Hypnosis,Placeboan,dSuggestionintheTreatmentofWarts.pdfVIP

Hypnosis, Placebo, and Suggestion in the Treatment of Warts NICHOLAS P. SPANOS, P H D ,ROBERT J. STENSTROM, MA, AND JOSEPH C. JOHNSTON, MA Two experiments assessed the effects of psychological variables on wart regression. In Experiment 1, subjects given hypnotic suggestion exhibited more wart regression than those given either a placebo treatment or no treatment. In Experiment 2, hypnotic and nonhypnotic subjects given the same suggestions were equally likely to exhibit wart regression and more likely to show this effect than no treatment controls. In both experiments, treated subjects who lost warts reported more vivid suggested imagery than treated subjects who did not lose warts. However, hypnotizability and attribute measures of imagery propensity were unrelated to wart loss. Subjects given the suggestion that they would lose warts on only one side of the body did not show evidence of a side-specific treatment effect. INTRODUCTION cebo interventions induce wart regression (see 5, 6 for reviews). This contentionhas, Warts are benign tumors of the skin, and however, been challenged, and several in- members of the papillomaviruses genus are vestigators (7-9) have argued that the find- responsible for the various types of infec- ings of these studies canbe adequately ex- tious warts, i.e., Verruca vuJgarus, Ver- plained in terms of spontaneous remission. ruca pJantaris, Verruca pJana juveniJis, The available data concerning sponta- Condylom accuminatum (1). Interest- neous remission rates for warts arenot en- ingly, a good deal of anecdotal evidence, tirely consistent (10, 11). Moreover, most along with a number of clinical studies, clinical studies provide no data concern- implicate psychological factors in there- ing pretreatment duration of warts beyond mission of warts (e.g., 2-4). The most com- the patients unsubstantiated estimates. monly employed psychological treat- Unfortunately, the accuracy of these esti- ments for warts are hypnotic suggestion mates is