How does the power of suggestion exhibit itself today?
In our fears around placebos and the effects of placebos. The placebo effect was initially understood to be powered by the power of suggestion. They’re inert pills or tonics or powders — why do they work? Well, they don’t really work, but patients think they work, and they think they work because their doctors tell them they’re going to work, and it’s really just suggestion. Since the early 1980s, our thinking about the placebo effect has undergone a sea change. We now think if you take a placebo, and you believe it’s going to work, your brain is going to change, and that might in turn lead to a cascade of effects that will cause your body to heal faster. Our thinking about the placebo has shifted from the power of the authority figure to the power of our own positive thinking? That’s how I see the history. There was a self-help book about the placebo effect that said the placebo effect is the good news of our time. You can be cured by nothing but yourself. So now we attribute the eff
