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Volume 0, double-issue 1+2, October 2005, 176 Pages

the journal Hypnose - Zeitschrift für Hypnose und Hypnotherapie (Hypnose-ZHH)

Table of Contents

  • Hardo Sorgatz
    Chronic movement pain, neuroplasticity and consciouness
  • Dirk Hermes, Daniel Trübger, Peter Sieg, and Samer G. Hakim
    Patients’ satisfaction after oral and maxillofacial operations with adjunct hypnosis
  • Stefan Junker
    Hypnosis with gastroscopies. A controlled and randomized study
  • Harald C. Traue, Andrea B. Horn,  Russell M. Deighton, and Henrik Kessler
    Psychobiological influences on the experience of pain. An overview
  • Ralf Dohrenbusch, Sigrid Lipka and Gundula Rüttinger
    On the influence of belief of control in hypnotherapeutic pain treatment
  • Iris von Fischern, Christoph Kraiker, Burkhard Peter, and Matthias Spörrle
    Osteopathy and hypnosis - a possible combination in pain-therapy?
  • Charlotte Wirl
    From children therapy to adult therapy: Short term interventions for psychosomatic disorders
  • Heinz Schott
    Pain and magic: Magnetism in medicine
  • Uwe Wolfradt and Katja Steudel
    Max Kauffmann. An early pioneer of the hypnosis and suggestion therapy in Germany
  • Christoph Piesbergen and Burkhard Peter
    What do suggestibility scales test? An investigation of the factor structure of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (HGSHS:A)

Abstracts & Download (German Originals)

Hardo Sorgatz

Chronic movement pain, neuroplasticity and consciouness
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 7-25

Background & aims: In a psychological point of view neuroplastic processes in the central nervous system are not more than provable physiological substrates of those learning processes which have been thoroughly studied by psychologists since Pawlow and Skinner. Pain-memory is an often mentioned concept of neuroplasticity. But a theoretical basis, explaining when and how the nociceptively marked memory contents are recalled, is seldom described. Fear of pain can be learned and subjectively felt due to operant and respondent methods, but conditioning rarely leads to pain as an aware somatic sensation. The growing interest of neurosciences in processes of consciousness may lead to new insights in mechanisms of the storage and of the retrieval of nociceptive data which will not fit into a simple neuroplastic pain model. After pointing to critical issues of the neuroplastic storage-model of chronic pain, this article attempts to combine selected principles of consciousness with neuroplastic mechanisms using movement pain as an example. According to the MCV-model, formulated for it, chronic pain is felt, when motor programs are activated which were formerly adapted to repeated incongruities between efferent and re-afferent information. An actual conscious feeling of chronic movement pain is, according to the MCV-model, bound to the initiation of nociceptively marked movement programs. However, not the stored nociception per se leads to a chronification of movement pain, but an adaptive process of limiting the consciousness.

Keywords: motion-pain, musculosceletal pain, neuroplasticity, consciousness

Dirk Hermes, Daniel Trübger, Peter Sieg, and Samer G. Hakim

Patients’ satisfaction after oral and maxillofacial operations with adjunct hypnosis
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 27-38

Background and aims: The Department of Maxillofacial Surgery of the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein/Campus Luebeck offers intraoperative hypnosis since 2002. Besides clinical evaluation, it would seem sensible to include patients attitudes in a first judgement on the therapeutic efficiency of such adjuvant procedure.

Method: 70 patients of the department treated under combined local anaesthesia/hypnosis rated their individual postoperative patient satisfaction by standardised questionnaires. A control group of equal size and demographic / surgical features consisted of patients that were treated without hypnosis in the same interval.

Results: Results of the inquiry indicate that intraoperative hypnosis increases significantly postoperative patient satisfaction of oral and maxillofacial patients.

Keywords: Oral and maxillofacial surgery – hypnosis – patient satisfaction

Stefan Junker

Hypnosis with gastroscopies. A controlled and randomized study
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 39-49

Aims: The following article presents briefly the results of an evaluation study of the effects of hypnosis with gastroscopies. The aim of the study was to show that hypnosis is a fast and useful tool for the preparation and company of patients that have to get gastroscopies.

Methods: 112 out-patients took part in this study. In a completely controlled and randomized part of the study, hypnosis was compared to a breathing relaxation. In another part of the study, hypnosis was compared to a group of patients (created by self-selection) that has been given the preparation Dormicum.

Results: One was able to show that hypnosis is much more suitable for gastroscopies than the two other procedures, regarding the duration of the examination, the vitality score, the appearance of choking and red head and the relaxation state of the patients. Moreover, hypnosis patients show significantly more signs of amnesia than the relaxation patients. Relaxation did not show to be more advantageous in any aspect. The Dormicum method was significantly more favourable than hypnosis concerning the appearance of amnesia, the patient’s assessment of their state of relaxation and the assessment of the (un-)pleasantness of the examination.

Conclusion: Based on these results, one assumes that hypnosis is a very effective, efficient and for practice suitable method that can be applied with gastroscopies. Hypnosis proved to be especially advantageous with patients that have not had a previous gastroscopy with pharmacological sedation and with male patients. The use of hypnosis has, just like the use of Dormicum, specific advantages and disadvantages that should be weighened up with every single patient before treatment.

Keywords: Gastroscopy, Hypnosis, Dormicum, Relaxation

Harald C. Traue, Andrea B. Horn, Russell M. Deighton, and Henrik Kessler

Psychobiological influences on the experience of pain. An overview
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 51-68

Background & aims: Pain is processed with a high priority in the brain. It has a major influence on behavior by triggering avoidance and protective learning processes upon acute stimulation. When damage has occurred, pain leads to protection of the damaged site and the search for abatement. The neuronal activity of the pain processing system is closely associated with exteroceptive and interoceptive perceptual processes and covaries with emotional functions and influences cognitive functions. From the perspective of clinical pain syndromes, the sensory, emotional and cognitive systems have different weights. However, even when the cause of pain is initially purely nocioceptive, for example in the case of burns, the entire pain system is always activated. On the neuronal level, different mechanisms of sensory projection and subsequent descending inhibition are set off. The emotional system controls avoidance and cognitions compare the acute lesion with previously experienced healing processes in order to anticipate the most likely course of healing and suffering.

Method: In this article the psychosocial factors and models will be discussed which have been shown to have influence on the experience of pain. The concepts range from psychodynamic reflections through to neurobiological experimental findings. To consider psychological and somatic aspects of pain in one system is a central aim of this chapter. In the past, the separation of these two aspects tended to be emphasized, while proponents of the psychological and the somatic perspective both claimed to consider the whole picture. Only when Gate Control Theory emerged was an integrated theory possible, which is its particular merit, although many of the hypotheses derived from it could not be confirmed. With this theory, a scientific window to chronic pain was opened which could only be understood in a multi-theoretical way. Neurocognitive and psychoendocrinal pain research fortifies the empirically supported assumptions on psychological factors in the pain phenomenon.

Keywords: psychobiology, ACC, fear avoidance, response specificity, nor-epinephrine, pain memory

Ralf Dohrenbusch, Sigrid Lipka and Gundula Rüttinger

On the influence of belief of control in hypnotherapeutic pain treatment
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 69-88

Background and aims: Empirical studies of chronic pain patients have shown a significant influence of patients’ perceived control on the process and outcome of cognitive-behavioural therapies. This influence is to be expected because behavioural therapy – unlike hypnotherapy – is partly based on such patient beliefs and aims to further promote perceived control in a transparent and systematic manner. This study tested to what extent the close relationships between patients’ perceived control and success of therapy, as reported in studies of behaviour therapy, can be generalised to hypnotherapeutic interventions.

Method: Of the 57 chronic pain patients who had expressed initial interest in hypnotherapeutic pain treatment, 38 participated in a three-week long intervention. This intervention included the daily listening to a CD with hypnotherapeutic components relating to relaxation, imagination, and suggestion, which could be combined on an individual basis. To predict treatment effects, initial pain-related perceived control and hypnotherapeutically relevant diagnostic features were measured. Measures of treatment success were collected both regarding process and outcome.

Results: The results showed that initial pain-related perceived control did not directly affect treatment outcome but only affected the process of intervention. The effect was weaker than for cognitive-behavioural therapies. Furthermore, suggestibility, which is typically increased in patients who have been successfully treated by hypnotherapy, was related to pain-related perceived helplessness. The potentially problematic interaction of patients’ perceived control and suggestibility in a hypnotherapeutic context is critically discussed.

Conclusion: Suggestibility should only be promoted in the context of hypnotherapeutic pain treatment if the undesirable effects, relating to suggestibility, which manifest themselves in perceived helplessness, are not being reinforced by the intervention.

Keywords: belief of control, self-efficacy, pain treatment, suggestibility

Iris von Fischern, Christoph Kraiker, Burkhard Peter, and Matthias Spörrle

Osteopathy and hypnosis - a possible combination in pain-therapy?
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 89-102

Aim: The present paper reports on a first attempt to combine osteopathy as a physical therapy and hypnosis as a psychological therapy in order to reduce pain.

Method: Patients with pain were treated in two osteopathic practices with either a combination of osteopathy and a CD of relaxating music or with osteopathy and a hypnotherapeutic CD. The treatment included three sessions of this combination. In the form of pre-post-design pain intensity, sensory and affective pain sensation, general psychological and physiological symptoms, and life satisfaction were assessed before the first and after the third session of combinated therapy by using clinical questionnaires.

Results: The results showed a significant effect in all measured variables for the whole group of patients. A group difference between the two CD interventions was not found.

Conclusio: The question whether the operationalisation of the hypnotical intervention was successful is discussed. Methodical restrictions and suggestions for further research studies are illustrated.

Keywords: pain, treatment, osteopathy, hypnosis, double blind study

Charlotte Wirl

From children therapy to adult therapy: Short term interventions for psychosomatic disorders
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 103-115

Background: Somatoform and psycho-somatic diseases are of increasing importance in children therapy as well as in adult therapy. A number of creative techniques in adult therapy might have their origin in children therapy and they surprise by their easy application on the analogue and the unconscious level.

Method: In order to highlight this idea, a few examples of techniques from hypnotherapeutic short-term therapy, applicable to somatoform and psychosomatic diseases, are discussed. These methods (originating from children therapy) surprise by their ease of applicability in reaching the unconscious. In addressing the inner child of the adult, these methods enable the use of creativity and learning potentials.

Keywords: children therapy, psychotherapy for the adult, hypnotherapy, brief therapy, somatoform disorder

Heinz Schott

Pain and magic: Magnetism in medicine
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 117-126

Background and aims: In the history of  medicine pain is regarded as a main symptom of disease. In the tradition of the “natural magic” and the so-called sympathetic-magnetic cures the magnet was used as a healing instrument as well as a symbol of the hidden healing power of nature. Those cures were important at the beginning of modern medicine especially in the context of paracelsism. Stimulated as well by the “artificial electricity”, as it was made possible since the middle of 18th century Franz Anton Mesmer established animal magnetism (mesmerism) at the end of this century, by which special methods for pain control were offered. With the beginning of the middle19th century those methods became part of the concepts of hypnotism and of suggestion therapies.

Keywords: “natural magic”, mesmerism, hypnotism, pain control, magnet

Uwe Wolfradt and Katja Steudel

Max Kauffmann. An early pioneer of the hypnosis and suggestion therapy in Germany
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 127-138

Background & aims: In the following contribution, we want to introduce the works of  Max Kauffmann (1871-1923) who investigated in and taught about hypnosis and suggestion at the University of Halle. Firstly, some biographical notes about Max Kauffmann who started as a medical doctor in the field of research on hypnosis quite late are presented. Afterwards his theory of consciousness and its implication for hypnosis and suggestion are presented. He assumes the following four stages of hypnosis: (1) tiredness, (2) catalepsy, (3) division of consciousness and (4) lethargy. Kauffmann integrated his theoretical assumptions with the current ideas of Voelkerpsychologie. Then follows a presentation of his hypnotherapy, which is characterised by different stages and techniques. Finally, Max Kauffmann’s contribution to the research on hypnosis and suggestion is discussed on the background of theories and approaches (e.g. evolution theory, psychoanalysis) at that time.

Keywords: history, consciousness, hypnosis, suggestion, Voelkerpsychologie

Christoph Piesbergen and Burkhard Peter

What do suggestibility scales test? An investigation of the factor structure of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (HGSHS:A)
Hypnose-ZHH, 2005, 0(1+2), 139-159

Aim: Investigation of the effects and the factor structure of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility (HGSHS).

Method: A standardized hypnosis session was conducted with 144 subjects in a controlled laboratory study. The induction of a hypnotic trance in the German version of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility (HGSHS:A by Shor & Orne, 1962) was recorded on a tape and used as the treatment.

Results: The HGSHS:A seems to be a reliable measure of suggestibility and hypnotizibility. This is underlined by the consistent results of a factor analysis on the depths of hypnosis that is in agreement with former studies. Descriptive data analyses with a sufficient number of subjects of high and low suggestibility suggest that our hypnosis induction by tape is an effective method of producing a hypnotic trance. Analyses of within-subjects variables did not reveal any valid predictors of hypnotizibility, thereby confirming the need of screening instruments such as the HGSHS.

Keywords: Hypnosis, suggestibility scales, factor structure