The placebo principle works on pain, too. Researchers Kenneth Casey and Jon-Kar Zubieta at the University of Michigan and Tor Wager of Columbia University have exposed people to mild electric shocks. Those given a placebo "pain-killing" lotion—one with no analgesic properties—reported less pain than the control group. Brain scans revealed that placebo pain medications actually stimulate the brain's pain-quelling opioid and dopamine neurotransmitter systems.

Placebos work on emotional pain just as well. Psychiatrist Andrew Leuchter of the University of California at Los Angeles reported in the January 2002 American Journal of Psychiatry that while "antidepressant" placebos created brain changes that were different than those brought about by actual antidepressants and took longer to manifest (two weeks instead of two days), they appeared to be alternate pathways to clinical improvement.

It may be time to drop the condescension of thinking that some effects are "all in the mind," as if that means they aren't genuine.

When psychotherapy researchers document clients' readiness to change and clients' expectation that therapy will help as important predictors of good outcome, isn't this merely another way of acknowledging the power of placebo?

Resources

Antidepressants: Public Library of Science Medicine 5, no. 2 (February 26, 2008).

Grad Schools: Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training 44, no. 4 (December 2007): 392-96.

Cancer Support Groups: Psychological Bulletin 133, no. 3 (May 2007): 367-94. Intuition: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration 15, no. 1 (March 2005): 19-47; Journal of Vision 7, no. 7, article 6 (2007): 1-14.

Homosexuality: Develop­mental Psychology 44, no. 1 (January 2008): 46-58.

Mediation: Family Court Review 46, no. 1 (January 2008): 105-24.

Placebo: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 3 (January 22, 2008): 1050-54; Science 303, no. 5661 (February 20, 2004): 1162-67.

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