Psychology - Hypnosis

Front 1

History of hypnosis

People in early hypnosis

Back 1

Franz Mesmer, Austrian physician, 1784
he believed that every being was surrounded by a magnetic field and that illness was the result of disruption of the magnetic field. To restore a sick person one can use magnets or a healthy person...called it "mesmerism". He would pass his hands near and around a sick person. He eventually went to Paris (Austrian thought he was a little too "out there"). Mesmer was very well received in Paris but when King Louis heard of mesmerism he formed an investigative board (that included Benjamin Franklin) and they looked into de-bunking Mesmer with an experiment of magnetized trees. It was belief, imagination and expectation that was facilitating healing NOT Mesmer's magnetism.

James Braid 1840's
divorces techniques from magnetic components. His wife was looking at a plate and entered into a comatose-like state - a "nervous sleep" which he called Hypnosis (after the Greek word for sleep)

James Esdaile, surgeon
used hypnosis for operations w/o anesthesia in India

Clark Hall (Stanford and Yale)
writes "Hypnosis and Suggestability" draws conclusions and backs them up with scientific research. Hypnosis is not a form of sleep but a state of heightened suggestibility. Yale was scared and felt that it was too dangerous...no more research or participants from Uni

WWI: clinical interest in hypnosis following WWI to help with PSTD

Ernest Hilgard (and others) create the measures of the "hypnotic suggestibility scale" and is the first to measure and compare person A and B. Best participants were those who were willing to be hypnotized, who were able to focus and block out peripheral awareness, who are more open to new experiences and capable of fantasy.

Front 2

Problems with defining hypnosis

Back 2

Official APA Division 30 definition for hypnosis is very long and boring. Mostly tries to define it as what it is not rather than what it is.

Anything could be hypnosis because it is so broad and can be so similar to anything linked with imagination, relaxation, etc.

Front 3

Myths about hypnosis

Back 3

It is not sleep, in fact one is very much awake as EEG shows that people are in an almost waking state.

Can hypnosis make you do something you don't want to do?
Well, yes, but only in as much as anything else can make upi do something you don't want to do. Hypnosis, alone and by itself, cannot make you do something...instead it is things like social pressure, an authority figure, etc. that can effect whether or not we do and do not do something.

Is hypnosis good for memory retrieval?
Not really because people are too vulnerable and suggestible so hypnosis is not reliable for memory retrieval.

Front 4

Theories about hypnosis

Back 4

Theory 1:
Altered State, hypnosis is a means of dissociation

Theory 2:
Type of role-play, such as ZImbardo's Prison Study, method actors.

*there was great argument between both theory holders

Front 5

The hypnotic phenomenon

Back 5

The hypnotic induction (assessing the expectation, heightened state of suggestibility, deep relaxation, intense focus)

Idiomotor movement (by thinking about the movement, the movement starts to happen)

Using dissociative language ("your" left hand, "your" right hand)

The "non-funny" joke (the whale is the largest animal)

Positive Hallucination (seeing something that isn't there)

Negative Hallucination (not seeing something that is sensed or that is actually there)

Post-hypnotic Suggestion (ex, Brittany and "i love bucks"

Amnesia (forgot her name, could not access it)

Demonstration of Blind and Deaf

Translogic