Hypnosis and Ordinary Trances

There is no such thing as hypnosis - all experience is trance.  [You can easily experience one kind of trance by fixating your gaze on a target.  Some interesting targets are at Optical Illusions].

The hypnotic trance clients experience in my office is just one of many different states of consciousness they experience throughout the day.  We are always in one trance or another.  Trances can be formally induced, but ordinarily are elicited naturally. 

Mr. O loves his wife, and generally treats her well, except sometimes he gets angry and beats her up.  To his wife he is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  To the therapist Jekyll and Hyde are the same man in different trances.  

As Dr. Jekyll, O has only tender thoughts of his wife, and memories of good times past come easily to mind - bad thoughts and images are far away.  But when he is angry at her, it seems she is always looking at other men, and never treats him with respect.  Now thoughts of her positive characteristics and loving tender feelings for her are unavailable to him.   This transition from one perceptual bias to another is invisible to him.  He is only aware of the provocation.  In a group setting, Mr. O can see the perceptual biases of others.  But it looks different than it feels, and he, like the rest of us,  cannot identify perceptual biases within himself in real time.  

One's state of mind [trance] at any given moment is determined by what has captured attention.  For example: imagine that you got a message that someone in your family had been seriously hurt in automobile accident and you must get to the emergency room right away.  You would run or drive as fast as you could, heart pounding, thoughts racing, experiencing great distress.   When you got there and discovered the report was untrue, you would experience relief, a very different trance.  Behaviors that are likely now would have been unlikely a few minutes earlier, and behaviors that were likely then would not be likely now. Objectively, the report was never true, yet it had a great impact on your state of mind and body.  The fact that the car accident had not happened was irrelevant.  The trance was elicited by the subjective reality that existed only in your mind, not by what was objectively true. 

Perception, memory, and behavior are each dependent upon your current state of mind, which in turn is dependent on local conditions.  Memory is state dependent - that is, memories formed during happy states are better remember when happy, memories formed when sad are better remember when sad.¹   When a loved one does something irritating it seems they are always doing such things; memories of earlier endearing actions are hard to access.  This is not only true for anger and affection - each trance produces characteristic perceptual biases that favor processing information consistent with the current trance.  The mood disorders, depression and anxiety are recursive trances, and so persist and even feed on themselves.  For more information on the trances people live, visit The Soul Illusion

Self Guided Trance

Hypnosis is but one vivid example of the fundamental nature of all experience as trance or state-dependent.  What is different about hypnosis is that the trance is produced intentionally, although indirectly².  

You can intentionally have some influence on the course of your life, but this is non-trivial task.  In real time there is an ongoing battle for your attention.  Whichever stimulus captures your attention will determine the current trance. 

Stimulus Salience refers to the ability of a stimulus to capture attention.  The most salient stimuli are associated with immediate pain or pleasure.  Local stimuli are much more salient than those at a distance, and so have a much greater influence on the current trance.  To follow the path of greatest advantage you must have the strength to keep your attention on your goal, despite the salient distractions along your way.

Developing this strength can be achieved by meditation - an exercise that in many ways is similar to working out with weights.  If meditation is like working out with weights, than hypnosis is like working out with a personal trainer. 

Self-Hypnosis and Self-Determination

One path to independence is to develop the capability to choose targets for your attention that encourage success.  To over-ride the influence of an external source of control, do not permit focus on thoughts and images the PIG would want you to target.  Resolve that any occurrence of such thoughts or images will trigger the PIG's question: "What is the best use of my attention right now?"  The answer to this question [examples: "Engage in a healthy pleasure," or "Get some work done"] becomes the intentional target.  Your job is to continually redirect your attention back to the intentional target until the relapse crisis is past.  This may take a while, and involve several redirections. 

• Happily, the more you do this exercise the better you get at it, and the more resistant to destructive distractions you become. 
• This exercise is a form of meditation, and you may find that after focusing on the intentional target for a while, your state of mind changes.  If this happens you will have willfully altered your own subjective reality.
• The capability of intentionally influencing your current state of mind - rather than being a plaything external events - is a significant milestone along the path of self-determination. 

Footnotes:

1. Bower, G. [1981] "Mood and Memory" American Psychologist. 36, 129-149; Weingartner, H etal [1977], Mood state-dependent retrieval of verbal associates. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 86, 276-284

2. Direct control of responding only works for the voluntary muscles.  Influence over emotional and motivational states may only be achieved indirectly -  by aiming attention to the stimulus that produces the desired state.  

It looks different than it feels.

- Gordon Potter

- N. H. Frijda

You cannot find yourself, only create yourself.

-Anne B. Sekel

Mental health is the process of trading one set of problems for a more interesting set of problems.

- Nathaniel Brandon