Curing the Incurable

Hypnosis is the only known cure for the congenital problem of fishskin disease. There is no medical solution for this disease. So if hypnosis can lead to even a partial healing it must be a very powerful process. Many practitioners of hypnosis now believe that hypnosis allows a special access to bodily change processes that is not normally possible.

Let's look at the fishskin study. In a 1952 issue of the Lancet , the British medical journal, Dr. Mason described his treatment of a young patient who seemed at first to be a very bad case of warts (Mason, A. A. (August 23rd, 1952). About 90% of the patient's body (except his chest, neck and face) was covered with an unsightly, lumpy, raised growth. The skin felt as tough as a fingernail and tended to crack with normal movement, leading to the constant presence of oozing blood stained serum. As a result, there was very unpleasant smell around the young man. You can imagine how uncomfortable his life was, since normal movement was severely limited because of the inflexibility of his tough skin. He didn't look very good either.

Mason was introduced to the patient when he was helping out with a skin graft operation that was not going very well. He thought he was looking at a case of warts and he knew that hypnosis could often be an effective treatment for warts. So he commented to the surgeon that hypnosis might be the thing to try. The surgeon gave him a funny look but said o.k., why don't you try it. At the first treatment session in the hospital ward, Mason asked the boy to relax, and then suggested that the left arm would clear and return to normal in a few days time. He touched the parts of young man's shoulder to show where this would happen. When he returned to see the patient again 5 days later, the thick horny skin had just flaked off. The pink flesh now visible looked normal.

With further treatment, eventually most of the skin became soft and normal again. The treatment effect was about what Mason had expected. However, when he showed the initial result to the surgeon, his jaw dropped and he told Mason to go off to the library to read up on the disease called Icthyosiform Erythrodermia of Brocq. This is a congenital disease. Patients with this problem lack oil-producing glands in the skin, so that instead of sloughing off from time to time, layers of skin build up one on top of the other, creating the symptoms that Mason had treated. The surgeon was so impressed with the hypnotic treatment he arranged for himself and Mason to give a talk about the case at the highly respected Royal Society.

Mason later pointed out that had he realised exactly what he had been dealing with, a congenital skin disease, he would never have tried hypnosis, because it seems so unlikely that the mind could cure a genetic physical problem for which medicine had no solution. In a later interview he said it was as likely that hypnosis could do anything for this condition as that it could cure a club foot.

There have been several other cases described in the Lancet since Mason's original study. Not all have had the same degree of success, but where healing was more limited there was often evidence of a psychological barrier to explain the lack of effect. Even so, since there is no medical treatment for the condition, all of these studies stand as strong testimony to the potential power of psychological factors in bodily healing.

One of the really fascinating aspects of these cases is that the patients did not have to understand how the healing effect could be achieved for healing to occur. Mason's case was a young man of 16 years, who had never heard of fishskin disease. Even more fascinating, Mason didn't know what the disease was either at the beginning. He thought he was treating the young man for a terrible case of warts.

In my opinion the most likely factor leading to improvement in such cases is the use of the imagination. The patient's imagining of body healing. But whatever the explanation, it is pretty clear that if healing change is possible in cases of congenital health problems, there would seem to be almost no limit on what might be achieved.

While treatment for fishskin disease is one of the most spectacular successes reported for hypnosis, there seem to be many other possibilities for self healing and change opened up through the use of hypnosis. For instance, reducing the damage from serious burns, removal of warts, modification or elimination of allergy responses, breast enlargement, or the elimination of profound levels of acute and chronic pain.

Mr Wright's Cancer - Placebo/Nocebo Effect

The good and the bad effects of a man's beliefs.

The case study that follows is worth reporting since much of the focus in self-healing discussions has been in the context of life-threatening illnesses such as cancer. Obviously evidence of spontaneous healing is more impressive in such cases. The case of Mr Wright is one such case, but from the point of view of the clinical psychologist it also presents an example of the perfect one trial field experiment. In effect "treatment" was presented, then withdrawn, then presented again, and finally withdrawn. The “treatment” in question is Mr. Wright’s belief in the healing effects of a new drug. His belief, followed twice by a failure of belief, had dramatic and opposing effects on his health.

Klopfer (1957) describes this situation in a seriously ill cancer patient with an optimistically assessed life expectancy of about two weeks. The systematic variations in the patient's condition in response to changes in his belief in the power of the treatment condition offer persuasive support for importance of patient expectations, or belief in health outcomes. The patient, Mr Wright "had a generalized far advanced malignancy involving the lymph nodes, lymphosarcoma. . . Huge tumor masses, the size of oranges, were in the neck, axillas, groin, chest and abdomen. The spleen and liver were enormous. The thoracic duct was obstructed, and between 1 and 2 liters of milky fluid had to be drawn from his chest every other day " (p. 337). His treating physician became involved in trials of a new cancer drug called "Krebiozen", and though Mr Wright had too short a life expectancy to be admitted under the protocols of the study, he had read about the drug and he begged to be included. Thus the first treatment period began.

Three days after his first injection, though his physician had expected that he might be dead by this time, his condition was spectacularly improved. "The tumour masses had melted like snowballs in a hot stove, and in only these few days were half their original size". No other patients showed any such effects and indeed it was later to be shown that the drug was inert for the treatment of cancer. Within ten days Mr Wright was discharged from hospital, "practically all signs of his disease having vanished". Within about two months reports began to appear in the press indicating that "Krebiozen" was ineffective, and Mr Wright began to lose faith in his treatment. As he became more depressed and his faith waned and finally disappeared he relapsed into his former state of ill health. Thus the treatment was effectively withdrawn.

His physician saw the opportunity to test Mr. Wright for his responsiveness to placebo, and deceived him with a story about receiving a new "super-refined, double strength" batch of the drug capable of duplicating the initial healing effects. Thus, albeit somewhat sceptically, he reinstituted the treatment procedure. Convinced by this new story, which was presented with much conviction and some theatrics, Mr. Wright expressed renewed optimism and eagerness to begin a second treatment program.

His physician tantalised him with delays in the "shipment", to allow for some increase in anticipation, and presented the injections only after Mr. Wright was almost ecstatic with expectation and faith. This time the injection was fresh water, yet the effects were as astounding as with the first injections. Again "tumour masses melted, chest fluid vanished, he became ambulatory, and even went back to flying again. At this time he was the picture of health".

Mr Wright was symptom free for over two months before new reports began to appear stating that the AMA had declared "Krebiozen" to be a useless drug. Again Mr. Wright became aware of these statements and again he began to doubt. We might say that once again the treatment effect was withdrawn because of his waning conviction. Within a few days of the press report Mr. Wright was readmitted to hospital in a very distressed condition. Without remaining faith in his treatment (to use his doctor's terminology) he died within two days.

Many members of the medical profession prefer to use the label "spontaneous remission" to describe the remission of disease in instances of self-healing. This label is given to indicate that no known mechanistic explanation is available to account for the changes that occur. Yet the term seems to mean something more than that. It is used almost as a blanket to put over phenomena that do not fit available frames of reference. The same people who use the expression are perfectly willing to deny the observed facts and speak as though the organism is not capable of intentional (by which I mean self-originating) healing. Clearly something extraordinary happened with Mr. Wright as a result of his belief in his treatment. Unless one prefers to believe in the intervention of a fairy Godmother, the conclusion is inescapable that his own system was responsible for bringing about the changes. As Dr. Ainslie Meares has put it, you need see an effect like this only once to know that it is possible.

In my opinion, instead of speaking of events labeled "spontaneous remissions" as though they are mystical phenomena beyond the realm of human understanding, it is more appropriate for the scientist to describe the reality, even to speak of self-healing, and to search for the key to unlocking the organism's own healing processes. That is how science progresses.

Reference. Klopfer, B. (1957) Psychological variables in human cancer. Journal of Projective Techniques, 21, 331-340 (The original report by one of his personal physicians, Dr. Philip West)