So it aired last night on BBC2 — The new TV series entitled ‘Alternative Therapies.’
Last night was the first of the 3 TV shows, featuring hypnotherapy. All I can say is; what a pile of rubbish! Absolutely appalling TV which I am disgusted that my TV licence funds. I am going to rant and tell you why I think this….
Firstly, here is the BBC blurb for the show taken from their website:
Imagine having your dentist pull your teeth out and drill into your jaw with no anaesthetic — just someone muttering in your ear about being on the beach. Sounds alarming? Welcome to the extraordinary world of hypnotherapy.
Half a million people in England use hypnotherapy every year. It’s claimed it can help with smoking, weight loss, phobias, allergies, and even breast enlargement. But what do we really know about hypnotherapy and hypnosis?
In the first in a new series, Kathy Sykes, Professor of Science and Society at Bristol University, embarks on a personal and scientific journey to explore three popular alternative therapies: reflexology, meditation, starting with hypnotherapy.
Travelling across the UK, Europe and over the Atlantic, in a journey that is at times funny, intimate, moving and revealing, she follows patients and scientists working in the area. She meets Richard, the policeman, who wants to quit smoking; Nicola, who wants to eat less chocolate; and Mandy, who wants teeth implants without anaesthetic. Kathy tries hypnosis for herself as she learns about the science behind the hypnotic ‘trance’.
A mixture of serious science and personal journey — Alternative Therapies is intriguing viewing for anyone interested in the ever-confusing and controversial world of alternative therapies.
Serious science? Ha! And what is it with this billing and framing of the world of alternative therapies as “ever-confusing and controversial” ?
Firstly, did they gather up the biggest collection of useless therapists and medical professionals on the planet, or what?
There was a hypnotherapist dealing with a policeman in the midlands to help him stop smoking — the therapist was reading a script!? A child could have done that! Right there on TV! Reading a script to hypnotise the guy. Where did they get this guy from? Then, the hypnotherapist got him to imagine the worst case scenario of his smoking — to imagine standing at his own grave! Unbelievable. Certainly not my choice of therapeutic intervention.
Then there was the hospital doctor telling everyone not to eat healthy food of you have IBS…
The BBC seem to be of the opinion that because someone works in a hospital and wears a white coat with a title other than Mr or Mrs, then that person is allowed to be on TV, be perceived as credible and make claims…
Like this doctor specialising in hypnosis for irritable bowel syndrome… He was doing some fabulous work with his clients… Yet he referred to his hypnotic sessions as him “droning on…” as if the content of what he was saying was of no importance. All he did was repeatedly say “deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper…” Man, this guy was boring his clients into hypnosis!
The shining light of the programme though, was the brilliant example of a lady having teeth removed and replaced with implants, without anaesthesia, just using hypnosis; this was fabulous, I have to say. The presenter was obviously impressed and shocked with what she had seen, yet she still had to say that she was not sure if it was entirely down to the hypnosis… Well, how about getting someone to sit down and tell them that they are going to be pain-free while attempting to pull their teeth out without hypnosis and see how far you get!
They showed an experiment with a young man who was apparently ‘very suggestible’ and the next ‘professor’ believed that high suggestibility in a small percentage of the population is just the same as hypnosis… He took the young man into hypnosis and told him to make different colours appear on the screen and then did the same using only suggestion… He did this one after the other, so the guy was in a receptive trance state anyway… Then when he did the lifting of fingers while he was suposed to be in trance (what we call an ideo-motor-response) the guy lifted his finger totally consciously?!
When someone is truly in trance and their unconscious mind is responding, the movement is jerky-like and there is a notable difference that shows they are in a trance. This guy on TV was obviously in no real formalised trance, yet they concluded that this showed that hypnosis was nothing more than being open to suggestion — and that they were very different things?
The science section showing different parts of the brain responding to placebo, and then other parts being used with hypnosis was superb… Yet the only time the presenter actually experienced hypnosis was with a guy who was a part-time magician! Who then let her lie down on a couch, roll around with various silly expressions on her face and gave her direct suggestions that she simply had a polarity response to!
When you give authoritarian suggestions in a direct ‘yes or no’ manner as this guy did, you give the opportunity for the client to say no! I mean come on… He actually told the presenter that she could not open her hands… And she said “yes I can…” I mean, where was his hypnotic skill? He spent an hour with her generating a trance. Eventually, she went off to see the stage hypnotist from the beginning of the programme to take her into hypnosis properly! What does that say about our featured therapists?!
Not one therapist featured in the show used real, good quality hypnotic language. They all used boring, relaxation-type scripts… They were all direct in their suggestions and the entire thing nearly made my head explode.
Thank goodness for the very good stage hypnotist and thank goodness for my good pal Elliott Wald being in the show… But even when he had done a 10 minute technique with a lady on stage to show her the power of her mind to take control of her chocolate eating, the presenter followed her up 3 months later to discover that she had done well, had the odd nibble of chocolate… How the hell is this supposed to be a TV programme looking at the scientific efficacy of hypnosis when she is gauging success by one isolated 10 minute stage demonstration? Surely, even our presenter could see and understand that a lady as responsive as that could have a few weeks of persistent, continued development and build upon her ‘taster’ to enhance the effect and make it long-lasting and more concrete. No?
Then going on to say that hypnosis trials have proven that hypnosis is virtually impotent for stopping smoking and weight reduction… I mean, what trials was she looking at? Has she looked at the many scientific clinical trials that show hypnosis to be infinitely more successful and longer lasting than nicotine relacement treatments or other mainstream ways of stopping smoking?
Am I being protective over my beloved subject? Am I just jealous that I was not featured in the show? Am I just fed up that hypnosis gets portrayed in the most ridiculous way by mass media and pseudo-scientific efforts like this one? Yes to all the above!
Tomorrow, I will have calmed down and got back into the joy of living… đŸ˜‰
(ps Delia Smith’s show was on right before this documentary, which did balance things up a tad)
I’m glad Jenny didn’t watch this – she would be apoplectic!
Like you say, at least get some decent therapists on. It’s just part of the general malaise that producers seem more interested in controversy, soundbites and fluff then genuine content and impartial investigations.
They usually seem to have an angle in mind, and go looking for evidence to support it – not exactly unbiased!
Adam, in my not so humble but quite experienced opinion the show was spot on. Hypnosis is suggestion. It has nothing to do with relaxation and is simply about focus and attitude, at least that’s what I think.
The stage hypno was the worst thing because of the old can’t get people to do anything against their will which is rubbish, however I thought the rest was spot on. No claims were made and everything was left to the viewr to decide.
Brilliant show.
Wow, Adam, I totally agree with you. I was so seriously annoyed and upset after watching this show that i had to blog about it right away. It was so appalling and I felt really cross that I had a lot of clients coming to see me today who might have been watching this programme and been put off by the all the inaccurate information and the totally unfair and unscientific portrayal of hypnotherapy. Grrrr…..
Sophie, I just read your blog, anyone else wanting to read what Sophie has to say about this programme do take a look at http://www.sophienicholls.com/blog as she does actually cite some proper research to refute claims made in BBC1’s TV show…
Thanks Sophie đŸ™‚
Oh come on Jon… I reckon the only reason you were not offended by the hypnotherapist using the script was because he had an accent like yours! đŸ˜‰
I was delighted to see the Police Force being progressive enough to use hypnosis and wrote about it some months ago, yet I could not understand why some other pieces of research were not cited to show the efficacy of hypnosis.
Of course I totally concur with you in one respect – hypnosis is not about relaxation. Yet the only time the presenter attempted to be hypnotised, she was nearly relaxed to death for the space of an hour… I’d have fallen asleep or got bored senseless!
I did not see any one subject in the show exhibiting any signs to indicate they were truly hypnotised.
What’s more, I gently disagree that ‘no claims were made’ – they claimed that hypnosis had no research to support any use in dealing with smokers or weight reduction clients… That is likely to influence anyone watching, is it not?
Jon, you and I are pals, but the show was a pile…
Oh, and thank you Gordon… I agree… Goddam TV companies…
What annoyed me about the show was that they expected Hypnosis to be the all or nothing answer to everything. When looking at the evidence for using Hypnosis with smoking cessation the phrase If I recall was “It sometimes works, but only with counselling or discussion too”. Well of course! We don’t just pull the client in, swing the watch, tell them they don’t smoke and send them on their merry way! We have to find out about their smoking habits so that the session is customised to their needs to ensure the hypnosis is correctly applied to the relevant areas of that persons habit. Same for the chocolate. They showed Elliot doing a quick demo which was effective, but the fact the woman had eaten chocolate a few weeks later was shown as a failure on the part of hypnosis. I wonder how much chocolate she used to eat before she was hypnotised. She freely admitted that chocolate had lost it’s buzz for her. To me that is a perfect result!
It seems that unless hypnosis is 100% effective for 100% of people, the press will continue to portray it as an end of the pier novelty and keep doing shows like this every so often. Why don’t the BBC do a similar show about all the supposed wonderful drugs on the market that don’t have a 100% success rate. Perhaps we should all start wearing white coats. Then we may get taken more seriously!
Well, for a moment there I thought I had found a sensible blog. I too was appalled at the programme – but for exactly the opposite reason. The apparent “evidence” for hypnotherapy was simply anecdotal – it wasn’t evidence for or against anything. The sight of teeth being pulled under hypnotherapy is the same (there are lots of anecdotes of people having teeth pulled with no anaesthetic at all). There was no systematic analysis of hypnotherapy compaed to anything else (or compared to nothing at all)
Basically a load of non-scientific claptrap. How can a scientist call “amazing” the behaviour of a silly women who thinks she has been “genuinely effected” by the words of a hypnotherapist!
If hypnotherapy really works this programme certainly didn’t provide any scientific evidence; and if it doesn’t work the programme was positively misleading.
The BBC should be ashamed of themselves.
Just watched some more:
SHOCK HORROR – Professor hypnotises a colleague who seems to be genuinely hypnotised
SHOCK HORROR – Some people (unquantified) appear (ie not proven) to benefit (ie not to be cured) from hypnosis if they have IBS (which is generally accepted to be psychosomatic in the first place)
Can this programme get worse!
I’m soooo glad I turned over from this last night. It would have significantly interfered with my sleep! I had flicked over to the late night repeat and watched a little bit. I saw the presenter undergoing hypnosis but was really irritated by the little bit I saw. She seemed to go into it with the aim of not feeling anything or falling for it. She wanted to prove it all wrong and not let go. It seemed like she was focusing more on what she wasn’t feeling than what she was. And the guy supposedly hypnotising her was appalling. He seemed to be skipping all over the place with no message or aim. And only too delighted to almost side with her afterwards saying that he wasn’t very suggestible either. As if that’s a good thing. Grrr!
What makes me very cross is that people like to “debunk” so many things in the name of science, and with only shaky evidence in their favour. The more time I spend in the medical field, the more I realise I don’t know. I’ve already seen many things we knew to be “true” being completely turned on their head so I think it is extremely naive to think that we can say with absolute certainty that something doesn’t work. As for trials: I’ll have to refer back to the Cochrane collaboration again. They do the donkey work in bringing together all the studies and analysing them. Yes, at first glance, they say that nicotine replacement therapy works and that hypnotherapy isn’t proven in smoking cessation. However, and this is a big however, they looked at 132 trials for NRT with over 40,000 participants. For hypnotherapy they only managed to find 9 studies comparing it to 14 different control interventions and with significant heterogeneity in results. So are we surprised that NRT comes out better? Hardly! It’s far easier to find a statistically significant result with huge numbers and well constructed trials than with small numbers and studies which were all conducted slightly differently. Add to this the personal/therapist issues in hypnotherapy and it is difficult to make trials as black and white. Does it “prove” that it doesn’t work? NO! Not unless you conveniently ignore the numbers and statistics…
Which is what they did in the programme by giving examples of a handful of people. It makes nice TV of course to have a poor woman trying to give up chocolate and the guy who wants to give up the fags. But having only a few people, giving them different therapies, and then presenting this as a real example of whether or not the therapy as a whole is worthwhile is tremendously misleading. Maybe they stated that they weren’t claiming to prove anything with their examples, but does anybody at all believe that you would use someone’s story as an example if you did not want to convince the audience that something (in this case hypnosis is rubbish) is true?
Why must everything be conventional OR alternative, black OR white, good OR bad? It’s an oversimplification. Life isn’t that simple. Human beings aren’t that simple. And to aim to manipulate audiences with quasi scientific presentations is very disappointing….
Phew! Feel better now…. Back to being a cynical scientific type…
Peter, I certainly would never want to be accused of being sensible or running a sensible blog…