Abstract
Hypnosis has had a long and controversial history in psychology, psychiatry and neurology, but the basic nature of hypnotic phenomena still remains unclear. Different theoretical approaches disagree as to whether or not hypnosis may involve an altered mental state. So far, a hypnotic state has never been convincingly demonstrated, if the criteria for the state are that it involves some objectively measurable and replicable behavioural or physiological phenomena that cannot be faked or simulated by non-hypnotized control subjects. We present a detailed case study of a highly hypnotizable subject who reliably shows a range of changes in both automatic and volitional eye movements when given a hypnotic induction. These changes correspond well with the phenomenon referred to as the “trance stare” in the hypnosis literature. Our results show that this ‘trance stare’ is associated with large and objective changes in the optokinetic reflex, the pupillary reflex and programming a saccade to a single target. Control subjects could not imitate these changes voluntarily. For the majority of people, hypnotic induction brings about states resembling normal focused attention or mental imagery. Our data nevertheless highlight that in some cases hypnosis may involve a special state, which qualitatively differs from the normal state of consciousness.
Highlights
Does a hypnotized person enter a special hypnotic state that is completely outside the range of normal mental states and cognition? This question has been under debate throughout the history of hypnosis research [1,2,3]
In the present study we focused on a classical behavioural marker of hypnosis, the ‘‘trance stare’’ (Hereafter Hypnotically Induced Stare, HIS, since we do not want to advocate the use of the term ‘‘trance’’, since it is a vague concept lacking definition in scientific literature)
Contrary to the control group, the pupil size (Figure 4) of TS-H was slightly diminished during hypnosis condition (HC) (913.1 6 464.3 arbitrary unit) as compared to normal condition (NC) (1071.6 6 572.7), whereas the reactions of the pupil size to changes in luminance were similar in TS-H and the control group
Summary
Does a hypnotized person enter a special hypnotic state that is completely outside the range of normal mental states and cognition? This question has been under debate throughout the history of hypnosis research [1,2,3]. Major psychological models of hypnosis called the Non-State View theories explicitly reject the existence of a special hypnotic state [2,3]. Instead, they assume that all hypnotic phenomena involve only cognitive and neural states similar to those occurring outside of hypnosis [3]. No hypnotic state fulfilling objective empirical criteria has ever been convincingly demonstrated. It is generally agreed that the existence of a hypnotic state could be defined empirically by behavioural criteria reflecting changed information processing that cannot be imitated or simulated by nonhypnotized control subjects [2,3]
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