Part One

by Kevin Hogan

The placebo response is the body/mind response to the absolute certainty that some expected effect will take place due to taking some action. The placebo response can also be noted as a response of expectancy. The placebo response, this mind/body healing response, is one of the best friends a therapist has.

When someone truly believes with absolute certainty that an effect of some kind will occur because of some action taken, the body/mind often responds in amazing ways. Although we will be sharing a few key therapeutic ideas in this article I wanted to share with you a non-therapeutic response of expectancy so you can consider the broad range of possibilities involved in the placebo response.

In the early 1970’s an interesting study was proposed and performed in New York. In brief, a well known psychologist approached a school to utilize two teachers and two groups of students. Group 1, teacher A was told was a group of superior students. All the students have very high IQ’s he is told. Do not tell the students or any other teachers. We (the principal and psychologist) expect you to have a great year. Exit teacher A.

Teacher B enters and is shared the following news (again I paraphrase): We have some news for you. The students you have (Group 2) are students that are students who are not doing so well. They have very low IQ’s. Do not tell the students or any other teachers. Do your best. Exit teacher B.

Eight months into the study the research project is stopped because the students in group 1 almost to a student have an "A" average. The students in Group 2 are averaging a "D" grade. The punchline? The students were randomly assigned to the groups. There was NO difference in the average IQ of the students! The study was immediately stopped and has never been conducted since.

Expectancy is a powerful element that is difficult to measure but it DOES play a crucial role in behavior as it does in healing. The two teachers believed that they had superior and inferior students, respectively and they said nothing verbally during their eight months of teaching their students. Their non-verbal communication clearly gave their expectant attitudes a neon sign of certainty to the students of what was going to happen. It is this very same neon sign that a good therapist wants to wear.

A good hypnotherapist will never say, "Absolutely, your tinnitus will disappear." We will never say, "You will lose 100 pounds and it will stay gone forever." But based on a superior understanding of how the expectant response of the body/mind can work, we can congruently say, "I really like your chances."

What are those chances by the way? Let’s look at the spectrum of possibilities.

A recent study reported in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) showed that over 7 in 10 people with asthma given an inhaler filled with water had their asthma attacks stopped. The people with asthma didn’t know that the inhaler had water of course. They were certain it was the same medicine they had been using for years. The certainty is the element in the mind/body response that we need to utilize for maximum results in all forms of healing.

Before we continue, does the above data indicate that cancer is real and asthma is not? No. Asthma is very real. So is cancer. A person who loses a limb will not regenerate a new limb regardless of their power of belief and expectancy. There is no programming for limb regeneration in our body. It doesn’t happen. There are some things that the human body can do and there are some things it cannot do. Our goal as hypnotherapists is to maximize the healing process for each client that we have. Everything our client experiences is very real if to no one else than the client. Note that in the asthma study 3 out of 10 people didn’t benefit from the water in their inhaler. They needed the medicine to affect physiological change in the lungs. So, let’s continue with what those chances are in another critical area, that of pain control.

Pain analgesics have been tested time and again against a placebo (an inert pill) and it has been found that about 35% of all people utilizing a placebo for the reduction of pain experience about a 50% reduction in pain. We cannot know exactly why this third of the population responds so well to a placebo pill. We also don’t know if the same group would respond better or worse to other pain reducing treatments. What we do know is that on average, about 1/3 of people need nothing more than a placebo (including the appropriate mind/body response) to gain remarkable relief from pain.

Ernest Rossi (Psychobiology of Mind Body Healing, 1993, Norton Publishing) has catalogued a number of maladies that seem to at least in part improve with the administration of "placebo treatment," implicating at least three major body systems in the mind/body healing response. In simple terms: All of the following disorders, diseases and symptoms respond at least in part to placebo treatment indicating some degree of mind/body healing capability.

Category One: The Autonomic Nervous System is Implicated

• Hypertension
• Stress
• Cardiac Pain
• Blood Cell Counts
• Headaches
• Pupilary Dilation