El papa Francisco:

Over the last 50 years, an increasing number of investigators have come to acknowledge the central importance of normal psychological processes in accounting for the behaviour and experiences of the hypnotic subject.

Indeed, many respected authorities go so far as to assert that the only unusual characteristics of hypnosis are the expectations and beliefs held by both the hypnotist and the subject.

Nobody, in fact, would seriously contest that everyday psychological processes are involved in responding to hypnotic procedures. Clearly one ingredient is selective and sustained attention, and, as we previously noted, absorption. At least with regard to neutral hypnosis, mental and physical relaxation is normally a major feature. Also, much of hypnosis requires sub-jects to deploy their imagination. Indeed, one of the major figures in the 'non-state' approach to hypnosis over the last half-century, the American psychologist T. X. Barber, made imagination (or the ability to fantasise real-istically) one of the central features of his understanding of hypnosis (see Barber et al 1974). In support of this is the higher-than-average hypnotis-ability of individuals who have a propensity for vivid fantasy (see Ch. 3).

Also, Barber and his colleagues (see Ch. 7) demonstrated the equivalence of 'task-motivating' instructions to traditional trance-inducing procedures in enhancing suggestibility.

Another ingredient of hypnosis is expectancy. The hypnotist creates the expectancy in subjects that they will have certain experiences and responses and, in a motivated subject, some would assert that this is suffi-cient for those experiences to occur. Although others would argue that expectancy effects are only a by-product of hypnosis, at least one authority, Irving Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut, considers that response expectancy is the essence of hypnosis (Kirsch 1991). He and others have demonstrated experimentally how responsiveness to hypnotic suggestion can be modified by manipulating expectancy on the subject's part.

In these accounts of hypnosis, therefore, no special processes are required to explain the observed phenomena. But how does one account for the out-of-the-ordinary effects of hypnosis outlined earlier? All of these appear to be radically different from one's everyday experience.

Compliance

If readers examine again the list of out-of-the-ordinary phenomena, one important consideration may present itself. The authenticity of each one relies on one crucial condition, namely that the subjects' behaviour and ver-bal accounts accurately represent their private experience. For example, if

subjects say they cannot see something in front of them, then it is assumed that they are being truthful, likewise if they say they cannot remember something they have just been told. Similarly, if subjects do not show evi-dence of discomfort when a painful stimulus is applied, we assume that it is because they are not in pain, not that they are consciously suppressing the reaction.

Now, one characteristic of good hypnotic subjects that experts are agreed on is that they are very vigilant and sensitive to whatever the hypnotist is expecting of them. Therefore, how can we be sure that the subject is not just being compliant? 'Compliant' here means that subjects give the overt response that the hypnotist appears to be expecting, but this conflicts with their subjective experience.

The answer is that it is very difficult to tell. Indeed, this fact is exploited in experiments on hypnosis that require non-hypnotised control subjects to be placed under the same demands as the hypnotised subjects. These 'simulators', as they are called, are instructed to do their best to fool the experimenter, so that the experimenter cannot detect that they are not hyp-notised. Setting aside Orne's experiments described above, invariably they succeed.

The obvious answer to our earlier question would seem to be that simu-lators know that they are simply complying and genuine hypnotic subjects know that they are really experiencing the suggested effects. Hence, all one has to do to find out who is who is to ask them. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as it seems. Let us explore why this is so.

Probably for all non-state theorists, it is not possible to explain hypnotic phenomena without reference to the subject's efforts to satisfy the demands and expectations that are created by the hypnotic context, that is the situ-ation in which it is conducted and the actions and communicsitu-ations of the hypnotist. Indeed, it needs always to be acknowledged that in most con-texts in which hypnotic subjects find themselves - the laboratory, the clinic, in front of an audience, in a forensic interview - there are social forces inde-pendent of hypnosis that exert a powerful influence on the individual's behaviour. Hence, there will be a marked tendency for people in such situ-ations not only to be coerced into doing whatever is required of them, but also to exhibit compliance, that is to engage in deception, in order to meet the contextual demands.

At least one theorist, the British psychologist Graham Wagstaff at the University of Liverpool considers that compliance is a major component of hypnotic responding (Wagstaff 1981,1991). Coming from the standpoint of role theory, two American psychologists, Theodore Sarbin and William Coe (Coe & Sarbin 1991, Sarbin & Coe 1972) have come to a similar conclusion.

For them, hypnotic subjects, to a greater or lesser degree, are so motivated to play the role of the good hypnotic subject that they will, where necessary, engage in deception to comply with that role.

What evidence informs us that these explanations require serious consid-eration? First, consider this experiment. Highly hypnotisable subjects were each given the suggestion that they were selectively deaf to their own voice.

Those subjects who indicated that they could not hear their voice were asked to speak under a condition called delayed authority feedback (DAF) where the subject's voice is played back to the subject over earphones with a slight delay. It is very difficult to speak normally under such conditions;

voice pitch and volume rise and speech become dysfluent. What happened in the case of those subjects who responded positively to the selective deaf-ness suggestion? DAF had the usual effects on their speech (Barber &

Calverley 1964, Scheibe et al 1968).

Now consider these experiments. Highly hypnotisable subjects responded positively to the suggestion of posthypnotic amnesia for some material presented during hypnosis. The suggestion had specified that the amnesia would immediately lift when the hypnotist gave a certain signal, but instead of giving the signal, the experimenters put increasing pressure on the subjects to be honest. One procedure involved connecting subjects to a 'lie detector'; in another condition, 'amnesic' subjects were informed that good hypnotic subjects would, in fact, be able to recall the material at that stage. What happened? Nearly all subjects exposed to such pressures breached their amnesia, whereas those who were not, did not do so (Coe &

Sluis 1989, Coe & Yashinski 1985, Howard & Coe 1980).

Now consider this interesting experiment. After testing, 15 out of 45 highly hypnotisable subjects professed that they saw nothing on a piece of paper on which was clearly written the number '8'. They had all previously been given the hypnotic suggestion that on opening their eyes they would see a piece of paper that was entirely blank. Here is a striking demonstra-tion of a negative hallucinademonstra-tion. However, the 15 subjects were then inter-viewed by a different experimenter who asked them to draw what they had seen. Before they did so, she informed them that people who are faking hypnosis always say that they see nothing, whereas genuine hypnotic sub-jects initially see something written on the paper which then fades from view. What happened next? Fourteen of the 15 subjects drew the number '8' (Spanos et al 1989).

Finally, consider this experiment. A group of highly hypnotisable subjects were informed, in the manner of Hilgard's hidden observer paradigm, that a hidden part of them was experiencing the actual pain as they were responding to suggestions of analgesia. As in Hilgard et al (1975), the hid-den observer responded with realistic ratings of the level of pain, in con-trast to the low levels reported overtly by the subjects. In another condition, subjects were again told that they possessed a hidden observer, but were not informed of the level of pain that it was supposed to experience. Finally, in a third condition, subjects were told that the hidden observer experi-enced even less pain than the 'hypnotised part' during the hypnoanalgesia

test. What were the ratings of the hidden observer in the second and third conditions?

The answers are that in the second condition the hidden observer's pain ratings did not differ from the rating of the 'hypnotised part', and in the third condition they were lower than those ratings (Spanos & Hewitt 1980, Spanos et al 1983).

What are these experiments telling us? One interpretation could be that individuals who are reported to be highly hypnotisable are complying, or less charitably, faking, in order to keep up the pretence of being a deeply hvpnotised person.