Contemporary hypnosis : the journal of the British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis最新文献

This study compared responses to a deafness suggestion amongst subjects administered one of three conditions: hypnosis and suggestion (i.e. reals), simulating instructions (i.e. simulators), or the suggestion alone without hypnosis (i.e. cognitives). Reals and simulators were administered a hypnotic induction, followed by a unilateral, left-ear deafness suggestion and the cognitive group was given the unilateral deafness suggestion without a hypnotic induction. All subjects were administered the Stenger Test of Audition (Stenger, 1907) during the deafness trial, and again on a final post-deafness trial. The Stenger Test is designed to assess the degree and veracity of deafness reports. Reported changes in deafness levels were indistinguishable amongst high-reals, low-cognitives and high-cognitives; all three of these groups reported lower levels of deafness compared to the simulating group. The latter demonstrated a pattern of response consistent with faking deafness, a response for which the Stenger Test is designed to measure. The findings lend support to the hypothesis that deafness does not uniquely characterize highly suggestible hypnotized subjects. In addition, the differences between reals and simulators reflect contextual demands on real subjects to report their deafness experience accurately. Copyright © 2004 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

This is a study of a case of post-herpetic neuralgia treated successfully with the use of self-hypnosis and client generated imagery in three sessions, the total treatment time being two hours. Paramount in the resolution was an acceptance of the symptom. Copyright © 2004 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

This study investigated the relationship between reported out-of-body experiences, certain psychological variables and personality characteristics. One hundred and sixty-seven participants completed a series of questionnaires to investigate differences amongst those participants reporting out-of-body experiences and those who were classified as believers or non-believers on: fantasy proneness, paranormal beliefs, psychological absorption, psychological association, somatoform dissociation, certain personality characteristics and OBE experience sensations. The findings revealed that experients were more fantasy prone, higher in their belief in the paranormal and displayed greater somatoform dissociation. Psychological absorption and dissociation were higher for believers than for either experients or non-believers and in relation to experients, fantasy proneness, paranormal beliefs and the personality dimensions of institution and feeling were significantly related, as were psychological absorption, psychological dissociation and somatoform dissociation. Copyright © 2004 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

This is a case study of a 53-year-old man who sought treatment for snoring. His motivation for treatment was that his wife could no longer tolerate the snoring so that he was forced to sleep in another room. The patient himself requested that I should use the direct suggestion that he turn over onto his side when snoring at night. It was shown that the snoring symptom lessened and his wife commented on this at a time when she was unaware that he was coming for treatment. The patient was also given direct suggestions to lose weight and, though at first he was reluctant to do this, later he was prepared to lose a stone in weight. After ten treatment sessions, the patient reported that the snoring symptom had been completely eliminated. At a follow-up telephone interview three months later the patient reported that his improvement had been maintained. Copyright © 2003 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

From 444 studies published until 2002 that investigated the efficacy of hypnosis, 57 randomized clinical studies were selected that compared patients treated exclusively by hypnosis to an untreated control group (or to a group of patients treated by conventional medical procedures). The 57 studies were integrated into a meta-analysis that yielded a weighted average post-treatment effect size of d = 0.56 (medium effect size). For hypnotic treatment of ICD-10 codable disorders (32 studies) the calculation of the weighted mean effect size resulted in d = 0.63. These estimates are conservative since all variables of a given study were used. Most of the studies employed methods of the classic approach to hypnosis. In order to obtain an estimate to which extent non-clinical factors (design-quality, way of comparison of dependent variables) have an influence on the effect sizes, effect sizes were computed for all studies of the original 444 studies that reported the necessary statistical information (N = 133). For those studies with an average effect size of d = 1.07 a massive influence of non-clinical factors was demonstrated with a range from d = 0.56 for randomized studies with group comparisons to d = 2.29 for non-randomized studies using pre-post-comparisons. Out of the 57 randomized studies, only 6 reported numerical values for the correlation between hypnotic suggestibility and treatment outcome with a mean correlation of r = 0.44. Copyright © 2003 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

There is currently agreement that, in addition to the changes in external behaviour, suggestions presented in a hypnotic context may give rise to changes in subjective experience. Yet, there is no general agreement about the theoretical framework within which these changes in experience should be explained. Though different theories about hypnosis overlap in many respects, there is still disagreement on whether reference to a specific internal state of the individual is necessary in order to explain these changes. We place the explanatory task in the context of a multilevel framework of explanation, which reveals that the disagreement between the ‘state’ and ‘nonstate’ view is about the level of description at which the phenomenon ‘hypnosis’ should be conceptualized. We propose a novel approach using the multilevel explanation which helps to formulate empirically testable hypotheses about the nature of hypnosis. We will outline the basic elements of such an approach and hope that our proposition will help hypnosis research to integrate with the multidisciplinary research on other phenomena of consciousness. Copyright © 2003 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis