Psychological Manipulation, Hypnosis, and Suggestion

International Journal of Cultic Studies, Vol. 6, 2015, 48-59.

Psychological Manipulation, Hypnosis, and Suggestion

Jose Fernández Aguado

Pehuén Institute of Psychology, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

A widespread vision links hypnosis to psychological manipulation. The mass media favor this image, thus making it popular. Traces of that point of view can even taint scientific views at scientific forums. Nevertheless, this widespread vision is essentially false. In this paper I deal with some of the possible causes of that confusion, the main one being that a major characteristic of hypnosis (namely, an increase in suggestibility one experiences while under hypnosis) is also a key characteristic of people in manipulative and abusive environments. I will give some well-established and agreed-upon definitions of hypnosis and explain why one’s suggestibility is enhanced while hypnotized. My conclusion is that one’s confidence in the process and the hypnotizer plays a major role in any enhanced suggestibility while under hypnosis. I compare what occurs during hypnosis to what occurs in the mildly or overly manipulative contexts of seduction and coercion, where suggestibility is also enhanced. I conclude that the main difference in the case of hypnosis lies in the ease with which one can exit that enhanced state of suggestibility. I introduce the concepts of dissociation and integration for the purpose of increasing readers’ understanding about the twofold route to higher states of suggestibility and the way back from them, and of showing how this way back can be hampered in manipulative contexts.

Keywords: hypnosis, psychological manipulation, suggestibility, dissociation, integration

Introduction

One of the oldest questions in the literature on hypnosis is whether deeply hypnotized individuals can be induced to perform antisocial or self-destructive acts (Orne, 1962), or whether those individuals can be induced to perform acts that are against their core principles and that they would never perform if they were not under hypnosis.

The answer that many have given to these questions is “No” (Capafons, 2001; Lynn and Kirsch, 2006; Orne, 1962). The impossibility of getting persons to do anything under hypnosis that they would not do without hypnosis, therefore, has been widely proven.

Nevertheless, Wells (1941), Rowland (1939), Young (1948), Estabrooks (1993), Wolberg (1945; 1948), and Weitzenhoffer (1949) have been leading proponents of the view that, provided the hypnotist’s technique is adequate, the subject in hypnosis may be forced to do anything. But according to Orne (1962), the evidence shown by all of these authors to support their view is inconsistent, if not clearly biased. Orne points out that, before asserting that by means of hypnosis a person can make someone act against her will, one must prove that, without hypnosis, the individual would not have been predisposed to carry out such an act. Orne skillfully proves how none of these authors had controlled the influence the hypnotist may have had on the subject prior to hypnosis, which Orne considers a key shortcoming of these studies.

Therefore, confusion continues to reign. This confusion has been present since the beginning of the modern history of hypnosis in the 18th century, with Mesmer, whose utilization of what he termed animal magnetism was related to confusion and deceit. The confusion has continued to the present day, enhanced by the popular vision that the mass media have attributed to hypnosis. More seriously, though, is the fact that mental-health professionals and academicians as well often ascribe these characteristics to hypnosis. For example, Hassan (1988) states that it is possible to get people who are under hypnosis to carry out acts that they would not do if they were not hypnotized.

In this paper I deal with the main causes, from my point of view, of this confusion: primarily that the increase in suggestibility produced while one is under hypnosis, which is a major characteristic of hypnosis, is also a core feature of contexts in which people are being manipulated.

However, despite this similarity between hypnosis and manipulation, there is a key difference: Persons under hypnosis have the freedom to reverse the process under which their suggestibility has been heightened. In other words, they have total freedom in choosing when to come out of hypnosis (a state that they also entered freely) whenever they desire to do so. I will give some examples of this difference.

States of high suggestibility can be attained in many ways (ways that imply a lesser or higher degree of manipulation). Hypnosis is merely one of these ways.

To offer a better explanation of this distinction, I will first pay attention to what hypnosis is, and what its essential components are. Then I will compare what occurs during hypnosis with what happens in other high-suggestibility contexts. I will pay special attention to what occurs when these states are manipulative, such as in cases of seduction and coercion.

To conclude, I will observe that what occurs during hypnosis is more because of the characteristics of human beings than of any characteristics associated with hypnosis. In other words, the strength to make us more suggestible is internal, stemming from our cognitive and affective architecture, rather than external, stemming from hypnosis.

Hypnosis and Psychological Manipulation

I am not going to pay much attention to explaining the impossibility of getting someone to do something through hypnosis that he would not do without it. Instead, I will offer some references that have been widely agreed on (Capafons, 2001; Lynn & Kirsch, 2006; Orne, 1962) for those wishing to expand their understanding about this issue. To give one example, Barber and colleagues (Barber, Spanos, & Chaves, 1974) obtained from highly motivated but not hypnotized participants, and from hypnotized participants, in one task, the same responses to the same suggestions. The researchers concluded that hypnosis was not needed, or at least that no more than high motivation was needed, to account for the responses to the suggestions.

Orne (1962) points out that the view sustained by the likes of Wells (1941), Rowland (1939), Young (1948), Estabrooks (1993), Wolberg (1945; 1948), and Weitzenhoffer (1949)—that under hypnosis the subject can be led to do anything—becomes untenable when one poses the question as follows: “Does hypnosis increase the amount of social control that the hypnotist has over the subject above that which existed before the induction of hypnosis?”

However, it is fair to say that Orne leaves a door open for the potential of hypnosis to increase the amount of social control one may have over a person under special conditions. These conditions would be when the person is ambivalent toward the realization of an action. Orne (1962) says that

In such a situation, he might well refuse to carry out the behavior in his normal waking state, but he could be induced to carry it out under certain special circumstances. One condition sufficient to resolve the ambivalence might be hypnosis. (…) Quite possibly, in some instances hypnosis, like alcohol, might provide the necessary rationalization for the execution of normally unacceptable actions. (pp. 186–187)

It is of note, though, that any shift in behavior in these special circumstances would be as a consequence of the significance the person who is hypnotized attached to the term hypnosis rather than a consequence of hypnosis itself. That significance would affect both the hypnotized and the hypnotizer, as the following quotation from Lynn and Kirsch indicates in reference to clinical hypnosis (2006):

Other meanings attached to the term are responsible for its therapeutic efficacy. As we mentioned earlier, hypnosis can provide a disinhibiting context, allowing patients to exhibit responses that they do not realize they are capable of making. That is why people are more responsive to suggestion—including therapeutic suggestions—after a hypnotic induction than they were before it. It also can disinhibit therapists by providing a context for therapeutic behaviors that might seem inappropriate in other settings (T. X. Barber, 1985). For example, the hypnotic context permits the therapist to repeat statements over and over, which enhances their forcefulness and salience. Outside the hypnotic context, this style of communication would seem strange and inappropriate. (pp. 35–36)

Bearing in mind the circumstances just mentioned, the existence of huge misconceptions in the general understanding of hypnosis has been widely agreed on. The Society of Clinical Hypnosis (SCH) (APA- Division 30) has listed some myths with regard to commonly held beliefs about hypnosis. One of these myths is that under hypnosis a person can be induced to do acts that he would not do without hypnosis. My main aim in this paper is to clarify, to the extent possible, some of the possible causes of the error that leads to this particular myth. Another related myth the SCH lists is that people may not be able to come out of hypnosis, and thus become stuck in a hypnotic state. Again, the mass media has had a significant role in spreading these myths as if they were true.

Where does this confusion come from? Apart from the historical reasons sketched above, the main cause of these misconceptions is, from my point of view, that a characteristic of the hypnotic state, namely, a rise in suggestibility, is also a characteristic of people who find themselves in manipulative contexts.

What Is Suggestibility and What Are Its Constituents?

Yapko (1995) defines suggestibility as an openness to accept and respond to new ideas and information. According to Spiegel and Spiegel (2004), we can refer to situations as being conducive to states of high suggestibility when we find the following:

high dissociation

low critical thinking

These two elements, high dissociation and low critical thinking, are the essential constituents of suggestibility.

High Dissociation

It will be of use to our discussion to look first at what we understand dissociation to mean. Dissociation is one of the more controversial terms in psychiatry and psychology. Recent developments (Cardeña, 1994; Spiegel & Cardeña, 1996) establish a basic distinction between pathological and nonpathological dissociation. An example of the first is dissociative amnesia, wherein we are unable to retrieve basic information about our identity. An example of the second is daydreaming, a state of concentration that makes us dissociate from everything lying outside the focus of our attention. Daydreaming, to be concentrated in our thoughts while we are driving to the extent of not remembering anything of our journey afterward, is an example of this second type of dissociation. This second type of dissociation is the one I will be referring to in this paper because it is the dissociation implied in hypnosis. However, it is likely that the line that separates pathological dissociation from nonpathological dissociation is blurred.

We could characterize dissociation as looking at one part and forgetting about the whole: One sees the trees but not the wood, and not necessarily all the trees, but perhaps just a few. In this state, a person concentrates so much on one part that she loses perspective of the whole of which it is a part. However, dissociation could also imply one seeing the wood without seeing the trees. In that case, the person centers herself so much on the big picture that she loses touch with the particulars. When a mind can switch easily between a vision of individual trees and that of the whole forest, and vice-versa, then integration is reached, and that is considered the healthy way to perceive. This ability of perception to change perspective easily allows a person to have a more accurate view of reality. This integrative capacity is lost or impaired in certain more or less pathological situations.

Two examples of these perspectives are provincialism and fundamentalism (I will let the reader judge which category these examples fall into). Provincialism occurs when you can pay attention only to some trees without seeing other trees or the entire forest. Fundamentalism occurs when you can see only the forest and therefore want to apply a theory to all cases, without paying attention to the individuality of each tree. We may speculate that the line that separates pathological from nonpathological dissociation lies in the difficulty or ease with which one can reach this perceptual integration (this is at least one of the lines that separates the two; there will surely be others). Thus, pathological dissociation would be characterized by an incapacity or a difficulty in being able to change one’s point of view. Sticking to the example of the trees and the forest, the person would be trapped in her perception either of one part or of the whole, without being able to swap her point of view from one to the other, or to change viewpoint without difficulty. In contrast, in nonpathological dissociation, the person would be able to easily change her perception of one part for that of the whole, and vice versa, and thus achieve perceptual integration.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is something we all understand, and I do not see the need to expand on the concept further. However, it is important to note that the increase in dissociation and the decrease of critical thinking are two sides of the same coin. Each is enhanced by the other. That is to say, the more evidence of dissociation, the less critical thinking will be on display, and the less critical thinking is evident, the more dissociation there is. Here lies the essence of suggestion. Let us look at an example.

A drug addict who has been able to abstain for some months, and who is in what is considered, according to Prochaska and Di Clemente (1983), the maintenance phase, suddenly sees his drug of preference and craves it (conditioned abstinence). In the addict’s mind in those moments, only the good experiences related with the drug are being considered, despite the fact that these experiences represent only a tiny proportion of his story with the drug. In accordance with our example, the addict sees only some of the trees in that situation. This is clearly a dissociation. He sees only a part, which actually is the smallest part, and does not see the rest: the long and painful history of disastrous consequences of his addiction. This high level of dissociation stimulates a very low level of critical thinking, since he will derive no evaluation of the negative consequences related to the consumption of the drug from remembering only the good moments associated with it. In such circumstances, he does not regard his perspective of consuming the drug as highly dangerous—an assessment which, in turn, feeds a high dissociation, in a vicious circle in which both factors provide feedback to one another. The floating state of a former cult member would be another example of this process.

Different Ways of Eliciting High-Suggestibility States

According to Spiegel and Spiegel (2004), there are three basic ways of putting people into a high suggestibility state, or trance, as they refer to it:

Hypnosis

Seduction

Coercion

In other words, as Figure 1 depicts, by means of hypnosis, seduction, or coercion, a state of high suggestibility can be induced in another. Thus, this similarity in the outcome can lead to confusion with regard to the cause; that is to say, hypnosis, seduction, and coercion all lead us to the same place, but they do so along different routes and are therefore not the same thing.

The great difference between these ways of getting to the same level of suggestibility lies in the ease with which one can get out of each circumstance. That outcome depends on the way one takes to get there, and it also has direct consequences on the person’s freedom (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Impact of hypnosis, seduction, and coercion on personal freedom.

While under hypnosis, a person is totally free at any moment to snap out of it, as free as he was to enter into that state. As noted above, that one may be trapped in a hypnotic state is a myth. Hypnosis is based upon the person’s confidence in the procedure and trust in the hypnotist. The suggestions the hypnotist presents encourage the person to go with the flow, thus reducing the participant’s critical thinking and heightening his dissociation in that situation (in the sense explained above); this ultimately increases the individual’s suggestibility. It is because he trusts that he is more suggestible (Kirsch, 1994); following Yapko’s definition of suggestibility stated above, it is because he trusts that he is more open to accept and respond to new ideas and information.

What Is Hypnosis?

According to the American Psychological Association (APA)’s Division 30, whose focus is hypnosis, “hypnosis is a procedure during which a health professional or researcher suggests, while treating someone, that he or she experience changes in sensations, perceptions, thoughts, or behavior….” (APA, http://www.apa.org/topics/hypnosis/media.aspx?item=1). In 2014, the APA completed the official Division 30 definition and description of hypnosis as follows: “A state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to “suggestion” (Society of Psychological Hypnosis, http://psychologicalhypnosis.com/info/the-official-division-30-definition-and-description-of-hypnosis/). There are more definitions of hypnosis and some theories that have tried to establish its basic principles. In accordance with that, some authors (Capafons, 1999) have asserted that hypnosis is everything that is labeled as such. When I was drawing up this paper, my sources were both the neodissociative (Hilgard, 1991) and sociocognitive theories of hypnosis (Lynn & Kirsch, 2006), which constitute what I consider to be an accurate representation of current views on hypnosis. I will not deal with the differences between those theories because that would represent a long diversion, and the reader can expand further on them via the bibliographical references. However, both theories would agree in defining hypnosis as a ritual or procedure in which the following three constituents must be present: consent, change of focus, and suggestion, as Figure 3 depicts. Therefore, if all these components or conditions are not present, there will be no hypnosis, since they all are essential to it. Let us take a closer look at each of them.

Figure 3. Components of hypnosis.

Consent

For consent to be valid, it must be based upon accurate information about what is and what is not hypnosis. Basically, this means that

under hypnosis, nothing will happen that would not occur in many everyday situations; that is to say, hypnosis is a natural process (Capafons 1998; Lynn S. J., & Kirsch, I. 2006; Spiegel & Spiegel 2004).

the person undergoing hypnosis, never the hypnotizer, always has control of what happens during hypnosis. No one can be induced by hypnosis to do something that she would not do without hypnosis. According to Lynn, Rhue, and Weekes (1990), the participant retains the ability to control her behavior during hypnosis, to refuse to respond to suggestions, and even to oppose suggestions.

If the information given to the person does not stress these points and so make them clear, or if such information is somehow based on the myths cited above about hypnosis, the person’s expectations will be mistaken, which will have consequences. The major consequence will be that whatever may be performed in that context will not be hypnosis but something else (with or without manipulative nuances). Note that the fact of one not giving proper information is in itself a manipulative nuance. According to Kirsch (1985, 1991), a person’s expectations about what will occur during hypnosis are the main causes of the actual occurrence of those responses. That is why Kirsch developed the response expectancy theory, which is an extension of Rotter’s social learning theory. Kirsch’s response expectancy theory is based on the idea that expectancies can generate nonvolitional responses. Kirsch’s research has shown that a wide variety of hypnotic responses vary in accordance with people’s beliefs and expectancies about the occurrence of these responses. In fact, Kirsch claims that throughout the history of hypnosis many have confused the products of hypnosis with its essence. This confusion is because, consistently, subjects under hypnosis perform the type of responses that are expected from them. Thus, Mesmer’s subjects convulsed, whereas those of later hypnotizers relaxed. And they all did so because the hypnotizers conveyed to them, more or less explicitly, an expectation of what the “proper” response to hypnosis was. Expectations, and their correct handling by means of the information given to a person about what hypnosis is and what it is not, are, therefore, very important—so much so that Kirsch and Lynn (1995) consider response expectancy to be the essence of hypnosis.

At the same time, for consent to be free, it cannot be forced. That is to say,

The person undergoing hypnosis must not be pressed to experience certain responses to suggestions, nor be reprimanded if these responses are not forthcoming.

The person’s limits should not be overreached; for example, overloading the participant with information, not giving him time to assimilate what he is being told, bombarding him with repetitive and monotonous stimuli patterns, or putting him into an inferior or submissive position with regard to the hypnotizer (i.e., using coercion techniques).

In the cult literature we frequently find the expressions hypnotic techniques, hypnotic inductions (Garvey, 1993), or posthypnotic suggestion (Tobias, 1993) when the authors make reference to a situation in which psychological manipulation is present. It is suggested subsequently that, in a way, psychological manipulation arises from the hypnotic features of those techniques, when in fact it occurs because of their coercive features. It is necessary to understand that, in such contexts, hypnosis is one thing and coercion another, although the two may become intermingled.

In short, the utilization of these methods would have more to do with coercion than with hypnosis. The method would not then be hypnosis, whatever happened while one was practicing it. Spiegel (2004) and Kirsch (1994) as we have said, noted that hypnosis is based upon the confidence and freedom that induces the person voluntarily to let herself go and become involved in the suggestions the hypnotist presents. The same confidence and freedom allows the person under hypnosis to get out of it whenever she wants to. Only under coercion will a person have more difficulty, precisely because she is being coerced. Therefore it would not be appropriate to refer to such a situation by the term hypnosis.

In this sense, hypnosis is always self-hypnosis. The hypnotist offers a proposal, but it is our choice to go with that suggestion or not. To choose well, we must not be coerced in any way (Capafons, 1998; Kirsch, 1991; Spiegel, 2004).

Change of Focus

Change of focus is related to changing our perceptual perspective. Doing this, in turn, will favor a state of concentration or absorption toward whatever is the current focus of our attention. We thus dissociate ourselves from everything that lies outside the boundaries of that focus of attention.

Suggestion

In this state of heightened concentration or absorption, our capacity to respond positively to certain suggestions increases. Or, as quoted above, our openness to accept and respond to new ideas and information intensifies. Figure 4 illustrates this relationship.