Griffin: What is your preferred method of inducing the anaesthesia? Is it a distraction technique or telling them that their hand will go numb?

Gibson: I will start from the beginning. I pick up the hand very gently. I tell them "If you relax you will feel less pain. And if you relax very deeply, you may actually feel no pain at all". I then, holding the arm in the gentlest way, wash around the wound with an antiseptic such as iodine which can cause pain, but I am very careful not to let a drop fall into the wound. Then I get an antiseptic that doesn't hurt and gently put it into the wound. But the whole time I'm telling them, "If you relax, it will help you. Relax deeper and deeper". And then when I start to stitch, I pick up a needle, I say to them "I can give you an injection now and you won't feel any pain but the injection won't take the pain away completely because when the effect wears off you will feel the pain again. But if you relax deeply enough for the stitching not to be felt it will be grand. I can stitch the wound then you will have no pain and no pain afterwards".

By this time the person is probably hypnotised. I can pick out any pieces of dirt that are in the wound without causing pain. Now the person is becoming deeply hypnotised and I can dispense with the anaesthetic and put in a stitch and they won't feel any pain at all. At the same time it may be necessary to cut the edges of the wound off to make them even and less ragged. This will be done without any pain whatsoever.

When I have finished the stitching, the person is feeling very well. They have enjoyed, actually enjoyed the feeling of the arm being numb and the wound being stitched. They will accept the feeling of being free from pain and even be free from pain later on when the stitches are removed.

Griffin: That really does help to clarify the way you induce anaesthesia with hypnosis.

Gibson: When I was in Vienna last year I went out to dinner with friends. There was a man there who didn't know anything about hypnosis. A colleague asked me to explain to him how I stitched a wound using hypnosis. I took his hand very gently and 1worked with him. When I'd finished, my colleague said "look at him , his hand is up in the air and he can't put it down". I had to tell him "your arm is free".

Griffin: Have you heard about Dr. Escudero in Spain? I have heard he uses a technique involving the use of saliva to produce anaesthesia.

Gibson: There is only one way and that is by getting the person to relax. He has a hospital where everybody is keyed up to do this one thing and he believes it, the patients believe it, the hospital, of course, believes it, and it works. In his method the mouth must be wet, if the mouth is wet the person isn't terrified. If you were terrified it would be dry. Witch doctors used the same technique in Africa. If a man committed a murder, say, the witch doctor would get all the men in the village to line up. They all believed he had magic powers, and he would go around with a hot poker and touch all of their tongues and the murders' tongue would be burnt because his mouth was dry. Those with wet tongues wouldn't have any pain.

Griffin: When you retired as a surgeon you then went into hypnotherapy practice treating psychotherapy patients. Wasn't that a big change?

Gibson: Yes, it was a big change, but remember, I retired at the age of seventy, I had to retire anyway, but by then I had so many hypnotherapy cases I was glad to. For the previous twenty years I had practised both surgery and hypnotherapy.

Griffin: I want to ask you where did your expertise in understanding human nature come from? That's a completely different field from being a surgeon.

Gibson: Very few have much understanding of human nature, or the ability to share compassion. I suppose I always was interested in people.

Griffin: I am interested in the approach you take to the different types of complaints and illnesses as outlined in your book and tapes. I was impressed by your creative use of language and suggestion and the psychological insights that you use. It seems to me they must have come from a lot of reflection but also there must have been some sources for this insight and knowledge.

Gibson: I think most of it came from my religion. There was a man called Lesley Weatherhead who wrote many books, I was interested in what he did.

Griffin: He explored the mind from a psychological philosophical and religious perspective. You drew inspiration from his books?

Gibson: Yes and from himself.

Griffin: In what way from himself?

Gibson: I went to hear him preaching. I was spellbound.

Griffin: Do you suppose he was a bit of a hypnotist?

Gibson: Well, I suppose every good preacher is really.

Griffin: Do you think that religious views, or at least a commitment to something beyond oneself, is important in mental health?

Gibson: If they are truly religious!

Griffin: How would you make that distinction?

Gibson: Some people are religious but they don't believe in the truth, not in their lives.

Griffin: What do you think is the fundamental religious truth?

Gibson: I'm not particularly religious in the terms of orthodox or any other kind of religion. I believe the world was born with a big bang. I don't know if all we are told is true.

Griffin: Do you suppose that there is a deeper pattern that somehow connects human beings and that religion,historically, has tried to encapsulate and express that, and that one doesn't have to be a member of a formal religion to be aware or have a sense of this pattern?

Gibson: Yes.

Griffin: I believe you were the first person to make a self hypnosis record.

Gibson: I'd be interested in finding out. I think I was the first - in about the late 1950s. It was for treating any condition but mainly asthma, but I didn't sell them. But in 1962 I made an EP and sold it, and then, when cassette tapes came out, I recorded on them. In 1970 my Stop Smoking recording was top of the pops in Ireland for six weeks running.

Griffin: Alternative therapies are becoming increasingly popular. Do you think this reflects some inadequacies in the medical model and how it's being applied in practice?

Gibson: I think we are far too slow in taking on the fact that we have a subconscious mind. When I gave my lecture to the Medical Society at University College Dublin, I said that the medical profession was influenced by body snatchers and we learnt about how the body works. But the dead body has no mind. And still today we spend years teaching how the body works but only a few minutes teaching how the mind works. We need to realise that the mind is just as important as the body.

Very early on in my career, I found that I had been very well taught in the physical side of medicine, but had received almost no training in the causes or treatment of most of the illness I met in practice. We were taught to treat asthma with cortisone and bronchial dilators. I saw the attacks disappear for a time but they nearly always returned. I gave painkillers to migraine suffers but their migraine returned. I treated insomniacs with sedatives but none were cured of the underlying cause of their inability to sleep. I saw the addicts of drugs, alcohol and nicotine listen to my advice only to reject it. This led me to realise just how much human misery has its origins in the mind. To get to the root of the problem we have to be able to tap into the power of the subconscious mind and to release the faulty learnings often contained there.

Griffin: So doctors have to be able to learn to tap into the power of the mind.

Gibson: And that's where we've gone wrong. We haven't done that.

Griffin: Take a doctor seeing one hundred and twenty five or more patients in a week - would it be practicable to expect him to be able to utilise that knowledge?

Gibson: We don't have enough doctors to treat everybody. Just having a number of people treating the physical illness is not enough. We've got to have people treating the mental side as well. There's far greater need on the mental than on the physical side. More people are in hospital who are suffering from a psychosomatic illness than from a physical illness.

Griffin: What illnesses would you classify as psychosomatic?

Gibson: Well, take all the mental hospitals: there are more people in the mental hospitals than there are in the general hospitals. In the general hospital there are a lot of people injured in accidents caused by alcohol abuse, people dying through the effects of smoking and other drugs, and illnesses caused by stress. So if we broke down the physical illnesses the majority of them could even be seen as psychosomatically caused.

Griffin: You'll be interested in the report in the report published in The Therapist on various methods of getting people to stop smoking, including the patch, and it was found that hypnotherapy was easily the most effective.

Gibson: I get most people to stop without withdrawal symptoms, although I don't promise that. But I notice that those who are really keen very often stop without any withdrawal symptoms.

If someone knows that smoking is likely to cause them a great deal of suffering, but still retains reservations about quitting, then it is not nearly so easy. It's important to have sincerity of intention because this makes reaching into the emotions and achieving harmony proportionally easier. But if one has honestly decided not to take nicotine again than this thought can be transferred to the subconscious mind and very often the person can stop smoking without withdrawal symptoms.

Griffin: So the very fact that they are highly motivated, combined with suggestions from you telling them that they are going to feel comfortable and relaxed and confident as non-smokers, is sufficient to generate the ability to be free from cigarettes without the withdrawal symptoms. That's an amazing relief from suffering.

Gibson: Absolutely! My daughter gave up smoking. She wouldn't come to me. People don't go to their relatives, but it's three years now and she's still got the withdrawal symptoms.

Griffin: I notice in your book you are also quite optimistic about helping people with obesity, that you feel that hypnotherapy can help them to lose weight successfully.

Gibson: Losing weight is different. Smoking — we can forget about it, but we can't forget eating. We have to have consistency. If a person wants to lose four stone they have got to think in terms of a couple of years and not to think of it happening in a few months. If they think of it as a Iong term thing they can learn to gradually reduce and enjoy their food more than they are enjoying it now. An overweight person doesn't usually enjoy food as a rule. Some do but most don't.

Griffin: That's because the feel so guilty .

Gibson: Yes because they feel guilt. If they would eat reasonable amounts and stop when they are no longer hungry they would lose weight, and there is no other way in which it can be done. Reducing weight in this way does not strain the will as other dieting methods tend to do. With relaxation and mind control, the whole being is in harmony in the intention to lose weight.

Griffin: I was also very impressed as to how you helped people with drink problems, because there you actually did some research into the problem as to the best approach and actually worked and researched with alcoholics as to what would be the most effective way of doing it.

Gibson: They used to come here and sit in the evening, the alcoholics, some of their relatives and some of the people who treated them. The alcoholics tore my self hypnosis record to pieces week after week, but I kept on going until they said they were satisfied with it, and that had it been available earlier it could have saved them years of hell.

Griffin: You had the alcoholics fantasise in hypnosis going for a drink!?

Gibson: Yes. They loved that part. The part where they relaxed and imagined themselves drinking, tasting their favourite tipple and feeling all those sensations of release, entering as it were another world, a world of happiness and then returning home the money still in their pockets, with the feelings of remorse replaced by one of tranquility. This turned out to be the most important part of the cassette. For the greatest thing that alcoholics wish to achieve is a feeling of contentment that is not gained through drinking.

Griffin: So the cassette showed them they could create the same sense of release through self hypnosis as they previously got through drink.

Griffin: I understand you were in Lithuania last year?

Gibson: Yes, I read an appeal that they wanted books on hypnotherapy and I went out there. I gave them copies of my book and tapes and did some demonstrations.

Griffin: Was there a language problem?

Gibson: I worked through an interpreter and they all went under.

Griffin: What are your plans for the future?

Gibson: I plan to write a book on hypnosis in surgery. For my background research I intend to travel to China and Spain to study their methods of working without chemical anaesthetics. That should make an interesting chapter.

Griffin: A new chapter in an interesting and productive life. I wish you luck with your new writing and I'm sure it will help to increase public and health service awareness of the value of hypnosis, properly used, in the treatment of illness.

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© Human Givens Publishing Limited and Jack Gibson (1997)

This article first appeared in an early edition of the Human Givens journal. It was republished in 1997 in Therapia.

> More information on the human givens approach can be found in the following books both by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell

Dreaming Reality: How dreaming keeps us sane or can drive us mad

Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

Return to top

> More information on the human givens approach can be found in the following books both by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell

Dreaming Reality: How dreaming keeps us sane or can drive us mad

Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

Return to top