by Rob MacInnes
It is the last day of the semester and I’m gripped with a strange apprehension. We are all giving our final class presentations on clinical, individually administered psychological tests. Many of the well known psychometric heavy-hitters have already been presented: The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), The Rorschach inkblot test, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the CAPS (clinical administered PTSD scale), just to name a few. At the beginning of the semester, I chose to present the Hypnotic Induction Profile (HIP) in front of my psychological assessment class. The Hypnotic Induction Profile is an instrument that measures clinically utilizable “hypnotizability”. It is a brief and empirically validated test developed by Dr Herbert Spiegel and David Spiegel MD to yield information regarding an individual’s hypnotizability sufficient to make a decision regarding the role of hypnosis in treatment. It was also developed in the hopes of creating a scale with rich relationships to psychopathology factors and treatment outcomes (Spiegel, 1978).
This is a test which is arguably less useful for consulting hypnotists who work with whomever shows up, than it is for medical doctors or psychologists with additional training in hypnotism, or a psychiatrist for example, who sees close to 100 patients per week, doesn’t necessarily have time for multiple sessions on a single issue, and can readily decide between alternate modes of treatment. The version I presented to the class was modified from the original, based on an NGH post-convention demonstration I witnessed by Rev C. Scot Giles, plus my own adjustments which minimized the amount of touch, as well as attempt to make the language slightly more updated and plain, without sacrificing the meaning of the items.
With the HIP, the administrator becomes the instrument to measure an individual’s “hypnotizability”. Because I am demonstrating a measurement instrument, there is no good reason for me to feel uneasy. Whether they do poorly or display profound hypnotic capacity isn’t technically relevant to my skill as a hypnotist (as long as I can adequately administer the test). However, because I am in a room with fellow students that are aware that I practice hypnotism, who have never experienced hypnosis or seen a demonstration in person, including the professor who is an expert in neuropsychology and psychometrics, I feel some pressure to “perform” as a hypnotist, represent the profession, and ensure that some hypnotic phenomena is displayed. Opinions on the efficacy of hypnosis are going to be formed this evening in the minds of current and future helping professionals, people I could ideally network with in the future. To have my single demonstration volunteer fail on every item of hypnotic potential would not be the best look for myself or the profession. Going over all my charts on statistical validity, normative data, and reliability of the HIP I brought along would seem somehow disconnected without the “seeing-is-believing” impact that a demonstration should provide. I’m uneasy because I want there to be some zazz, some hypno-fireworks, something to cement in the memory of my classmates that there is a real effect produced by hypnosis, and using the HIP as a demonstration, without having any extra time to go into depth-testing or convincers, is really leaving this up to chance.
I’m not currently a stage hypnotist (at least not until I have to repay my student loans). I believe it was Scott McFall who pointed out at the convention two years ago, that all the hypnosis greats at some point either did some stage or demonstrational hypnosis, even Milton Erickson did demos. I made the commitment to get some live demonstrations under my belt whenever a chance presents itself.
So I’ve done my introduction and gave the class some background information on the HIP and it’s now time to pick a volunteer for the demonstration. There is no time for any suggestibility testing or to pick a “high” from the crowd and no time for a pretalk. I’m going to work with whoever is willing to be hypnotized in front if the class, no matter how ill-informed they are on the subject of hypnosis. But there are no takers; This is not what my classmates signed up for. No one has any idea what, specifically, I’m going to have them do besides go into hypnosis and move their arm around. No one in the crowd has any accurate information regarding hypnosis. In short, no one wants to be “turned into a chicken”. It’s kind of a tough crowd.
My professor, probably the most left brained and analytically-abled individual in the building at that hour, graciously volunteers. Now I don’t know what, if any, exposure he has had to hypnosis or what exactly his opinions are on hypnotism. He is a forensic licensed psychologist that has OK’d my writing this article but did not want his name used. Perhaps that gives an image of the “critical factor” that needs to be to bypassed. So much for my hypno-zazz, I am blatantly about to look like a fool in front of my classmates, if any hypnosis is reached it will probably be resisted or denied somehow, but at least it will be over soon.
I begin the profile. the Eye Roll score (ER) is promising, a 2.75 out of 4. Some definite hypnotic potential is present, at least according to Spiegel’s hypotheses. The question is, can it be expressed in front of a group, with no pretalk, no clarification of the context of hypnosis, no real motivation to go into a hypnotic state? The induction is complete and the next item is arm levitation. Will his arm raise by simply suggesting that it feels lighter, as he imagines a ballon tied to his hand? I even suggest that every breath he inhales causes more helium to expand that balloon making the arm want to raise even more. It is not to be, so I adjust his arm in an upright position and he is at least able to keep it there.
The next set of interlocking suggestions are given as follows:
I am going to move your hand down to touch the surface of the desk, when I do that I would like to suggest that you will be surprised and amused to find that your arm will want to rise back up into the air until it is approximately in the position it is in now, and that you will allow that to happen …. I would like to suggest that your arm will want to remain in that elevated position until such time as I touch your elbow just like this *touch*. At that time and not before, your right hand will go back to feeling the same as your left hand. [*The reader may note that these words diverge somewhat from the actual HIP]
I ask a few questions and proceed to the post induction arm levitation item. The instructor is losing (post-induction levitation) points as I use up all four reinforcements and still no levitation. I find out afterwards that at this point he is still very aware of the class and not yet “feeling hypnotized”. Camera phones are flashing and he is laughing a little bit with the class, which I assure him will “take him deeper”.
On the next test item I have him raise the other hand. This is the control differential item where you ask questions that assess any feeling of difference in the “sense of control” in one arm versus the other as it rises. Previously, to get some arm levitation I have given suggestions that the right arm feels very light and that the left arm feels extremely heavy. When I ask about the difference in sensation and sense of control in one arm as compared to the other as it goes up, the response is positive. His right arm feels lighter with which he indicates feeling somewhat less control. Some hypnosis is happening, I now know he is in hypnosis at some level because these suggestions have stuck and have affected his perception of his arms, however I might be the only one in the room that realizes it at this point.
Next, (and this is where I’m going with all this) I give the cut off signal: a touch on the elbow and *bang* his whole arm instantly drops and hits the rickety desktop with a solid thud. This surprised me because I had not seen this with the individuals I had practiced the HIP on. However it was a clear and immediate response to this line I borrowed from C. Scot Giles modification of the HIP*:
I would like to suggest that your arm will want to remain in that elevated position until such time as I touch your elbow just like this *touch*.
Normally, at least from the limited experience I have with the HIP, you touch the elbow but still have to manually push the still immobilized hand down to touch the armrest, or in this case the surface of the desk. I had not anticipated that it would suddenly cut off all levitation like a switch, nor had I considered that his arm was actually being held in place entirely by suggestion considering it took all four reinforcements to get it to rise. For the demo, I altered the forth reinforcement as follows. Instead of saying: just put it up there, even if you have to pretend or “fake it”, I said: “just let it rise back up into the upright position of it’s own accord … help it along just a little bit if you need to”. This, I believe, reframed the situation from “OK, just play along, pretend” to one that left the door open to true nonvoluntary hypnotic compliance.
Finally, no other points were awarded for the remaining test items, that is amnesia (Item K) and floating sensation (Item L), though he answered that he “felt calm” in response to the Item L question.
After the demo, before presenting the psychometric data, I asked the professor to explain to the observers what he got out of the experience that might not have been apparent to the rest of the class by observing. He said “I was very aware of the class, I didn’t really feel like I was hypnotized…until you touched my elbow and it suddenly dropped, then I was like, Whoa!” …. “He added, I’ve done relaxation techniques before but this felt… different”.
This gave me a great opportunity to explain what normally would have been part of the pre-talk: “it is different.. Hypnosis and relaxation are two different things, there is no such thing as a “hypnotized feeling” the only feeling of hypnosis has to do with what is being suggested, such as the heaviness and lightness in the hands you had reported, that you can be unrelaxed or tense and still be in hypnosis but we tend to prefer to suggest pleasant feelings such as relaxation”.
What is interesting to me is that technically he did not pass the cut off item, the right arm did not feel the same as the left arm (considering it just smacked the desk). But clearly the cut off signal had full effect. When his arm dropped, the suggestion: your arm will want to remain in that elevated position until such time as I touch your elbow just like this *touch* was acted upon with an unmistakable immediacy that surprised both of us. This is what Weitzenhoffer (1980) one of the co-authors of the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales (SHSS), characterizes as the enhancement of nonvoluntary compliance with suggestion following induction procedures, a classic hypnotic effect which is distinct from a deliberate, voluntary effort to follow the instructions. I am confident that under different circumstances (not being in front of the class with no explanation or clarification of the context of hypnosis) that the effect would have shown itself on the other items of the test as well. The HIP is of course intended to be administered individually in a clinical setting, not a classroom, so the professor’s profile score on this occasion would probably not be considered valid.
In altering the HIP for a class demonstration, I had not adequately anticipated the possible consequences, i.e., every possible way the suggestions could be understood or interpreted at all the varying levels of hypnosis. But internalizing and demonstrating the HIP was an excellent learning experience, which I will continue to draw from. If I had not asked about his experiences after he emerged, I might have missed exactly what it was that had convinced him, and by extension the rest of the class, that he had experienced substantial depth of hypnosis.
References
Spiegel, H. (1977) The Hypnotic Induction Profile (HIP): A review of its development. Annals of new york academy of sciences 296: 129-142.
Spiegel, H. & Spiegel, D (1978). Trance and treatment: Clinical uses of hypnosis. New York: Basic Books Inc.
Weitzenhoffer, A.M. (1980) Hypnotic susceptibility revisited. American Journal of clinical hypnosis, 22 (3), 130-46.
*For clarification, neither C. Scot Giles nor the NGH teach the HIP which is the intellectual property of Herbert Spiegel MD and David Spiegel MD. Some of the modification described can be credited to a live demonstration of the HIP by C Scot Giles as witnessed by the author. The use of these particular alterations was at the liberty of the author for the purposes of ease in presentation in a psychological assessment course. The HIP is not administered by the author in a clinical setting in either original or modified form.
