Hypnosis is a social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) suggests to

another (the subject) that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts or behaviors will
spontaneously occur. When on is under hypnosis, they may experience posthypnotic
amnesia: a temporary memory loss, or supposed inability to recall what one
experienced during hypnosis; induced by the hypnotist’s suggestion.

To some extent, everyone is susceptible to hypnosis. So the friend, who is

concerned that the hypnosis won’t work on him 8is false. Anyone who can turn
attention inward and imagine is able to experience some degree of hypnosis
because that’s what hypnosis is. Virtually anyone will experience hypnotic
responsiveness if led to expect it. To test this fact, Cynthia Wickless and Irving
Kirsch played a clever stunt on their students to show that the belief in hypnosis is
actually the key factor in making hypnosis work. After standard hypnotic induction,
they suggested to the students they would see red and then see green, then hear
music, and so forth. They then gave all the stimuli and the skeptical students were
led to believe they were actually hypnotized. This proves that the students weren’t
able to differentiate the difference between actual hypnosis and a false stimulus
that was projected towards them. All the students were later shown to have a high
susceptibility on the hypnotic susceptibility scale.

Concerning the mother, hypnosis can be therapeutic. Posthypnotic suggestions

have helped alleviate headaches, asthma, and skin related disorders. Posthypnotic
suggestion is defined as a suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be
carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized. One woman who suffered 20
years from open sores all over her body, was asked to imagine herself swimming in
shimmering sunlit liquids that would cleanse her skin. Within three months, her skin
was clear. It seems hypnosis speeds the disappearances of skin disorders. Hypnosis
and positive suggestions both have the power to change people’s expectations.

Hypnosis is also proven to alleviate pain, using disassociation. Disassociation is

defined as a split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to
occur simultaneously with others. Hypnosis disassociates the sensation of pain
stimulus.

Another theory that proposes hypnotic pain relief results from selection attention, as
when an injured athlete, caught up in the competition, feels no pain until the game
ends. Support for this view comes from several studies showing hypnosis relieves
pain no better than does merely distraction people. For instance, with their
attention distracted, during hypnosis, many women can experience no pain with
childbirth. PET scans reveal that hypnosis reduces brain activity in a region
attending to painful stimuli, but no the somatic sensory cortex that receives raw
sensory output.