Hypnosis, Theory or Wishful Thinking?

The internet community twitter.com, is often times home to people who will grab on to key words related to a business they may own, and follow other authors. They hope that this mild form of cyber-stalking will result in the victim following them in return, as a show of internet courtesy, forcing them to see the offender's tweets.

These keyword stalkers almost always have a commercial motivation for finding more followers, posting the same message with a link to their particular product every few days.

"What on earth does Twitter have to do with science?" you may ask. Simple, I was recently followed by 2 users after leaving a post in reference to my insomnia. This first "Practitioner" locked on in an attempt to advertise his new hypnotic sleep aide. The second followed the word "hypnosis", paying no attention to the fact that the same tweet also contained the words pseudo-scientific, nut job, and placebo...

Yes, placebo, that's all hypnosis is. The hypnotist simply uses suggestion and CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), under the guise of the metaphysical, to force the mind to do what it can already do on its own, THINK FOR ITSELF! Hypnosis is a crutch that allows the subject to do what they cannot -more correctly, will not- do on their own. It's a fancy and expensive alternative to simply looking at a doughnut or cigarette and saying "No". The subject lacks the self motivation to pull themselves out of whatever pit it is, that caused them to turn to their particular method of self destruction, and simply blame success on a swinging pocket watch.

"How can this be bad? Nobody gets hurt, and a lot of them stop smoking." Sure, nobody gets hurt; however, nobody gets better either. The satisfaction of overcoming nicotine addiction or overeating in simply not there after hypnotherapy. Instead of being motivated to achieve more, because on their own, the patient overcame their problem. They "need" the nut job with a pocket watch. There is no longer the realization that one can simply decide to not strike that lighter if they so choose, they trade one dependence for another, fast food or tobacco, for a man with a mail order certificate and an infomercial.