Consciousness Consciousness is basically your ability to be aware of yourself and your environment. Orientation x3: Who you are, where you are, and time (when). Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness. It is basically separating your inner thoughts from your motor activity. What is hypnosis (in practice?). Hypnosis is the ability to get you almost asleep, but not all the way there. In fact, you don’t need a hypnotist in order to get into this state. Daydreaming is close to hypnosis. Too light a state of hypnosis and you will not be susceptible to suggestion at all. Too deep a state of hypnosis and you will fall asleep.

Hypnosis Falsehoods During hypnosis you will do whatever you’re told During hypnosis you will gain super strength During hypnosis you can be controlled like a robot It is possible to get “stuck” in a hypnotic state All you need is a hypnotic suggestion to act and you will not have to “think”, you’ll just act out whatever you were told under hypnosis (no matter how long ago that was) Under hypnosis you have no control over yourself

Some people are easier to hypnotize than others Some people are easier to hypnotize than others. Those individuals have a rich fantasy life and can be hypnotized easily (Walter Mitty). If you are afraid or resist relaxing, you can not be hypnotized. However, anyone can be hypnotized if they allow themselves to be. In order for hypnosis to work well (like with drug abuse or addiction), it is not enough to have a hypnotic suggestion, you must consciously practice what you are supposed to be doing also. If you are trying to battle addiction, you must think to yourself, “I will not……” Oddly, the likelihood that you will do something under hypnosis “that you would never do” in normal life is very low. In reality, if a person is hypnotized on a stage and clucks like a chicken, they probably would have done that anyway without the hypnosis.

Post Hypnotic Amnesia After being hypnotized, many people report that they cannot remember anything. This is probably due to 2 things: They DO remember, but they are blocking it out. They were told beforehand that they would NOT remember, so that the memory is suppressed or was never processed into memory.

Hypnosis can cloud a person’s own memory of things Hypnosis can cloud a person’s own memory of things. A person can become sure that something that was only talked about in therapy actually happened to them in real life. Because of this, post hypnotic testimony is not allowed in court. WHY? Therapists don’t mean to tamper with your memory, but it can (and does happen). A therapist asks you if something has happened in your past. You think about it and it becomes a possibility. The more you discuss it, the more likely it seems. Soon you have pictured it in your mind and it plants itself firmly in your memory. Now you can’t tell the real memory from the false one.

Constructed memory Creating false memories is not as difficult as it sounds. Our mind is always “filling in the gaps” with memory. There are parts that you don’t remember, so your brain fills in what it thinks is most likely. Think about this: You see something that you want The more you think about it, the more excited that you get The more excited about it you get, the more you think about it Eventually, you convince yourself that you need / want it so bad that the negative consequence doesn’t seem so bad. When you find you don’t like that thing at all (or it ended up being much more expensive than you thought) it’s called “Buyer Remorse”

Experiments Orne & Evans “Boiling Acid trick” People were hypnotized and then told that “acid” was going to be applied to their skin. A single drop of ordinary tap water was placed on their skin. When the water was wiped away, there was a bright red mark left on their skin where the water was (as if they had been chemically burned) Under hypnosis the immune system can have very strong reactions (pos. / neg.) Under hypnosis pain can be significantly dulled

Ernst Hilgard “Ice / Pain” experiment Hilgard hypnotized people and then submerged one of their arms in ice water. It was found that people who were hypnotized reported very little discomfort. Also, it was noticed that subjects sometimes seemed to be able to respond in way that they weren’t supposed to while hypnotized. Hilgard came to believe that there was a “hidden” observer in the brain. A part of the brain that was always awake and aware, even if the person was hypnotized or even asleep. This might explain how we can have a conversation when we’re asleep, or that we “know” what noise we heard when we wake up shortly after hearing it.