Harnessing the placebo effect without deception

Professor Irving Kirsch is Associate Director of the Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Relationship, and a lecturer on medicine at the Harvard Medical School (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center). He is also Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Hull (UK) and the University of Connecticut (USA).

He has published 10 books, more than 250 scientific journal articles and 40 book chapters on placebo effects, antidepressant medication, hypnosis, and suggestion. He originated the concept of response expectancy.

Professor Kirsch’s 2002 meta-analysis on the efficacy of antidepressants influenced official guidelines for the treatment of depression in the United Kingdom. His 2008 meta-analysis was covered extensively in the international media and listed by the British Psychological Society as one of the “10 most controversial psychology studies ever published.” His book, The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, has been published in English, French, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, and Polish, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Mind Book of the Year award. It was the topic of a 60-minute segment on CBS and a 5-page cover story in Newsweek.

In 2015, the University of Basel (Switzerland) awarded Irving Kirsch an Honorary Doctorate in Psychology.

In 2019, the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis honoured him with their “Living Human Treasure Award.”

Professor Amir Raz is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Director of the Brain Institute at Chapman University, California (USA) and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry (Psychology, Neurology and Neurosurgery) at McGill University, Montreal (Canada). His research spans the cognitive neuroscience of attention, placebos, and altered planes of consciousness. 

Professor Amir Raz is a world leader in unlocking the brain substrates of self-regulation and consciousness. He is Senior Investigator in the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research of the Jewish General Hospital and a member of the Montreal Neurological Institute. A former member of the McGill Board of Governors, he heads both the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at McGill University and the Clinical Neuroscience and Applied Cognition Laboratory at the Institute for Community and Family Psychiatry.

Professor Raz continues to add to his huge list of peer-reviewed publications in highly cited journals such as Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, The Lancet, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Raz has received multiple accolades, ranging from a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression and the American Psychological Association’s Early Career Award to Fellow of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis and Honorary Fellow of the Golden Key Society. 

Professor Raz’s research interests span the neural and psychological substrates of attention, suggestion, placebos, and self-regulation. A former professional magician and musician, he also conducts research into the cognitive neuroscience of deception, ownership, altered consciousness, and atypical cognition. Using functional brain imaging of the living human brain, genetics, and other techniques, his research brings together basic and clinical science.