Talk:Hypnosis

	This Psychology related article has been assessed as SIGNIFICANTLY PROBLEMATIC in one or more ways. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.
This article requires attention for the following reason(s): It contains unsourced statements Tagged since 2 April 2017

Archives for this talk page:

<1>

, (new)

[citation needed]

On one hand, I agree that this article needs more sources. There are an awful lot of unsourced statements. But at the same time, it needs fewer ^{[citation needed]} tags—and not just in the "they need to be replaced with citations" sense. Now, sometimes ^{[citation needed]} is used correctly...but often it's not, and sometimes it's used several times in quick succession when any one of those would be sufficient. Particularly amusing to me is the last sentence of the "The problems with hypnotism" section, which implies that we need to cite a source for saying that we'll get to something later.

I'd argue that this many ^{[citation needed]} tags impedes attempts to actually get those citations. Say some helpful hypnotherapy scholar comes by, looking at the banner at the top, and thinks "I know some good sources on hypnotism, maybe I can help." Which seems more likely to get him to actually do something—several scattered ^{[citation needed]} tags, placed where citation is definitely needed, or dozens seeding the entire page? If I were that hypnotist, seeing ^{[citation needed]} after ^{[citation needed]} might make me think that this website's community just hates hypnotism, and that anything I fixed would just get more ^{[citation needed]} tags. Alternatively, I might look at the sheer number of citations requested and give up due to the apparent enormity of the task.

This page is a mess^{[citation needed]}, and the attempts at cleaning it up are also a mess^{[citation needed]}. Let's hope that efforts to clean up the clean-up efforts don't also turn into a mess, or else this page will be doomed to an eternity of being an enormous mess.^{[citation needed]} GreatWyrmGold (talk) 01:47, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

@GreatWyrmGold I concur, this article is in need of a major cleanup effort, with one of the first priorities sorting through the citation needed tags to determine which should go and which should stay. In addition we should also endeavor to actually source the article, or else delete it for poor quality. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 12:05, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Mmmm. Yes. I suspect that a bit of woo might have crept into the end of the article and that the multiple "citation needed" flags are a sign of this.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 12:20, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

New defintion and skepticism

There is scholary debate on whether hypnosis is a state or not. I think that we therefore should say that there isn't any scientific consensus, yet and give examples of other theories. This whole page seems to lack general skepticism of the hypnotic phenomena, considering how many people think it is fake. I found an answer on Quora that had a few good links skeptical of hypnosis, which maybe we could use? I also found this book that described the different theories of hypnosis and some skepticism against it. P.S. The chapters about dramaturgical, nonstate and sociocognitive models are skeptical of the phenomena. SassLass (talk) 08:00, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Revision

I think this article needs a complete makeover to fix the problems with it. I'm thinking of starting with restructuring the whole page and remove some things which aren't necessary. I will structure it with these sections: Definition (altough I'm unsure myself if this will be very interesting)

Alternative medicine (I will leave it as is in it's current state, will probably edit and add in this section when I have the time, as it is quite a gold mine of woo (for instance: quantum healing hypnosis technique, don't think there is enough material for it's own page))

Other claims (pseudoscientific ones which aren't necessarly clinical)

I'll leave this post here mostly for context for edits I'm planning to do so I don't have to be long winded in my explaination for my edits.

SassLass (talk) 14:06, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Alien abduction and John Mack

This article only has a brief mention of alien abduction and would benefit from expanding upon it, especially as it pertains to John Mack's work and Whitley Strieber's "experiences". 184.171.60.91 (talk) 15:38, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Actual uses

While hypnosis for entertainment is a valid use, wikipedia suggests that there are valid therapeutic uses for it, and while I was not able to personally vet every source, there is valid evidence suggesting that hypnotherapy can be beneficial standalone or combined with other treatments such as CBT

• Dental anxiety - positive, but further research is needed to be conclusive : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9138388/
• PTSD - behind paywall, unable to vet : https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207144.2015.1099406 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00029157.2011.645913
• Depression - book, unable to read or vet : https://worldcat.org/title/60671838
• Phobias - paywall, unable to vet : https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-06062-015
• Dental phobia - specific case, anecdotal : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ch.312
• Addiction - paywall : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0306460380900209?via%3Dihub
• Rehabilitation after stroke - low sample size (6), paywall? : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ch.319
• Breast Cancer Care - positive, but further research is needed to be conclusive : https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1534735414550035
• IBS - positive : https://web.archive.org/web/20141022160538/http://www.med.unc.edu/ibs/files/educational-gi-handouts/IBS%20and%20Hypnosis.pdf

conclusion :

• evidence seems to suggest hypnotherapy can help treat certain condition, but further research is needed to be conclusive
• way too many science article are behind paywalls ^{— Unsigned, by: 2a01:e34:ec40:2d10:c5b6:35ad:5a54:ed7f / talk / contribs}