ABSTRACT
Every good salesperson knows how to use suggestion. Members of the healing professions call it “placebo.” Salespeople and therapists have much in common as both are trying to influence human behavior. In fact, suggestion or placebo may be the most frequent form of therapy ever used, if we consider its employment throughout all the ages of history, in every culture, civilized and primitive. As Kirsch (2002) noted, placebos are usually physically inert substances or medical procedures that are identical in appearance to an active pharmacological or medical procedure being tested. Placebos are used to determine the psychological effects of administering a particular treatment for a disorder. Placebo effects are the effects attributed to placebos. 1 Placebo effects operate within every type of therapeutic intervention. Even in psychoanalysis, the suggestive-placebo factor is operating concurrently with interpretations and insight. People often change their behavior, feelings, attitudes, and symptoms when told to by someone who holds a position of prestige and respect. Kirsch (2002) reminded us that it is difficult to extend placebo effects tests to psychotherapy because all of the effects of psychotherapy are due to the psychological properties of the the treatment, therefore “there is nothing to control for.” At this point it is important to remember that hypnosis is not psychotherapy but rather a physiological state that can be induced or spontaneously experienced. Therefore, those effects that can be accounted for by placebo rather than hypnosis can, and should, be accounted for.
