Crash Course Psychology #10 is where I learn about Hypnosis and other altered states of consciousness.
For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 10:
Hypnosis
Hypnosis and its many variations have been around for centuries. The western version of it came about around the 18th century. This was by German physician Franz Mesmer when he tried to treat all medical problems by putting his patients in to trance like states. Here, he claimed to align their “internal magnetic forces”, which he called Animal Magnetism. Many of his patients did indeed feel better, but not because of his theory of Animal Magnetism. Instead, Mesmer unintentionally used the healing power of suggestion. Mesmer’s theory of Animal Magnetism has no scientific backing. Eventually, other physicians discredited Mesmer.
Hypnosis
A calm, trance like state during which you tend to have heightened concentration and focus, and in which you are typically more open to suggestion.
In a previous episode, we loosely defined consciousness as our awareness of ourselves and our environment. Consciousness is at work both whenever we’re awake and asleep dreaming. So Hypnosis is a good example of an altered state of consciousness. You’re fully conscious in a clinical sense, but also not what you consider a normal waking state. Altered states of consciousness include hallucinations, and the effects of psychoactive drugs. Both of which, don’t need each other.
Hypnosis has been observed in lots of studies that focused on empirical evidence and Hypnosis has been used effectively in treatments for many things. These include stress, anxiety, weight loss, and chronic pain. However, even though you are more open to suggestion when hypnotised, you do not lose control of your behaviour. This means that hypnosis can’t make you act against your will.
Hypnosis is also not reliable to recall deeply buried memories. Our brains don’t store memories of literally every single thing that happens to us. We only permanently store some of them and even those tend to mutate over time.
Only about 20% of us are thought to be highly hypnotisable. This simply means these people are just more open to suggestion. And they won’t do grave acts that go against their will. They’re more open to mellower suggestions like interpreting a stimuli differently. Or more receptive to thoughts and suggestions.
How does Hypnosis work?
So far we know that hypnosis can increase your suggestibility. However, experts still debate what exactly constitutes a hypnotic state and how to achieve it. Remember, just because we observe something, doesn’t mean we understand it. What something does and why it does it, is difficult to determine from observation alone.
Here are a couple of theories explaining how Hypnosis works.
One looks at hypnosis as a phenomenon of social influence. This means that hypnotised subjects may feel and act like “good hypnotic subjects” if they trust their hypnotist to direct them.
Another theory suggests that hypnosis utilises dissociation, a special dual processing state of “split consciousness”. Dissociation is a sort of detachment from your surroundings. This ranges from mild spacing out, to a total loss of your sense of self. We all do some variation of this. Dissociation helps in some situations, like when it helps to not focus on our thoughts and feelings. An example of this is when hypnosis may help to ease pain by selectively not attend to that pain. Clinicians can do this by guiding patients into a relaxed, spaced out state, further guiding them with positive thoughts and suggestions. This is all voluntary by the participant. So in legitimate clinical hypnosis, clinicians ask people to dissociate, not make them dissociate.
Drug Tolerance & Neuroadaptation
Drugs are a common way to voluntarily enter an altered state of consciousness. There are the legal drugs, like coffee, alcohol, prescription drugs. Of course, some people develop problems, such as building tolerance to any substance, legal or illegal.
Tolerance is the diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug, requiring the user to take larger and larger doses before experiencing the drug’s effect. This is our brain chemistry adapting, in a process called neuroadaptation. Further continuing and this can lead to addiction.
Psychoactive Drugs
Psychoactive Drugs are chemical substances that alter your mood and perception. They go right to the brain’s synapses and mimic the functions of neurotransmitters. They also tap in to the user’s psychological component; the user’s expectations about that substance usage.
However, if you expect to behave a certain way with a particular substance but was given a placebo and still behaved within expectation, that’s what’s called a Placebo Effect.
However you consume psychoactive drugs, we will cover them in 3 general categories:
Depressants
Things like alcohol, tranquilizers, and opiates. They bring you to be more mellow, slow body functions, and suppress neural activity.
(Alcohol): Historically, the world’s favourite depressant is alcohol. People drink alcohol to get parties going, but not because it stimulates them, but rather to get the effects of a disinhibitor. Disinhibitors impair your brain’s judgement areas, while reducing your self-awareness and self-control. Alcohol also disrupts memory formation.
(Tranquilizers): Similar to alcohol, tranquilizers/barbiturates, all depress nervous system activity. This makes them applicable to ease anxiety or insomnia, but high doses can negatively impact memory and judgement. And really high doses, or bad interactions with other substances like alcohol, can kill you.
(Opiates): Opiates, like the flower opium and it’s derivatives morphine and heroin, work similarly in depressing neural activity. It envelopes the brain in feeling no pain. However, if a brain keeps getting outside opiates, it will eventually stop producing it’s own natural pain killing neurotransmitters, endorphins. If this happens, withdrawal is extreme.
Stimulants
Opposite of depressants where they depress neural activity, stimulants excite neural activity. They speed up body functions, bring up your energy and self confidence, and bring mood changes. Legal drugs include caffeine, nicotine, and prescription emphetamines. The illegal drugs include street emphetamines, meth, ecstacy, and cocaine.
When our neurotransmitters activate excessively, they can become temporarily depleted. This is why excessive users often feel that crash after heavy usage. The crash being severe, is why addicted users keep chasing that high.
Hallucinogens
They come in a variety of plant, fungal, and synthetic forms. Hallucinogens are also known as psychedelics. These drugs distort perceptions and evoke sensory experiences in the absence of actual sensory input. You can experience things through your senses that are not real. However, these are voluntary ways to induce hallucinations using drugs. There are many other ways to induce hallucinations without using drugs. These include; seizures, brain injuries, diseases, sensory deprivation, fever, stress, even extreme grief or depression can all cause neurological disturbances that cause some kind of hallucination.
Conclusion of Crash Course Psychology #10
All these various states of consciousness provide us a rich, complex world to question and experience. This shows us what a messy yet marvelous thing the human mind is.
Danniel’s thoughts on Crash Course Psychology #10
- I think it’s worth pointing out that the comment section on this video has made some clarifications. Such as that “Psychedelics are not a synonym for Hallucinogens. Psychedelics are a class of Hallucinogens” or that another comment saying that “Hallucinogens don’t actually make you see things that aren’t there but rather just distort the way you perceive sensory input”. Pretty interesting and it’s good to be reminded that things are always more nuanced than they seem.
Enjoyed this learning of Psychology? Test your knowledge against these quick custom Kahoot! quizzes I’ve made based on the episode above: This is the easy mode and this is the hard mode for Crash Course Psychology #10.
Also, do check out what else Psychology related I’ve learnt from my Psychology blog!
Credits for Crash Course Psychology #10
Original Content & Media by Crash Course
Content Consumed and Paraphrased by Danniel Iskandar
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