Aside - Digging for Hypnosis as a Ritual

Wait, where’d that bit about hypnosis being a ritual really come from?

Man. Academic research in hypnosis is annoying. This aside’s a little rough - but it’s more to highlight what a pain in the ass it is to ‘properly’ dig up a source.

My first hint came from Wordweaver himself, linking me this. There’s some summaries here where Kihlstrom speaks about hypnosis as a ceremony - much like how we could look at guided meditation. But if we dig a bit deeper, it leads us to this article…

I’m not an academic - so finding the resource took some footwork. We get the quote from this article, stating…

Hypnosis can be defined as “an event or ritual between a hypnotist and an hypnotic subject in which both agree to use suggestion to bring about a change in perception or behavior.”69

Nice. Let’s check that footnote…

Kulleseid S, Surman OS: Hypnosis. In Stern TA, Herman JB, editors: Psychiatry update and board preparation, New York, 2000, McGraw-Hill, pp 467–470.

Ah - it leads here to another paywall. After a bit more looking around, I realized I went down the wrong path, ending up here at Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Update & Board Preparation 4th ed. Edition.

Wait what - it’s not there?! Holy hell, where the f-…

It’s buried only in the first edition on page 467.

Interestingly, if we really know our shit, we also find out why it was rewritten.

In Clinical Hypnosis and Self Regulation, there’s an article about Hypnosis and Forensic Psychology. In there, they discuss how poor hypnosis is for memory retrieval, as it tends to give confidence to false memories, reshaping them on the fly.

Anyway, that’s the end of my ramble. It takes a degree of masochism and tenacity to dig this stuff up - unless you’re already incredibly comfortable with both digging through academic text and have the resources to do so.