Are high hypnotizables suggestible?

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Dj I.C.U.
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Are high hypnotizables suggestible?

Post by Dj I.C.U. » Sun Jun 04, 2006 8:48 am

From http://www.fmsfonline.org/hypnosis.html#chbf

During the latter part of the 19th Century and for several decades into the 20th Century, the prevailing view among investigators of hypnosis was that it can best be understood in terms of suggestibility. At a descriptive level this may be true, but as an explanation, suggestibility theory depends upon the far from useful observation that a person who responds to a gamut of hypnotic items, ranging from very easy to very difficult is, ipso facto, suggestible. Logically, this is a circular argument, the form of which can be stated as follows:

Question: Why did a particular person respond to a number of hypnotic items?
Answer: Because s/he is suggestible.
Question: How do you know that s/he is suggestible?
Answer: Because that person responded to a number of hypnotic items.

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Dj I.C.U.
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Post by Dj I.C.U. » Sun Jun 04, 2006 8:49 am

Quite a few concepts in Psychology are used in a comparably circular fashion. Instinct is a thoroughly respectable term when used descriptively, but far too often it is used to explain what it describes. For instance, weaver birds build a distinctively shaped nest, and the evidence is that they do this when raised from birth in isolation from their parents. This is clear evidence that their nest-building behavior is instinctive, rather than learned. It is accurate descriptively to say that weaver birds have a nest-building instinct, but a pseudo-explanation to regard this empirically established instinct as explaining this behavior (E. R. Hilgard, 1971). For that, professionals trained in such fields as genetics and biochemistry appear to be more likely to provide the requisite explanation by examining what is built into the body of the bird.

By the same token, it is correct to say that people who respond positively to a hypnotic procedure are suggestible -- but only at the descriptive level. Suggestibility describes what they do; it does not explain why they do it. To understand why they do what they do, a rationale needs to be developed which differentiates the people who respond to most hypnotic items, regardless of difficulty, from those who respond minimally, if at all. Returning to weaver birds, it is true that they build distinctively shaped nests and that this behavior suggests the existence of a nest-building instinct. The mechanism that underlies this instinct needs to be documented independently, so as to avoid circular reasoning. By an identical logic, the same can be said about the mechanisms that underlie response to hypnosis, and about high and low levels of this response to it.

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