Illusion and reality in the study of sleep, hypnosis, psychosis, and arousal

Abstract

All hypnoidal phenomena, i.e. both the process of induction and the achieved state, involve an interaction among many components of psychodynamic and psychophysiological processes, as these are manifested in sleep, in waking, in all intermediate phases, and especially in all transitions among them. These interactions and transitional processes also produce many illusory phenomena whose precise nature has not yet been clarified. For example, “suggestibility” and the “influence” which the hypnotist supposedly can exercise over the subject have been looked upon as essential components in hypnosis, yet we do not know to what extent they are real or to what extent they are illusory. As has been pointed out before (Kubie, 1961a, 1961b; Kubie & Margolin, 1942, 1944a, 1944b), we can be relatively certain that, both with regard to input and output, changes in the quantity, variety, rate, and amplitude of change are related in turn to changes in central excitatory and/or inhibitory processes, and that the shift from a major dependence upon exteroceptive to a major dependence upon interoceptive and proprioceptive afferent input is a basic ingredient in all hypnoidal phenomena. Clearly these can be influenced by physiological processes; yet at the same time they require a lessening of the alerting mechanisms that automatically mobilize anxiety and anger, by which these in turn will be influenced, thus interacting with their roles in the total process.

We have a more precise concept about the nature of the process of induction than of the state, but we still lack sufficiently precise concepts and criteria of both. In the absence of such criteria, meaningful correlations are still uncertain.