Something to think about

It is said that several animals decided to found a school. They gathered around in the forest and began to choose the subjects:

The bird insisted that the flying subject was important... The fish chose swimming as part of the curriculum, on the other hand the squirrel found that going up on trees was essential, 

The rabbit wanted racing above everything else...  But suddenly they realised they had made a big mistake: they insisted that all animals should carried out all the subjects..

The rabbit was magnificent in the race, nobody ran like it, but they wanted to teach him how to fly... So he was put on a tree and told: "Fly, rabbit". So he jumped from the top, broke his legs and as a result he didn't learn to fly AND broke his legs...

The bird flew like no other, but it was forced to dig holes like the mole. It broke its beak and wings, and could not even fly anymore nor dig holes.

Sooo... what is the MORAL of the STORY: we are all different in many ways!

Each one of us has something good to offer and we cannot force others to be like us. At the same time we cannot accept to be the way the others want us to be..

We will end up causing them to suffer, and in the end they will not be what we wanted them to be nor what they were in first place...

Defence mechanisms

In Freud’s model of personality, the EGO is the aspect of personality that deals with reality whilst having to cope with the conflicting demands of the ID and the SUPEREGO and when the EGO cannot cope with the demands of our desires, the constraints of reality and our own moral standards generates anxiety and stress.

In order to cope with the negative elements of anxiety and stress, the EGO develops ‘defence mechanisms’, which help us to repress or conceal this anxious libido. These ‘defence mechanisms’ can be healthy or adaptive, that is, allowing us to function normally. For instance, by trying to rid all the stress from work by doing a dangerous sport such as rock climbing for instance, which is called Sublimation where a person transforms an unacceptable impulse into a socially acceptable one. On the other hand, a ‘defence’ can be unhealthy by interfering with our day-to-day lives.

In the film Sucker Punch, Baby Doll chose to Suppress (not Repress) her memories. Because Baby Doll was under such enormous amounts of stress, she created the "fantasy world" as a way to cope with the harshness of her traumatic reality: her stepfather killed her little brother (there are also elements of sexual abuse towards Baby Doll). 

As a result of this highly stressful and emotionally impactful situation her psyche uses another defence mechanism: she dissociates herself from the horrible realities of her life and toggles between reality and fantasy world where she creates this “James Bond” world where the “Wise Man” supports her with his advice. Essentially, she used fantasies to cope with the horrible things that she was experiencing whilst inside the mental asylum.

Madam Vera Gorski uses Hypnotherapy techniques such as Visualisation as a possible therapeutic cure for her depression and help her learn new behaviours where she is given positive advices and coping tools “weapons” which come from the “Wise Man”, an archetype (please see my previous blog for a full explanation) who helps her to boost her self-esteem and overcome the “monsters” of her life. 

Another interesting way of depicting her coping mechanisms is the fact the she sacrificed herself at the end. This parallels her being lobotomized in the real world upon which she had no control whatsoever. 

Of course, every story has always two sides... let us play the devil's advocate now... maybe she suffered from Schizophrenia... because of this, she was delusional and as a result she actually killed her little brother... her stepfather found the asylum to be the best place for her to be...

Now the question remains… was she trying to cope with reality… or was she Schizophrenic?

What do you think?

The power of your subconscious mind speaks "dreams"

In order to understand the psychological and physical aspects of hypnosis the relationship between the conscious and subconscious minds and their roles in the process will be explained.  The conscious and subconscious minds could be compared to an iceberg. What you see above the water, which is the conscious, is only a small chunk of what actually exists. The portion you cannot see which is the subconscious (underneath the water), is the larger of the two. So, whenever we meet someone, we only see the "tip of the iceberg", however, what lies below the water” is another part of the individual.

Hypnosis becomes the vehicle that allows you to bypass or submerge below the conscious mind and explore the subconscious existence (8). It is suggested that hypnosis helps you gain more control over undesired emotions or behaviours or to help you cope better with a wide range of medical conditions.

Once the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to execute it. Evidence suggests that the subconscious mind contains all your memories, emotions, imaginations, intelligence and controls the autonomic nervous system, which regulates breathing, blood circulation, heartbeat etc. A good example of this is riding a bike or driving a car.  When we are learning to ride or drive, we hit many obstacles.  Loosing balance, crunching gears and lack of confidence. However, as we practice and become familiar with the skills, they automatically become habit and are stored away in the subconscious mind to use at any time in the future.  When we become an expert driver or rider, we don’t have to think about how to do it, we just do it automatically. Hence, anything that has ever happened to you and everything you have imagined is stored away in the subconscious mind which acts just like a computer.  All the information is stored away and is available to be pulled back at any time.

The conscious mind helps us with daily decision-making and thinks out new situations where we have to decide what to do and how to do it.  It can hold only a limited number of thoughts and ideas at any one time, which is why we often memorise numbers in small chunks. This is because the conscious mind can hold only between five and nine units of information at any one time. (19)

It is believed that the conscious mind has an automatic resistance to situations.  It reasons and rejects and filters certain situations and acts as our defence mechanism and a safety device, as if it were a “Watchman at the gate”. (The Power of your subconscious mind, page 20)

There are four main types of brain wave. The fastest of the four being beta waves and the slowest being delta waves:

• Beta Waves (15 to 40 cycles per second): These are characteristic of an engaged and focused mind, for instance, a person engaged in a conversation
• Alpha Waves (9 to 14 cycles per second): Present at lighter hypnosis and guided meditation.
• Theta Waves (4 to 8 cycles per second): Present during dreaming and some meditative states
• Delta Waves (1 to 4 cycles per second): These are produced in our subconscious mind and when we are in our slowest deepest state of rest and there are no other waves active

In order to access the subconscious mind, the conscious mind needs to be bypassed through an induction process- known as PMR Progressive Muscle Relaxation - in order to establish the right brain-wave pattern so suggestions can be acted upon. Evidence shows that the role of relaxation (which is caused by induction) is very important, which combined with the element of suggestion, will result in the relaxation of body and mind, narrowed focus of attention, reduced awareness of external environment and everyday concerns, greater internal awareness of sensation and finally the trance state.

So, let's consider the film Inception, a cinematic blockbuster from writer/director Christopher Nolan about the power of dream states. Essentially, the movie is a psychological thriller about the intricacies of the psyche, especially the brain waves of the subconscious mind.

The only language our subconscious understands is: iamgination. So the way our subconscious manifest to us, is via our dreams which are represented via symbols. All products of the unconscious that come to awareness do so as symbolic messages. Archetypes are the birthing agents for symbols. The most common symbols occur as dreams. Dreams are the avenue of egress for the unconscious to gain awareness and, as such, are the axis on which therapy revolves.

The movie's star, Leonardo DiCaprio, said he prepared for the role by reading Sigmund Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams". Jungian dream interpretation differs from Freudian dream analysis. Freudian dream analysis is based on repression; that is, dreams are viewed as the emergence of repressed material from the unconscious. Jungians take the phenomenological view that the drama of the dream represents the unconscious message to the dreamer expressed in symbolic terms (Jung, 1964b).

Right, in treatment, how can we use dreams as a tool to interpret our subconscious mind? I will leave this one for the next post...

References

1   Alder, H Dr. (1994). NLP, The Art and Science of getting what you want, Piatkus

2   Allen, R P. (2009) Scripts Strategies in Hypnotherapy – The Complete Works, Athenaeum   

     Press  

3   Cherry K, What is Hypnosis? Hypnosis Applications, Effects and Myths

     Found online at  http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/a/hypnosis.htm

4   Goodman K. Hypnosis explained

     Found online at http://www.kengoodmantherapy.com/Hypnosis_Explained.html

5   Hadley, J & Staudacher, C (1996) Hypnosis for Change, New Harbinger Publications

6   Heap M & Dryden W.  (1991) Hypnotherapy, A Handbook. Open University Press,

     page 25  

7   Hilgard ER. Hypnotic Susceptibility. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1965.

8   Hilgard, E. R. (1986). Divided consciousness: Multiple controls in human thought and action.   

     New York: Wiley.

9  JNCI J Natl Cancer Inst (2007) Hypnosis intervention effects on institutional costs*

     Found online at http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/99/17/1304.full

10 Kilhstrom, J. F. (2001). Hypnosis and the psychological unconscious. In Howard S. Friedman (Ed.), Assessment and therapy: Specialty articles from the Encyclopedia of Mental Health. San Diego, CA: Academic Press 

11 Kirsch, I. (1996). Hypnotic enhancement of cognitive-behavioral weight loss treatments: 

     Another meta-reanalysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 517-519

13 Mayo Clinic. Hypnosis: Another way to manage pain, kick bad habits.

     Found online at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hypnosis/SA00084

14 Murphy, J Dr (2006) The Power of your subconscious mind, Pocket Books

15 Waterfield, R (2004) Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis, MacMillan

16 What is the difference between the conscious and subconscious mind?

     Found online at http://www.manifestyourheartsdesire.com/hypnosis

17 The transparency template

     Found online at http://transparencytemplate.wordpress.com/

18 Voit R Dr. Will I Cluck Like a Chicken?: Myths and Misconceptions About Clinical 

      Hypnosis -  Found online at http://www.ofspirit.com/rickvoit1.htm