Page 166 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

Mysteries of the Mind 147

ple, according to extensive experimentation, automatons who would obey a hypnotist’s A patient is hypnotized
place somewhere in the middle range, between commands to violate their moral or cultural into a state of rigidity.
5 and 7. ideals. Instead, the subjects remained active (FORTEAN PICTURE LIBRARY)
Among the results of the studies of problem solvers while responding to the sug-
Weitzenhoffer and Hilgard were demonstra- gestions of the hypnotist.
tions that a person’s ability to be hypnotized is By using hypnosis, the scientists at Stanford
unrelated to his or her personality traits. Earli- were able to create transient hallucinations,
er suggestions that those individuals who could false memories, and delusions in some subjects.
be hypnotized were gullible, submissive, imagi- By using positron emission tomography, which
native, or socially compliant proved unsup- directly measures metabolism, the researchers
ported by the data. People who had the ability were able to determine that different regions of
to become absorbed in such activities as read- a subject’s brain would be activated when he or
ing, enjoying music, or daydreaming did she was asked simply to imagine a sound or
appear to be the more hypnotizable subjects. sight than when the subject was hallucinating
Another objection by the skeptics that the under hypnotic suggestion.
process of hypnosis was simply a matter of the The mechanisms by which the process of
subject having a vivid imagination also hypnosis can somehow convince certain sub-
proved to be a false assumption. Many highly jects not to yield to pain remain a mystery.
imaginative people tested by the experi- Many researchers theorize some hypnotic sub-
menters proved to be bad hypnotic subjects, jects and experienced meditators can allow
and there appears to be no relation between the altered state of consciousness to bring
the ability to imagine and the ability to about an analgesic effect in brain centers
become a good hypnotic subject. higher than those that register the sensations

The Stanford experiments also learned of pain. A 1996 National Institutes of Health
that hypnotized subjects were not passive panel assessed hypnosis to be an effective

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