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This article explores the sociocognitive view of hypnosis, questioning traditional notions of altered states of consciousness. It examines the role of expectations, attitudes, and cultural suggestion in hypnotic responding and discusses the cultural phenomena of spirit possession and speaking in tongues. The article also delves into the socialization of demoniacs and the historical association between demon possession and witchcraft.
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BHS 499-07Memory and Amnesia Hypnosis and Multiple Identities
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Example of Spirit Possession • http://www.spiritualresearchfoundation.org/spiritualresearch/difficulties/Ghosts_Demons/violent_manifestation.php
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
