Hypnosis and consciousness: a structural model

Abstract

AbstractA model of consciousness and hypnosis is presented which has its origins in a series of neuropsychological studies on the role of neocortex in associative learning and memory in animals. It is essentially an evolutionary and hierarchical description of increasingly more sophisticated levels of information processing in vertebrate brains which places the more recently evolved systems that are associated with subjective experience into a more meaningful perspective. With the evolution of representational systems (consciousness systems) with the capacity for parallel processing a need was created for an executive control system to prioritize some currently active representations as the basis for action, particularly in novel situations. Consequently, a major function of the executive control system is in the re‐representation of a selected subset of these representations for further processing in a subsystem (self‐awareness system) with priority access to action. Representations that enter the latter subsystem constitute the contents of our subjective experience. In hypnosis, it is argued, influence is exerted through the executive control system to orchestrate the re‐representation of information into the self‐awareness system and hence to influence the nature of subjective experience. Important among the pressures acting on the executive control system are those identified by sociocognitive theories as capable of influencing hypnotic enactment and experience. Copyright © 1999 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis