rigorousintuition.ca

Link.

...We agree with Lynn and psychologist Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull in England, who wrote in 1995 that “having failed to find reliable markers of trance after 50 years of careful research, most researchers have concluded that this hypothesis [that hypnosis is a unique state of consciousness] has outlived its usefulness.” Increasingly, evidence is suggesting that the effects of hypnosis result largely from people’s expectations about what hypnosis entails rather than from the hypnotic state itself. Still, it is always possible that future studies could overturn or at least qualify this conclusion. In particular, research on potential physiological markers of hypnosis may elucidate how hypnosis differs from other states of consciousness. Although hypnosis poses fascinating mysteries that will keep scientists busy for decades, it seems clear that it has far more in common with everyday wakefulness than with the watch-induced trance of Hollywood crime thrillers.

Has anyone ever done any studies on the hypnotizability of those scientists who study hypnosis?

It would be interesting to see how they fit on the suggestibility scale compared to non-scientists -- or even scientists in a very different field like, say, geology.

Do any of them have any direct experience of altered states of consciousness, or are they always the experimenter and never the rat?

It always seemed to me that hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness. Kind of a deep and guided meditation or trance state.

Wombat used to have a link to "MonsterS and Magical sticks: There's no such thing as hypnosis."

There's another book called "Trances People Live".

Just looking up the authors now.

Both those books make a strong case for the idea that normal waking consciousness is a form of hypnotic trance.

Trances People Live is by Stephen Wolinsky Margaret Ryan.

They are practicing therapists and describe how they manipulate trance in their patients to bring them out of trances that are unhealthy.

I am a bit sus on the authors cos they claim, well Wolinsky does, that the idea of mixing quantum physics and psychology is pretty much his. No mention of RAW for example.

Also, since I have become aware of the whole MK Ultra MC horror, for some reason I've always wondered if Wolinsky had any connection. (WEll if "that author guy", if you want the exact thought I was using).