Indigenous Healing Practitioners and Their Use of Hypnotic-Like Procedures
Authors: Krippner Stanley 
Published: February 2017

According to Division 30 of the American Psychological Association, “hypnosis” typically involves an introduction to the procedure during which a subject, client, or research participant is told that suggestions for imaginative experiences will be presented. The so-called “hypnotic induction” is an extended initial suggestion for using one’s imagination, and may contain further elaboration of the introduction. The subsequent “hypnotic procedure” is used to encourage and evaluate the subject’s responses to suggestions. When using hypnosis, one person (the subject) is guided by another (the hypnotist) to respond to suggestions involving changes in subjective experience, as well as alterations in perception, sensation, emotion, thought or behavior. In addition, persons can also learn self-hypnosis, which is the act of administering hypnotic procedures on one’s own. if the subject responds to hypnotic suggestions, it is generally inferred that hypnosis has been induced. Many practitioners, but not all practitioners, believe that hypnotic responses and experiences are characteristic of a so-called “hypnotic state.” While some practitioners think that it is not necessary to use the word “hypnosis” as part of the hypnotic induction, others view it as essential. In other words, there are agreements and disagreements concerning the definition and description of hypnosis even by researchers, theoreticians, and practitioners who have given considerable thought to this topic.

In addition, the details of hypnotic procedures and suggestions will differ depending on the goals of the practitioner and the purposes of the clinical or research endeavor. Procedures traditionally involve suggestions to relax, although relaxation is not necessary for hypnosis and a wide variety of suggestions can be used including those to become more alert. Suggestions that permit the extent of hypnosis to be assessed by comparing responses to standardized scales can be used in both clinical and research settings. While the majority of individuals are responsive to at least some suggestions, scores on standardized scales range from high to negligible. Traditionally, scores are grouped into low, medium, and high categories. As is the case with other positively scaled measures of psychological constructs such as attention and awareness, the salience of evidence for having achieved hypnosis increases with the individual’s score.

The term “hypnosis” was coined by James Braid (1795–1860), an English physician. Braid disliked the term “mesmerism,” which had been named after its originator, Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), an Austrian physician. Braid concluded that Mesmer’s purported cures were not due to “animal magnetism” as Mesmer had insisted, but to suggestion. He developed the eye-fixation technique (also known as “Braidism”) of inducing relaxation and called the process “hypnosis” (after Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep) because he thought that hypnotic phenomena were a form of sleep. Later, realizing his error, he tried to change the name to “monoeidism” (meaning influence of a single idea) however, the orig inal name stuck. In other words, semantics played an important role in the history of hypnosis and actually directed the way that this modality was practiced.