Contemporary Hypnosis (1999)

Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 157–159

DISCUSSION COMMENTARY

THE VARIETIES OF HYPNOTIC EXPERIENCE

Stanley Krippner

Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco, USA

T.X. Barber’s investigations of hypnotic phenomena have considerably changed the

direction of the field, in my opinion for the better. Some of his early papers (for
example, Barber, 1962) placed the term ‘hypnosis’ in quotation marks, a ploy that
angered many of my friends. To me, however, it was a reminder that ‘hypnosis’ is a
theoretical construct and that, in another time and place, a different word or words
could have been used to identify similar phenomena. In fact, I have objected to the
use of the term ‘hypnosis’ when it is used to describe premodern meditative practices,
shamanic rituals or self-regulatory procedures (Krippner, 1993). For example, Sapp
(1997b) writes, ‘Hypnosis can be traced to biblical times’ (p.43) and Agogino (1965)
states, ‘The history of hypnotism may be as old as the practice of shamanism’ (p.31).
Agogino adds that priests in the healing temples of Asclepius (commencing in the 4th
century BC) induced their clients into ‘temple sleep’ by ‘hypnosis and auto-sugges-
tion’ (p.32). These references are well meaning but tend to categorize hypnosis as a
phenomenon that existed before the word ‘hypnosis’ was first conceived. As Gergen
(1985) observes, the terms in which the world is understood are social artefacts,
‘products of historically situated interchanges among people’ (p.267). To use the term
‘hypnosis’ to describe exorcisms, the laying-on of hands, dream incubation and the
like does an injustice to the history of hypnosis, as well as to the varieties of cultural
experience. The terms ‘hypnosis’ and ‘hypnotic state’ were concretized too early and
too often, distracting the serious investigator from an appreciation of earlier uses of
human imagination, suggestion and motivation that are worthy of study in their own
right.
Barber’s conclusions, following his four decades of industrious scholarship, bear this
out. Why did it take him so long to identify ‘three distinct types of very good hypnotic
subjects’ and the ‘three dimensions of hypnosis’? From my perspective, the reification
of the term ‘hypnosis’ led most investigators, including Barber himself, to assume that
hypnosis was a unitary phenomenon. Most of the measures of ‘hypnotizability’ classify
their subjects on a unidimensional scale, assuming that what is being measured is a sin-
gle trait, one that exists ‘on a continuum’ (Sapp, 1997a: 24). Instead, there are a variety
of hypnotic experiences, and a variety of hypnotized subjects as well.
A general axiom of science is that there is no knowledge without comparison, and
that measurement is required for comparisons to be made. Profound individual dif-
ferences in hypnotic experience had been noted earlier (for example, Sarbin, 1950),
but well-crafted measures had yet to document these observations. Once the Barber,
Stanford, Harvard and Carleton Scales were supplemented by such measures as
Wilson and Barber’s (1981) Creative Imagination Scale and Carlson and Putnam’s
(1993) Dissociative Experiences Scale, investigators were able to document that not
all ‘very good hypnotic subjects’ experienced hypnotic induction in the same way.
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158 Krippner
In another time and place, psychology and psychiatry could have produced three
different words for hypnosis, based on the experiences of what Barber refers to as
‘amnesia-prone’, the ‘fantasy-prone’ and the ‘positively set’ subjects. ‘Hypnosis’
(from Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep) would still have been an appropriate term for
the description of inductions for the ‘amnesia-prone’ because James Braid, who
coined the term, was impressed by ‘somnambules’. But someone working with the
‘fantasy-prone’ might have originated the term ‘morphosis’ (from Morpheus, the god
of dreams), and an investigator of the ‘positively set’ might have invented the term
‘themosis’ (from Themis, the goddess of ceremonies and oracles). The umbrella term
might have been ‘imagination’, ‘suggestion’, ‘motivation’ or some other word.
Barber graciously gives credit to those practitioners who had referred to two of
these three types, and I suspect that their own style of hypnotic induction was more
conducive to eliciting some types than others. Barber’s ‘fifth dimension’, that of the
hypnotist, recognizes this possibility – as well as situational demand characteristics
(his ‘fourth dimension’) and the instructions themselves (Barber’s ‘sixth dimension’).
I am in agreement with Barber that he has developed a new paradigm of hypnosis,
and one with important clinical implications.
Barber’s essay concludes with directions for further research, and I would like to
comment on his mention of ‘subtypes’ within each category. He cites Cardeña’s
(1996) seminal paper on ‘two distinct personality types’ of shamans, one of which
resembles the ‘fantasy-prone’ individuals ‘who go on imagined journeys to a different
world’ and the other the ‘amnesia-prone’ person who ‘is temporarily taken over by
some entity that acts through him or her’. Peters and Price-Williams (1980) compared
42 societies from four different cultural areas in an attempt to delineate shamanic
alterations in consciousness. Shamans in 18 of these societies engaged in ‘spirit incor-
poration’ (that is, the ‘amnesia-prone’), 10 in out-of-body ‘journeying’ (that is, the
‘fantasy-prone’), 11 in both and three in some different altered state.
The fact that shamans in 11 groups engaged in both types of experience suggests
that these societies might have provided opportunities for both of Cardeña’s ‘distinct’
personality types to express themselves. But what might have happened to the ‘fan-
tasy-prone’ potential shaman in the 18 societies where spirit incorporation was
emphasized, and to the ‘amnesia-prone’ person with shamanic potentials in the 10
societies where ‘journeying’ was featured?
My personal observations of dozens of shamans around the world convinces me
that some shamans engage in both ‘incorporation’ and ‘journeying’, depending on the
needs of the client or their community at the time. Does this mean that these
shamans ‘play against type’ when the occasion demands it, or that they are versatile
enough to both ‘incorporate’ and ‘journey’? Further, there are shamans (for example,
the Navajo hataalii ) who neither ‘incorporate’ nor ‘journey’ (Krippner, 1993: 701). In
other words, Cardeña’s ‘distinct’ personality types may blur in practice.
Finally, are there psychobiological markers for each of these shamanic activities,
and for each of Barber’s three types of hypnotic activities? Spiegel (1998) has
reported more left frontal theta activity on the part of high hypnotizables, as well as
changes in event-related potentials. If these findings hold up, it would be reasonable
to ask if there are three sets of psychobiological correlates for Barber’s three types of
hypnotized subjects. Indeed, Barber’s new paradigm may be the end of one adven-
ture, and the beginning of another.
 Varieties of hypnotic experience 159
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Address for correspondence:

Stanley Krippner
Saybrook Graduate School,
#300, 450 Pacific Avenue,
San Francisco, CA 94133,
USA
Email: [email protected]