Dangers of Hypnosis Bulletin Blog

Since James Braid found that hypnosis is unbelievably harmless for a power so remarkable and great, his contention has remained virtually unshaken. Despite the low opinion of hypnotism held by the public, manifested both in its idle curiosity and its evil-humored gossip, there have been reported amazingly few instances of ill-effects. Moreover, of the few that have actually occurred, most, if not all, should be attributed to accident or coincidence. In a recent study of this problem, M. H. Erickson states,"The literature offers little credible information concerning possible detrimental effects of experimental hypnosis, although replete with dogmatic and opinionated denunciations founded on outworn and untenable concepts of the phenomenon. The author's own experience, based upon several thousand trances on approximately three hundred individual subjects, some of whom were hypnotized at least five hundred times each over a period of four to six years, reveals no evidence of such harmful effects. The clinical finding is further substantiated by the well-known difficulties encountered in the deliberate therapeutic attempts to occasion desired changes in the personality. Accordingly, marked changes from experimental hypnosis appear questionable."