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The Future Effects Of Placebo In Hypnosis

I should like to point out an interesting fact pertaining to Biblical healers.

So long as the fame of the healer preceded his arrival in any country, he was able to heal the sick. However, where his fame as a healer was either unknown or discredited, he found no faith and subsequently no cure. The earliest reference to hypnosis is in the Bible, Genesis ii, 21. "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept ..."

Dr. William Malamud, 86th president of the American Psychiatric Association, in an address delivered at the annual meeting in 1960, stated the following in a paper called "Psychiatric Research: Setting and Motivation":

"During the last few years we have witnessed a growing trend of overemphasizing the value of 'exact' methodology and uniformity of standards. This trend, which could be characterized as a 'cult of objectivity,' has already had an important influence on psychiatric research.

It is true that in its emphasis on critical judgment and valid criteria, it has helped to curb unrestrained flights of imagination and sloppy methodology. But the overglorification of objectivity and the insistence on rigidly single standards of acceptable methods have resulted in a concentration on certain phases of the science of human behavior at the expense of other very important ones."

I believe that most individuals have a fairly good understanding of how they came to have the problem that they have. I have yet to encounter the person who protests he has no idea why he doesn't function as he would like to in a certain area. From a practical standpoint, not many have the time nor money required to delve into the unconscious background of the problem. The high cost of treatment is a very real objection and cannot be discounted lightly. People suffering from emotional problems usually suffer financial reverses as well.

Who is to help these people? There are very few places in the country where they can receive competent psychiatric help at a reasonable fee. Is there this type of help in your own community? It is only when the individual is destitute that the state provides whatever help it can. However, at this point it's a long hard struggle back to good emotional health.

The National Association for Mental Health and its affiliates issue about 10 million copies of 200 different pamphlets on various aspects of mental health. To assess the value of these pamphlets, 47 mental hygiene experts held a conference at Cornell University. A report on this outstanding conference has been published.

It is called "Mental Health Education: A Critique." A feature by Ernest Havemann in the August 8, 1960 issue of _Life_ contains a very worthwhile article on this conference called "Who's Normal? Nobody, But We All Keep On Trying. In Dissent From 'Mental Health' Approach, Experts Decry Futile Search For An Unreal Goal." The following paragraph is taken from the 'Life' article:

"What about psychiatry and psychoanalysis? This is a different matter. Many unhappy and problem-ridden people, though by no means all who have tried it, have profited from psychotherapy. Indeed, all the mental health pamphlets, as a postscript to the self-help methods they advocate, wind up by advising the reader to seek professional care if his problems are serious enough. But the skeptics at Cornell cited statistics which to them show that psychiatric treatment is as remote for the average person as a trip to the moon.

Aside from the expense, which most people would find prohibitive, there simply are not enough therapists to go around. The U. S. has around 11,000 psychiatrists and 10,000 clinical psychologists--in all, about one for every 8,500 citizens. If everybody with emotional problems decided to see a psychiatrist, the lines at the doctors' offices would stretch for miles."

I assume that most readers of this book know that state hospitals are understaffed and unable to provide proper care for the mentally ill.

Mike Gorman, executive director of the National Mental Health Committee, has written a crusading report on this very theme called 'Every Other Bed'. In this book he tells us that every other hospital bed in the United States is occupied by a mental case. Mental illness costs the country two and a half billion dollars a year besides the more important untold human suffering that can never be equated in dollars.

The book is
a shocking story of how we have let this happen; are still letting it happen; and of how little, for the most part, we, the general public as well as the medical and psychological professions, are doing to correct this deplorable situation.

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