Q: What is hypnosis?

A: HYPNOSIS is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as:
“Sleep artificially produced. State produced by hypnotism. Derived from Greek word HYPNOS - meaning sleep” During hypnosis however, the subject is not asleep, or unconscious.

There have been many attempts to define ‘hypnosis’ over the years. The following is taken from the draft BPS Statement produced by BSECH, September 2000: “ The term “hypnosis” denotes an interaction between one person, the “hypnotist”, and another person or people, the “subject” or “subjects”. In this interaction the hypnotist attempts to influence the subjects’ perceptions, feelings, thinking and behaviour by asking them to concentrate on ideas and images that may evoke the intended effects. The verbal communications that the hypnotist uses to achieve these effects are termed “suggestions”. Suggestions differ from everyday kinds of instructions in that a “successful” response is experienced by the subject as having a quality of involuntariness or effortlessness. Subjects may learn to go through the hypnotic procedures on their own, and this is termed “self hypnosis”.”

A hypnotic subject is said to be in trance. Trance is a particular frame of mind characterised by focused attention, disattention to extraneous stimuli, and absorption in some activity, image, thought or feeling. People can and do enter this state spontaneously everyday, for example being lost in thought or day dreaming, absorption in sport, reading, listening to music etc, driving for long distances and not re calling the route taken, being absorbed in meditation/relaxation procedures. Often in these examples there will time distortion in that the passage of time is underestimated. Hypnotic procedures formalise this process of ‘entrancement’ and intensify it. Potential hypnotic subjects are given a series of instructions which, if they follow them, are intended to assist them in achieving a trance state. Many people who are hypnotised are not aware of being in a ‘hypnotic state’. This is because they expect to feel very different in hypnosis. They expect to feel ‘out, under, or zonked out’, which does not occur in hypnosis.

It is important to remember that the hypnosis does not constitute a form of treatment or therapy in its own right. Hypnosis is an adjunct, providing a context for the delivery of the treatment or therapy. Therapy incorporating hypnosis can only be as effective as the underlying therapeutic approach permits.