genetic Studies of Genius (1947), Mental Testing: Its History, Principles, and Applications (1949), Exceptional Children (1956), and Genetic Studies of Genius.
These literary works were the material milestones of the journey Goodenough was traveling. This journey began as she was earning her M.A. at Columbia. At this time, she was the director of research for the Rutherford and Perth Amboy public schools in New Jersey where she first collected children's drawings. To further her journey along, Goodenough worked with Lewis Terman as she did research helping with Terman's developments of the Stanfort-Binet IQ test for children. This is where she conducted research worthy of attention in Terman's book Genetic Studies of Genius.
Goodenough's most famous contribution was the invention of a test to measure nonverbal IQ. Her very reliable and highly valid Draw-A-Man test (also known as the Goodenough Scale) was a first to test non-verbal IQ in preschool and older-children populations. These drawings were looked at as a window to see mental processes and organization playing off the concept that children draw what they know–not what they see (Goodenough, 1975). This accomplishment was established in her first book: Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings. This test along with its revised 1940 Draw-A-Woman version was used well into the 1950's.
To continue assessment and testing, Goodenough revised the Stanford-Binet into the Minnesota Preschool scale which now included small children in its population. This test included both verbal and nonverbal sections and scores. It was at this time that Goodenough developed methods which are still used in observational studies. These methods were time sampling (studying a participant's behavior for a set period of time) and event sampling (studying a participant's particular behavior and counting its occurrence).
Goodenough didn't simply challenge the processes or testing methods of IQ tests, but she also critiqued the manner in the test were scored. She rationalized that mental age was not the same for all children. Instead, to allow comparison of children with in the same chronological age group, percentages should be used to report results. These arguments were presented in Handbook of Child Psychology of 1933.
Beginning in 1920, Goodenough became a forerunner in documenting effects of environment on intelligence scores. Even though her position on the nature vs. nurture debate caused the most controversy on her career path, she held her position that intelligence is a stable entity, challenging the effect of environment on the scores of children's intelligence tests.
Surprisingly as many contributions as Goodenough made and as many accomplishment and breakthroughs she achieved, she is not well known, not even widely recognized within the field of psychology. However, her contributions are an essential part of psychology's history.

Time Line1886 Born in Honesdale, Pennsylvania as youngest of nine children. 1908 Bachelor of Pedogogy (B.Pd.) earned from Normal School in Millersville, Pennsylvania. 1920 Bachelor of Science from Columbia University under Leta Hollingsworth. ----Director of Research in the Rutherford and Perth Amboy New Jersey public schools. ----Began to document the effects of environment on intelligence test scores. 1921 Masters of Arts earned from Columbia University under Leta Hollingsworth. 1921 First began working with Lewis Terman at Stanford University. 1923 Published The Stanford Achievement Test. 1924 Doctorate of Philosophy earned from Stanford University under Lewis Terman. ---- Worked at Minneapolis Child Guidance Clinic. 1925 Appointed assistant professor in the Institute of Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota. ---- Published Genetic Studies of Genius. 1926 Published her first book: The Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings (Introduction to Draw-A-Man test). 1926 Argued that foreign language in the home was leading cause of mental retardation. 1931 Published The Measurement of Mental Growth . ----Published Anger in Young Children. ---- Promoted to full professor in the Institute of Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota. 1933 Published Handbook of Child Psychology . 1938 Served as president of the National Council of Women Psychologists. 1940 Goodenough-Harris drawing test established, as revised by Florence Goodenough and Dale Harris. 1947 Retired early from the University of Minnesota due to physical illness. ---- Published Genetic Studies of Genius. 1947 Appointed Professor Emeritus until her death in 1959. 1949 Published Mental Testing: Its History, Principles, and Applications. 1956 Published Exceptional Children. 1959 Published Genetic Studies of Genius. ----Died in her sister's Florida home due to a stroke at the age of 73.

The Rorschach Test

Most people have heard of the Rorschach test (pronounced "ror-shock"), but few have ever seen a real Rorschach inkblot. The blots are kept secret. When you see an inkblot in a popular article on the test (as in the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the Rorschach test), it's a fake: it's an an inkblot, but not one of the inkblots. There are only ten Rorschach inkblots. Psychologists want the blots to remain a secret from the general public so that reactions to the blots will be spontaneous. Hermann Rorschach hoped these spontaneous reactions would yield valuable clues to the test subject's personality. Whether they do remains controversial. Many psychologists think the Rorschach test is hopelessly unreliable; others see it as one of the cardinal tools of modern psychodiagnosis. Even among those who acknowledge the value of the test, there is disagreement on interpretation of responses. Just as secret as the blots themselves are the ground rules for administering the test. There are a few things that you, as a subject, are supposed to know and a lot of things you aren't supposed to know. If you ask about something you're not supposed to know, the psychologist will give you a pat answer as prescribed in Rorschach literature. For example, if you ask if it is okay to turn the card upside down, the psychologist will respond that you may do as you like; it's up to you. The psychologist won't say that many of the cards are easier to interpret when turned; that most people do turn the cards; that he or she will make a notation with a little arrowhead every time you do turn a card; and that you lose points in the initiative department if you don't turn the cards. You'll be handed the cards one by one in the fixed order devised by Rorschach (there are numbers on the backs of the cards for the psychologist's benefit). The first card, for instance, looks like a fox's head or a jack-o-lantern. The cards are thick, rectangular cardboard, 6 5/8 inches by 9 1/5 inches. Half of the blots are black ink on a white background. Two others are black and red ink on white, and the last three blots are multicolored. The psychologist will always put each card in your hands "right" side up. You aren't supposed to know it, but the psychologist will write down everything you say. This includes any seemingly irrelevant questions you may have. To keep you from getting wise, the psychologist always arranges to sit to your side and a little behind you, so that you can't look at the card and the psychologist at the same time. Most subjects realize the psychologist is taking notes, of course, but they don't realize that the notes are a special shorthand record of everything said. Some psychologists use hidden tape recorders. The psychologist will also time how long it takes you to respond, using a "tickless" watch. The psychologist will not ask you to hurry up or slow down and will not make any reference to time, but response times (in seconds) are one of the things he or she is writing in the notes. Don't hold the card at an unusual angle. Watch how you phrase things. Say "This looks like ..." or "This could be ..." never "This is..." After all, you're supposed to realize that it is just a blot of ink on a card. By the same token, don't be too literal and say things as, "This is a blotch of black ink." Don't groan, get emotional, or make irrelevant comments. Don't put your hands on the cards to block out parts. The psychologist will watch for all of the foregoing as signs of brain damage. If there are no right answers for the test, there are some general guidelines as to what is a normal response. You can probably see images in the inkblots proper and in the white spaces they enclose. Stick to the former. Don't be afraid of being obvious. There are several responses that almost everyone gives; mentioning these shows the psychologist you're a regular guy. It is okay to be original if you can justify what you see in the shape, shading, or color of the blot. If you see an abalone and can point out why it looks like one, then say so. Justifiable original responses are usually judged to be indicative of creativity or intelligence. You don't want non sequiturs, images that don't fit the blot in the judgment of the psychologist. These may be signs of psychosis. You're expected to see more than one thing on all or most of the cards. Not being able to see anything on a card suggests neurosis. Usually the more things you can see, the better, as long as they fit the form and color of the blot. Of course, you can see things in the whole blot or in parts of it, and images may overlap. Since time is a factor, it is important to come up with good answers fast. (It looks particularly bad if you take a long time and give a dumb, inappropriate answer.) Copyright restrictions prevent us from showing you the blots themselves, so we'll use outlines. We'll refer to the blots as psychologists do, as Plates I through X. The psychologist won't mention the numbers to you, but the blots will always be in order.

Plate I
Black ink. A roughly triangular shape, point down, suggesting a broad, foxlike face with prominent ears. Naughty bits: a pair of breasts (rounded projections at top of blot); a vertical female figure, her torso partly visible through a gauzy dress (along center line). The first blot is easy. How fast you answer is taken as an indication of how well you cope with new situations. The best reaction is to give one of the most common responses immediately. Good answers are bat, butterfly, moth, and (in center of blot) a female figure. Mask, jack-o'-lantern, and animal face are common responses too, but in some interpretation schemes they suggest paranoia. A bad response is any that says something untoward about the central female figure. "She" is often judged to be a projection of your own self-image. Avoid the obvious comment that the figure has two breasts but no head. If you don't give more than one answer for Plate I, many psychologists will drop a hint--tell you to look closer.

Plate II
Black and red ink. Two dark-gray splotches suggesting dancing figures. Red splotches at top of each figure and at bottom center. Naughty bits: penis (upper center, black ink); vagina (the red area at bottom center). It is important to see this blot as two human figures usually females or clowns. If you don't, it's seen as a sign that you have trouble relating to people. You may give other responses as well, such as cave entrance (the triangular white space between the two figures) and butterfly (the red "vagina," bottom center). Should you mention the penis and vagina? Not necessarily. Every Rorsehach plate has at least one obvious representation of sexual anatomy. You're not expected to mention them all. In some interpretation schemes, mentioning more than four sex images in the ten plates is diagnostic of schizophrenia. The trouble is, subjects who took Psychology 101 often assume they should detail every possible sex response, so allowances must be made. Most Rorschach workers believe the sex images should play a part in the interpretation of responses even when not mentioned. You may not say that the lower red area looks like a vagina, but psychologists assume that what you do say will show how you feel about women. Nix on "crab"; stick with "butterfly."

Plate III
Black and red ink. Two obvious .figures (black ink) facing each other. Butterfly-shaped red blot between the figures; an elongated red blot behind each figure's head. Naughty bits: penises and breasts (at anatomically appropriate positions for each figure). This is the blot that supposedly can determine sexual preference. Most people see the two human figures. Both figures have prominent "breasts" and an equally prominent "penis." If you don't volunteer the gender of the figures, you'll be asked to specify it. By the traditional interpretation, seeing the figures as male is a heterosexual response (for test subjects of both sexes). Describing the figures as female or acknowledging the androgynous nature of the blot is supposed to be a homosexual response. Does it work? Not really--many straights describe the figures as women, and not all gays give a gay response. A 1971 study at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York showed the traditionally heterosexual response (two male figures) to be declining in popularity. The splotches of red ink are usually perceived separately. Common responses are "bow-tie" or "ribbon" (inner red area) and a stomach and esophagus (outer red areas).

Plate IV
Black ink. A roughly triangular blot, point up, with the two lower comer regions resembling boots or pet. Naughty bits: two penises (on either side of blot, near top of triangle); vagina (on center line near top of blot). Plate IV is the "father card." At first glance it is a difficult blot to see as a single image. The "boots" are fairly conspicuous; between them is the apparent head of a dog or Chinese dragon. Many subjects see the blot as an animal skin. After a few seconds, though, most can see it as a standing figure seen from below.The boots become the feet, enlarged because of the unusual perspective. The arms and head, at the top, are smaller. Common descriptions are bear, gorilla, or man in a heavy coat. Bad descriptions are monster or attacking bear or gorilla-Rorschach theorists equate your description of the figure with your perception of your father or male authority figures.

Plate V
Black ink. A simple, batlike shape. Naughty bits: two penises (the "ears" or "antennae"). Rorschach himself thought this was the easiest blot to interpret. It is a bat or a butterfly, period. You don't want to mention anything else. Seeing the projections on the ends of the bat wings as crocodile heads signifies hostility. Seeing the paired butterfly antennae or feet as scissors or pliers signifies a castration complex. Schizophrenics sometimes see moving people in this blot. Many psychologists take particular note of the number of responses given to this plate. If you mention more images here than in either Plate IV or VI, it is suggestive of schizophrenia.

Plate VI
Black ink. An irregular shape like that of an animal-skin rug. Naughty bits: penis (center line at top); vagina (below penis). Plate VI is the most difficult blot. The best-rendered penis of all the blots is at top, but few subjects mention it. The rest of the blot doesn't look like much of anything. Some hold that the value of this blot is to have the subject grope for images and possibly reveal subconscious attitudes about sexuality. Basically, the secret of this plate is to turn it. A good response is to say it looks like an animal hide (about the only reasonable response when held right side up), then turn it on its side and say it looks like a boat or surfaced submarine with reflection, and then turn it upside down and say it looks like a mushroom cloud, a pair of theater masks, or caricatures of men with long noses and goatees.

Plate VII
Black ink. A U-shaped blot, each side of the U resembling a female figure in a narrow-waisted dress. Naughty bits: a vagina (on center line at bottom of U). Christina Crawford meets projective psychology: This blot is supposed to reveal how you really feel about your mother. Virtually everyone sees two girls or women. Deprecating descriptions of the figures~ "witches," "gossips," "girls fighting," "spinsters" indicate poor maternal relations. Seeing the blot as thunderclouds instead of female figures suggests anxiety to some psychologists; seeing it as a walnut kernel may mean a vulvar fixation. There is an entirely different side to this blot, but you're not supposed to see it. The white space between the girls or women can be interpreted as an oil lamp or similar object. It is claimed that only schizophrenics usually see the lamp.

Plate VIII
Pink, blue, gray, and orange ink. An almost circular array of interconnected forms--a gray triangle (point up) at top, a pair of blue rectangles in the center, a pink and orange splotch at bottom, and two pink "animal" shapes forming the right and left sides of the circle. Naughty bits: a vagina (pink-orange area at bottom). The first full-color card is easy. It is important that you see the four-legged animals- lions, pigs, bears, etc. -on the sides of the blot. They're one of the most common responses on the test, and you're assumed to be a mental defective if you don't see them. Other good responses are tree (gray triangle at top), butterfly (pink and orange area at bottom), and rib cage or anatomy chart (skeletal pattern in center between blue rectangles and gray triangles). The entire configuration can be seen as a heraldic design (good answer) or a Christmas tree with ornaments (reaching). Children tend to like this blot and say a lot about it-the bright colors and animal shapes make it more interesting than your basic penis/vagina number (II, IV, or VI).

Plate IX
Green, orange, and pink ink. A very irregular upright rectangle. Orange at top, protruding green areas at center, pink at bottom. Naughty bits: a vagina (center line at bottom). There aren't many good answers here. If you're going to throw up your hands (figuratively; see warning about emotional outbursts above) and plead a mental block, this is the place to do it. The colors clash, apparently by Rorschach's design. Good answers are a fire with smoke, an explosion (but paranoids are claimed more apt to note the pale green mushroom cloud on the center line at top), a map, anatomy, or a flower. If you turn the card ninety degrees, you can make out a man's head in the pink areas at bottom. (The man is identified as Mark Twain, Santa Claus, or Teddy Roosevelt.) A bad response is to describe the orange areas at top as monsters or men fighting---a sign of poor social development. As with Plate V, the psychologist may be counting the number of responses you give to this blot for comparison with the preceding and succeeding blots. You want to give fewer responses to this blot.

Plate X
Pink, blue, gray, green, yellow, and orange ink. A loose assortment of brightly colored shapes, the most chaotic of the plates. Naughty bits: penis and testes (top center, gray ink). The unspoken purpose of this last blot is to test your organizational ability. Plate X is full of colorful odds and ends easy to identify---blue spiders, gray crabs, paired orange maple seeds, green caterpillars, a light-green rabbit's head, yellow and orange fried eggs--and you're expected to list them. But the psychologist will also be looking for a comprehensive answer, something that shows you grok the whole Gestalt. There are two good holistic answers: sea life and a view through a microscope. Some subjects see two reddish faces at top center, separated by the orange maple key. If you describe them as blowing bubbles or smoking pipes, it may be interpreted as evidence of an oral fixation. Seeing the gray "testes" and "penis" as two animals eating a stick or tree indicates castration anxiety.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is therapy that is undertaken with a subject in hypnosis.
Whilst being in hypnosis has no specific therapeutic benefit, apart from the concomitant relaxation, a hypnotized subject displays certain unusual characteristics and propensities, compared with a non-hypnotized subject: for example, suggestions given to hypnotized subjects are far more effective.
The objective is to utilize a subject's "trance state" to facilitate the activation of their personal resources. In trance, some functions, like involuntary nerve actions, can become accessible' e;g,, anaesthesia and vasoconstriction/vasodilatation.
Hypnotherapy is often applied in order to modify a subject's behaviour, emotional content and attitudes, as well as a wide range of conditions obesity, substance abuse, pain, ego, anxiety, stress, amnesia, phobias, and matters of performance. It may also be used to assist with functional disorders like Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

History
The roots of medicine by therapy lie in ancient societies even earlier than the Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Indians. Religious rituals were characterized by dancing, music, and masked peoples assuming new identities.
In the nineteenth century, healers like Abbe Faria and practitioners like Franz Anton Mesmer, Scottish neurosurgeon James Braid, James Esdaile, John Elliotson,Boris Sidis Ambroise-Auguste Liébault, Emile Coué, Jean-Martin Charcot and more recently Andrew Salter with his conditioned reflex therapy, began experimenting with the principles of what we now understand as hypnosis.
Mesmer's research into the prevalent ailment of 'hysteria' led to the theory of animal magnetism. This is comparable to modern-day stress, or in hysteria's most extreme examples, appears to bear similarity to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A contemporary of Mesmer had claimed to have discovered a physical force in all living things (people, trees, plants and animals) through which humans would reach the hysteria state instantly on contact with a specially "magnetised" tree or bush. Following an elaborate ceremony 'magnetising' trees, sufferers of hysteria would touch the tree and experience something akin to a fit, after which the hysteria would usually not recur.
Mesmer staged an animal magnetism without having 'magnetised' the trees to illustrate that the ceremony was a sham. However, all of the volunteers for Mesmer's event had the same effect from the non-prepared trees. That is, the very suggestion of animal magnetism being at work was enough to create the bodily response.
Mesmer then wrote various theses on this previously unheard-of psychological effect, later termed [Mesmerism] as shorthand for the effect. In common parlance, we have since retermed this the Placebo Effect.
James Braid was next to develop modern hypnosis a step further. In his scientific studies of brain workings, he became driven to understand the nature and logistics of sleep, and specifically dreaming, in the brain. In his writings and studies later published on these findings, Braid referred to the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos. As such, the new branch of learning became known as "neur-hypnology".
Sigmund Freud originally employed something similar to hypnosis with his own hysteria clients, upper-class Viennese women. Presumably not all Freud's clients found this effective, as he later abandoned the procedure in favour of his newly-developed free association technique. This is often viewed as the beginning of modern [psychotherapy], in that the patient would be asked ongoing questions to 'keep them talking' from which Freud would then deduce an explanation and treatment based on his own theories and frameworks. During such procedures, various props were used to allude to the patient's own psychology and preferences, including inkspots of undetermined shape Rorschach test (pronounced 'raw-shock') and lucid dreaming similar to waking hypnotherapy of the modern day.
Although he showed a preference for his own home-made procedures, the principles of conscious, unconscious, dream utilisation and refinement of attention are ongoing themes throughout the majority of his work. They also predate what we nowadays refer to as hypnotherapy, although the chasm between the schools of psychotherapy and hypnotherapy has deepened as these elements of Freud's format are left aside in favour of a more counselling-based approach.
Milton H. Erickson, M.D. is considered one of the most successful modern hypnotherapists. He has written many books, journals and articles on the subject, and his accomplishments are well-documented.
During the 1970s, Erickson saw unprecedented success treating his medical patients with hypnotic procedures. He was responsible for an entirely new branch of hypnotherapy, which we now call Ericksonian hypnotherapy, characterised by, amongst other things, indirect suggestion, confusion techniques, double binds, &c.
The phenomenal effectiveness of Erickson's techniques has since led to the development of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which has in turn found use in modern-day sales, advertising, political discourse and entertainment (mentalism, of the kind popularised by Derren Brown amongst others.).

Techniques
Age Regression - by returning to an earlier ego-state the patient can regain qualities they once had, but have lost. Remembering an earlier, healthier, ego-state can increase the patients' strength and confidence.
Revivification - remembering past experiences can contribute to therapy. For example; the hypnotist may ask "have you ever been in trance?" and then find it easier to revive the previous experience than attempt inducing a new state.
Guided Imagery - a method by which the subject is given a new relaxing and beneficial experience.
Parts Therapy - a method pioneered by Charles Tebbetts to identify conflicting parts that are damaging the well being of clients, then helps those parts negotiate with each other through the therapist to bring about a resolution.
Confusion - a method developed by Milton Erickson in which the subject becomes receptive to ideas because confused.
Repetition - the more an idea is repeated the more likely it is to be accepted and acted upon by the patient.
Direct Suggestion - suggesting directly. "You feel safe and secure".
Indirect Suggestion - using "interspersal" technique and other means to cause effect.
Mental State - people are more receptive while relaxed, sleeping, or in a trance.
Hypnoanalysis - the client recalls moments from his past, confronting them and releasing associated emotions, similar to psychoanalysis.
Post-hypnotic Suggestion - a suggestion that will be carried out after the trance has ended. "When you re-awaken you will feel refreshed and happy!!"
Visualization - being told to imagine or visualize a desired outcome seems to make it more likely to actually occur.