Summary and Conclusion

Abstract

We began by examining the controversial beliefs surrounding hypnosis from the time of Mesmer’s discovery to the present, where diverse opinions still prevail. We were familiar by the end of the first chapter with the fact that the magnetic fluid of Mesmer was a myth; that the subject and not the operator was essentially responsible for the event of hypnosis; that the continued use of the sleep metaphor defies the electroencephalographic finding that hypnosis is not sleep; and that many of the “magical” and poorly understood somatic changes associated with hypnosis and reported in the clinical literature should be respected as evidence of a psychosomatic interaction, even though the nature of that interaction is not yet discovered. We had also learned that hypnotic control is really a very subtle two-way communication process; that expert opinions differ about subjects in hypnosis being compelled to carry out antisocial acts against their will; and that although there is a close relatedness between hypnosis and meditative states, they are generally not considered as equivalent.