You Will Now Feel Better. . . .
As a surgeon who has used hypnotic techniques with patients, I heartily support psychiatrist David Spiegel’s findings [“Hypnosis Works,” November]. I think that studies of the brain both under anesthesia and under hypnosis would show many similarities. I have been able to correct cardiac arrythmias, bleeding, rapid pulse rates, and other physiological problems by talking to anesthetized patients in a therapeutic way during surgical procedures and by using similar techniques preoperatively. Surgeons have also done major abdominal surgery on patients under hypnosis alone. Hypnotic and communication techniques can create positive results. The placebo effect is, in essence, a positive result of communication. I have had children go to sleep as they entered the operating room because I told them they would, and some have resisted hair loss from chemotherapy because we relabeled their vitamins “hair-growing pills.” Just as we can heal with a scalpel, we can heal with words.
Bernie Siegel
Woodbridge, Connecticut
