The “Dangers” of Hypnotism?

Let’s go back to the horse’s mouth and see what the surgeon who coined the term “hypnotism”, James Braid, the founder of hypnotherapy, said about the dangers it posed and the extent to which patients could be “controlled” and made to do objectionable things…

While under the hypnotic influence, the patients evince great docility, but there is, however, such a state of the perceptive faculties and judgement that they will be quite as fastidious of correct conduct as when in the natural state. So far as I know, there is no more, or not so much, chance of gaining a knowledge of the thoughts of others than might be attained by giving the patient a glass or two of wine. And I have no experience of any such irresistible influence over individuals for producing those malign effects you refer to. I strongly suspect they only exist in the imagination of the parties operating or operated on. At all events, no such effects result from my operations, although undoubtedly I have been able to produce the most wonderful effects in many instances where ordinary treatment had been unavailing.

This is from an unpublished letter in the archive of his follower, Dr. John Milne Bramwell, who goes on to comment,

[Braid] had never seen a hypnotised patient who did not strenuously resist any attempt at taking a liberty with her. Such patients could not be induced to take off their stockings, for example, or to give a kiss to a gentleman, even should he be a hallucinatory one. On the contrary, they would repel such suggestions with more energy than in the waking condition.

Victorian doctors were, it has to be said, in a better position to test behaviour which might be considered too dubious to propose in a modern psychological experiment, and wouldn’t get approval from a modern ethics committee. Braid recognised that people do sometimes do things they later regret in hypnotism but that this was more often due to other factors such as social compliance, peer pressure, deception, etc., and that it seemed to him more likely to be possible to manipulate people psychologically through the use of alcohol or intoxicating drugs rather than hypnotism.

What might be achieved by systematic and persevering attempts to corrupt a virtuous person during that state, I do not pretend to tell; I should never condescend to witness such attempts being systematically made; but my present convictions are that the same individual might be more readily demoralised when awake, than when in the second conscious state of nervous sleep, which evidently has a tendency with virtuous people to quicken their perceptions and heighten their notions of what would be immoral or highly indecorous, whilst at the same time it renders them most docile and obliging in all which is reasonable and seemly in their estimation. Thus, while they still indignantly repel the proposal to kiss an imaginary gentleman, they will be quite willing to do so to an imaginary child.

Modern research on hypnotism has, overall, supported Braid’s original view and failed to find credible evidence that hypnotic subjects were more complaint than non-hypnotised subjects. It has to be emphasised, in this context, that as Milgram’s famous experiment illustrates, people are surprisingly compliant to social pressure anyway and this is easily confused with the effects of hypnotism.

The 2001 report reviewing the scientific research on hypnotism, commissioned by the British Psychological Society (BPS), concludes,

Hypnotic procedures are not in themselves able to cause people to commit acts against their will. However, the demands of the context in which the procedures take place may exert pressure on the subject to comply with the hypnotist’s instructions. (BPS, 2001)

Essentially this confirms Braid’s original account of hypnotism, which he opposed to the misconception of “mind control” originating in the tendency to confuse hypnotism with Mesmerism.