Thank you for this contribution Matt, enjoyed reading it immensely and it made plenty of sense 🙂

I too am guilty of this. I have lost count of how many times i have been sold by something based on loose research findings, and have argued my case until i am blue in the face even though I did not truly have any factual evidence to support what i was saying.

I think its also worth mentioning that we need a certain self-awareness here. Once we buy into a belief in something, we tend to become blinded and small minded that it is right, and too easily dismiss evidence and ideas to the contrary. I am going to use a non-hypnotherapy example (sorry).

Have you ever seen or heard of the ‘power balance bracelet’ ? If not research it, and watch the videos of the guy who pioneered it doing a demonstration of its effects. Its basically a hologram that he claims realigns your bodies magnetic energies, and removes negative energies that enable you to become stronger and faster. The experiments that he uses to demonstrate the effect are absoluletly appalling (in my opinion). The tests are not blind, which is the biggest flaw as it opens up the likelihood of the effects witnessed being a placebo, but so many people over the whole world have been sold by it and are spending £30 a time on one of these bracelets. Most of these people refuse to accept or see the huge flaws in the research put forward to back up the claims.

A ‘deceptive mega-placebo’ perhaps?

This is the world we live in. And thats why anything and everything that we pick up (especially over the internet) needs to be scrutinised, analysed and critcised from every angle before we argue its claims.

Adam your rants about binaural beats do make me laugh. I think much of this comes down to the power of suggestion. If its not a chemical then perhaps it can only really ever be a placebo? If this helps people, and works for them, then i guess it is something positive. Its just the ethical boundaries that get blurred by selling something which isn’t exactly what it claims to be (which opens up an entirely different debate). For example, a £20 binaural beat CD that can turn you into an artistic genius, or a £30 power balance bracelet that turns you into he-man!!

I think that developing the ability to be flexible enough to view things from every angle is crucial. By this i mean we have to be subjective, as well as objective. We are too complex beings to always assume that objective data and research is the only framework to believe in and work within. Its ok to bash research or back it, but lets also try things ourselves and see what works for US. If our belief in a certain approach creates expectancies that help generate success…. then can it really be wrong? Even if it does have no hard data that backs it up. Perhaps everything we do is just giving more hard evidence to the existence of the placebo effect.

Rant over. This made no sense did it. 🙂