Should we take hypnotherapy more seriously? | Award-winning LSE iQ podcast

JOANNA BALE: In this scene from The Simpsons, Homer volunteers to be hypnotised on stage - and, predictably, it all goes horribly wrong.

It’s a darkly comic moment, but it points to something deeper: a long-standing stereotype - that hypnosis is either a stage trick used to make gullible people embarrass themselves - or a more sinister form of mind control.

For hypnotherapists, portrayals like this echo a long history of their profession being dismissed, ridiculed, and at times even feared.

Welcome to LSE iQ, the podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. I’m Joanna Bale from the iQ team. We work with academics to bring you their latest research and ideas - and talk to people affected by the issues we explore. In this episode, I ask: Should we take hypnotherapy more seriously?

I’ll be exploring how:

Hypnotherapy helped one woman overcome addiction.

SARAH IBRAHIM: I’m trying to kick a 20-year cocaine habit to the kerb here and fighting with everything I’ve got, and I’ve got to do it in secret.

JOANNA BALE: Why teachers in Indonesia are hypnotising their students.

NICK LONG: You're all wonderful kids, you're going to study hard, you're going to be so successful, you'll receive all of the wisdom and knowledge that I'll give today.

JOANNA BALE: And how hypnotherapy gave relief from agonising pain – when conventional medicine had failed.

AMANDA JOY: It looked magical. It looked mysterious. What is this witchcraft? What is going on here? But it worked really, really well.

JOANNA BALE: First, we head to a small coastal town in the Pacific - where an LSE anthropologist finds himself persuaded to put his research into practice.

NICK LONG: I'd been living in a town called Jepara in Central Java for a couple of months and I was about to leave and head off to Jakarta for the next phase of the work…

JOANNA BALE: This is Dr Nick Long, Associate Professor in LSE’s Department of Anthropology. He spent 18 months researching hypnosis and hypnotherapy in Indonesia - where it’s widely used. He even trained as a hypnotherapist to fully understand it. Anthropologists use a research method called ‘participant observation’ – that’s living with and taking part in the daily activities of the people they are studying. This helps them to better understand their culture and behaviour.

NICK LONG: So, I had a little leaving party with this group of emergency responders, ambulance volunteers, that I'd been hanging out with.

One of the group, who I call Slamet, was really unwell that day. He'd had terrible flu, and his latest wife had just left him and run off with some other guy - which is kind of fair enough because he'd been cheating on her with people he met on TikTok for a long time.

And you could tell he just looked awful and he, nevertheless, bless him, dragged himself along to the base camp to say goodbye.

The leader of this volunteering group had always been wanting me to give a demonstration of my hypnosis skills. I'd been a bit kind of shy about doing it.

But he was like, "Come on, Nick. Slamet is having the worst day of his life. He looks terrible." He did look terrible. He could barely speak because he's so bunged up. His wife's run off. "You need to hypnotize him and sort this out." So, it was a high stakes situation, but I asked him to lie down. I was quietly confident that he would respond well because he was a very exuberant character who if he bought into something, would really buy into something.

So, I was kind of, "Just follow my energy and let it push you back onto the pillow and then into a deep, deep trance."

And I just gave a very kind of basic hypnosis script - that he should imagine all those feelings of illness and disease leaving, picture them leaving his body as smoke. It could be black, it could be grey, it could be yellow, and instead he's filled with a healing light and a sense of wellbeing. He can feel all of the friends who are around him, his kids, the people who care for him and love him, sending their energy to him.

And you could see he was smiling as he was picturing these things.

JOANNA BALE: As the session drew to a close and Slamet slowly emerged from hypnosis, the room fell silent as everyone waited to see if it had worked.

NICK LONG: I'd been feeling very unconfident that I could cure anything to do with a respiratory illness because I mean, that's physical. It's not really psychological. But what my hypnotherapist friends would always say to me is, "Every illness has got a psychological component."

And once he woke up after this hypnosis, his voice was so much clearer. He looked so much lighter. It's not as though the cold had completely gone away, or the flu or whatever it was, but there was a real boost, and you could tell he felt more energized. Everyone was saying. It was, "Oh my God, he's totally different!" And he was.

So, you could see the power of how just providing very simple affirmations can support people even through a very common respiratory infection of the kind we're probably all going to get this winter.

And he was like, "I wish you could stay for a whole extra month, and you'd solve all my problems, and I'd get another wife." And I was like, "Yeah, I think that's possibly beyond my skillset - I’m happy to be leaving!”

JOANNA BALE: I asked Nick to explain what hypnosis is, and how it works.

NICK LONG: The working definition that has been created by the American Psychological Association is that it's to do with using focused states of attention in order to achieve enhanced responsiveness to suggestion - and then hypnotherapy would be turning that responsiveness to a particular therapeutic goal. It is very much about thinking about how we can become something other than what we're used to being, how we can respond to ambient words and symbols, and the things that other people provide to us, in order to expand our experience of ourselves.

JOANNA BALE: Nick had originally travelled to Indonesia to research politics, but what caught his attention was something else entirely - the way hypnotherapy was becoming integral to everyday life. It wasn’t just helping people overcome problems, it was also bringing them closer together.

NICK LONG: Hypnotherapy was becoming a big phenomenon in Indonesia. So about 50 to 60,000 Indonesians have trained as hypnotherapists over the past 20 years, which is not a huge number in the context of Indonesia where you've got hundreds of millions of people. But compared to the number of psychiatrists or clinical psychologists, it's very high. You've got about 4,000 clinical psychologists. I think only about 1,000 psychiatrists.

So, it was becoming a big wave of mental health support and being used in all kinds of contexts that we maybe wouldn't expect to see it in the UK. It was being used in schools. It's being used around the home, people running seminars on hypno-parenting. It was used a lot in marketing, hypno-sells. So, I was very curious as to why it was becoming so popular, why it was being embraced right now. At a time where maybe in other parts of the world, it's a relatively marginal kind of psychotherapy.

JOANNA BALE: He found that it was especially popular among schoolteachers, who used it to help students relax before exams - as well as in everyday interactions.

NICK LONG: I met teachers who, at the start of their classes, would ask everyone to close their eyes and they do a little bit of group hypnosis where it's like, "You're all wonderful kids, you're going to study hard, you're going to be so successful, you'll receive all of the wisdom and knowledge that I'll give today."

And then as the kids are focusing on their exercises in the class, they'll wander around behind them muttering, "You're a very, very clever student, you're a very diligent student, you're hardworking, you're wonderful."

And I don't know whether or not that really actually goes into the student's subconscious mind and changes the way they perform as a pupil. I mean, one could perhaps do some kind of controlled test to study that. It doesn't really matter. What it did do is it changed the way that teacher was viewed by the pupils because suddenly teachers are no longer this scary, authoritarian figure, which they have often been in Indonesia.

Now they're people who are taking on this caring role - they were starting to be referred to in new ways in the classroom by honorifics like ‘ayah’, which means father. It's what you say to a really revered figure. And suddenly these teachers were feeling, ‘I've got status. I feel close to my pupils. I feel revered by them.’ The pupils were coming to visit at the end of Ramadan to share some gifts and spend time with them. So, it really did achieve something in terms of how it brought people together through that therapeutic modality.

JOANNA BALE: Some children enjoyed the hypnotherapy so much that they asked for more.

NICK LONG: I heard cases of kids who would say to their parents, "Please mum, please dad, can I have some therapy tonight, can I have some hypnotherapy?" Because if you've been having a tough time and maybe relations have been a bit strained, there's been some conflict. If you ask for that, it's a little reset when you're in that therapeutic moment. The kid is lying in bed, ready to go to sleep. The parent is giving all of the positive suggestions and affirmations, "You're a wonderful child, you've got so much potential."

The fact that there is this new kind of interaction that the hypnosis boom has created space for is a really positive thing and seems to be giving people more comfort and security in their family relations.

JOANNA BALE: We’ve heard how hypnotherapy is becoming woven into everyday life in Indonesia - supporting people through personal challenges, while also helping them to connect.

Here in the UK, it sits very much on the margins. It’s recognised by the NHS as a legitimate talking therapy – because there’s evidence that it can help with issues like anxiety, addiction, irritable bowel syndrome, and sleep problems.

But it isn’t routinely available through the NHS, so most people end up seeing a hypnotherapist privately – effectively limiting it to those who can afford the average UK fee of around £150 per session. High-profile figures who are reported to have used it include Adele, Matt Damon, Ellen DeGeneres, Lily Allen, Tiger Woods and David Beckham. Performance anxiety and enhancement were among the issues addressed - but also more commonplace concerns.

Here’s Matt Damon telling talk show host Jay Leno how hypnotherapy helped him give up smoking after 16 years.

Despite the medical recognition and the celebrity endorsement, hypnotherapists still have a bit of a public image problem.

This is an iconic scene from the Oscar-winning psychological horror movie Get Out.

Chris, played by Daniel Kaluuya, is hypnotised by his girlfriend's mother - using the noise of a spoon stirring in a teacup. She sends Chris down into the “sunken place” - leaving him powerless while his body is controlled by others.

AMANDA JOY: A lot of the misconceptions come from TV and film and stage and the idea of loss of control and really that's all just nonsense because we're facilitating. If I had mind control, wow, that would be amazing!

But that’s not the reality.

JOANNA BALE: This is Amanda Joy - a practising hypnotherapist and founder of the Northern College of Clinical Hypnotherapy in the Northeast of England. She not only works with clients but also trains future hypnotherapists.

Many people still imagine hypnotherapists swinging a pocket watch. How do you explain what hypnotherapy really is?

AMANDA JOY: It comes from James Braid, who was one of the founders - he coined the word hypnosis or hypnotherapy. And he noticed that when people were gazing into a candle flame - if you've ever looked at a flickering candle flame, there's something really cozy and relaxing and you feel like a sense of real focus and a sense of real peace, a little daydreamy and calm and relaxed - but you're still very aware of everything that's going on around you. That's a state of hypnosis and that's why he was swinging his pocket watch because it was something to focus on.

JOANNA BALE: As Amanda explained, the word ‘hypnosis’ was coined in the 1840s by James Braid - a Scottish surgeon who borrowed it from Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. And while the swinging pocket watch is still the image most people associate with hypnosis, practitioners have long since moved on - even if the core techniques haven’t changed all that much.

AMANDA JOY: Sometimes you can use a sound to focus on or sensation to focus on, but we want to bring the sense of awareness, we want to bring the focus in, so we enhance a state of focus. We enhance focus awareness. We bring about relaxation. And in a state where you have extreme focus and calm, that's when you can really introspect.

That's when you can go in and you can bypass the noise of life. You can bypass the noise of that little chattery voice that's telling you you can do something, or you can't do something and you're not able to do something or something frightens you. And you can get underneath that sound, that voice, that noise, those images, those stories that we tell ourselves. And we can get to what's at the roots of that and then reprogramme that. So, it's a better outcome.

So, it's a focused state of awareness that creates a more suggestible state, but actually it just creates a space where people can have a chat with themselves and go inward and really get to the root of what's going on.

JOANNA BALE: So, what happens in the brain when someone is in a hypnotic state?

AMANDA JOY: So, when you go into a trance state, there are brainwaves changes. So, when we're quite alert and we're focused or when we're walking around, or when we're at work, we're in either an alpha or beta brainwave state. We're chatting, we're thinking, we're moving, we're using our brain, we're focusing.

When we go into the lower, deeper, slower brainwave states like the theta brainwave state, we're going into more of a meditative brainwave state. The brainwave state of hypnosis is often that theta brainwave state, very similar to a deep meditative state. And then with the deeper levels of trance, you can go into the delta brainwave states, which are the really beautiful, healing brainwave states that we go into when we're in a very deliciously restorative, deep sleep.

So, we're creating the brain state where our brain functions are slightly altered as well. So, the logical analytical parts of our brain, the frontal cortex, the parts that are involved with language, they don't go offline completely, but they become a little less active. And the parts of our brain that are involved with imagination, the parts of our brain that are involved with emotion really kick in and take over. The parts of our brain that are to do with memory storage and the processing of memory and experiences, they all become very active.

And there are changes in the brainstem as well, which is why we can make a suggestion of warmth and people feel warmer or make the suggestion of cool and people feel cooler, which is great if you're menopausal or perimenopausal! That's fabulous. And it can also change the perception of pain as well.

So, there's lots and lots and lots going on in the brain when we go into that altered state of awareness, but it is just like a delicious daydream.

JOANNA BALE: Amanda’s interest in hypnotherapy began while she was working as an NHS healthcare specialist - caring for patients living with paralysis caused by spinal cord injuries.

AMANDA JOY: I had a number of clients who I worked with who had what was known as, at the time, neurological pain. So neurological pain is pain that we do not understand why you experience it. So, the spinal cord is severed, so there are no pain signals, but the patient still experiences horrific pain, absolutely horrific pain. One patient in particular, they described this discomfort. They were experiencing this pain as if somebody was burning their chest area with hot pokers. So, if you could imagine being quadriplegic, ventilated, and just feeling like somebody was burning you all the time. And it was just awful to be a carer in that setting and just feel like this isn't what I wanted to do. I want to help people. So, we went down the traditional pain management route, and we ended up giving really strong opiate-based medicines to many of our patients.

And one day, one of the patients said to me, "Amanda, when you give me this pain medicine, it does not reduce my pain. It just stops me from being able to tell you that I'm in pain." And I was like, "Oh no, this is worse." Not only are you quadriplegic and you have to have machines breathing for you, these people can feel really trapped inside their own bodies, but to be trapped in their own bodies, not be able to express it and have this immense horrific pain just sounded like an absolute living hell to me. So, I went on a bit of a mission to find something different. There's got to be something that works. There's going to be something out there that can help people.

JOANNA BALE: With conventional medicine offering no clear answers, Amanda turned to alternative and complementary therapies - bringing in specialists like an acupuncturist, a reflexologist, and an aromatherapist.

But it was a hypnotherapist that ultimately made the most profound difference.

AMANDA JOY: A hypnotherapist came and created an ‘anchor’ on an area of the body where the client had some sensation. It was actually on the top of their head, and they anchored to this point feelings of calm, feelings of comfort, feelings of peace, feelings of relaxation.

And I saw it work, and I saw the client experience a massive reduction in the discomfort that they were just living with on a daily basis, and it meant they could go out. It meant they could go shopping. It meant they could reengage with activities that they loved, and it got me really interested in the power of the mind because I hadn't come across anything like that and there was something magical. It looked magical. It looked mysterious. What is this witchcraft? What is going on here? But it worked really, really well.

So that was the initial moment really where I got fascinated by the power of the mind and how it can just switch off the discomfort that people are feeling and how it alters the perception of pain so that it decreases the experience of pain that people are having. And I was like, "This is magic. This is giving people their lives back." That's what I wanted to go into care work and nursing for, so I got the bug.

JOANNA BALE: Amanda was so inspired that she left the NHS to retrain as a hypnotherapist. When I asked her if she could introduce me to one of her clients for a potential interview, I assumed it might be a tough ask. Hypnotherapy is sometimes met with scepticism, even quiet disapproval - so I imagined it was not something many people would feel comfortable sharing openly.

But then she put me in touch with Sarah Ibrahim, who came to her for help in overcoming a 20-year cocaine addiction.

SARAH IBRAHIM: Before my first session, I don’t think I really knew that much about hypno. I had a lot of what I would call probably common misconceptions about it. You know, you might lose control, or you’ll be put under, you know, and things like this. Now my mum is very Christian and so hypno to her is kind of witchy and forbidden. And so, I didn’t tell her. I’m trying to kick a 20-year cocaine habit to the kerb here and fighting with everything I’ve got, and I’ve got to do it in secret. And that was not helpful to me.

JOANNA BALE: Sarah told me she’d had a difficult upbringing shaped by the relationship between her Christian mother and Muslim father - who was often absent. She recalls her childhood home as a “battlefield,” leaving lasting emotional scars. Later, while working as a personal assistant in London’s financial district, a colleague introduced her to cocaine. She says she quickly became hooked on the euphoric surges of energy it gave her. She became what she describes as a “functioning addict” – holding down a well-paid job while masking deep-rooted abandonment issues - and quietly accumulating huge credit card debts to fund her addiction.

SARAH IBRAHIM: This is a very profound realisation that I had: that the drugs were my constant, right? Boyfriends would come and go, money would come and go, my dad would come and go. Everything came and went, but drugs - that was always there for me, and I knew where I was with my coke. And that was it. And how sad is that?

JOANNA BALE: So, what motivated you to seek help, and how did you ultimately discover hypnotherapy as an option?

SARAH IBRAHIM: I became pregnant with my son quite unexpectedly following a wild night, which was one of many, but I had never ended up in that scenario before…And I was just like, dear God, I have made some messes in my life, but this is something quite spectacular. And my immediate response was, ‘this isn’t happening’ and I went out on a massive three-day bender, in all honesty. And then I got to the end of that and had this piercing realisation, ‘Sarah, this child has been sent to save your life’. And from there that was it. I was like, ‘no more drugs’ I just decided and that was that.

And then he was born and three months later, hey presto, I was offered a line. I took it because that’s what addicts do. And I was right back in the cycle again and it took another two years then.

JOANNA BALE: By this point, Sarah had left her City job and set up a virtual assistant business, so she could have more flexibility while caring for her son.

SARAH IBRAHIM: I set up this business. I became introduced to Amanda somehow through that - in the online space - and found out that she was this hypnotherapist and she specialised in addiction. And pretty soon after connecting with her, I reached my breaking point and I was like, ‘this needs addressing right now.’

JOANNA BALE: Sarah told me how her cocaine-fuelled nights were followed by crushing lows, leaving her unable to handle the early mornings with her son. But a call to her dealer would soon give her the energy to cope.

SARAH IBRAHIM: I had a two year old child at that time, Jo - and this isn’t something I’m proud of, it’s something I really had to reconcile with myself, you know – and I would be doing coke most of the night and he’s asleep in his room, and he would come in and I was just like, wanting to hide under the covers and just not be ‘mummy’.

And so naturally the solution was, ‘I know. We’ll make a call that will make me a better mum because then I’ll have some energy, and I’ll play.’ And I realised the cycle couldn’t continue so, quite naturally, Amanda was my first call. She was the first person I said, ‘I am in I trouble here’ and she was like, ‘don’t worry, we’ll sort this out’.

JOANNA BALE: Can you walk us through what a typical session was like for you?

SARAH IBRAHIM: The reality of the therapy is nothing like what I thought it was going to be. It was much more like entering a kind of really focused, really calm place where you can access thoughts and emotions more clearly. We’d talk about what was going on in my life and the patterns that I wanted to change. And from there Amanda would guide me into this really relaxed state. And so, this was great because I had a small child at that time and so relaxation was not something that was really very present in my life. But my mind became very focused. And so, in that state we were exploring, you know, the beliefs and the emotional associations that I had around drugs and around myself essentially. So, it felt less like being controlled and more like accessing a kind of quieter and deeper level of awareness.

JOANNA BALE: Did you notice changes right away or was it more gradual?

SARAH IBRAHIM: So, some were immediate, for example, like my relationship to cravings, right? So, it wasn’t almost that they went away, it was more like the emotional charge started to diminish. So, of course, there were still conscious choices that needed to be made throughout the journey, but the internal struggle was less.

JOANNA BALE: Were there any insights or breakthroughs during your sessions that felt especially transformative? Like a sort of light bulb moment?

SARAH IBRAHIM: So, in my final session, Amanda guided me through a visualisation process where I went into a morgue. So, I was seeing myself in the morgue, was seeing, you know, a black body bag there. I could see the label on it. And she guided me to go closer to it and read the label and it was my own name. This makes me really emotional to talk about it.

And she said, you know, now you can see your family, your friends, your son around you, you know. How do they feel? How do you feel seeing you, you know, and it was the most horrific, shocking, tangible experience, like to the point that even just speaking about it now just takes me right back there, you know. And it was just like, this is a possible reality if you continue on the path that has led to this destruction, and, my goodness me, I came out of that session and I was, like, why the heck didn’t you tell me it’s what you were gonna do? And she was just, like, you know, it would have changed the impact somewhat. And I was like, ya think?! But you know, it served its purpose, and you can clearly see that five years later.

JOANNA BALE: I guess that’s an image that sort of stays at the back of your mind quite a lot?

SARAH IBRAHIM: Honestly, it’s something I try not to think about. It was quite the experience, and not one that I want to repeat, but as I said, it served its purpose. It was so real, and it was so intense. And my heart was just breaking.

JOANNA BALE: Sarah’s 20-year addiction was cured in just four online sessions with Amanda. She has since gone on to become a professional recovery coach and spiritual advisor - helping people to overcome addiction and other problems.

Sarah’s story and Amanda’s pain management story demonstrate how, for some people, hypnotherapy can be life changing. We’ve also heard that in Indonesia, it is widely embraced in everyday life, particularly in schools and at home. But here in the UK, it still sits on the margins - held back, in part, by negative stereotypes - even though the NHS recognises it as a legitimate talking therapy.

So, should we be taking it more seriously? I put that question to Nick Long, the LSE anthropologist we heard from earlier.

NICK LONG: Well, maybe in a way we should take hypnotherapy a bit less seriously. I think imagining it's going to be the perfect solution or immediately solve something or be this all-powerful way in which our minds get surrendered to an all-powerful hypnotist can often be an obstacle to properly understanding what it is and getting the most benefits out of it. So, in that sense, let's take it a bit less seriously, have a bit more fun with it, have modest expectations, and then reap the benefits.

JOANNA BALE: Do you think everyone could benefit from a bit of hypnotherapy?

NICK LONG: I definitely think people could benefit from exploring who they are through engaging with hypnosis and hypnotherapy. I have a colleague who I met at an Anthropology of Consciousness conference two years ago, and she likes to say that these expanded states of consciousness are our birthright, and I kind of agree with her. We have the ability to access them. Why should we be scared of accessing them? Let's see where it goes, exploring them, where it takes us, what it unlocks for us and what that means. And if it doesn't do anything for anyone, fine. But if it opens new horizons, great.

And maybe this podcast is the first step in that direction. That's what I'm hoping. Let's hope some listeners are hypnotised into wanting to start the new wave!

JOANNA BALE: This episode was written and produced by me, Joanna Bale, with script development by Sophie Mallett and editing by Oliver Johnson. If you’d like to find out more about the research in this episode, head to the show notes. And if you enjoy iQ, please leave us a review. We’re taking a break for the summer - but join us again for a new season in the autumn.

ENDS