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The "implied directive" is a label we are proposing for a fairly common type of indirect suggestion that is in current use in clinical hypnosis (Cheek and LeCron, 1968). The implied directive usually has three parts: (1) a time-binding introduction, (2) the implied (or assumed) suggestion, and (3) a behavioral response to signal when the implied suggestion has been accomplished. We may thus analyze an implied directive from this session as follows:

As soon as you know

(1) A time binding introduction that focuses the patient on the suggestion to follow

only you or I, or only you and my voice are here

(2) The implied (or assumed) suggestion

your right hand will descend to your thigh.

(3) The behavioral response signaling that the suggestion has been accomplished. An implied directive frequently used by Rossi to end a hypnotherapeutic session is as follows:

As soon as your unconscious knows

(1) A time-binding introduction that facilitates dissociation and reliance on the unconscious.

it can again return to this state comfortably and easily to do constructive work the next time we are together,

(2) The implied suggestion for easy reentry to trance phrased in a therapeutically motivating manner.

you will find yourself awakening feeling refreshed and alert

(3) The behavioral response signaling that the above suggestion has been accomplished.

When the behavioral response signaling the accomplishment is an inevitable response that the patient wants to happen (as in the above examples), we have a situation where the behavioral response also has motivating properties for the accomplishment of the

suggestion. The behavioral response signaling the accomplishment of the suggestion takes place on an involuntary or unconscious level. Thus the unconscious that carries out the suggestion also signals when it is accomplished.

The implied directive engenders a covert state of internal learning. It is covert because no one can tell it is occurring since it is a series of responses taking place entirely within the subject, frequently without conscious awareness and usually not remembered after trance. Therapist and patient only know it is completed when the requested automatic response (e.g., finger signaling, head nodding, awakening from trance) takes place, signaling the end of the internal state of learning.

The implied directive is thus a way of facilitating an intense state of internal learning or problem solving. We may suppose that all of a subject's available mental resources (e.g., stored memories, sensory and verbal associational patterns, various forms of previous learning, etc.) are marshalled toward a creative state of learning and problem solving. Since recent experiments in the neurophysiology of learning suggest that new proteins are actually synthesized in the appropriate brain cells during learning (Rossi, 1973a), we may speculate that the implied directive facilitates the internal synthesis of new protein structures that could function as the biological basis of new behavior and phenomenological experience in the patient.

The implied directive is particularly interesting because of its similarity to the technique of biofeedback. In most forms of biofeedback an electronic device is used to signal when an internal response has been accomplished. With the implied directive the patient's own overt and autonomous behavioral response is used to signal when the internal response has been accomplished. The formal similarities between them may be listed as follows:

1. Consciousness is given a task it does not know how to accomplish by itself.

Raise (or lower) your blood pressure 10 points. Warm your right hand and cool your left.

Increase the alpha of your right cortex.

Decrease the muscle tension in your forehead.

2. Consciousness is given a signal enabling it to recognize when any behavior changes are being made in the desired direction of response. In biofeedback this is accomplished by an electronic transducer that measures the response (blood pressure, body temperature, alpha waves, or muscle tension in the above examples) and makes any change in this response evident on a meter that allows the subjects to monitor their own behavior. In the implied directive, by contrast, the patient's own unconscious system serves as the transducer indicating when the desired internal response (blood pressure change, body temperature, etc.) has been made and translates it into an overt behavior signal that consciousness can recognize.

The advantages of the implied directive over biofeedback are obvious. The latter is a fairly cumbersome technique that requires sophisticated and expensive electronic equipment. It is limited to those responses that can actually be measured. By contrast, the implied

directive requires no equipment and is limited only by the ingenuity and imagination of both therapist and patient. Although no comparative studies have been made as yet, one might expect that the electronic equipment of biofeedback might ensure a greater reliability of

control than is possible with the implied directive. For this, indeed, is the major problem in utilizing any method of hypnosis: the relative reliability of response between different individuals and within the same individual on different occasions. It may well be that this reliability problem can be dealt with in part by utilizing this analogy with biofeedback. The reliability of biofeedback is due to the reliability of the signaling system provided by the electronic instrumentation. Hypnotic procedures can be made more reliable by having

patients remember and report experiential and behavioral changes that initiate or accompany the desired hypnotic response. These changes may then function as signals to reinstate the hypnotic response on another occasion. In this case hypnosis and biofeedback share another common aim: to establish a connection between a conscious thought or behavior and a previously nonvoluntary response.