of making. That is why people are more
responsive to suggestion—including
therapeutic suggestions—after a
hypnotic induction than they were
before it. It also can disinhibit
therapists by providing a context for
therapeutic behaviors that might seem
inappropriate in other settings (T. X.
Barber, 1985). For example, the
hypnotic context permits the therapist
to repeat statements over and over,
which enhances their forcefulness and
salience. Outside the hypnotic context,
this style of communication would
seem strange and inappropriate. (pp.
35–36)
Bearing in mind the circumstances just
mentioned, the existence of huge
misconceptions in the general understanding of
hypnosis has been widely agreed on. The
Society of Clinical Hypnosis (SCH) (APA-
Division 30) has listed some myths with regard
to commonly held beliefs about hypnosis. One
of these myths is that under hypnosis a person
can be induced to do acts that he would not do
without hypnosis. My main aim in this paper is
to clarify, to the extent possible, some of the
possible causes of the error that leads to this
particular myth. Another related myth the SCH
lists is that people may not be able to come out
of hypnosis, and thus become stuck in a
hypnotic state. Again, the mass media has had a
significant role in spreading these myths as if
they were true.
Where does this confusion come from? Apart
from the historical reasons sketched above, the
main cause of these misconceptions is, from my
point of view, that a characteristic of the
hypnotic state, namely, a rise in suggestibility, is
also a characteristic of people who find
themselves in manipulative contexts.
What Is Suggestibility and What Are Its
Constituents?
Yapko (1995) defines suggestibility as an
openness to accept and respond to new ideas and
information. According to Spiegel and Spiegel
(2004), we can refer to situations as being
conducive to states of high suggestibility when
we find the following:
a) high dissociation
b) low critical thinking
These two elements, high dissociation and low
critical thinking, are the essential constituents of
suggestibility.
High Dissociation
It will be of use to our discussion to look first at
what we understand dissociation to mean.
Dissociation is one of the more controversial
terms in psychiatry and psychology. Recent
developments (Cardeña, 1994 Spiegel &
Cardeña, 1996) establish a basic distinction
between pathological and nonpathological
dissociation. An example of the first is
dissociative amnesia, wherein we are unable to
retrieve basic information about our identity. An
example of the second is daydreaming, a state of
concentration that makes us dissociate from
everything lying outside the focus of our
attention. Daydreaming, to be concentrated in
our thoughts while we are driving to the extent
of not remembering anything of our journey
afterward, is an example of this second type of
dissociation. This second type of dissociation is
the one I will be referring to in this paper
because it is the dissociation implied in
hypnosis. However, it is likely that the line that
separates pathological dissociation from
nonpathological dissociation is blurred.
We could characterize dissociation as looking at
one part and forgetting about the whole: One
sees the trees but not the wood, and not
necessarily all the trees, but perhaps just a few.
In this state, a person concentrates so much on
one part that she loses perspective of the whole
of which it is a part. However, dissociation
could also imply one seeing the wood without
seeing the trees. In that case, the person centers
herself so much on the big picture that she loses
touch with the particulars. When a mind can
switch easily between a vision of individual
trees and that of the whole forest, and vice-
versa, then integration is reached, and that is
considered the healthy way to perceive. This
ability of perception to change perspective easily
allows a person to have a more accurate view of
reality. This integrative capacity is lost or
impaired in certain more or less pathological
situations.
50 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015

Two examples of these perspectives are
provincialism and fundamentalism (I will let the
reader judge which category these examples fall
into). Provincialism occurs when you can pay
attention only to some trees without seeing other
trees or the entire forest. Fundamentalism occurs
when you can see only the forest and therefore
want to apply a theory to all cases, without
paying attention to the individuality of each tree.
We may speculate that the line that separates
pathological from nonpathological dissociation
lies in the difficulty or ease with which one can
reach this perceptual integration (this is at least
one of the lines that separates the two there will
surely be others). Thus, pathological dissociation
would be characterized by an incapacity or a
difficulty in being able to change one’s point of
view. Sticking to the example of the trees and
the forest, the person would be trapped in her
perception either of one part or of the whole,
without being able to swap her point of view
from one to the other, or to change viewpoint
without difficulty. In contrast, in
nonpathological dissociation, the person would
be able to easily change her perception of one
part for that of the whole, and vice versa, and
thus achieve perceptual integration.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is something we all understand,
and I do not see the need to expand on the
concept further. However, it is important to note
that the increase in dissociation and the decrease
of critical thinking are two sides of the same
coin. Each is enhanced by the other. That is to
say, the more evidence of dissociation, the less
critical thinking will be on display, and the less
critical thinking is evident, the more dissociation
there is. Here lies the essence of suggestion. Let
us look at an example.
A drug addict who has been able to abstain for
some months, and who is in what is considered,
according to Prochaska and Di Clemente (1983),
the maintenance phase, suddenly sees his drug
of preference and craves it (conditioned
abstinence). In the addict’s mind in those
moments, only the good experiences related with
the drug are being considered, despite the fact
that these experiences represent only a tiny
proportion of his story with the drug. In
accordance with our example, the addict sees
only some of the trees in that situation. This is
clearly a dissociation. He sees only a part, which
actually is the smallest part, and does not see the
rest: the long and painful history of disastrous
consequences of his addiction. This high level of
dissociation stimulates a very low level of
critical thinking, since he will derive no
evaluation of the negative consequences related
to the consumption of the drug from
remembering only the good moments associated
with it. In such circumstances, he does not
regard his perspective of consuming the drug as
highly dangerous—an assessment which, in turn,
feeds a high dissociation, in a vicious circle in
which both factors provide feedback to one
another. The floating state of a former cult
member would be another example of this
process.
Different Ways of Eliciting High-
Suggestibility States
According to Spiegel and Spiegel (2004), there
are three basic ways of putting people into a
high suggestibility state, or trance, as they refer
to it:
a) Hypnosis
b) Seduction
c) Coercion
In other words, as Figure 1 depicts, by means of
hypnosis, seduction, or coercion, a state of high
suggestibility can be induced in another. Thus,
this similarity in the outcome can lead to
confusion with regard to the cause that is to say,
hypnosis, seduction, and coercion all lead us to
the same place, but they do so along different
routes and are therefore not the same thing.
The great difference between these ways of
getting to the same level of suggestibility lies in
the ease with which one can get out of each
circumstance. That outcome depends on the way
one takes to get there, and it also has direct
consequences on the person’s freedom (see
Figure 2).
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015 51