Involuntariness in Hypnotic Responding and Dissociative Symptoms

Abstract

Clark Hull's (1933) research on dissociation was based on a ‘straw man’ formulation of dissociation; he claimed that dissociation requires noninterference. Hull completely ignored the then-current paradigm of dissociation—dissociation as automatism—and claimed that he had refuted the validity of the phenomenon of dissociation. Hull's view of dissociation held sway in the hypnosis field for 60 years. This essay seeks to retrieve the Janetian paradigm of dissociation as automatism. Automatisms are unexpected, uninitiated, involuntary behaviors that just ‘happen.’ The author argues that human sensitivity to the experience of involuntariness (a) is quite important, (b) was selected by evolution, and (c) is central to both hypnotic responses and dissociative symptoms. This editorial urges the hypnosis field and the dissociation field to jointly undertake a renewed investigation of the experience of involuntariness and to follow recent neuroimaging studies which indicate that the parietal cortex underlies the experience of involuntariness.

KEYWORDS:

• dissociation
• hypnosis
• involuntariness
• parietal lobe

Notes

Portions of this article were presented at the American Psychological Association, Boston, MA, August 14, 2008; and the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Philadelphia, PA, October 25, 2008.