Just a few years ago, several of my colleagues and I were captivated when Robert Otto gave us his normally charismatic pep talk about the wondrous powers of the “subconscious mind.” As a well-trained and experienced advocate of hypnotherapy, he faithfully followed a tradition rooted in the works of Sigmund Freud and espoused by other greats such as Ormond McGill, Milton H. Erickson, and David Elman. However, I propose the heretical position that our profession’s fascination with the concept of the “subconscious mind” has retarded the acceptance of hypnosis and hypnotherapy as valid for clinical applications. This well-trodden path may have become a routine that we must transcend.

To understand my point of view on this, one must delve into the semantics of the words consciousness and mind. Consciousness involves not only thinking, sensations, perceptions, moods, emotions, and dreams, but also self-awareness. So for phenomena to be “sub”, “not” or “pre” conscious, one or more of those elements need to be missing, especially consciousness. This implies that, at the very least, for a subconscious to exist, there must be some aspect of our human mental or physical system that fails the “self-aware” test. However, at each reductionist level of the human system of organisms there is a level of self-awareness. As histology professor Bruce Lipton, PhD, clearly states, even our cells are highly aware of their surroundings. Thus, despite an occasional distraction, we are understood as an aggregate community of self-aware (conscious) systems that work in harmony and communicate with each other on a regular and continuous basis. In my relentless search for the holy grail of the subconscious mind, I have yet to find any part of the human entity that is truly subconscious. I am fully aware that thinking and dreaming is normally attributed to humans and other creatures with more developed frontal lobes. However, this alone does not justify the exaggerated obsession about the existence of the subconscious.

So let’s look at the concept of mind. This is where our humanity seems to emerge. The mind is an aspect of our consciousness, but with a twist. It strongly implies that we have the capacity to engage in thought, perception, memory, emotion, will, and imagination. Although all living systems have consciousness, as I defined it in the previous paragraph, only certain intelligent systems truly have the attributes of mind. The ability to use the mind to create or organize data and phenomena into new concepts or ideas is unique to the level of intellect which appears to correlate with the size and function of a developed frontal lobe.

Am I just splitting hairs to be a point of silliness? I do not think so. Our insistence on believing in the concept of a wonderful entity that exists below the conscious level believes that we are made of a very intricate system of self-aware and communicative components. Nor does it accept that they are organized in harmonized patterns that coexist for the mutually beneficial purpose of our continued existence. By respecting the nature of these neurophysiological systems, and moving away from the almost new-age mysticism surrounding the fallacious concept of a subconscious mind, we begin to understand the power of selective thinking, which is at the core of core concepts of what is. . It has been called suggestive therapy, selective thinking, and hypnosis.

Each aspect of the neurophysiological system is organized into patterns of behavior that reflect both its self-aware nature and its abilities to communicate effectively internally and externally. For example, just think about the relationship between the hypothalamus and the anterior and posterior portions of the pituitary gland. The flow of “release hormones” in the bloodstream triggers sympathetic or parasympathetic autonomic reactions. If the hormones released are specific to an organ, the organ will provide feedback in the form of inhibitory hormones that will tell the hypothalamus and pituitary gland that additional hormone release is no longer needed.

These reactions, which also involve peptides and electrical signals, can also be triggered by thoughts and imagination (or anticipation). An example of this will occur when a woman sees a nursing child or even thinks about the situation, the hypothalamus releases enough estrogen to create milk production or at least a feeling of heaviness in the female mammary glands. Keep in mind that the neurophysiological systems of the human mind and body will react to both realities and fantasies.

My conclusion here is that every thought, idea, or concept has a corresponding biochemical and bioelectrical pattern. Thoughts, ideas, and concepts are creatures of the mind centered in the frontal lobe rather than some system misnamed the “subconscious mind.” Intra and inter neurophysiological patterns are developed and programmed with one key requirement. That is self preservation. (Note that this means preservation of patterns, not necessarily of the organism. This is why all too often we have a tendency to do silly things despite a heightened awareness that the organism, i.e., us, is in risk (Just think of the addictive behavior we know will result in our premature death.) Our innate and adaptive immune systems and what Darold Treffert MD has coined the “tyranny of our left brain” exist for the purpose of protecting these collective patterns . When these patterns become dysfunctional due to a faulty reaction to injury, disease, or “thought virus,” then interventions such as surgery, pharmacology, energy medicine/psychology, or psychotherapy (to include hypnosis) are warranted.

This means that every dysfunctional situation is one in which the emergence of a pattern threatens the existence of a higher level of the collective, so the intervention must circumvent the self-preservation function so that the underlying patterns can be altered. Paraphrasing this another way, you may want to say that we must “get out of our own way” if we want to change. In fact, to treat addictions and even physiological conditions such as cancer, the individual or physician must find ways to overcome resistance so that the intervention can have a chance. David Elman said this very appropriately. He said that we must bypass the critical factor so that we can engage in selective thinking. Dr. Milton H. Erickson talked about divide and link.

Thus, I see something as simple as smoking as a manifestation of a neurophysiological pattern to which the subject’s obsession with self-preservation will actively struggle to latch on. This pattern is manifested by biochemical and bioelectrical responses that can be detected by kinesthetic awareness or modern medical technologies. There is a self-aware (which is one of the reasons you resist change) and communicative dimension to these systems. The subject or clinician will have more success initially employing techniques that override or bypass the natural pattern-keeping tendencies of these conscious (not subconscious) systems. Then, by installing new functional patterns, the dysfunctional ones are displaced and wither away. Merely removing a system without replacing it with a new, stronger one is an invitation to a subsequent recurrence of the dysfunctional system/pattern.

I know that my ideas are contrary to the conventional (and erroneous) wisdom of the medical and hypnotherapy communities. However, if instead of looking at the reactive components of non-intellectual systems as a vast repository of reactive behaviors, you look at them as conscious (self-aware and communicative) entities, then you may begin to respect the power of a physician as dysfunctional. patterns are virtually eliminated and replaced by new functional ones. It is in the conscious attributes of these systems that the power of intervention resides. Unfortunately, the term “subconscious mind” is an outdated oxymoron that leaves hypnosis in the realm of mysticism and pseudoscience rather than a scientifically verifiable concept worthy of general discussion. The future of hypnotherapy (and allopathic medicine) will not be found in the fallacious “power of the subconscious mind” but in the “power of the conscious mind” to direct and direct the mental and physical manifestations of human existence.