Toward a new paradigm of hypnosis: A model combining the social-psychological and special-processes paradigms

Abstract

This paper examines research on three hypnotic phenomena: suggested amnesia, suggested analgesia, and «trance logic». For each case a social-psychological interpretation of hypnotic behavior as a voluntary response strategy is compared with the traditional special-process view that «good» hypnotic subjects have lost conscious control over suggestion-induced behavior. I conclude that it is inaccurate to describe hypnotically amnesic subjects as unable to recall the material they have been instructed to forget