Hypnotic Suggestibility, Psychopathology, and Treatment Outcome

One of the most robust findings in the literature on hypnotic suggestibility is that there are large individual differences in the extent to which people respond to imaginative suggestions. Although approximately 15-20 percent of people respond to very few suggestions, a comparable percentage of individuals respond to an array of suggestions for changes in sensation, perception, cognition, and action (1). Many highly suggestible individuals are able to experience involuntary or automatic movements, vivid hallucinations, age regression, anaesthesias, compulsive posthypnotic behavior, and amnesia in response to suggestions. Observations of the dramatic effects of hypnosis led early investigators, including Charcot and Janet, to the mistaken conclusion that hypnosis was a pathological condition, while the therapeutic potential of hypnosis was recognized by Breuer, who used hypnosis to explore the psychological dynamics of conversion disorder (2). The idea that there is a link between hypnotic suggestibility and psychopathology (and medical conditions), and that suggestibility is associated with the ability to benefit from hypnotic procedures is very much alive today. In this article, we examine the link between hypnotic suggestibility and treatment outcome associated with a variety of Hypnotic Suggestibility, Psychopathology, and Treatment Outcome