When people think of hypnotism, they usually think of a doctor swinging his pocket watch back and forth as his unsuspecting patient falls into a deep, sleeplike fugue. The doctor then forces the hypnotized patient to cluck like a chicken, impersonate Abraham Lincoln, or do other silly parlor tricks. Eventually, at the sound of a handclap, the patient wakes up, with no recollection of the entire scene.
It’s a terrifically entertaining story—too bad that it’s so terrifically inaccurate.
Real hypnosis is far less entertaining. It’s a trance-like mental state where a person is deeply relaxed, extremely attentive, and extremely open to suggestion. Trained hypnotists have a variety of techniques that they use to put people “under,” or bring on the state of focused concentration that exposes the unconscious. In this state, the person blocks out distracting stimuli and becomes incredibly focused, receiving and processing the hypnotist’s suggestions without interference from the conscious mind. Being hypnotized isn’t terribly different from focusing intently on a movie or “losing yourself” in a daydream.
Because of its representation in popular culture, there are many myths surrounding hypnosis, making it sound far more sinister and sensational than it really is. Most people believe that when under hypnosis, a person is asleep or develops short-term amnesia. In reality, hypnotized people are awake and aware of their surroundings at all times, and they usually remember the entire experience. A hypnotized person is not controlled by the hypnotherapist like a puppet, or forced to do anything he would not ordinarily do. The person retains his free will. It’s also impossible to be hypnotized without consent, because successful hypnotisms depend on the person’s willingness to participate.
Who Gets Very Sleepy?
In order to be successfully hypnotized, the subject must be open to the experience— wanting to be hypnotized and believing it’s possible. She also needs to feel comfortable and relaxed. Psychologists have studied personality traits that correlate with high levels of hypnotizeability, and they’ve discovered that traits like trustfulness, aggressiveness, gullibility, intelligence, and imagination have no bearing on whether a person can be hypnotized. According to Psychology Today, the best indicators that someone will respond to hypnotism are a tendency to become absorbed in fantasy or daydreaming and a talent for blocking outside stimuli and achieving single-minded focus. These people, who are also usually open and receptive, are the most suggestible.
Because the subject’s attitude is so important to the success of the hypnotism, Stanford University psychologists developed tests in the 1950s that measure a potential subject’s ability to be hypnotized. In these tests, potential subjects are asked a series of questions and given an assortment of small tasks, then scored on a scale of zero to twelve. Most people score somewhere in the middle, but 95 percent of people tested respond positively to at least one of the questions. This indicates that most people can be hypnotized, at least to some extent, but everybody’s response is different, and some people have trouble relaxing and quieting their mind.
