Word: barbering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Suggestion. Largely a put-on, claims Theodore Xenophon Barber, 43, director of psychological research at Massachusetts' Medfield State Hospital. "Since no test has been able to demonstrate the existence of the hypnotic state, there is no reason to assume that there is such a state," he writes in Psychology Today. In more than 100 experiments, Barber and others have reproduced hypnotic effects by the simple power of suggestion...
Warts Cured. Hypnosis allegedly cures warts. So does suggestion. Barber reports that the wart count among some New York schoolchildren fell dramatically after their warts were painted with chemically inert dyes identified as effective medication. Barber also discounts feats of strength under hypnosis, such as the ability of a man to make his body so rigid that he can be stretched like a plank between two chairs. "Practically all normally awake persons can remain suspended between two chairs while supported only by the head and ankles," Barber says...
...Barber notes that hypnotists have claimed the ability to produce and inhibit labor contractions and allergic reactions, to improve vision and to change heartbeat rates, blood-glucose levels and stomach-acid secretions. But, he says, "in each case there is evidence that the same things can also be obtained by suggestion alone." Barber claims that he has demonstrated the ability of subjects to recall long-forgotten memories -without hypnosis...
...ultimate power of suggestion is reflected in the subject's own conception of hypnosis, he believes. People "know" that hypnotized subjects are supposed to act like glassy-eyed zombies. Thus, when it is suggested that they are hypnotized, they obediently act as expected. To demonstrate the point, Barber cites an experiment by Philadelphia Psychiatrist Martin Orne. Orne told a class of introductory-psychology students that, under hypnosis, a subject's dominant hand automatically becomes cataleptic-that is, it cannot be moved. That is simply not true. Nevertheless, when he put the class under "hypnosis," 55% of his students...
There is an even clearer case of ca tering to special interests. Last week Nixon ordered special government tax and technical aid to the U.S. barber-chair manufacturing industry, which is suffering from Japanese competition. The entire U.S. -owned industry consists of just one manufacturer, the Emil J. Paidar Co. of Chicago...