Journal ArticleDOI
Commentary: Reversing amnesia about hypnosis.
TLDR
All that Kirsch and colleagues are harping on is that a formal hypnotic induction is not needed to elicit hypnotic response among hypnotizable people, why results are often comparable when hypnotic suggestions are given with and without a formal induction.Abstract:
All that Kirsch and colleagues are harping on is that a formal hypnotic induction is not needed to elicit hypnotic response among hypnotizable people. That is why results are often comparable when hypnotic suggestions are given with and without a formal induction. Furthermore, many of the so-called ‘nonstate’ studies do not take hypnotizability into account. Differences of any kind, with or without a hypnotic induction, are unlikely to emerge among people who are not at least somewhat hypnotizable. It may indeed be the case that many people are not aware of slipping in and out of hypnotic states because it is such a natural shift in consciousness among those with the capacity. People do so spontaneously during intense experiences of absorption (Tellegen and Atkinson, 1974; Tellegen, 1981), traumatic stress (Spiegel, 1991; Spiegel, 2001; Butler, Duran, et al., 1996), or ‘flow.’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Those with the ability may not identify it as particularly unusual because it is part of their routine cognitiveexperiential landscape. From the article: “When controlling for the effect of nonhypnotic suggestion, it is crucial that the exact same suggestion is given in both the hypnotic and nonhypnotic conditions. People can be remarkably sensitive to the wording of imaginative suggestions. If the wording is not the same in both conditions (e.g., Kosslyn, Thompson, et al., 2000; Iani, Ricci, et al., 2006), it can confound the nature of the induction of hypnosis and the nature of the suggestion. With such ambiguity, it is impossible to know whether differences in response are due to hypnosis or to differences in the wording of the suggestion.” Talk about ambiguity – I cannot make sense of the meaning of this paragraph, especially as a co-author of the Kosslyn et al. study. By definition, theread more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Hypnosis and the analgesic effect of suggestions.
TL;DR: A study investigating the effects of hypnotic analgesia on pain and distress and on the brain responses evoked by electric shocks and assessed with somatosensory event-related potentials (SERPs).
Journal ArticleDOI
Hypnotic history: a reply to critics.
TL;DR: This article responds to comments on Kirsch, Mazzoni, & Montgomery (2007) by reminding commentators of a long accepted axiom in hypnosis research: the effects of hypnotic suggestions cannot be attributed to hypnosis unless it is demonstrated that the same suggestion does not produce the effect outside of hypnosis.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Openness to absorbing and self-altering experiences ("absorption"), a trait related to hypnotic susceptibility.
Auke Tellegen,Gilbert Atkinson +1 more
Journal ArticleDOI
Hypnotic Visual Illusion Alters Color Processing in the Brain
Stephen M. Kosslyn,William L. Thompson,Maria F. Costantini-Ferrando,Nathaniel M. Alpert,David Spiegel +4 more
TL;DR: Observed changes in subjective experience achieved during hypnosis were reflected by changes in brain function similar to those that occur in perception, supporting the claim that hypnosis is a psychological state with distinct neural correlates and is not just the result of adopting a role.
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Hypnotizability and traumatic experience: A diathesis-stress model of dissociative symptomatology.
TL;DR: High hypnotizability may be a diathesis for pathological dissociative states, particularly under conditions of acute traumatic stress, according to several lines of evidence converge in support of the role of autohypnosis in pathological dissociation.
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Practicing the two disciplines for relaxation and enlightenment: Comment on "Role of the feedback signal in electromyograph biofeedback: The relevance of attention" by Qualls and Sheehan.
TL;DR: Using absorption, the trait studied by Qualls and Sheehan, as an example, it is shown how an empirically corroborated interactive trait concept can be used as a source of ideas for further Trait X Treatment studies and even for pure experimentation.