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hypnotherapy AND EXISTENTIALISM
by Don De Grazia
"What does my reason matter? Does it crave knowledge as a lion craves it's food?" --Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Hypnotherapy has two separate elements: hypnosis, and psychotherapy. Existentialism has important relationships to both of them. Existentialism is a vaguely defined body of ideas containing many widely different views. Some of the most famous existentialists were very devout theologians, for example, while others were very vocal atheists. But there are a couple of common threads that run through most of the works by most of the philosophers and other writers who are commonly referred to as existentialists. We will explore a few of these common threads and see how they can lead to a deeper understanding of both hypnosis and psychotherapy. The earliest of the group of thinkers who are often referred to as existentialists was the Danish philosopher and Christian theologian, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). We usually think of truth as being objective, but Kierkegaard emphasized the importance of subjective truth, as opposed to objective truth and reason. Kierkegaard believed that faith results from a simple choice rather than from a rational process. He is the one who coined the phrase "leap of faith" in his influential 1844 book, The Concept of Anxiety. Although scientists use objective truth and reason when they study the experience of hypnosis, the experience itself is characterized by subjective truth and a diminished rational process. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), who was awarded the Nobel prize for physiology and medicine in 1904, studied the physiology of hypnosis and concluded that hypnosis involves a temporary inhibition of the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain where objective, rational, analytical thought takes place. Since then scientists with modern instruments have confirmed that cortical inhibition does indeed occur during hypnosis. Many scientists believe this cortical inhibition explains why, in a state of hypnosis, suggestions are able to reach the lower brain centers and initiate desired changes in habits and perception. A very common theme throughout the history of philosophy has been that passion should be the slave of reason. But David Hume (1711-1776) the great Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and historian said that “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions...” Hume is not thought of as an existentialist but that statement expresses one of the important themes of existentialist thought. It also touches on one of the great strengths of hypnotherapy. We all know that we should not smoke or overeat. We understand these truths at a rational level. But reason is not what drives addictive behavior or habit disorders. They are driven by passion, and hypnosis can be a powerful tool for converting rational beliefs into visceral passions. When hypnotherapy works, it can convert the knowledge that smoking is bad for you into the habit of not smoking. It can transform the rational understanding that fruits and vegetables are good for you into a physical craving for fruits and vegetables. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) the philosopher most often identified with existentialism, would say that smokers and overeaters are often guilty of what he called mauvaise foi, which can be translated as bad faith. One who overeats might feel that he does so because he is an overeater and thereby accept this as his destiny. But Sartre would call this mauvaise foi. He would say that people do not overeat because they are overeaters, they are overeaters because they overeat. He would say that you are always creating your own essence whether you want to or not. You cannot escape this fate. If you choose to passively accept your current habits, you are thereby actively writing the script for your future. In a sense there is no such thing as true passivity. Choice is a burden from which you cannot escape. You are always either choosing to change or choosing to remain the same. But some might question Sartre’s conception of mauvaise foi when it comes to smoking. They might point out that smoking is a physical addiction, so you do have to smoke because you are a smoker. But you do not have to choose to continue to be addicted. There are ways, such as hypnosis, to free yourself from addiction. By not choosing to take the steps necessary to get rid of the addiction, you are in effect choosing to remain addicted, and to deny this would be mauvaise foi, bad faith. Sartre was an interesting guy. He fought in the French resistance when France was occupied by Germany. When he wasn't blowing up nazi installations in the dark of night, he was hanging out in the cafes of Paris surrounded by his many followers, admirers, and groupies. He attracted a large following of young people who called themselves existentialists but who were in many cases interested mostly in the uninhibited, bohemian lifestyle for which this group had acquired a worldwide reputation. They were the precursors of the beats, who were the precursors of the hippies. He fought hard and partied hard but still managed to work hard. He wrote thousands of words every day, often at a table in his favorite Parisian cafe, and left us a huge volume of work: novels, short fiction, plays, journal articles, and essays, in addition to his formal philosophical works. Even when he was captured and sent to a nazi prisoner-of-war camp, he continued to write every day. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize, but he turned it down because he felt that a philosopher should not be influenced by that sort of thing. Those of you who are feminists might be more familiar with Sartre’s lifelong girlfriend, Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote among other things, The Second Sex, which has become a feminist classic. She was a first-rate writer of both fiction and nonfiction and an important existentialist philosopher in her own right. They first met as young university students and stayed together for more than fifty years until death finally separated them. They had an exceptionally close and devoted relationship and are buried next to each other. But they never married. They maintained an open relationship, a mutually non-exclusive relationship that sometimes included a third person. Simone de Beauvoir had a Chicago connection. She spent time here and had a serious affair with Chicago novelist, Nelson Algren. Algren wrote many successful novels. The Man with the Golden Arm is the one that is remembered by the largest number of people because it was made into a major film starring Frank Sinatra. Algren is the guy who said "Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose." Mike Royko helped get a Chicago street named after him, but that caused a small uproar. Some people were upset because they felt Algren wrote about what they called "the seamy side of Chicago." So they got the name of the street changed to something else. Sartre's most important philosophical work was L'Etre et le Neant. The English edition is called, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. This is not an example of his most accessible writing. It is very long and ponderous and at times fairly obscure. I probably would not have finished it if it had not been required reading for a course I was taking. But it is worth the effort if you are interested in the nature of choice and freedom. It deals with a lot more than that, but those were the areas that interested me the most, partly because of their relevance to the treatment of habit disorders and addiction. All existentialist writings are not formal philosophical works. There are many novels, short stories, and plays that are considered existentialist literature. The best of the best are Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor and Notes from Underground. The Grand Inquisitor is a tale told by a fictional character, Ivan Karamazov, in The Brothers Karamazov, but it is also published as a separate book. "The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written: the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be valued too highly." --Sigmund Freud (1)
On the surface, The Grand Inquisitor is about religion. Dostoevsky was an exceptionally devout Christian. But there is a more basic underlying philosophical theme that is of interest to non-believers just as much as believers. One of its main themes is about people eagerly surrendering the freedom that Christ gave them when He rejected Satan's three temptations in the wilderness. (Mathew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, and Luke 4:1-13) But at a more basic philosophical level it is about the innate human tendency to try to free one's self from freedom and from the burden of choice that is inherent in freedom. In this respect it is closely related to Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and to the type of mauvaise foi that is often associated with addictions and habit disorders. They are all about the way people make the choice to either accept or deny their freedom of choice. Feelings of dread normally have objects. When someone experiences a feeling of dread, he or she is usually dreading some particular thing. Kierkegaard used the word angst to describe a special kind of fear and dread that has no object. It is a vague feeling of dread that people experience from time to time without knowing what they are dreading. Kierkegaard believed this type of dread, or angst, is the result of freedom, our inescapable need to be constantly making choices. He saw angst as an intrinsic part of human existence, so it is often referred to as existential angst. Hypnosis is sometimes used in an attempt to trace existential angst to a cause in order to defuse it. This is an inappropriate use of hypnosis, and I do not recommend it. Although we cannot entirely escape from freedom, we can to some extent choose how much freedom we want in our lives. Usually those who choose to maximize freedom in their lives are somewhat like Ivan Karamazov, extremely rational people who emphasize the importance of being free to live by reason rather than being chained to tradition. In Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky created a strange and interesting character who goes a step further. He insists on being free even from reason because he believes that to live a rational life is to be enslaved by reason. I have known a few people like that. He strives to be free of everything but freedom itself, and thereby creates a weird and empty life.
"Two plus two equals four--
Genesis explains in beautiful metaphor that painful consequences are associated with our freedom to choose between good and evil by attributing those consequences to Adam and Eve eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One of Sartre's main theses explains less poetically that you cannot entirely escape from freedom of choice even if you try. So we all must constantly be making choices between what is right and what is wrong. Because we rarely, if ever, are 100% certain that a choice is correct, we inevitably accumulate varying degrees of guilt. Sometimes the guilt feelings stem from a specific major choice such as Raskolnikov's blood-splattering choice in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. But smaller feelings of guilt continuously stream from the endless series of smaller choices that we all must constantly make. A highly reflective person can create a morass of guilt for himself over choices that are in themselves inconsequential, as Albert Camus demonstrates in The Fall, the title of which is an allusion to the Genesis account of the Fall, when the knowledge of good and evil was gained, and paradise was lost. In The Trial, Franz Kafka demonstrates how the endless series of choices we all must continuously make gradually creates a vague, diffuse aura of guilt that has no identifiable cause. He seems to feel this is the inescapable atmosphere of human existence. Hypnotherapy is sometimes used in an attempt to identify these vague feelings of amorphous guilt and trace them to specific causes and thereby defuse them. This is another inappropriate use of hypnosis, which I do not recommend. Hypnosis is often very effective in dealing with guilt that has an identifiable cause or with feelings of dread that have an identifiable cause. But when therapists use hypnosis to probe for unknown causes, they sometimes discover causes that do not really exist. What they sometimes discover are confabulations or outright invention. There are better ways of dealing with vague, unidentifiable, Kafkaesque guilt and existential angst. There are excellent approaches available from modern psychology as well as from a few thousand years of philosophy and theology, both western and eastern. Hypnosis is a powerful tool that is often used inappropriately, but when it is used wisely it can be extremely helpful in many areas of life. The areas in which hypnosis seems to achieve its most dramatic successes happen to be the areas that are most closely related to Sartre's concept of mauvaise foi. I am referring to habit disorders and addiction, especially tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana, and changing eating, drinking, and exercise habits. Hypnotherapy can be effective in many other areas as well. I singled out the above uses only because they are the areas in which hypnosis seems to have its most frequent and dramatic successes. I have had mixed results using hypnosis for crack cocaine addiction--pretty good results with people who were willing to stop spending their time with other users, and poor results with those who were unwilling to make this choice.
References: (1) "Dostoevsky and Parricide," reprinted in Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Rene Wellek (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1962), p. 98.
© Copyright 2007 Don De Grazia |
