Hypnosis

Developments in Research and New Perspectives

Robert Shor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351514026
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Although research and practice in hypnosis has seen unprecedented expansion, there has been a definite lack of inclusive and comprehensive surveys to aid the student and researcher. This collection of original chapters written by leading experimental investigators is the first work to offer a current state-of-the-art in hypnosis research. A compendium of the historical background, theories, issues, and trends in hypnosis, this volume represents all major experimental viewpoints while providing a virtual ""who's who"" in the field of hypnosis.The first two chapters (written by the editors) establish the current theoretical base of the field and review the historical background. Seventeen contributions focus directly on key aspects of present day hypnosis research. These contributions are organized as surveys of broad topic areas, descriptions in depth of individual investigator's programmatic lines of research, and reports on research within specific areas, especially those representing new viewpoints and holding promise for programmatic development. A final chapter develops questions for future research.Offering an inclusive survey of the field from its historical inceptions to its current and predictive state, this book presents many new ideas while updating established positions in research and theory. The vital areas covered in connection with hypnosis include: psychophysiology, creativity, dreams, imagination, suggestibility, simulator controls, cognitive activity, and ego-psychological theory. In addition there are chapters on hypnosis as a research method, the measurement of altered states of consciousness, and hypnotic programming techniques in psychological experiments. Hypnosis: Research Developments and Perspectives is written for researchers in hypnosis and clinical practitioners in medicine and psychology. The book will serve as a basic text in all courses in hypnosis at the graduate level.

1

Underlying Theoretical Issues: An Introduction

ERIKA FROMM AND RONALD E. SHOR

Scientific research on hypnosis began two centuries ago with Mesmer's first "magnetic" treatments in 1774. Hypnosis had been known and practiced for thousands of years, but Mesmer was the first to seek a scientific explanation for the powerful psychological forces he had learned to control. In the two centuries since then, research on hypnosis has been vigorous. While cycles of greater or lesser activity have occurred, research has gone on more or less continuously. Often researchers have drawn unwarranted conclusions; often their work has seemed to be demolished by the polemics of their critics. Nonetheless, the fabric of interest was never torn for long. For hypnosis was a phenomenon that would not go away, even though it was sometimes roundly misconceptualized and encountered resourceful enemies.

Hypnosis was an area of psychological research long before the phenomenon was recognized as primarily psychological and more than a century be-fore the emergence of psychology as a separate discipline with the founding of Wundt's laboratory in 1879. In fact, research in hypnosis was a major influence in the development of the psychologies of motivation, the unconscious, and social influence. A number of historically important persons, known primarily for their work in other areas, have made significant contributions to the study of hypnosis: Jean Charcot, Wilhelm Wundt, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Binet, Charles Fere, Ivan Pavlov, Vladimir Bechterev, Pierre Janet, Henri Bergson, Auguste Forel, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Frederick Myers, Theodule Ribot, Charles Richet, Morton Prince, Sandor Ferenczi, William James, Eugen Bleuler, William McDougall, Vittorrio Benussi, Paul Schilder, Clark Hull, and Henry Murray.

Despite such credentials in the way of background, manpower, and im-pact, the study of hypnosis has not yet reached an advanced stage of scientific development. In terms of clinical skill and practical application we know a great deal about hypnosis, but the art of its application is far ahead of its scientific elucidation. The situation is analogous to the scientific study of humor. Everyone has an intuitive grasp of humor, and comedians and writers of comic drama have practiced their craft for many centuries. This fund of practical know-how does not, however, help to build a psychology of humor, because that practical knowledge is not in a form amenable to direct use by the scientist. The scientist must tread his own paths and he must putfindingsinto his own forms.

We believe it will be useful to begin this book by summarizing and high-lighting the underlying theoretical issues that have divided and united our contributors. We will not attempt to tally votes; but will be content simply to sensitize the reader to important issues—scientific truth is not arrived at by poll taking. Nor do we emphasize those areas where there is general agreement; such areas might be called solved issues, or nonissues. For example, our contributors generally would agree that, at its best, hypnosis is a method of tapping potent psychological forces. Yet the day is not far behind us when this statement would have been hotly debated.

In our view, the key issues fall into the following categories:

• the role of unconscious mentation in hypnosis;
• phenomenological versus behavioristic aspects of hypnosis—with special emphasis on the confusion of metatheories with scientific methodology;
• continuity and discontinuity between waking and hypnotic states; and
• physiological changes and psychological behaviors distinguishing hypnosis from the waking state.

Altogether 12 key issues are presented. Usually two alternatives are set forth. However, presenting these alternatives is not intended to deny that some of the contributors may have taken intermediary positions, or that others may be unconcerned with certain issues.

These key items are expressed in various levels of generality. In some instances, redefinitions or elaborations of a particular item merit development through subquestions, or even the rewriting of the item in the form of an additional one.

The Role of Unconscious Mentation in Hypnosis

The first four items concern themselves with the nature of hypnosis, broadly stated.

ITEM 1

In any complete theory of hypnosis the concept of unconscious mental functioning (more or less in the psychoanalytic sense) will be found to be necessary and important;

or, alternatively,

will be found to be unnecessary and unimportant.

While most of the contributors feel that the concept of the unconscious is indispensible to their thinking about hypnosis, a small minority take pains not to use it in their formulations.

ITEM 2

In any complete theory of hypnosis the concept of usually unavailable modes of mentation will be found necessary and important;

or, alternatively,

will be found to be unnecessary and unimportant.

To investigators who use the concept of the unconscious, Item 2 would seem to be almost a derivative of Item 1. Those who start with the concept of the unconscious also view hypnosis as a way of tapping usually unavailable modes of mentation. Many terms are used to describe these modes of mentation: primary process, regression, primitive, dreamlike, nonrational thinking, trance logic, utilization of nonconscious resources, wellsprings of buried human potentialities, retrieval of fantasy residues, and so forth.

We decided to list Item 2 separately because investigators can refer to usually unavailable mentation without necessarily subscribing to the concept of the imconscious, and some do. Thus two contributors theorize that subjects have usually unavailable experiences as a function of intensive organismic involvement in the hypnotic role, and deny the need to invoke the concept of unconscious mental functioning.

ITEM 3

At its best hypnosis is something more than merely a profoundly compelling imaginal fantasy;

or, alternatively,

hypnosis is nothing but a profoundly compelling imaginal fantasy.

To our contributors Item 3 may appear to be a nonissue. All of them would agree with the second alternative. Perhaps such agreement is possible today because we have reached a stage in the development of psychology where we can readily acknowledge the power of the processes of imagination. But what are the processes of imagination? That issue would now merit attention.

ITEM 4

Learning to be a good hypnotic subject basically involves the development of a cognitive skill, of increasing one's capacities for cognitive control;

or, alternatively,

it involves succumbing to the control of others, decreasing one's capacities for cognitive control.

Again, this appears to be a non-issue today. All our contributors would agree that the first alternative applies to their own work. However, some clinicians would urge keeping open the possibility that an unscrupulous hypnotist might be able to use hypnosis to take advantage of his subjects (see Kline, 1970). But no one doubts that, in responsible hands, hypnosis involves learning a cognitive skill.

Phenomenological versus Behavioristic Aspects of Hypnosis: Metatheories versus the Scientific Method

The next six items (Items 5-11) focus on major theoretical issues that are still unsolved and hotly debated. In our view, this lack of resolution is at least partly due to the so far neglected task of separating metatheories from systems of scientific inquiry. Item 5 raises this issue.

ITEM 5

The ultimate issue to be explained with regard to hypnosis is the subject's inner subjective experience;

or, alternatively,

the ultimate issue is the subject's outward, observable, behavior.

This item poses the issue that is central to the classic dispute between phenomenology and behaviorism. The phenomenological position is that the subjective experience of hypnosis is the fundamental fact to be explained, and that it provides the primary defining datum of hypnosis. Phenomenologists contend that outward behavior is a meaningful index of hypnosis only to the extent that it accurately reflects the primary subjective events. The behavioristic position is that behaviors observable by an outsider are the fundamental indices, and that reports of subjective experience are simply one form of behavior—verbal behavior. The behaviorist thinks it is irrelevant to discuss whether people have subjective experiences; he flatly states that unless such experiences are translated into observable behavior they have no place within the scientific system.

Two examples help to clarify these two positions. Let us suppose that an investigator initially became interested in hypnosis because he himself had had profound subjective hypnotic experiences; no amount of rational argument could shake his conviction of the reality of these experiences. These subjective experiences have become the fundamental puzzle he wants to ex-plain; they are the reason why he is willing to devote his professional energies to the study of hypnosis. Nothing will convince him that outward behavior is more real, or more fundamental, than his own subjective experiences. He will argue that if science is not big enough to encompass and ex-plain these primary subjective events, then the conception of science must be broadened. If these experiences do not fit into the scientific test tube, he will insist science needs a bigger test tube.

However, a second investigator, also initially interested in hypnosis be-cause of compelling subjective hypnotic experiences, may arrive at a radically different conception of the kind of science that should be developed to explain hypnotic experiences. He may conclude that it is folly to try to pursue subjective events in their own terms, and that the only way to build a fruitful, coherent science is on the basis of observed behavior. In his view, if science is broadened to include pure mentalisms, inevitably it will become pseudoscience. He will insist that men have no direct pipeline to mentalisms, and that the sooner they acknowledge this fact and get on with the business of building a solid behavioral science, the better off the discipline will be.

These issues have not been resolved since the battle lines were drawn by J. B. Watson in the 1920s; it is obvious that they will not be resolved in the confines of this volume.

In our judgment, allegiance to the phenomenological or to the behavioristic position is basically a matter of philosophy of science, not science; it is a philosophic commitment, not a scientific decision. However, once such a philosophic commitment has been made one way or the other, it determines the kind of scientific system that can unfold within it.

In our view science does not begin in a vacuum. Prior to the scientific enterprise all science begins with a set of philosophic assumptions, a philosophic metatheory, a bedrock of unassailable "givens" that are axiomatically assumed to be true. While, by selected criteria, one scientific system may prove more fruitful than another, the philosophic metatheories themselves are not amenable to scientific proof or disproof within the scientific systems that arise out of them. Metaphorically speaking, these metatheories create "elbow room," the context of definition and outlook within which the scientist can set about doing his work. We believe that many of the current controversies among hypnosis researchers have their origin in the philosophic commitment to either a fundamentally phenomenological or a fundamentally behavioristic metatheory. To so assert is not to resolve the differences between the two views; but it is useful to put them on the table where they can be seen more clearly.

The controversy between these two points of view has often been phrased in terms of "inner subjective experience of the hypnotic effects" on the one hand, and "outwardly observable behavior" on the other. These phrasings carefully avoid specifying the nature of the subjective or the behavioral events—except to say that they are somehow hypnotic. A variety of scientific theories can flow from both philosophic positions. Scientific theories and philosophical commitments, however, are in different realms of dis-course. We believe that it is important to try to separate scientific theoretical formulations from metatheories. This can best be done by asking two series of questions, one from the phenomenological position, and the other from the behavioristic position.

Key Questions from the Phenomenological Point of View

Eleven questions should be raised from the phenomenological point of view.

1. Do the subjective events in hypnosis involve some kind of alteration or change in the organism?
2. Assuming a Yes answer to the above question, is it meaningful to say that this change is a change in the state of the organism?
3. Do the subjective changes in hypnosis involve some kind of change in consciousness?
4. Do the subjecti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• I. Theoretical and Historical Perspectives
• 1. Underlying Theoretical Issues: An Introduction
• 2. The Fundamental Problem in Hypnosis Research as Viewed from Historic Perspectives
• II. Surveys of Broad Areas
• 3. Hypnosis and Sleep: Techniques for Exploring Cognitive Activity During Sleep
• 4. Hypnosis as a Research Method
• 5. Suggested (“Hypnotic”) Behavior: The Trance Paradigm Versus an Alternative Paradigm Theodore
• 6. Hypnosis and Psychophysiological Outcomes
• 7. Hypnotic Amnesia
• 8. Hypnosis and Creativity: A Theoretical and Empirical Rapprochement
• 9. Hypnosis and the Manifestations of “Imagination”
• III. Lines of Individual Research
• 10. The Effects of Neutral Hypnosis on Conditioned Responses
• 11. Hypnotic Programming Techniques in Psychological Experiments
• 12. Evidence for a Developmental-Interactive Theory of Hypnotic Susceptibility
• 13. On the Simulating Subject as a Quasi-Control Group in Hypnosis Research: What, Why, and How
• 14. Measuring the Depth of an Altered State of Consciousness, with Particular Reference to Self-Report Scales of Hypnotic Depth
• IV. Individual Researches Within Specific Areas
• 15. Humanistic Aspects of Hypnotic Communication
• 16. Hypnosis and Adaptive Regression: An Ego-Psychological Inquiry
• 17. The Contents of Hypnotic Dreams and Night Dreams: An Exercise in Method
• 18. The Wish to Cooperate and the Temptation to Submit: The Hypnotized Subject’s Dilemma
• 19. Hypnosis and the Psychology of Cognitive and Behavioral Control
• V. Anticipations for Future Research
• 20. Quo Vadis Hypnosis? Predictions of Future Trends in Hypnosis Research
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index