Down yonder, a reader writes:
Jimmy, what is your "informed opinion" about whether it would be morally advisable for a Catholic to be hypnotized, either to help curb an unhealthy habit, or just as part of a show at a fair or on a cruise or something?
It depends in part on what your view of hypnosis is.
If you think that hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness that results in heightened suggestibility then it would be morally licit to use it for legitimate therapeutic purposes, like stopping smoking or losing weight or curbing anxiety.
It would not be morally usable for illegitimate therapeutic or investigative purposes, like trying to dig up memories of past lives, alien abductions, or fingering real or imaginary criminals since hypnosis trying to use hypnosis in this way leads to confabulated "memories."
It also could be morally licit to use it for entertainment purposes IF (and this is a BIG IF) you’re confident that the use of it in a particular case will not result in you doing or being tempted to do something immoral. For example, if you know that the stage magician is likely to give you morally neutral commands like "Cluck like a chicken" then the act would have a different moral character than if he were going to give you commands like "You’re becoming extremely aroused by your co-worker, who I also have here on stage hypnotized. You can’t keep your hands off her, etc., etc."
If, on the other hand, you’re like me and think that hypnosis is likely a socially constructed role that people know how to "play" from movies and TV (rather than a genuine altered state of consciousness) then a different moral question comes to the fore, because hypnosis in that case functions basically as a placebo.
Deceiving people into thinking that a placebo is real is immoral because it involves the offense of lying, but–in principle–it’s not immoral to use placebos as long as you don’t lie to people about the nature of what they’re doing. If you say, "This is not a change in your consciousness; it’s just a confidence-building measure that has as much or as little meaning as you choose to put into it" then I could see where therapeutic hypnosis might be morally permissible in principle.
I could see an informed Catholic saying to himself, "This may be just a placebo–or perhaps a smidge more than a placebo–but I’m going to use the fact that I was hypnotized as a confidence-building measure when I want a smoke or want to eat or when I’m feeling over-anxious."
In that case the person would not be attributing more to hypnosis than hypnosis has or is known to have. He’s aware that it’s just a tool he’s using with himself to accomplish his goals (like counting to ten in order to cool off when you’re mad or telling yourself that you can do something in preparation for actually doing it).
I’m not 100% comfortable with that, but it’s sufficiently non-problematic I wouldn’t at this point say that a properly informed Catholic couldn’t morally use it for therapeutic reasons.
Of course, the illegitimate therapeutic and investigative considerations would still apply.
And I’d be more uncomfortable about using it for entertainment since part of the game is thinking that what the stage hypnotist is doing might be real–unless the audience was made to understand that this is all just a game.
There’s also a "content-free" school of hypnosis that treats it just as a relaxed, focused state in which a person can put himself and decide for himself what he wants to do. In that case, it’s basically a form of meditation, and as long as it doesn’t get overlaid with mysticism or claims that it’s anything other than it is then it seems morally nonproblematic in principle.
This is all distinct from using hypnotism in works of fiction, where real-world rules don’t apply and hypnotism can be presented in a humorous, fantasy light–like in the otherwise forgettable Woody Allen movie Curse of the Jade Scorpion.
Madagascar! Constantinople!
