Characteristics[edit]
A person in a state of hypnosis has focused attention, and has
increased suggestibility.[11]
The hypnotized individual appears to heed only
the communications of the hypnotist and typically responds in an uncritical,
automatic fashion while ignoring all aspects of the environment other than
those pointed out by the hypnotist. In a hypnotic state an individual tends to
see, feel, smell, and otherwise perceive in accordance with the hypnotist's
suggestions, even though these suggestions may be in apparent contradiction to
the actual stimuli present in the environment. The effects of hypnosis are not
limited to sensory change; even the subject's memory and awareness of self may
be altered by suggestion, and the effects of the suggestions may be extended
(posthypnotically) into the subject's subsequent waking activity.[12]
It could be said that hypnotic suggestion is explicitly intended
to make use of the placebo effect. For
example, in 1994, Irving Kirsch characterised
hypnosis as a "nondeceptive placebo", i.e., a method that openly
makes use of suggestion and employs methods to amplify its effects.[13][14]
In Trance on Trial, a 1989 text directed at the
legal profession, legal scholar Alan W. Scheflin and psychologist Jerrold Lee Shapiro observed
that the "deeper" the hypnotism, the more likely a particular
characteristic is to appear, and the greater extent to which it is manifested.
Scheflin and Shapiro identified 20 separate characteristics that hypnotized
subjects might display:[15] "dissociation";
"detachment"; "suggestibility", "ideosensory
activity";[16] "catalepsy";
"ideomotor responsiveness";[17]"age
regression"; "revivification";
"hypermnesia";
"[automatic or suggested] amnesia"; "posthypnotic responses";
"hypnotic analgesia and anesthesia"; "glove
anesthesia";[18] "somnambulism";[19] "automatic writing"; "time
distortion"; "release of inhibitions"; "change in capacity
for volitional activity"; "trance logic";[20] and "effortless image