Hypnosis and the Wakeful Sleeper

2014

As individuals bring their raw potentials into existence, the human race evolves. Trance states are the means through which these transformations take place. Trances are concentrated states of engagement with the world. They occur frequently in the ordinary course of living. Hypnosis is merely one variety of trance, but its study has led to a profound understanding of trance states in general. The idea that trance constitutes the technology for human advance has developed for Dr. Crabtree over a period of some thirty years. Memoir of a Trance Therapist is the story of that development, along with an explanation of the central elements of Dr. Crabtree's vision.

J Abnormal Psychol, 1970

Page 1. Journal oj Abnormal Psychology 1970, Vol. 76, No. 2, 304-315 CONSCIOUS CONTROL OF DREAMING: I. THE POSTHYPNOTIC DREAM1 CHARLES T. TART2 AND LOIS DICK University of Calijornia, Davis Thirteen ...

2003

The study of dreams and its underlying neurophysiological mechanisms can provide important insights into how changes in the brain can account for changes in the conscious experience of waking and sleep. The study of the brain basis of dreaming is an important herald of what needs to be done to understand hypnosis at the level of the brain. In this paper we point out similarities and differences between sleep, dreaming and hypnosis but our main emphasis will be on the new science of dreaming. The mental and emotional output of the brain during REM sleep differ considerably from the output of the brain during waking. To get at this difference we assess and measure what we call the formal properties of the mental content of the states waking and REM sleep (as well as sleep onset). In this way we attempt to articulate the distinguishing universal characteristics of dreaming as against the individual content of dreams. We are thus able to compare human brain regional activation Dreaming ...

A number of investigators have concluded that dreams occurring in the hypnotic state and dreams occurring in natural sleep are essentially the same phenomenon. The purpose of the present study was to carry out an objective comparison of the extent to which dreams in the 2 states were affected by (post) hypnotic suggestions to dream about a speciiied topic, in order to partially test the validity of the above conclusion. 10 Ss were trained to reach a deep hypnotic state, and then each S participated in 2 individual experimental sessions. In the Hypnotic Dream Session the S, while deeply hypnotized, was instructed to dream immediately about a tape-recorded narrative. He was then dehypno-tized and asked to describe his dream. I n the Sleep Dream Session the deeply hypnotized S was instructed to dream about a similar narrative played on the tape recorder, but the dream was to occur during his natural sleep that night. The E awakened the S for a dream report during each stage 1 dream period of the night, on the basis of EEG and eye movement recordings. All the hypnotic "dreams" were found to have been accompanied by a waking EEG pattern, a lower basal skin resistance than the stage 1 dreams of each S, and the presence of nonspecific galvanic skin responses , which were absent during stage 1 dreaming. It was thus established that the 2 types of dreams occurred in distinct neurophysiologi-cal states. The reported dream were rated on how well they conformed to the suggested narratives by a technique which was quite objective, in the sense of being highly communicable. For the group of 10 Ss, the suggestions had a significantly greater effect on dreams occurring in the hypnotic state than on dreams occurring in stage 1 sleep. Further considerations in evaluating the data are discussed, and some tentative conclusions are: (a) posthypnotic suggestion shows great promise as a technique for manipulating the content of stage 1 sleep dreams; and (b) the equating of dreams in hypnosis and sleep, both

Frontiers in Neurology, 2020

This essay will evaluate the extent to which James Braid (1795-1860) reinvented Mesmerism through his attempt to make trance-therapy more palatable for the 19th century medico-scientific community. Did Hypnotism offer a greater understanding of the phenomena, or was it simply Mesmerism in disguise? There already exist detailed works regarding; the practice of Mesmerism analysed on its own terms 1 ; its relation to the (much later) development of psychoanalysis 2 ; and its (non-accidental) temporal position at the end of the Enlightenment period in France 3. However, there is a distinct lack of modern historical literature pertaining to the continuity between Mesmerism and Braid's Hypnotism. This – coupled with pure curiosity – has been the motivation for this study.

Lévinas Is a phenomenology of sleep possible? If sleep is the complete absence of experience, including, the self-experience of consciousness itself, how can phenomenology, as a description of lived experience, have access to a condition that is neither lived nor experienced? In this paper, I respond directly and indirectly to Jean-Luc Nancy's challenge that a phenomenology of sleep is impossible. As an indirect response, my sketch of the contours of phenomenology of sleep investigates Husserl's employment of the distinction between sleep and wakefullness as a metaphor. Specifically, the metaphorical characterization of retentional consciousness is assessed. On the basis of this metaphorical characterization of time-consciousness in terms of sleep and wakefullness, I turn to Husserl's account of the constitution of sleep. I argue that Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness remains incomplete without an account of "sleep-consciousness" (by which we mean, in a restricted manner, dreamless sleep). In pursuing Husserl's phenomenological account of sleep, falling asleep and waking up within the context of his genetic phenomenology, I offer a suggestion for how to understand the sense in which consciousness (temporarily) constitutes itself as sleep--as the absence of itself. I conclude with an analogy with Husserl's investigations into the imaginary: in both instances, consciousness induces within itself its own suspension or self-abstention. In the particular instance of sleep, consciousness disengages itself entirely from the complex of interests while also immunizing itself to the force of affectivity.

The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology, 2009