Contents
The book «Introduction to Psychology». Authors — R.L. Atkinson, R.S. Atkinson, E.E. Smith, D.J. Boehm, S. Nolen-Hoeksema. Under the general editorship of V.P. Zinchenko. 15th international edition, St. Petersburg, Prime Eurosign, 2007.
Article from chapter 6. Consciousness
Suggestions given to the subject under hypnosis can lead to a variety of behaviors and sensations. You can affect a person’s motor control, you can forget something new or revive the memory of the past, and the current perception can change radically.
Movement control
Many subjects under hypnosis respond to direct suggestion with involuntary movements. For example, if a person is standing with arms outstretched forward and palms facing each other, and the hypnotist suggests that the subject’s palms are attracted to each other, the hands soon begin to converge and the subject feels that they are being moved by some force that he did not apply. Direct suggestion can also suppress movement. If a hypnotizable subject is told that the arm is hardened (like an iron bar or like a hand in a cast) and then asked to bend the arm, it will not bend or it will take more force than usual to bend it. This response is less common than the suggested movement.
Subjects, taken out of hypnosis, can respond by movement to the conditioned signal of the hypnotist. This is called the post-hypnotic response. Even if the suggestion has been forgotten, subjects will be forced to carry out this behavior. They may try to rationalize the behavior even though it was impulsive to do so. For example, a young man was looking for a rational explanation for why he opened the window when the hypnotist took off her glasses (this was a prearranged signal), saying that the room was a little stuffy.
Posthypnotic amnesia
Under the hypnotist’s suggestion, events occurring during hypnosis can be «forgotten» until the hypnotist’s signal allows the subject to recall them. This is called post-hypnotic amnesia. According to their suggestibility to post-hypnotic amnesia, the subjects differ greatly, which is reflected in Fig. 6.5. In this study, the reproducible elements were 10 actions that the subjects performed while under hypnosis. Some subjects did not forget anything or only 1-2 items; most of the subjects forgot 4-5 items. However, a significant number of subjects forgot all 10 items. This bimodal distribution, revealing two distinct groups of subjects, has been found in many studies of post-hypnotic amnesia. The group of subjects with more complete reproduction is larger and presumably includes average hypnotic respondents; a smaller group — subjects who forgot all 10 elements — were qualified as hypnotic virtuosos. The difference in the completeness of recall by these two groups following hypnotic suggestion is apparently not related to differences in memory capacity: after this amnesia is canceled by the hypnotist’s conditioned signal, subjects with severe amnesia recall as many elements as subjects with mild amnesia. Some researchers have suggested that hypnosis temporarily interferes with a person’s ability to recall a particular item from memory, but does not affect actual memory storage (Kihlstrom, 1987).
Rice. 6.5. Distribution of posthypnotic amnesia. Subjects under hypnosis performed 10 actions, and then they were given instructions for post-hypnotic amnesia. When asked what happened under hypnosis, the subjects could recall a different number of actions: the number of actions forgotten by a given subject varied from 0 to 10 items. There were 491 subjects in the experiment, and the graph shows the number of subjects for each number of forgotten items. This graph shows a bimodal distribution of post-hypnotic amnesia with forgetting maxima of items 4 and 10 (after: Cooper, 1979).
age regression
Under hypnotic suggestion, some subjects are able to relive episodes from earlier periods of their lives, such as a 10-year-old birthday celebration. For some subjects, such episodes are displayed as if on a television screen; they are aware that they are present and see what is happening, but do not feel that it is they who create it. In another type of regression, subjects feel as if they are re-experiencing these events. They can describe the clothes they wear, run their hands through their hair and describe its length, or recognize classmates from elementary school. Occasionally, during the regression, a long-forgotten language that the subject used in childhood appears. For example, an American-born boy whose parents are Japanese and who spoke Japanese at an early age, but then forgot the language, began to speak it again under hypnosis (Fromm, 1970).
positive and negative hallucinations
Some hypnotic sensations require more hypnotic talent than others. For example, vivid and convincing hallucinatory perceptual distortions are relatively rare. There are two types of suggested hallucinations: positive hallucinations, in which the subject sees an object or hears a voice that is not really there, and negative hallucinations, in which the subject does not perceive something that he would perceive under normal conditions. Many hallucinations have both positive and negative components. In order not to see a person sitting on a chair (negative hallucination), the subject must see parts of the chair that are closed from the view of the person sitting (positive hallucination).
Hallucinations may also appear as a result of post-hypnotic suggestion. For example, subjects might be told that after coming out of a hypnotic state, they will find themselves holding a rabbit that wants to be petted, and will ask «What time is it?» Seeing and caressing a rabbit will seem natural to most subjects. But when they find that they are reporting the correct time and day, they are surprised and try to explain their behavior: “I heard someone ask me the time? It’s funny, I thought it was a rabbit asking, but rabbits don’t talk!» is a typical reaction.
Negative hallucinations can be used effectively to control pain. In many cases, hypnosis relieves pain even though the source—a severe burn or broken bone—remains. The inability to perceive anything (pain) that would be perceived under normal conditions qualifies this reaction as a negative hallucination. For the analgesic effect of hypnosis, pain relief does not have to be complete. Reducing pain by 20% can make a patient’s life more bearable. Experimental studies have shown that the degree of pain reduction is closely related to the measured amount of hypnotizability (Crasilneck & Hall, 1985; Hilgard & Hilgard, 1975).
Hidden Watcher
The concept of the hidden observer was proposed by Hilgard (1986), who noted that in many subjects under hypnosis, a part of the mind that is not conscious observes the experience of the subject as a whole. See →