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International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis

Campbell Perry

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Can Anecdotes add to an Understanding of Hypnosis?

To cite this Article: Campbell Perry , 'Can Anecdotes add to an Understanding of Hypnosis?', International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 52:3, 218 231 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/0020714049052348 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020714049052348

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The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 2004, Vol. 52, No. 3, pp. 218231

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CAN ANECDOTES ADD TO AN UNDERSTANDING OF HYPNOSIS?1,2

CAMPBELL PERRY
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Abstract: This paper emphasizes the importance of anecdotes, in conjunction with experimental data and careful clinical observation, for an understanding of hypnosis. Anecdotes are presented that bear on (a) individual differences in hypnotizability, (b) the stereotypes of hypnosis, (c) the importance of careful wording in preparing experimental subjects and clinical patients for hypnosis, (d) the notion of hypnosis as involving a partial, but not complete, setting aside of critical judgment, which permits the hypnotized person to engage in fantasy and make-believe, (e) confabulation in hypnotic age regression, (f) the differentiation of hypnotic and therapeutic suggestion, (g) the nature of hypnotic suggestion, and (h) some experiences with the posthypnotic persistence of an uncanceled suggestion.

I have long believed that anecdotes can be a very valuable source of information for a better understanding of the nature of hypnosis. Of course, it can never replace experimental research and disciplined clinical observation, but often I have found that anecdotes can be very helpful in clarifying issues, for illuminating seemingly incomprehensible data, and sometimes as an inspiration for new experimental endeavors. I recognize, though, that although anecdotes can inform, they can just as easily mislead; but that can be said also of experimental research data and clinical observations. Ultimately, I have come to realize that to understand hypnosis, one needs help from every available source. For this reason, I have been writing down anecdotes in a notebook for many years, and, now that I am in my anecdotage, I am pleasantly surprised by the way in which this compilation still has relevance to the issues that concerned (and often bafed) me for so many years.
Manuscript submitted August 15, 2001; nal revision received October 13, 2003. 1 An earlier version of this paper appeared in Hypnos: Swedish Journal of Hypnosis in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine (2001), 28, 6168. 2 Address correspondence to Jean-Roch Laurence, Department of Psychology, PY-135-3, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H4B 1R6. E-mail: jrlaure@alcor.concordia.ca
10.1080/0020714049052348$16.00 # The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis

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WHAT MAKES SOME PEOPLE MORE HYPNOTIZABLE THAN OTHERS?

It is well documented that hypnotizability is a differential phenomenon and that these individual differences are stable. Approximately 1015% of the population is highly responsive, another 1015% is minimally responsive, and the remaining majority is moderately responsive. I have long been interested in what underlies these differences. Research indicates that the subject abilities of imagination, absorption, and (perhaps) dissociation appear to be implicated, and factor analyses indicate that the Stanford scales are reducible to three factors (E. Hilgard, 1965). This suggests that hypnotizability is a complex criterion and is most likely to be accounted for by a plurality of predictors. The situation, however, becomes quite puzzling when it is realized that even Josephine and Ernest Hilgard disagreed on where to place the emphasis. Josephine Hilgard (1979) opted for hypnosis as imaginative involvement, while Ernest Hilgard (1977) argued for dissociation. This may just be one of these either/or disagreements that tend to plague the eld (Perry, 1992a), especially as I agree with Brian Fellows, who has noted, often, in conversation that some high hypnotizables show no obvious talent at imagination. A dip into my anecdote book suggests that both Hilgards may be correct. Among high hypnotizables, there appears to be more than one pathway into hypnosisa point that Josephine Hilgard emphasized frequently. At an SCEH research workshop in Denver in 1979, one of the participants brought along Elroy, a high hypnotizable who used selfhypnosis to control dental pain. We asked him how he did this, and he stated, simply: I go skiing. His wording intrigued me; he did not say: I think about going skiing, or I imagine going skiing just I go skiing. Perhaps I read too much into this, but it seems to me that what he was saying was that he becomes so imaginatively involved in skiing that the pain that ordinarily accompanies dental work performed without a chemical anesthetic is attenuated. On the other hand, there was Barbara, a mature student who assisted my research on many occasions. She was allergic to dental anesthetics and in the 1960s stumbled upon yoga as a means of controlling pain, much to the terror of her dentist, until he was assured that he was not hurting her. Twenty years later, hypnosis was a revelation to herher subjective experience of it in a research context was identical to that of yoga in a dental setting. One day, I questioned her about the subjective experience she had in dentistry. She described it in a highly metaphoric way. She reported that she left the dentists chair to sit in another chair in the corner of the

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room, where she watched the dentist at work in her mouth. Although I certainly do not believe that her mind left her body to go sit in the corner of the room, her description of such unusual subjective experience fascinated me. I do have some reservations about dissociation as a process, but her response pointed to the importance of understanding the different factors at play in creating such experience. I have come to believe that studies of the correlates of hypnotizability need to take the differential nature of response among high hypnotizables into greater consideration this is something that has shown up, also, in some of my own research data. I suspect that some high hypnotizables enter hypnosis by the pathway of imaginative involvement, while others come to it via dissociation.

THE STEREOTYPES OF HYPNOSIS

Hypnosis attracts more than its unfair share of stereotypic thinking; on good days, I treat it with wry amusement, and with annoyance on bad days. The eld has never completely lost its image of being one that is inhabited by a bunch of male pocket-watch-swinging Svengalis who are bound to be up to no good especially if the hypnotized person is female. Some years back, I was with Martin Orne and a few others; Martin was reminiscing about a time he had appeared before the U.S. Government Select Committee on National Security. I am certain that there were some very bright people in this group, but, clearly, their understanding of hypnosis was stereotypic. Later that year, Nikita Khrushchev was to visit New York City to address the United Nations. He was scheduled for all but 15 minutes of his visit. The Committee wanted to know whether Martin could hypnotize him during this brief free time period in order to obtain the U.S.S.R.s most closely guarded state secrets. Martin was obliged to use considerable tact, and some fancy footwork, to persuade the Committee that what was being requested was nonsense without actually saying so. At this point, Ken Bowers deadpanned: Ah, so that is why Khrushchev took off his shoe and banged it on the table at the U.N. Certainly, his behavior was consistent with stereotypic perceptions of hypnosis, but I doubt that this was the reason for the famous shoe-banging incident. Setting Aside Critical Judgment I have long favored Gill and Brenmans (1959) description of hypnosis as involving the ability to set aside critical judgment, without relinquishing it completely, and the additional ability to engage in make-believe and fantasy. It is clear that critical judgment is not

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completely abandoned in hypnosis; a hypnotized person can, for instance, resist an uncongenial suggestion. Nevertheless, a person may be coerced into behavior if he or she is not aware that resistance to an uncongenial suggestion is an option. Unfortunately, the stereotype of hypnosis as the exercise of power by one person over another does not die easily; as a result, coercion by hypnosis still happens. Evidence of this can be found in situations where hypnosis is employed for the purpose of sexual seduction. Typically, what happens is that an unprincipled operator capitalizes upon the experience of involuntariness (the experience of a hand and arm lifting up to the forehead of its own accord, rather than being deliberately lifted). Such individuals seek to convince a hypnotized person that he or she is under the control and power of the hypnotist and no longer has autonomy (Hoencamp, 1990; Perry, 1979). My anecdote book abounds with examples that shed light on this retention of critical judgment at some level. For instance, I was once working with a highly hypnotizable woman who experienced every suggestion I administered except for one. This was the delusion of a missing number item. It involves having the hypnotized person visualize the digits from 0 to 9 and then suggesting that one of them (say the number 5) is fading away, so that he or she can no longer think, visualize, and use 5 that the number has been ablated. I was curious as to why this woman had failed this single item, even though it is not an uncommon occurrence few high hypnotizables rack up perfect performances. Nevertheless, I asked the question, expecting her to say either that she could not visualize the digits or else the erasure of the number 5. This was not so; she said she was able to do both. At which point, critical judgment kicked in. She thought to herself that number abilities are fundamental and that it is not possible to eliminate a fundamental ability with hypnosis, so she restored the number herself. Needless to say, I ignored the implied rebuke that I should have known this. One of my favorite colleagues was the late Donald OConnell. During my 2 years at Martin Ornes lab in Philadelphia, between 1966 and 1968, I came to know Don well. He had been trained at Harvard, by Edwin G. Boring, one of the great historians of psychology, and later at Swarthmore by Wolfgang Kohler, one of the leaders of the Gestalt psychology movement. Visitors were frequent at Martins lab, and I remember well the time when Milton Erickson paid the lab a visit. A student who had worked extensively with Don was chosen for the demonstration that Erickson was to perform. The student was accustomed to the directness of experimental inductions and took an instant dislike to Erickson and his indirect procedures, both of which he perceived as slippery and manipulative. He decided to take Erickson down several pegs by refusing to respond but then

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realized that if he were to do this, it would be a disloyalty to Don. Accordingly, the student resolved this dilemma by imagining that Erickson was really Don performing an experimental induction. The session was completed without incident and without Erickson being aware that much had been happening during a seemingly routine demonstration. Choosing Words Carefully It was a hot Friday in October 1960. The academic year at the University of Sydney was winding down, and I was at the end of my rst week of inducing hypnosis. I think I was well prepared for all contingencies, since, during the previous months, I had read Andre Weitzenhoffers excellent book on hypnotic induction (1957). Thus far, I had not encountered a high hypnotizable or, at least, I did not think so. Logic told me that this was to be expected, given that highs represent 10 to 15% of the population. The voice of inexperience said that perhaps there was something that I was not doing correctly. During that week, I had run Stanford scales with several subjects, including 2 middle-aged women who turned out to be medium hypnotizables; both had recognized my rookie status, and both had sought to reassure me. If anything, that made me feel worse; I wondered even more whether there was some deep aw in my induction procedure. On that Friday, I had a subject scheduled for mid-day. He duly arrived, we chatted for several minutes, and, relying on the wisdom of four previous inductions that week, I concluded prior to formal induction that he was a low susceptible. This turned out to be a mistake. Even worse, to compound the error, I said to him something to the effect that we would sample a variety of hypnotic items and that if he was unable to experience them, we would nish early. By the time we reached the mosquito hallucination item of the SHSS:C, I was still convinced that he was a low hypnotizable, even though, behaviorally, he had passed all of the preceding items. At this point, something quite remarkable happened. Suddenly, he said to me that he could not hear the mosquito buzzing. I thought to myself that it was time to terminate the induction. I was about to do this when I realized that there was an anxious edge to his voice and that this did not t in with the very little I knew about low hypnotizables. I then established that he could visualize the mosquito and could feel it landing on his hand; it was just that he could not hear it. I caught myself just in time and assured him that this was perfectly normal. He passed all of the remaining items of the SHSS:C, and following the removal of post hypnotic amnesia while questioning him about his subjective experience of each item, it was clear to me that I had met my rst high hypnotizable and had been a millimeter from disaster.

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CONFABULATED MEMORY IN HYPNOTIC AGE REGRESSION

From a very early stage, I was aware that the often very vivid and subjectively compelling memory reports that are encountered in hypnotic age regression have to be treated with great caution; they may be true memory, but, as equally, they may be confabulated. It is essential in a forensic setting that they be corroborated before being admitted in a court of law. At the same time, I agree with the view of many clinicians that it does not really matter whether what is recalled in age regression actually happened. Whether such material is fact or fantasy, it can provide clinically useful information about a persons current perceptions of the past. The major problem is when such memories are elicited for forensic purposes. Martin Ornes (1951) classic paper on the mechanisms of hypnotic age regression documents the problem; in it, he described a number of supercially plausible memories elicited in age regression that, on closer inspection, turned out to be spurious. There is also an experience he had at around that time that had a profound impact upon his later activities as an expert witness on hypnosis. In 1950, there occurred a famous hold-up in Boston, in which a Brinks Security truck was relieved of one million U.S. dollars of the 1950 variety. The case has never been solved. There was, however, an eyewitness who proved to be highly cooperative and was at least moderately hypnotizable. The FBI asked Orne to hypnotize this witness, who furnished a quite vivid description of the events he had witnessed and proceeded to focus in on the getaway car, for which he provided a license plate number. The FBI agents were impressed despite Ornes emphasis on the need for corroboration. This concern proved to be well-founded; the license plate number turned out to be for a car belonging to the president of a local university, who, because of his status in society, was almost automatically excluded from suspicion. There are, though, more embarrassing instances of memories that surface in age regression. In a Texas murder case in the early 1980s, an eyewitness provided a license plate number for a car that was found to belong to her husband. In 1978, I presented a paper on age regression to an SCEH meeting in Asheville, N.C., and was obliged to leave immediately, without discussion, so as to catch a bus to the airport. Several colleagues were in the same position, so the discussion was held at the back of the bus. We were dissecting various issues associated with confabulated memory when a pleasant-faced middle-aged woman interrupted me and said, You are absolutely correct. Needless to say, I liked her immediately. I had noticed her at the meeting but did not know, until she told me, that

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she was a patient of Jack Watkins and had been brought along for demonstration purposes. She told me that Jack would frequently regress her to various ages of schooling and ask her to name other students in a particular class. She said, I never meant to deceive him, but, afterwards, I realized that certain of the people I named belonged to other years of schooling. At the time, though, I believed that I was reliving the particular year and that the people I named were all present. Finally, there was Shirley, a high hypnotizable I met during a delicious 14-month sabbatical that I spent at the University of Queensland in 197576. During age regression, she appeared to relive some very painful emotions, and she responded with tears and heightened affect. I was surprised, to put it mildly, when she stated after the session that she was certain that the painful events she had described to me in hypnosis had never happened. Of course, I will never know what the truth is in this particular instance, but it underscores my point, one that was emphasized by 19th-century French forensic investigators: Anything remembered in hypnosis can be truth, a lie, a confabulation, or it can be a pseudo-memory resulting from an inappropriate suggestion or self-suggestion (Laurence & Perry, 1988).

HYPNOTIC AND THERAPEUTIC SUGGESTION

Response to placebo may be as good an operational index of suggestibility as can be found, since any response to a pharmacologically inert substance must necessarily stem from its suggestive properties. A study by McGlashan, Evans, and Orne (1969) (for a discussion, see Perry, 1992b) compared hypnotic analgesia in high and low hypnotizables in both hypnosis and placebo conditions. Only high hypnotizables in hypnosis obtained signicant pain relief. Highs actually showed a slight pain increase in the placebo condition. By contrast, the low hypnotizables showed a slight amount of pain diminution in both hypnosis and placebo. This study demonstrates, unequivocally, that hypnosis is something other than suggestibility; otherwise, the high hypnotizables would have obtained pain relief in placebo that was comparable to what they experienced in hypnosis. Further, the nding was replicated by Spanos, Perlini, and Robertson (1989) in a rare instance of hetero-method replication, since the latter investigators tested the hypothesis in a very different manner. I played a small role in the McGlashan et al. study. In order to equate some of the demand characteristics for high and low hypnotizables, I was given the assignment of convincing the low hypnotizables that they were sufciently responsive to hypnosis to progress to the main

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part of the study. This was done by deception. Prior to hypnosis (which was really a diffuse bunch of relaxation suggestions), I administered a sharp electric shock to the hand and told them that this was the level of shock they would encounter in hypnosis after the hand had been made analgesic. The deception was that in the hypnosis condition, the shock I administered was half the intensity of the earlier shock. I confess that, at the time I learned that I was going to do this, I thought that Martin Orne was dreaming in Technicolor, since all of these people were hardcore lows; they had undergone several prior inductions without as much as a slight movement of the hand when arm levitation was suggested. Further, I know that I am not good at lying. To my own wonderment, it proved all too easy to convince all but one of them that they had, nally, been able to have an experience of hypnosis. Indeed, they were extremely grateful to me for having been able to do what no prior investigator had succeeded in doing. I realize now that Orne had done his homework, and one of his anecdotes of the period assured him that what he was asking me to do was possible. He had treated a middle-aged male patient who sold medical equipment in remote areas of the American Midwest. One day, while driving from one small town to another, the man experienced nausea and was obliged to pull over to the side of the road until it receded. He drove on to his destination only to discover that the town did not have a medical practitioner. The next day, he saw a doctor in nearby town and discovered that the nausea was connected to a minor heart attack his rst. Obviously, this was frightening news, and his response was not unusual. It was to equate robust physical activity with a possibility of another coronary incident; he became impotent. He sought help from Martin but turned out to be highly unresponsive to hypnosis 20 minutes of hand and arm levitation produced the barest of ickerings. Undeterred, Orne proceeded to offer suggestions designed to alleviate the impotence. After hypnosis was terminated, the man commented, several times, that he had not done well with hypnosis (which, in performance terms, was true) to which Orne countered that he had done very well (which to him meant that the patient had tried hard to cooperate and to experience what had been suggested). Martin set another appointment for the following week. It did not transpire; the next day, he had a phone call from the mans wife. The tone of her voice indicated that the treatment for impotence had been highly successful. A prehypnotic suggestion can, also, be highly effective in shaping a persons perceptions of what constitutes a hypnotic induction. In earlier times, Estabrooks (1943/1948) induced hypnosis with a gramophone record, allowing him to leave the room to attend to other

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matters. One day, as he began working with a small group in this way, he realized that he had loaned the record to a colleague. He quickly substituted it with another, saying as he left the room: This will do the trick. He returned at the end of the record to nd one member of the group deeply hypnotized. This was remarkable, given that the recording was of a Swiss yodeler.

WHAT IS A SUGGESTION, ANYWAY?

On the face of it, this may appear to be a frivolous question, but I have my reasons for asking it. In my early years at Concordia, I was administering the dream item of the SHSS:C one day and elicited a response that spelled trouble. The female subject reported, Hands. Steel hands. And theyre moving towards my forehead. And theyre boring through my forehead. And Im frightened. I thought to myself that this made two of us and proceeded to try to resolve the difculty. What I did was effective, but I believe, still, that it was a far from elegant solution. I said, (rather tritely) trying not to communicate my own anxiety, I can see that you are having a bad experience, and I dont want you to have a bad experience. . . . The dream is fading . . . fading away. . . . There are no longer any steel hands, and you continue to feel relaxed and calm and condent. It was not one of my ner moments, but it worked. One day, years later, I was talking to the late Leon Chertok, who told me of a similar experience. He was once utilizing hypnosis as the sole analgesic for major dental surgery. The patient began to bleed severely, and the dentist performing the surgery began to show signs of edginess to put it mildly. With the few seconds that he had to react, all he could manage was: Please, dont bleed. To his amazement, the bleeding stopped. Leon Chertok was no shrinking violet, but, as he told me that day, he was trained as a psychoanalyst, and nothing that he learned as a student or in his subsequent vast clinical practice prepared him for success with so simple a request. I know the feeling (having had it myself), but I have to wonder why a simple statement that I dont want an experimental subject to have a painful experience or a polite request not to bleed should be effective. At the same time, I do not recommend it as a practice, though, perhaps when it is important to act quickly, it is possible that simplicity even an acknowledgement of vulnerability is a highly appropriate response.

POSTHYPNOTIC PERSISTENCE OF BEHAVIORS SUGGESTED IN HYPNOSIS

Of all of the phenomena of hypnosis, posthypnotic suggestion (PHS) is still the least understood. It is even more rare than posthypnotic

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amnesia, and it can involve an interesting admixture of voluntary and involuntary components. There is, for instance, the fascinating story about Robert White, one of the leading experimental researchers of the 1930s and 40s. He was demonstrating hypnosis to an undergraduate class, and, to terminate it, he suggested that, at a prearranged posthypnotic cue, the subject would pick up a chair and place it on a nearby table. He terminated trance and administered the signal for the PHS; nothing happened. I imagine that he gured, as I have often done in such situations, that PHS was not in the subjects repertoire. Whites ofce was connected to the classroom in which he taught, and a few hours later he heard a slight noise in it. He tiptoed to investigate and was surprised to discover that the student with whom he had demonstrated hypnosis earlier that day was there, quietly lifting a chair and placing it on the table. He appears to have been able to resist the impulse to do this in front of the class some hours earlier, perhaps because he found it embarrassing; nevertheless, he still felt an impulse that he had to carry it out. There is, also, the question of whether, when he carried out the PHS, he was still hypnotized. Ernest Hilgard makes a wry comment on this issue; he had a favored PHS in which he suggested that after hypnosis was terminated formally, an arm would remain in the air, above the head, without the persons awareness. Hilgard would ask whether the person was still hypnotized or was it the arm that was hypnotized. I suspect neither, but it is an excellent question, and I am unable to answer it. Perhaps even more difcult to understand are uncanceled suggestions. Very early in my training as an experimental researcher, it was impressed upon me that having suggested and tested a hypnotic item, I should always make sure that I canceled it; otherwise, the suggestion would persist posthypnotically. At around the time I became interested in this problem, there was an event that occurred in Montreal that caught my attention. One Sunday afternoon, a lay hypnotist appeared on French-language television and proceeded to hypnotize his audience (a practice not permitted in most countries). At one point, he suggested arm immobilization; unfortunately, during the course of canceling it, a commercial airliner strayed from the customary descent pattern into the local airport. This disrupted TV transmission in that area for several seconds. He continued, unaware that a percentage of his TV audience had not heard the removal of the suggestion. Remarkably, after his program was over, the television station received over 20 phone calls from viewers to the effect that a family member was stuck in front of the TV set, unable to move an arm. He was obliged to reappear on TV to cancel the suggestion.

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This turned out to be a highly instructive anecdote, since when I launched some studies of uncanceled suggestions, in which I deliberately failed to cancel a suggestion of glove analgesia, I found, contrary to what this anecdote implies, that many of the experimental subjects reported, after hypnosis, that the arm was not in any way analgesic. When I questioned them further, they told me that they realized that I had forgotten to remove the analgesia suggestion and had proceeded to cancel it themselves. These, of course, are university students, of often insatiable curiosities. Part of the job of an experimental researcher in such a setting is to provide these experimental volunteers with accurate information about hypnosis, not the least of which is that people retain autonomy no matter how deeply hypnotized they might feel. At the same time, as I indicated earlier, this is just one more instance of setting aside critical judgment, without relinquishing it completely, while engaging in make-believe and fantasy. One nal anecdote may trump all that I have presented. Martin Orne was once interested in the durability of posthypnotic suggestions. He hit upon a most ingenious way of testing this phenomenon, since opinion at the time was divided between those who thought that a posthypnotic suggestion endures indenitely and those who believed that it fades over time. Accordingly, he asked highly hypnotizable experimental participants to name an animal that they hardly ever thought about. On one memorable occasion, the hypnotized person, after due thought, said that he thought about seals rarely. He was then given the suggestion that from this time on, whenever he thought about seals, he would touch his forehead, without being aware of it. The subject returned several months later to participate in another experiment, which progressed uneventfully. Afterward, while chatting with the experimenter, he mentioned, casually that, since his previous session, he had developed a red and tender spot on his forehead and wondered whether it could have anything to do with his previous hypnosis session. As was standard practice at Martins lab, he was sent, immediately, to speak with Martin even though a tender red spot on the forehead is not debilitating. One of the most remarkable tales that I have ever heard, unfolded. It transpired that since his previous session, the student had developed a fascination for seals. He had borrowed every book on them from the university library, enquired about the cost of purchasing one, about the adequacy of his familys backyard swimming pool for housing it, and the weekly cost of sh for feeding it. Obviously, something had happened that transformed a rarely thought of animal into a preoccupation which meant, of course, that he was touching his forehead repeatedly.

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CONCLUDING COMMENT
This set of anecdotes leads me into one nal point about anecdotes in general. What I think is particularly important about them is that they remind us that some very potent psychic forces can be at work even in the seemingly benign and austere connes of the laboratory. We are not always able to understand why certain things happen, but we should always be alert to the possibility of them happening, even if we do not know why. This is why I spent the 1980s criticizing the practice of some police departments of using briey trained police ofcers to hypnotize crime victims and witnesses, and the 1990s drawing attention to the use of hypnosis to recover putative memories of sexual abuse during childhood (Perry, 2000). Clinical hypnosis is best left to thoroughly trained clinicians, but even for experimental researchers a solid grounding in the clinical lore of hypnosis is mandatory. In this regard, I am reminded of Ernest Hilgards (1971) wise dictum: Many of the events that occur in hypnosis are not necessarily caused by hypnosis. This is highly apposite when it comes to attempts to understand the various inuences that contribute to a persons response in a hypnotic context. For many years, the eld of hypnosis has been plagued by a dichotomy of psychodynamic versus social psychological interpretations of hypnotic behavior. My hope is that in describing some of the interesting things that I, and others, have observed in hypnosis, researchers and clinicians will come to realize the benet of both approaches. Perhaps more important, I hope that anecdotes will be seen as valid sources of testable hypotheses (as happened in my work on uncanceled suggestions, even though, as I noted, the anecdote was in part misleading). On the other hand, some anecdotes (such as the one of Martin Ornes experimental subject who became preoccupied with seals) are probably too idiosyncratic to be fruitful sources of a research program. Nevertheless, they are a valuable reminder of the diversity of response to suggestion in hypnosis.
REFERENCES
Estabrooks, G. H. (1948). Hypnotism. New York: Dutton (Original work published in 1943). Gill, M. M., & Brenman, M. (1959). Hypnosis and related states. New York: International Universities Press. Hilgard, E. R. (1965). Hypnotic susceptibility. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Hilgard, E. R. (1971). Hypnotic phenomena: The struggle for scientic acceptance. American Scientist, 52, 567577. Hilgard, E. R. (1977). Divided consciousness: Multiple controls in human thought and action. New York: WileyInterscience.

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Hilgard, J. R. (1979). Personality and hypnosis: A study of imaginative involvement (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hoencamp, E. (1990). Sexual abuse and the abuse of hypnosis in the therapeutic relationship. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 38, 283297. Laurence, J.-R., & Perry, C. (1988). Hypnosis, will and memory: A psycho-legal history. New York: Guilford. McGlashan, T. H., Evans, F. J., & Orne, M. T. (1969). The nature of hypnotic analgesia and placebo response to experimental pain. Psychosomatic Medicine, 31, 227246. Orne, M. T. (1951). The mechanisms of hypnotic age regression: An experimental study. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 46, 213225. Perry, C. (1979). Hypnotic coercion and compliance to it: A review of evidence presented in a legal case. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 27, 187218. Perry, C. (1992a). Theorizing about hypnosis in either/or terms. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 40, 238252. Perry, C. (1992b). What is hypnosis? Hypnos: Swedish Journal of Hypnosis in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine, 19, 169179. Perry, C. (2000). Vicissitudes of memory: Falsication and false memory syndrome. Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 28, 420. Spanos, N. P., Perlini, A., & Robertson, L. A. (1989). Hypnosis, suggestion, and placebo in the reduction of experimental pain. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 98, 285293. Weitzenhoffer, A. M. (1957). General techniques of hypnotism. New York: Grune and Stratton.

Konnen Anekdoten das Verstandnis von Hypnose erleichtern? Campbell Perry Zusammenfassung: Dieser Artikel hebt die Bedeutung von Anekdoten in Verbindung mit experimentellen Daten und sorgfaltiger klinischer Beobachtung zum Verstandnis von Hypnose hervor. Es werden Anekdoten angefuhrt, die sich auf a) interindividuelle Unterschiede in der Hypnotisier barkeit beziehen, b) auf die Stereotype gegenuber Hypnose, c) auf die Wichtigkeit vorsichtiger Formulierungen, c) darauf, dass Hypnose zum Teil, wenngleich nicht ganzlich, die kritische Urteilsfahigkeit aufheben kann, glicht, Vorstellungen und Phantasien was es der hypnotisierten Person ermo zu erzeugen, e) auf Konfabulation bei hypnotischer Altersregression, f) auf die Unterscheidung zwischen hypnotischen und therapeutischen Suggestionen, g) auf die Natur hypnotischer Suggestionen und h) auf einige Erfahrungen mit dem posthypnotischen Andauern nicht zuruckgenommener Suggestionen. RALF SCHMAELZLE University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany ` Les anecdotes peuvent-elles aider a la comprehension de lhypnose? Campbell Perry Resume: Cette article met en valeur limportance des anecdotes, conjointe` ment a des donnees experimentales et une observation clinique minutieuse, dans la comprehension de lhypnose. Les anecdotes presentees portent sur (a) les differences individuelles dhypnotisabilite, (b) les stereotypes de

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` lhypnose, (c) limportance du choix des mots lorsque lon prepare a lhypnose les sujets experimentaux et les patients cliniques, (d) la notion ` dhypnose implicant de mettre de cote de maniere partielle, mais non ` ` complete, un jugement critique ce qui permet a la personne hypnotisee ` dacceder a limaginaire et aux fantasmes, (e) la confabulation en regression dage sous hypnose, (f) la differenciation entre la suggestion hypnotique et therapeutique, (g) la nature de la suggestion hypnotique, (h) quelques experiences sur la persistance en etat post-hypnotique dune suggestion hypnotique qui naurait pas ete annulee. VICTOR SIMON Psychosomatic Medicine & Clinical Hypnosis Institute, Lille, France Pueden ayudar las anecdotas a entender la hipnosis? Campbell Perry Resumen: Este trabajo enfatiza la importancia de las anecdotas, en conjun cion con datos experimentales y la observacion clnica cuidadosa, para una comprension de la hipnosis. Presento anecdotas relevantes para (a) las diferencias individuales en la hipnotizabilidad, (b) los estereotipos de la hipnosis, (c) la importancia de fraseo cuidadoso en la preparacion para hipnotizar a sujetos experimentales y pacientes clnicos, (d) la nocion de que la hipnosis implica un abandono parcial, pero no completo, del juicio crtico, que permite que la persona hipnotizada se involucre en la fantasa y se crea las sugestiones, (e) la confabulacion en la regresion hipnotica de la edad, (f) la diferenciacion de las sugestiones hipnoticas y terapeuticas, (g) la naturaleza de la sugestion hipnotica, y (h) algunas experiencias con la persistencia posthipnotica de algunas sugestiones no canceladas.
ETZEL CARDENA University of Texas, Pan American, Edinburg, Texas, USA