BHS 499-07 Memory and Amnesia

1. BHS 499-07Memory and Amnesia Hypnosis and Multiple Identities

2. Myth of Hypnosis • Spanos is a critic of traditional views of hypnosis. • He argues against the idea of hypnosis as an altered state of consciousness in which people: • Have unusual experiences. • Have abilities not available to them normally. • Cannot lie and will do things without question.

3. Sociocognitive View of Hypnosis • Hypnotic behaviors can be explained using normal psychological processes. • The term hypnosis refers to a historically rooted conception of hypnotic responding held by the participants. • Responding is context-dependent: • Determined by the willingness of subjects to adopt the role • Modified by their understanding of that role.

4. Components of Hypnotic Situations • An induction procedure • Now, includes suggestions that the subject is becoming relaxed or sleepy. • Administration of suggestions calling for specific behavioral or subjective responses. • Arm levitation (raising) • Hypnotic responding is stable over time.

5. What is Hypnotic Responding? • Traditional view says that a trance state is induced in which people respond involuntarily to suggestions. • Sociocognitive view says that responding reflects expectations and attitudes people bring to the session. • Hypnotic subjects retain control over their actions, even when experienced as involuntary.

6. Fallacies • Hypnotic responding is no better than non-hypnotic responding to suggestions. • Neither produces long term change in smoking, wart removal, etc. • There is no unique quality to hypnotic trance that cannot be simulated. • People are not necessarily faking, but anything a hypnotized person can do, a non-hypnotized person can too.

7. Explaining Dramatic Behaviors • Negative hallucinations – deafness, blindness. • Delayed auditory feedback – “deaf” hypnotized subjects behaved like non-hypnotized. • Demand characteristics – depends on how the question is asked. • Fading number 8

8. Involuntariness • One of the chief demands of the hypnotic situation is the loss of will. • Sociocognitive view says subjects retain control and use it in goal-directed ways. • Subjects interpret their responses as involuntary in order to conform to social demand – woman swatting fly. • Wording of suggestions affects involuntariness.

9. Studies of Spirit Possession • Spanos argues that other “dissociative” experiences are the result of cultural suggestion, enacting a social role. • Not all cultures have multiple personality disorder (DID or MPD), but some enact multiple personalities as spirit possession. • Human occupant of a body is temporarily displaced by another self that takes over.

10. Speaking in Tongues • Glossolalia (speaking in tongues) occurs in the context of a religious ceremony. • May be accompanies by convulsions, eye closing or unconsciousness, etc. • Interpreted as the holy spirit taking over and speaking in His own language. • Interpretation may follow, with amnesia. • Learned and practiced behavior.

11. Spirit Mediums • The medium becomes possessed by a spirit or series of spirits who help the client. • The ceremony involves behaviors marking the transitions, and observer responses the validate the performance.

12. Example of Spirit Possession • http://www.spiritualresearchfoundation.org/spiritualresearch/difficulties/Ghosts_Demons/violent_manifestation.php

13. Learning the Possessed Role • In some families, being a medium runs in the family and the spirit moves from one relative to another. • In some cases, people apprentice to learn the role. • Kardec introduced spirit mediums into Puerto Rico where “espiritistas” replaced folk healers. • The first possession may arise during distress.

14. Peripheral Possession • A person with little social status or power becomes possessed by a member of another person’s family. • That possessing spirit begins making demands that must be met by the other family. • Women may adopt peripheral possession roles in order to engage in behavior otherwise not tolerated.

15. Historical Demon Possession • Symptoms of demon possession from the New Testament: • Convulsions, sensory and motor deficits, enactment of alternate identities, loss of voluntary control, increased strength, amnesia • These symptoms ultimately coalesced into a relatively stereotypic social role. • Largely a conversion tool, so possession increased with competition among religions.

16. Witchcraft and Demon Possession • In the 15-17 centuries, demon possession was associated with witchcraft (part of a Satanic conspiracy). • Compendium Maleficarum – witchhunting manual from the 17th century. • People who were of low social status but intelligent, well-traveled, or privy to thoughts and actions of others were suspected. • Behaviors of those possessed were involuntary

17. Socialization of Demoniacs • Clerics taught those possessed their role. • Initially symptoms were ambiguous. • Later, became convulsions, being bitten, and seeing spectres of witches attacking them. • Catholic & Protestant treatment of demons varied. • Enactments sometimes used strategically.

18. Evidence of Social Construction • Incidence of demon possession has varied widely across cultures and across time periods with inconsistent symptoms. • Some experts diagnose many more cases than others. • The more attention paid to the symptoms, the more elaborate they become. • Rearrangement of biographies to fit role.