The Paradox of Induction

The American journal of clinical hypnosis, 2015

Book review of Jeffrey Zeig's "The Induction of Hypnosis: An Ericksonian Elicitation Approach.

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 2002

Cognitive Therapy and Research, 1978

Recent research in hypnosis has been a proliferation of challenges to the traditional view of the hypnotized subject as someone under control of the hypnotist and in a hypnotic trance. Many investigators seem to agree on the essential cognitive processes, antecedent conditions, and developmental factors necessary for a subject to be hypnotically responsive (Spanos & Barber, 1974). At the same time evidence has accumulated, primarily from the Cognitive Behavioral paradigm , that challenges the unity and utility of the traditional sleep/trance induction in enhancing suggestibility . These studies show that specific variables (e.g., the subject engaging in goal-directed imagining) are critical for maximum hypnotic responsiveness, and that the traditional sleep/trance induction does not maximize these variables (DeStafano, 1977;

The American journal of clinical hypnosis, 2016

Groups of participants (N = 164) were randomly assigned to three conditions: Group 1 received a trance induction, Group 2 received task-motivational instructions, and Group 3-"cold start" control-was simply told, "We will begin the hypnosis procedure now." All participants received the Creative Imagination Scale suggestions and then completed the Creative Imagination Scale and Inventory Scale of Hypnotic Depth. The three conditions did not differ significantly either on the Creative Imagination Scale or in reported hypnotic depth. These results are consistent with prior studies which show that trance induction and task-motivational yield similar results, but they are inconsistent inasmuch as the trance induction and task-motivational groups did not differ from the control group. These results, however, are predictable from socio-cognitive perspectives that the context of hypnosis itself can elicit hypnotic behaviors.

Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, 1977

The seemingly inexhaustible techniques of inducing hypnosis implies that the induction of hypnosis has nothing to do with the induction procedure per se, and that the gradual development of an alleged state of hypnosis is an illusion, an artifact of the induction procedure. This illusion is reinforced by the progression of item difficulty on standard susceptibility scales, and by the impression of increasing relaxation in the physical and facial appearance of subjects undergoing an induction. I will present evidence supporting the notion that the obtained enhancement of suggestibility is immediate. If this is indeed the case, then its enhancement must be obscured by the administration of the standard susceptibility scales. Another implication is that the trait theory underlying these scales is inappropriate; to wit, giving heterogeneous items equal weight when they do not all represent the same underlying system or function. Quite aside from this conceptual issue, these scales suffer from severe shortcomings with respect to item difficulty, which can lead to erroneous inferences regarding the nature of suggestibility or hypnosis. An alternative approach to the problem of measurement will be considered after I present some of the conceptual issues surrounding suggestibility and hypnosis.

2011

This article reports a consensus that was reached at an Advanced Workshop in Experimental Hypnosis held as part of the joint annual conference of the British Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis (BSMDH) and the British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis (BSECH). The unanimous consensus was that conventional definitions of hypnosis and hypnotizability are logically inconsistent and that at least one of them needed to be changed. Participants were divided between the alternatives of (1) broadening the operational definition of hypnosis so as to include responding to so-called waking suggestion and (2) limiting the term 'hypnotizability' to the effects of administering a hypnotic induction.

2012

Contemporary Hypnosis, 2000

An integration between neurobiological and sociocognitive perspectives is advocated to advance and overhaul the concept of hypnosis and its humanistic applications. The thesis is presented that hypnosis is an altered state of brain functional organization involving interrelations between brain regions initiated by the intervention of the hypnotist -that is, an atypical alteration of brain systems through an interpersonal and cultural context. Experimental evidence shows that the hypnotic process produces a brain state that is different from everyday neurophysiology, as shown by evidence of differential effects of attention and relaxation, and by evidence of cognitive and neurophysiological dissociation, which are central features of hypnosis. The hypnotic induction has a neurophysiological logic involving a temporal process that becomes conditioned to facilitate future induction and self-hypnosis. Our integrative perspective of brain systems in a social context includes a neuropsychological translation of the hypnotic induction and draws out the implications of orbital-frontal suppression for subjects being oblivious to embarrassment and being able to endure stage hypnosis. Wasteful pursuits in the field of hypnosis include the search for a single marker, premature closure of neurophysiological investigation, attributions and inferences such as 'suggestion' and goal-directed striving without validation and without consideration of process and mechanism, and the use of dichotomies such as 'waking' versus 'sleeping'. Recommendations include considerations of multidimensionality regarding trance and levels of susceptibility; the modifiability of susceptibility; formal assessment of social conceptions about hypnosis; concurrent validation of susceptibility during experimental procedures; consideration of both objective and subjective measures of susceptibility together with cross-checking for inconsistencies; the feasibility of control conditions; assessment of processes underpinning suggestibility; distinguishing the social impact of experimental, clinical and stage hypnosis; and assessment of after-effects.

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 2015

This article elucidates an integrative model of hypnosis that integrates social, cultural, cognitive, and neurophysiological variables at play both in and out of hypnosis and considers their dynamic interaction as determinants of the multifaceted experience of hypnosis. The roles of these variables are examined in the induction and suggestion stages of hypnosis, including how they are related to the experience of involuntariness, one of the hallmarks of hypnosis. It is suggested that studies of the modification of hypnotic suggestibility; cognitive flexibility; response sets and expectancies; the default-mode network; and the search for the neurophysiological correlates of hypnosis, more broadly, in conjunction with research on social psychological variables, hold much promise to further understanding of hypnosis.