Hypnotic Susceptibility: A Personal and Historical Note Regarding the Development and Naming of the Stanford Scales

Abstract

Certain misleading, if not inaccurate, allegations that have been made regarding the foundations of the Stanford scales are corrected. No special meaning was intended when the scales were designated susceptibility scales. A retrospective examination, however, indicates that grounds existed for making certain differentiations. SHSSC and RSEI and RspS:II should more appropriately have been designated as suggestibility and depth scales. On the other hand, whereas SHSSA and SHSSB also assess depth of hypnosis, they include a feature that permits using the obtained depth as a measure of hypnotic capacity and a predictor of future hypnotic performance. The possibility of using the same measure, suggestibility, to assess hypnotic responsiveness in dissimilar contexts may have been partially responsible for the confusing variety of labels that have been attached to what in the past has appeared to many to be one and the same thing. Further confusion more recently has been introduced by researchers and clinicians who have used the term depth, previously and conventionally attached to assessments based on observed overt responses, in reference to now certain subjectively based assessments.