Medicine: Hypnosis for Cancer Pain

To the lengthening list of conditions in which reputable medical men now believe that hypnosis may be useful, a psychiatrist last week added cancer. Dr. Jacob H. Conn, a psychiatry professor at Johns Hopkins University, told a Manhattan meeting of anesthesiologists that this relatively quick and simple method of relieving pain—often a major manifestation in late cancer—can be used by any physician after brief special training.

Dr. Conn’s technique is conventional: he gets the patient to look at a spot on the wall and concentrate upon a pleasant scene of his own choosing. As his hypnotic state deepens under the doctor’s suggestions, pain subsides—provided he is not one of those patients who have a neurotic need for pain—and this relief may last several hours or longer. Eventually, the patient can be taught to hypnotize himself whenever pain becomes unusually severe. The method relieves anxiety as well as pain, and has enabled several Johns Hopkins patients to get along with reduced doses of narcotics.