The hypnotist, dangling a swinging pocket watch before the subject’s eyes, slowly intones: “You’re getting sleepy … You’re getting sleepy …” The subject’s head abruptly slumps downward. He is in a deep, sleeplike trance, oblivious to everything but the hypnotist’s soft voice. Powerless to resist the hypnotist’s influence, the subject obeys every command, including an instruction to act out an upsetting childhood scene. On “awakening” from the trance half an hour later, he has no memory of what happened.
In fact, this familiar description, captured in countless movies, embodies a host of misconceptions. Few if any modern hypnotists use the celebrated swinging watch introduced by Scottish eye surgeon James Braid in the mid-19th century. Although most hypnotists attempt to calm subjects during the “induction,” such relaxation is not necessary; people have even been hypnotized while pedaling vigorously on a stationary bicycle. Electroencephalographic (EEG) studies confirm that during hypnosis subjects are not in a sleeplike state but are awake—though sometimes a bit drowsy. Moreover, they can freely resist the hypnotist’s suggestions and are far from mindless automatons. Finally, research by psychologist Nicholas Spanos of Carleton University in Ontario shows that a failure to remember what transpired during the hypnosis session, or so-called posthypnotic amnesia, is not an intrinsic element of hypnosis and typically occurs only when subjects are told to expect it to occur.
The Consciousness Question
The iconic scene we described at the article’s outset also raises a deeper question: Is hypnosis a distinct state of consciousness? Most people seem to think so; in a recent unpublished survey, psychologist Joseph Green of Ohio State University at Lima and his colleagues found that 77 percent of college students agreed that hypnosis is a distinctly altered state of consciousness. This issue is of more than academic importance. If hypnosis differs in kind rather than in degree from ordinary consciousness, it could imply that hypnotized people can take actions that are impossible to perform in the waking state. It could also lend credibility to claims that hypnosis is a unique means of reducing pain or of effecting dramatic psychological and medical cures.
Despite the ubiquitous Hollywood depiction of hypnosis as a trance, investigators have had an extremely difficult time pinpointing any specific “markers”—indicators—of hypnosis that distinguish it from other states. The legendary American psychiatrist Milton Erickson claimed that hypnosis is marked by several unique features, including posthypnotic amnesia and “literalism”—a tendency to take questions literally, such as responding “Yes” to the question “Can you tell me what time it is?” We have already seen that posthypnotic amnesia is not an inherent accompaniment of hypnosis, so Erickson was wrong on that score. Moreover, research by Green, Binghamton University psychologist Steven Jay Lynn and their colleagues shows that most highly hypnotizable subjects do not display literalism while hypnotized; moreover, participants asked to simulate hypnosis demonstrate even higher rates of literalism than highly hypnotizable subjects do.
Other experts, such as the late University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Martin Orne, have argued that only hypnotized participants experience “trance logic”—the ability to entertain two mutually inconsistent ideas at the same time. For example, a hypnotist might suggest to a subject that he is deaf and then ask him, “Can you hear me now?” He may respond “No,” thereby manifesting trance logic. Nevertheless, research by the late Theodore X. Barber, then at the Medfield Foundation, and his colleagues showed that participants asked to simulate hypnosis displayed trance logic just as often as hypnotized people did, suggesting that trance logic is largely a function of people’s expectations rather than an intrinsic component of the hypnotic state itself.
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17 Comments
Add CommentHypnosis reveals - as if by way of caricature - the exceptional power that language confers not only to our capacity to self-regulate but to socially regulate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough hypnosis can be entertaining to observe and be of crucial clinical benefit (in some cases) let's also use it as an opportunity to be warned about our genetically (and by certain categories of naturally selective lifetime challenges in our phylogeny) GUARANTEED gullibility!
The most commonly accepted definition of hypnosis is suggestion. One topic not mentioned here is crowd hypnosis, or suggestion via verbal and body language applied to the masses as used by the nazis and other tyrannies to terrible effect. On this point, I cannot agree more with BEFELL on the extreme gullability of mankind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost hypnotist have maintained that one can go into "hypnosis" by being led there or naturally without a hypnotist's help. Therefore, when those doing the study suggested that the phenomena such as arm levitation etc could occur in the "waking" just as easily as in the hypnotic state how do you know this "waking" state was not actually a natural hypnotic state?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere was a day when hypnosis was a recognized door towards meditation, but Christianity in the Middle Ages condemned hypnosis alongside witchcraft. That condemnation still lingers on, even in the minds of those who are not Christians but who are influenced without their knowing by Christian ideas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy was Christianity against hypnosis? You will be surprised to know it was against hypnosis because it leads directly to meditation; neither the priest is needed nor the church is needed - not even God is needed. This was the trouble.
If meditation succeeds in the world there are not going to be any religions anymore, for the simple reason that you will be in direct contact with existence and yourself. Why should you go through brokers and all kinds of agents who know nothing, except that they are knowledgeable, except that they have been disciplined for years in how to influence people and win friends?
Excerpt from the Osho talk: Therapy, Hypnosis & Meditation
Quite apart from the entertainment issue and the suggestibility of the highly suggestible, hypnosis may be a gateway into a truly remarkable state of alert, awakened consciousness, free of the habitual distractions of the discursive mind. In my own clinical work, I have found that this state of thought-free consciousness can provide a healing respite from the torments and trauma of a distressed mind. More-over individuals can easily learn to seek refuge in this dynamic state of undistracted presence even in the midst of their daily routines. Cleary, true healing and growth can only begin when individuals learn to be fully present in all the situations where they have been mentally and emotionally absent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn contradistinction to the suggestion that hypnosis is a trance-like state, it would seem, that the normal waking state of consciousness is even more trance-like, in that human beings habitually live in their distracted mental chatter. A conscious presence in a purely thought free state of awareness is certainly an awakening from the habitual trance state of mundane consciousness. Hypnosis may be an important portal to that trance free state.
The above is titled "Discuss this article". But the actual article is not given. We only see: "research by psychologist Nicholas Spanos of Carleton University in Ontario". "Research"? Published where? When? In a paper? A letter? A book? Just what are we supposed to discuss, if we can't read the original research, whatever that may be?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this" ... psychologist Joseph Green of Ohio State University at Lima and his colleagues found that 77 percent of college students agreed that hypnosis is a distinctly altered state of consciousness."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a spectacular standard for scientific measurement!
So does watching t.v.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny by hypnotists induced altered ways of behaving and/or being aware reflect how we evolved to normally be and/or be equipped with "AEVASIVE". [Note the requirement to accEPT a degree of grammatical looseness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAEVASIVE is the most integrative concEPT of a somewhat etymologically pioneering terminology. It was eclectically pieced together with help of a pragmatic approach that entailed The "Principle of Tolerance (nee Uncertainty)" - plus of course many other relevant and more or less readily available facts and observables such as not the least relevant and securely scientifically established principles and trends of interpretation and cumulative conclusions. [All of which corroborate/confirm or support a mainly 'evolutionary psychophysiological type' take and not financial but fairly philanthropically oriented overview of/outlook on ourselves.] AEVASIVE can partly therefore also be said to have been constructed by help of "SEPTIC' sem_antics" - whereof "sem_antics" stands for a wordplay that only to a deceptively dominant extent involves toilet-humored and other mirth-making explanatory philosophical thinking methods and techniques.
Accordingly, AEVASIVE approximately stands for the *Ambiadvantageous(ly)* Evolved aspect of how we to normally are endowed with a Veritable Actention (Selection Serving) System Incorporating/involving (amongst other known neural or neurochemical factors of key/EPTly instructive importance) Various Endo(genous)opiates"].
AEVASIVE is an exceptionally precise and thoroughly defined overarching reference to how our more or less mutant ancestors came to successfully cope in ways that lengthened their lineage towards our now typically and uniquely human languages and language-enabled abilities.
Hypnosis appears to be a normal variant of awakeness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs usual, Lilienfeld and Arkowitz have a lot of cogent points to make in separating fact from fiction, this time on the fascinating subject of hypnosis. My only quibble has to do with their comments on the role of the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC). This brain region is extremely interesting in its role in cognitive and emotional processing, and it is difficult to capture with language exactly what activity there means. Indeed, it appears to have a special function in detecting and dealing with conflict, cognitive dissonance, or perhaps any incoming information seen as problematical. Lilienfeld and Arkowitz state that "hypnotized participants frequently exhibit increased activity in their brain's anterior cingulate cortex."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems more reasonable to me that by hypnotically directing a subject's attention away from the conflicting or unwelcome information (such as, for example, painful sensations) the ACC would be pacified, i.e., less active. This was shown in the study by Raz, Fan, and Posner in their report published in PNAS (July 12, 2005), "Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the human brain." They demonstrated that there was in fact reduced activity in the ACC when highly hypnotizable individuals were guided to disattend in a posthypnotic state the conflict induced by the Stroop effect.
Leon McGahee
As usual, Lilienfeld and Arkowitz have a lot of cogent points to make in separating fact from fiction, this time on the fascinating subject of hypnosis. My only quibble has to do with their comments on the role of the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC). This brain region is extremely interesting in its role in cognitive and emotional processing, and it is difficult to capture with language exactly what activity there means. Indeed, it appears to have a special function in detecting and dealing with conflict, cognitive dissonance, or perhaps any incoming information seen as problematical. Lilienfeld and Arkowitz state that "hypnotized participants frequently exhibit increased activity in their brain's anterior cingulate cortex."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems more reasonable to me that by hypnotically directing a subject's attention away from the conflicting or unwelcome information (such as, for example, painful sensations) the ACC would be pacified, i.e., less active. This was shown in the study by Raz, Fan, and Posner in their report published in PNAS (July 12, 2005), "Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the human brain." They demonstrated that there was in fact reduced activity in the ACC when highly hypnotizable individuals were guided to disattend in a posthypnotic state the conflict induced by the Stroop effect.
Leon McGahee
As an addendum to my previous comment, I note too that in the June 2005 (vol 16, no 2) issue of Scientific American Mind, Nash and Benham in their article on hypnosis refer to the work of Pierre Rainville (p 50): "Using PET, the scientists found that hypnosis reduced the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex -- an area involved in pain -- but did not affect the activity of the somatosensory cortex, where the sensations of pain are processed."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLeon McGahee
It seems to me that hypnosis is the ultimate Placebo Effect. It works only if you believe it does.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuite apart from the entertainment issue and the suggestibility of the highly suggestible, hypnosis may be a gateway into a truly remarkable state of alert, awakened consciousness, free of the habitual distractions of the discursive mind. In my own clinical work, I have found that this state of thought-free consciousness can provide a healing respite from the torments and trauma of a distressed mind. More-over individuals can easily learn to seek refuge in this dynamic state of undistracted presence even in the midst of their daily routines. Cleary, true healing and growth can only begin when individuals learn to be fully present in all the situations where they have been mentally and emotionally absent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBandler & Grinder summed it up very well when they said "There is no such thing as hypnosis and everything is hypnosis." We go in and out of multiple states of consciousness all day everyday. Erickson might not have been right in some of his assumptions but he was still very effective at utilizing the technique of hypnosis for very positive effects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA has proved that space and time are linked. This means everything is related. There will always be a place for Religion. Hypnosis also has a place.
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