The most common misconception about hypnosis is that trance, hallucina-tory imagery, the will to carry out suggestions—indeed all the phenomena of hypnosis—emanate from the hypnotist. In fact, it is the subject who produces these. Very few people cannot be hypnotized at all, but the number is simi-larly small who can experience the deepest hypnotic phenomena–eyes open hallucinations, negative hallucinations (failing to perceive something right in front of oneself), suggested amnesia and analgesia sufficient for surgery.
Hypnotizability is not a present/absent dichotomy but a continuum. Many traits historically were believed to determine hypnotizability such as hysteric personality, passivity, “weak will,” and “need to please.” However, these actually bear little or no correlation when subjected to modern research anal-yses (see Spanos and Barber, 1972, review for a good outline of what doesn’t correlate with hypnotizability). This chapter summarizes the cluster of traits that do predict response to hypnotic induction.
Through the late twentieth century, studies on what did correlate with hypnotizability began to converge on a trait—or group of closely linked traits—that was essentially like a preexisting disposition to informal trance: vividness of imagination, absorption in imagination, and ability to block out external stimuli. Josephine Hilgard (1970, 1979) found the childhood histories of her deep trance subjects were more likely than less hypnotizable subjects to involve imaginary playmates, parental encourage-ment of fantasy play, and a hearty appetite for fiction. Many high suscepti-bles also recalled being punished harshly and utilizing their fantasy ability to tune out the punishment while it was occurring or to engage in self-soothing later. As adults, the high susceptibles were more likely than others to be avid consumers of drama, film, and fiction, to daydream more, and to be more creative.
Hypnotic susceptibility also correlates with Tellegan and Atkinson’s (1974) scale of absorption in imaginative activity, containing questions about vividness of imagery, intensity of emotional involvement in fantasy, tendency to tune out external stimuli when imaging, and experiences of syn-esthesia. Absorption has also been found by multiple regression analyses to account for factors such as positive attitudes toward hypnosis, which in turn have been linked to hypnotic susceptibility (Spanos & McPeake, 1975).
Wilson and Barber (1981, 1983) studied 27 women, representing about the 4 percent most hypnotically responsive, and reported that all but one of them were distinguished by a constellation of fantasy-related character-istics: (1) They spent much of their waking time engaged in fantasy; most said they fantasized at least 90 percent of their waking time simultaneous with carrying on real-life activities. (2) They reported their imagery to be every bit as vivid as their perceptions of reality; 65 percent said this was the case with their eyes open; 35 percent had to close their eyes for the visual component of their imagery to look completely real. (3) They expe-rienced physiologic responses to their images such as needing a blanket to watch Dr. Zhivago on TV in a warm room, vomiting when they (mistak-enly) thought they had eaten spoiled food, and being able to reach orgasm through fantasy with no physical stimulation. The majority of their female subjects had experienced physiological symptoms of false pregnancy at least once when they had reason to suspect they might be pregnant. (4) They had unusually early ages for their first memory, many dating back to infancy. Only one of Wilson and Barber’s high hypnotizable subjects did not display this constellation of fantasy-related characteristics, and only a small minority of their low and medium susceptible subjects dis-played any of them.
Their study used both traditional and nontraditional scales (Barber &
Wilson, 1978) in selecting the best hypnotic subjects including the rather idiosyncratic variable of the ability to go into a trance instantly or quickly as one of their criteria. This is not a criterion for any of the most widely used scales of hypnotic susceptibility, which typically give the subjects about fifteen minutes of induction before beginning the specific suggestions whose responses will be scored for hypnotizability.
Several other studies examined the relationship between fantasy and hypnotizability—all finding a positive correlation but to varying degrees.
Lynn and Rhue (1986) developed a “fantasy-proneness” scale based closely on the characteristics Wilson and Barber had described. They found that 80 percent of fantasy-prone subjects scored as highly hypnotizable, while only about 35 percent of the non-fantasizers did so. Lynn and Rhue (1988) and Huff and Council (1987) found that high and medium fantasizers did not differ on hypnotic responsiveness, while low fantasizers were less hyp-notically susceptible. Spanos (1989) found an even lower degree of correla-tion between fantasy proneness and hypnotic susceptibility.
Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy 16
Several dreamlike qualities have been suggested to be more characteristic of daydreams in high hypnotizable subjects than of those in low hypnotiz-ables. In one of my own studies (Barrett, 1990), I found highly hypnotizable subjects to be likelier than medium hypnotizables to have daydreams con-taining magical or surreal content, abrupt transitions of scenes, sense of wak-ening with a start at their conclusions, and occasional amnesia for content.
Hartmann (1984) has described frequent nightmare sufferers as having
“thinner boundaries” in many senses including those between sleeping and waking. He reported that the concept “daymare” was a meaningful one to nightmare sufferers only; they reported their fantasies could take on very terrifying turns of content and be difficult for them to terminate. Frequency of nightmares correlates with hypnotic depth (Belicki & Belicki, 1984) as does Hartmann’s measure for thinness of boundaries (Barrett, 1989).
Other categories of dreams that research has found to correlate with hyp-notizability include dreams that the dreamers believed to be precognitive and dreams in which the dreamer experiences himself or herself as outside their body (Zamore & Barrett, 1989). The same study found Tellegan’s Absorption Scale to correlate with dream recall, ability to dream on a cho-sen topic, reports of conflict resolution in dreams, creative ideas occurring in dreams, amount of color in dreams, pleasantness of dreams, bizarreness of dreams, flying dreams, and precognitive dreams.
In two further studies that I describe in detail in this chapter, I exam-ined to what extent other highly hypnotizable people resembled Wilson and Barber’s fantasizers and what traits might characterize deep trance sub-jects who were not extreme fantasizers. As being able to enter a trance instantly was the most idiosyncratic of Barber and Wilson’s criteria, it was hypothesized that this might distinguish fantasizers from other deep trance subjects. In addition to exploring the replicability of Wilson and Barber’s findings about fantasy activity among high hypnotizables, other points of interest were characteristics of hypnotic experience and how these interact with a person’s waking fantasy style.
For the first of these studies, 34 extremely hypnotizable subjects were selected from among approximately 1,200 undergraduate subject volunteers who had been hypnotized in the course of other research projects and dem-onstrations in classroom and dormitory settings over a several year period.
They were selected using two standard scales: The Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (Shor & Orne, 1962); and The Stanford Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C (Weitzenhoffer & Hilgard, 1962).
All subjects scored either 11 or 12 on both scales. This constituted a very similar criterion for hypnotic susceptibility to Wilson and Barber’s with the exception of not requiring instant or rapid hypnotic induction.
Subjects were hypnotized a total of three to four times, depending on what the protocol in the screening project had been. Their hypnotic expe-riences included both ones in which an amnesia suggestion and removal Dissociaters, Fantasizers, and Their Relation to Hypnotizability 17
cue were given and ones in which they were not, age regression sugges-tions, a hypnotic hallucination of a candle that they were asked to blow out, a post-hypnotic hallucination of a person they knew arriving at the ex-perimental room to talk with them, and an attempted instant re-hypnosis followed by several measures of trance depth.
For that first study, these high-hypnotizable subjects were interviewed from two and a half to four hours and were asked about the fantasy-related phenomena that Wilson and Barber and J. Hilgard reported. They were also asked about the “dreamlike” qualities of surrealism, abrupt transitions within daydreams, startling out of them, and occasional amnesia for con-tent that my earlier research had found (Barrett 1979, 1990). They were then asked about the “daymare” phenomena that Hartmann (1984) found among nightmare sufferers. They were also asked about how real and/or involuntary the hypnotic phenomena they experienced felt and about how much hypnosis was like other experiences.
FANTASIZERS
The first subgroup of deep trance subjects was selected by their ability to enter trance instantly, since Wilson and Barber had used this as a criteria
TABLE 2.1 Waking Imagery and Hypnotic Characteristics of Fantasizers Compared with Dissociaters
Characteristic
Fantasizers (12 Women, 7 Men)
Dissociaters
(10 Women, 5 Men) Chi Square df = 1
Daydream amnesia 3 16 14 1 15.22**
Earliest memory > 3 0 19 11 4 14.44**
for the group they characterized. These 19 people, 7 male and 12 female, also had a number of other characteristics that distinguished them from subjects who did not achieve their deep trances immediately. Most of these character-istics clustered around vividness of fantasy processes, so they are referred to for the rest of this chapter by Wilson and Barber’s term fantasizers.
Vivid Imagery and Fantasies
Fantasizers scored extremely high on Tellegen and Atkinson’s Absorp-tion Scale: 32–37 of 37 items, with a mean of 34. During their interviews, they described five related characteristics of fantasy-proneness that Wilson and Barber found most characteristic of their group: extensive history of childhood fantasy play, majority of adult time devoted to fantasizing, hal-lucinatory vividness of imagery, physiological effects from their imaging, and a variety of “psychic” experiences.
They all described rich fantasy life as children. They had at least one, most many, imaginary companions. These included a real playmate who had moved out of state, a princess, an entire herd of wild horses, and space aliens among others. The fantasizers greatly enjoyed stories, movies, and drama; they tended to prolong their experience of these by incorporating them into their fantasy lives, providing another source of imaginary com-panions. For example, one subject described that, after seeing the movie Camelot, he had spent two years engaging daily in an elaborate scenario in which he was the son of Arthur and Guinevere and commanded the king’s court. Periodically he would appoint new knights of his own invention to the Roundtable. His real-life brother was cast in the role of Mordred, but all the other characters were either from the film, or completely from his own imagination. The fantasizers described these imaginary companions as every bit as vivid as real persons. In addition to ongoing fantasies, these subjects described a wide variety of brief fantasy as children, such as watching a friend blow soap bubbles and suddenly developing a fantasy about there being a fairy that lived inside one of the bubbles. Seventeen of them found this changing of realities at will so compelling that before encountering its formal philosophical discussions they had formulated their own versions of the famous musings of Chuang-tzu: “One night, I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering here and there, content with my lot. Suddenly I awoke and was Chuang-tzu again. Who am I in reality: A butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang-tzu, or Chuang-tzu dreaming that I was a butterfly?” (trans. 1970)
Parents of fifteen of the fantasizers were remembered as explicitly encouraging their fantasy. On a rainy day when one boy was bored, his mother would begin play suggestions with, “You could pretend to be . . .”
Another said her parents’ formula response to her requests for expensive toys was, “You could take this . . . (household object) and with a little Dissociaters, Fantasizers, and Their Relation to Hypnotizability 19
imagination, it would look just like . . . (that $200-whatever-Susie-just-got).” And she reported, “this worked for me—although Susie couldn’t quite always see it.” One mother very specifically trained hypnotic ability by reading trance exercises about age regression, being an animal, speeding up time, and so forth to her son from the book Mind Games (Masters &
Houston, 1972).
Their adult fantasy continued to occupy the majority of their waking hours. They all fantasized throughout the performance of routine tasks and during any unoccupied time. Six of them said they did not “fantasize” or
“daydream” when dealing with the most demanding tasks but still contin-ued to have vivid images in response to any sensory words. The other thir-teen said they continued to have elaborate ongoing fantasy scenarios.
Some experienced them superimposed and intertwined with the ongoing tasks: “I’m listening to my boss’s directions carefully, but I’m seeing the Saturday Night Live character ‘Mockman’ next to him mocking all his gestures.” Others experienced the fantasies as simultaneous or separate, happening “on a side state,” as one subject described it: “somehow I’m see-ing the real world and experiencsee-ing my fantasy one at the same time.”
Fantasizers also continued to have momentary vivid fantasies inspired by ongoing events. One young man had come to the interview directly from an archery class where he described that as he shot arrows at a target and watched others do so, he would briefly experience himself as the arrow being hurled by the force of the string through the air and felt himself piercing the fiberboard target. Another described that while passing up chocolate cake at lunch because of a diet, she momentarily “became” a microbe burrowing through the cake, tasting and smelling it as she dev-oured it, and feeling it squish around her body. She reported experiencing a sense of satiation with this fantasy indulgence.
All of these subjects described some of the dreamlike, surreal content, sudden transitions, and surprise that two earlier studies had reported for deep trance subjects’ daydreams (Barrett, 1979, 1990). When asked whether they “startled” out of daydreams that they could not recall, four said they experienced this occasionally, although usually they had a “tip of the tongue” feeling about the fantasy and its memory would “come back”
to them shortly. Seven of them reported that they occasionally had fright-ening content that seemed not to be under their control as in the
“daymares” reported by Hartmann’s nightmare sufferers.
Like Wilson and Barber’s subjects, they experienced physical effects from their imagery. Seven of the twelve female fantasizers had experienced false pregnancy symptoms. Even more of Wilson’s subjects had experienced some such symptoms and full-blown cases (so to speak) presenting for treatment have been linked to high hypnotic susceptibility (Barrett, 1989). All of the fantasizers, male and female, described sometimes experiencing physical sensations to visual stimuli, such as shivering when seeing a painting of the Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy 20
Alps; feeling hot, dry, and impulsively getting something to drink in response to looking at desert photos; and getting nauseated from motion sickness at a film set on a tossing submarine. Ten of them said they tried to avoid either fictional depictions or real newsreel footage of violence and injuries because they experienced pain akin to real injuries. For four of them, this might precipitate ill feelings for hours or days. One such subject who had long ago learned to avoid television news, described several weeks previously that she had been watching a nationally televised swim meet in which a diver had unexpectedly been injured. As she described the scene, she clutched herself tightly, grimaced as if in pain, tears came to her eyes, and she described this as minimal compared to her reaction when watching the scene that had left her shaken and physically aching for hours.
Fourteen of the fantasizers could experience orgasm through fantasy in the absence of any physical stimulation, and all of them reported frequent, vivid, and varied sexual fantasies. Although most of them tended to have fairly active and varied sex lives, all of them had fantasies of many more variations than they actually engaged in. Seventeen of this group were exclusively heter-osexual, and two males were predominantly homosexual with a bit of hetero-sexual experience. However, all of the women and two of the heterohetero-sexual men mentioned homosexual fantasies. Other fantasy partners included ani-mals, children, statues, and a variety of suggestively shaped inanimate objects.
Wilson and Barber reported that their subjects often obtained greater enjoyment from their fantasized sex than their actual sexual relationships.
When our group was queried, they said this was not a meaningful compari-son as their two categories of sexual experience were fantasy only versus fantasy superimposed on real activity, of which the latter was often pre-ferred. Real partners were heard to utter imaginary sexy comments, were dressed in hallucinatory erotic attire, had movie stars’ faces (and occasion-ally other parts) superimposed onto theirs, were joined by additional imagi-nary partners, and were transformed into science-fiction creatures and circus animals. Only two subjects (one male, one female) said they tried not to fantasize during real sex, and both of them said they often failed.
Fantasizers all had some experiences that they considered “psychic”: 14 had premonitions about events that were going to happen, 12 said that they could sometimes sense what significant others were thinking or feeling at a distance, 9 had dreams that came true, 13 had out-of-body experiences, and 8 had seen ghosts. Fifteen firmly believed these experiences were real paranormal phe-nomena, and the remaining four said they were undecided about their reality.
Early Memories and Parental Discipline
The earliest memories of the fantasizers were all identified as being before the age of three, and before the age of two for eleven subjects. For the purposes of this study, subjectively believed age and detail of first Dissociaters, Fantasizers, and Their Relation to Hypnotizability 21
memories were compared. This study was not set up to definitely check whether the ages were accurate or whether indeed the memory was directly recalled rather than fantasized from stories told by parents. For randomly selected college students, the average of subjectively recalled first memory is about three and a half and two to six is the usual range (Barrett, 1980, 1983). The youngest memory that had a specific time estimate was of age eight months. This subject remembered two scenes: one in which he was being carried by his father down a hospital corridor and another in which he was lying on his back with one green-gowned man prodding his stomach while another pressed a plastic mask over his nose and mouth. He remembered excruciating pain in both scenes. He was quite convinced that these were memories of an appendectomy he had undergone at eight months, and that he had remembered details of this, which surprised his parents the first time they discussed it with him.
More typically, the incidents were too minor to be remembered by parents or to be tied to an exact date but sounded like those of a preverbal
More typically, the incidents were too minor to be remembered by parents or to be tied to an exact date but sounded like those of a preverbal