We are also learning that both biological and environmental factors predict how deeply a person goes into a trance. Identical twins reared apart often have strikingly similar responses to hypnosis. Furthermore, an "eye roll" test, developed by Herbert Spiegel, M.D., measures how far a person can roll his eyes up beneath slowly lowering lids and is correlated with hypnotizability, implying that hypnosis has neurological underpinnings. New studies by David Spiegel, M.D. (son of Herbert Spiegel) at Stanford, Helen Crawford, Ph.D., at Virginia Tech and Robert Kunsendorf, Ph.D., at the University of Massachusetts support that idea, example, suggesting anesthesia could blunt cortical activity in areas of the brain associated with pain, while asking hypnotized people to hallucinate an image could produce activity in the visual cortex. Early experiences also play a role. Children who are encouraged to engage in imaginative play and creative activities, for instance, usually grow up to respond strongly to hypnosis.
It is also becoming clear that the skills one needs to respond to hypnosis are similar to those necessary to experience trance-like states in daily life. The best predictors are a propensity to become absorbed in fantasy or imagery and a knack for blocking out the surrounding world. Research suggests that two groups of people are most easily hypnotized: fantasizers and dissociaters. While these groups make up only 5% of the general population, they are so highly hypnotizable that if a person can identify with even a few of their qualities, he or she is probably a good candidate for hypnosis.
Fantasizers
In 1981, Cheryl Wilson, Ph.D., and Ted Barber, Ph.D., of The Medfield Foundation interviewed a group of highly hypnotizable people about their childhoods and current adult experiences. They called these people "fantasizers." These subjects said their imaginations were every bit as vivid as reality. They fantasized during 90% to 100% of their waking hours, all while carrying out other activities. Wilson and Barber believed fantasizers represented most or all highly hypnotizable people.
I designed a study to test this hypothesis further. After I chose 34 of the most hypnotizable people from the several hundred that I had tested, I observed their responses to a variety of hypnotic suggestions and interviewed them to see why they might be so easily hypnotized. When I looked at people who could enter a trance instantly, I realized that almost two-thirds of them fit the profile of Wilson and Barber's fantasizers. Here's what they tend to be like:
o The memories that fantasizers have begin unusually early in life. Fantasizers' recollections are also highly detailed. Of course, we cannot gauge how accurate fantasizers' memories might be. One subject, for instance, recalled watching glowing alphabet letters popping one by one out of a shower drain. This might be a memory of a childhood dream, but also might well be a complete fantasy--or a drug-induced hallucination.
o In childhood, fantasizers had had at least one, but usually many, imaginary companions often drawn from storybook characters, real-life playmates who had moved away, and pets and toys whom they believed could talk. One of my subjects had seen the movie Camelot as a child and, for two years, imagined being the son of Arthur and Guinevere, commanding the King's court.
o Parents of fantasizers encourage imaginative play. Fantasy occupies much of these people's adult lives, too, getting them through boring chores and free time. Some fantasizers superimpose their daydreams onto their daily tasks. "I'm listening to my boss carefully," recounted one subject, "but I'm seeing the Saturday Night Live character `Mockman' next to him, imitating all his gestures."
o Parents of fantasizers often disciplined their children by reasoning with them instead of laying down hard-and-fast laws, using imagination to evoke empathy. "One time, I'd gotten in a fight in nursery school with another girl because I'd picked up a doll that was her favorite," one subject recalled. "She tried to take it away from me and I pushed her down. The teacher told my mother about it. My mother told me I should think about what the girl had felt like when she fell. I actually felt like I was her, hitting the floor, scraping one knee, and crying. I could also feel her desperation and her thought that the doll was really hers, even though it belonged to the school; she had named it and everything. I wouldn't have done that again."
o Although none of the fantasizers in the study reported experiencing severe childhood abuse, when they were spanked or verbally belittled, they typically used fantasy and imaginary companions to restore their self-esteem. Powerful aliens came down and kidnapped subjects' parents and chained them in a dungeon, for example, or were arrested by the police or sent back to grade school.
o Not surprisingly, fantasizers become deeply absorbed in stories, movies and drama, often becoming oblivious to real-world stimuli. They often find it impossible to pry themselves away from a good novel unless someone is shouting at them; they may be surprised to find themselves sitting in a theater seat at the end of a movie. Fantasizers prolong these dreamy states of mind by incorporating them into daily life, dialoguing with a book or film hero for weeks after first reading about them or seeing them onscreen.
