Here is Part 2:
What is hypnosis?
Hypnosis is a trance-like state resembling sleep in which a person becomes very responsive to suggestions from another.
Hypnosis is brought on by having one fix one’s attention on a particular object, and it can be self-induced through concentration and relaxation.
While hypnosis is often described as a sleep-like state,
it is better expressed as a state of focused attention, heightened suggestibility, and vivid fantasies.
People in a hypnotic state often seem sleepy and zoned out, but in reality, they are in a state of hyper-awareness.
Hypnotisability Scores are highly stable over a person’s lifetime. Research by Deirdre Barrett has
found that there are two distinct types of highly susceptible subjects, which she terms fantasisers and dissociaters.
Fantasisers score high on absorption scales, find it easy to block out real-world stimuli without hypnosis,
spend much time daydreaming, report imaginary companions as a child, and grew up with parents who encouraged imaginary play.
Dissociaters often have a history of childhood abuse or other trauma, learned to escape into numbness, and to forget unpleasant events.
Their association to “daydreaming”
was often going blank rather than creating vividly recalled fantasies. Both score equally high on formal scales of hypnotic susceptibility.
Individuals with dissociative identity disorder have the highest hypnotisability of any clinical group,
followed by those with posttraumatic stress disorder.