Page 84 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

inculcation. For example, Paul Thorsen, a researcher, touches the arm of the
person under hypnosis with a tip of a pen and tells him that it's a hot skewer.
Soon, a blister (as would have been produced by a second degree burn) formed
in the region where the tip of the pen touched. Thorsen also hypnotized a

person called Anne O. into believing that the letter A was being drawn onto
her arm by pressing hard. Although nothing else was done, redness emerged
in the shape of an "A" in that area. 20 Researchers H. Bourru and P. Burot,
persuading a hypnotized person that his arm was being cut, saw that the arm
was bleeding after being slightly drawn on by a pencil. 21
J.A. Hadfield told a sailor in hypnosis that he was going to press a hot iron
bar on the sailor's arm and that the arm would burn. However, he merely

touched it gently with his fingertip, after which he covered it. Six hours later
when the cover was removed, there was a slight redness and puffiness in that
area. Hadfield states that
"the following day the
puffiness became larger
and swelled like a burn." 22
These changes that
occurred to the human
body during hypnosis

show that we do not need
the outside world to
produce sensations of sight,
sound, touch, feeling, pain
or ache. For example,
although there is no hot
iron bar in the outside

world, if the person is
persuaded, there can be a
burn mark on his arm.
These examples show
that when we examine how
It is a fact that some skin diseases can be cured
by using hypnosis. On the pictures above we an image occurs, and
see the disease before being treated with
follow technological
hypnosis, then we see it after the person has
been hypnotized and the disease has been developments, and also
cured.(D. Waxman, Hypnosis, p. 113)

82 MATTER: THE OTHER NAME FOR ILLUSION