Physiological effects during hypnotically requested emotions.

From the Laboratory of Social Relations, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., and Studies in Hypnosis Project, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass. This work was supported by Research Grant M-3369 from the U. S. Public Health Service, National Institute of Mental Health, and by a grant from the Human Ecology Fund. We wish to thank our co-workers, Emily Carota Orne and Donald N. O'Connell for their critical comments and editorial assistance in the preparation of this manuscript. Much appreciation is due Dr. Ulric Neisser, Brandeis University, for his suggestions, and Mr. Bernard Tursky, Psychophysiology Laboratory, Massachusetts Mental Health Center, for his technical assistance. Received for publication Nov. 19, 1962. control and are therefore not within the behavioral repertoire of the waking S. For example, Reiter concludes ". . . it has been evidenced that during hypnosis it is practicable through suggestion to provoke pronounced changes within a field of function which is vegetatively regulated. The changes will be more pronounced the more intimately the suggested emotional state is correlated to the relationship between the adrenals and the sympathetic nervous system." Gorton concludes, "it is . . . clearly established that hypnotic suggestion is capable of bringing about physiological changes which differ significantly from those produced by means of suggestion in the waking state. There is good reason to believe that these changes differ quantitatively and qualitatively from those which can be obtained voluntarily."