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Hypnosis

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

  • 81 Accesses

Synonyms

Animal magnetism; Artificial somnambulism; Hypnotic suggestion; Mesmerism; Suggestion; Trance

Definition

Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness in which the subject responds to suggestions by the hypnotist for alterations in perception, memory, and the voluntary control of action. In the classic case, these responses entail a degree of subjective conviction bordering on delusion and an experience of involuntariness bordering on compulsion (Kihlstrom 2008; for comprehensive coverage, see Jamieson 2007; Nash and Barnier 2008).

Introduction

Hypnosis had its origins in the practices of Franz Anton Mesmer in eighteenth-century Vienna and Paris and got its modern name from James Braid, based on an analogy with sleep (Kihlstrom 1992). Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism was discredited by a commission led by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 (Kihlstrom 2002), but mesmerism was revived in the 1840s when James Elliotson and James Esdaile used it successfully to relieve pain in surgical...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    John F. Kihlstrom

Authors
  1. John F. Kihlstrom
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to John F. Kihlstrom .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. MacQuarie University, North Ryde, Australia

    Simon Boag

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Kihlstrom, J.F. (2020). Hypnosis. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1384

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