The Value of Nonstate Hypnosis and Ignoring Suggestibility

The Value of Nonstate Hypnosis and Ignoring Suggestibility by sleepingirl

Hypnosis is a unique art and kink in the sense that how we do it relies heavily on how we understand it. As writer and educator GleefulAbandon says, “You don’t need to explain what rope is in order to do a rope scene.” This idea applies to all parties in a hypnosis scene: The subject, notably, needs to understand at least a little bit about hypnosis for it to be most effective. We are familiar with the idea that many of the issues that new subjects face when they are trying to go into trance stems from mismatched expectations or lack of knowledge that would serve to guide their experience.

The flipside of this is that the actual techniques involved in hypnotizing a person are taught and learned with the necessary background information: “What is hypnosis? How does it work?” We do certain things on the basis that hypnosis works a certain way -- one of the most basic examples of this is the idea that hypnosis involves responses which are unconscious, so hypnotists can or should work with the part of the person that drives unconscious responses.

The problem here is that there is no singular, distilled answer to these fundamental questions. For all intents and purposes, we are all making assumptions regarding the nature of hypnosis. The trickiest part of this is that many of these assumptions, when we derive techniques based off of them, appear to yield results. A hypnotist who operates based on the concept that there is a “hidden observer” within their subject will many times have great experiences that in turn reinforce their belief. Their subject didn’t respond to a suggestion that they didn’t want -- obviously, that means that their hidden observer played a part, right? They may even “speak to” this supposed observer, and receive a response.

The result is that hypnosis, as a practice, is a loosely-woven combination of models (ways to think about hypnosis) and therefore techniques. Certain ideas have become pervasive in the body of hypnosis knowledge because of this, even though they can ultimately be limiting or misleading. In this essay, we’ll address and offer some alternatives to one of the most fundamental concepts that comes up when we’re talking about how hypnosis works: “Hypnosis increases suggestibility.”

State vs Nonstate Theories

The nature of hypnosis has almost always been up for debate, discussion, and study. Some theories have been wholly disproven, such as Franz Mesmer’s original theory of animal magnetism and magnetic fluid, but many of the theories from the 20th century onwards are difficult or impossible to prove one way or another due to their abstract nature. Many can be seen as falling somewhere on a scale between what are called “state” and “nonstate” theories.

State theories of hypnosis usually posit that hypnosis is a distinct, altered state of consciousness. This is used as an explanation for how subjects behave and feel during hypnosis -- a physiological change in brain function causes subjects to respond to hypnotic suggestions and feel as though those responses are involuntary. Often, other changes in cognition such as dissociation are said to be involved, and “hypnotizability” is said to be measurable through tests (eliciting “trance” and giving various suggestions). This idea leads into the concept that hypnosis is a special state that has an effect on the way that someone takes suggestions.

Nonstate theories, in contrast, argue broadly the opposite: Hypnosis is not a unique state, and hypnotic behavior can be explained through other psychological principles. Some talk about the concept that the “hypnotist” and “subject” are entering into a social contract and are expected to behave in a certain way, so they do (even though this may not be wholly conscious). Discussion of Pavlovian conditioning and association also comes up. They do not preclude the sense that hypnotic response can feel involuntary -- simply that the reason for this experience is not because of a “trance” state.

Many of the more modern academic theories have moved away from this harsh dichotomy, and approach something in the middle, or something that marries the idea of hypnosis as a state with concepts such as role-enactment and expectation. For our purposes, it is best to be able to understand the various ideas and models of hypnosis in order to pick and choose styles and techniques that make sense. Any existing theory about hypnosis is purely conjecture. This means that aspects of them can and should coexist.

“Suggestibility”

We still see a lot of the older state-based thinking when we look at hypnosis technique that is broadly used today. Hypnosis tends to be about inducing trance in order to achieve different purposes. This is evident when we analyse how much emphasis is put on the common framework of a scene: “Pretalk, Induction, Suggestions, Wakeup.” Part of this comes from a need to simplify and explain the hypnotic process to someone who has no preexisting knowledge. However, this structure seems to imply that the induction of hypnosis is what facilitates suggestions, and many newer hypnotists struggle to escape this format and way of thinking.

The essential idea that hypnosis creates suggestibility falls apart when we understand that we use suggestion in order to create trance: If someone is not “suggestible” outside of trance, they would simply never be able to be hypnotized. Studies have shown that suggestions given without formal induction of hypnosis (“waking suggestions”) are not really less effective than suggestions given while the subject is in trance. We can also look at the practice of someone like Milton Erickson who was famous for acknowledging trance as something special but not the main catalyst for response.

“Suggestibility,” as a general concept, is a misleading attempt to slap a single label on the entirety of human experience and processing. The way that an individual responds to suggestions and hypnosis is exceedingly complex. Consider the skillset and steps required to be suggested to recall a memory, versus forget a memory, versus visualize something enjoyable, versus visualize something uncomfortable, etc.

Every suggestion takes nuance and understanding of a person’s process. A study from 1980 looked specifically at suggested amnesia. Some participants were instructed to forget something without specifying how they should do it, while others were told to forget by “[directing] attention away from the target items and to maintain it away from recall cues even when challenged to recall.” 75% of the subjects following that direction experienced at least some amnesia, compared to only 36% of those who had no instruction. This very plainly shows that engaging with a person’s process is much more important and effective than conceptualizing hypnosis as a state that facilitates suggestions.

Nonstate Principles and Techniques

In this section, we’ll take a look at some of the concepts of various nonstate theories of hypnosis and strive to understand how they can be useful to us when we engage in scenes.

• Subjects respond outside of trance almost if not as well as inside trance

Waking suggestion, while comparatively newer in hypnosis culture, has an established history, and a number of influential studies have analyzed the effectiveness of “imaginative” (“nonhypnotic”) suggestion as opposed to suggestions given during trance. A paper in 2001 reports,

“Because of the small effect of hypnosis and the high correlation between hypnotic and nonhypnotic responding, the term hypnotizability is inaccurate and misleading as a label for the individual difference variable measured by so-called hypnosis scales. These scales do not measure differences in the effects of hypnosis. Instead, they measure differences in responses to a particular type of suggestion, more or less independent of the induction of hypnosis.”

This concept pushes us to pay more attention to suggestions themselves than trance and hypnosis. In line with this, we should also strive to eschew other ideas which use a state-based explanation for hypnotic responsiveness or “suggestibility.” One of the most prominent concepts that gets repeated is the idea that hypnosis “bypasses the critical factor” -- i.e., a subject in hypnosis is able to respond to suggestions because they are not thinking critically about it, so they are able to suspend their disbelief and have experiences that don’t align with “reality.”

This line of thinking leads people to think that any time they are engaging critically with what a hypnotist is saying, they are not hypnotized (or not responding “correctly”). The reality is that almost anyone who has been hypnotized is familiar with the feeling of analyzing what is happening to them, what their partner is saying, how they are responding, etc. It is a perfectly normal and healthy part of hypnosis.

Effective hypnosis could be said to be specifically about not necessarily relying on a person suspending disbelief, but instead getting them to engage or buy into beliefs. The most simple way to do this is to provide reasoning of why a person will respond. For example, if you’re looking to create a sensation of physical pleasure, you don’t want to suggest that without any “footholds,” like saying, “Now, you might experience a sense of pleasure.” Instead, add some reasoning: “Because you’re paying such close attention to my voice, and because my voice turns you on, you might experience a sense of pleasure.” This is a completely reasonable line of thinking and makes sense to anyone, regardless of whether or not they are in trance.

• Subjects can be actively or voluntarily engaged in suggestion responses

The second part of this is giving methods for the subject that actively facilitate hypnotic response. In the study that looked at suggested amnesia, the subjects who did best were following instructions of how to direct their attention. As we’ve discussed, providing a process for someone that leads into responsiveness is key. When we’re thinking about how to give effective suggestions, we should be considering questions like, “How can I direct my partners’ attention in a way that facilitates a response?” and “What are the skills that they are drawing upon in this scene, and how can we make it easier?”

This connects into the nonstate idea that subjects can be actively engaged in hypnosis. This is a principle that we in the erotic hypnosis community are familiar with, usually associated with our desire to show that trance experience can be one of agency and empowerment. But beyond this, it’s effective and useful to give options and instructions for a person to be engaged in the process of hypnosis -- very simply, it gives them something to do. When a subject is not overly focused on “Is this working? Am I responding? Is it happening to me?” we can much more easily facilitate responsiveness.

Consider the different ways that someone could focus their attention, and how that relates to the kind of suggestions that you are giving. Continuing our example about pleasure, ask yourself: “Could they focus on different parts of their body? Could they focus on an exciting fantasy or memory? Could they focus intensely on what I’m doing and the moment itself?” Think about how a person experiences pleasure without hypnosis, and what kind of motions their brain goes through. Following the same kinds of patterns they are already used to can be a very useful technique. It’s also worth thinking about their physical behavior and what their body does. Tensing or relaxing? Moving or being very still? Touching themselves or you in some way?

The expectation or desire of hypnosis is often a drive to feel as though things are happening to the subject, rather than them controlling it. This is usually part of the fetish, and we also see it in academic literature as a defining quality of hypnotic response. While we know that exclusively focusing on this as a “success” condition is not fully accurate and can cause stress, it is still a wildly exciting experience that we often strive for. Somewhat paradoxically, intentional or voluntary actions like directed focus and the like often facilitate the feeling of involuntary responsiveness. Following instruction can easily lead into feeling passive, especially within hypnokink where there can be a quality of submission involved. When someone is actively engaged in their own experience, you can switch them into a more passive role, as well: “Focusing so intensely on the feelings in your body, really making the effort to think more and more about each and every small sensation, then noticing how you let yourself feel them more broadly, how the feelings themselves grow to overwhelm you…”

• Responses are based more on expectation, role-enactment, and other psychological principles rather than trance

One of the most important parts of effective hypnosis is learning to understand the myriad of principles that define the way that we, as humans, broadly experience and behave. Hypnosis works with these principles, not against them. When we make efforts to see suggestion responsiveness through the lens of general psychology, we can make things easier for ourselves and our partners.

Expectation is enormous in hypnosis. On one level, expectations help to shape our behavior -- one of the general nonstate theories of hypnosis says that a hypnotized subject is responsive because they expect hypnosis to work a certain way, and so it does. We can also make quite a few connections to the placebo effect. However, it’s also critical to understand that mismatched expectations can be challenging, and we see this especially with newer subjects: There is a preconceived notion of what hypnosis will feel like and how they will react to it, and anything outside of that can be disappointing. This is why it is often helpful to temper expectations about what hypnosis is like before playing with someone.

Expectations shape but do not define response. One of the factors that influences this is the idea of reasonability. For example, when we think about the placebo effect in medicine, a placebo is usually given to a patient by a doctor, in a medical setting -- it’s reasonable in this situation to expect that this “medicine” would be real and helpful. Hypnosis is a little bit different: While the hypnotist can be a figure of authority, and this can certainly have an influence on responsiveness, hypnosis itself is an activity that can often spark a lot of introspection and attention in the moment (“Is it working? What am I feeling?”) as well as doubt.

The key is working with someone in a way that plays into their expectations while leaving room for those expectations to change if necessary. This is where ambiguity and indirect suggestion can come in handy (“Maybe you’ll experience some sort of change in the way that you notice your body” instead of “You feel pleasure”). This is also why it’s helpful to approach hypnosis as an activity where you and your partner are interested and curious about what’s going to happen as opposed to something where the end-goal is concrete and immutable.

Making suggestions more reasonable also ties into the idea of making them more realistic in general. If you think about the way that experiencing pleasure works outside of hypnosis, it can clue you into methods to elicit it that are in line with someone’s preexisting experience. For example, for most people, sexual pleasure starts slow and small before growing into something more intense. Perhaps it is also something that comes and goes over the natural progression of a scene. Perhaps they tend to feel more pleasure when doing a certain act, like masturbating, receiving oral sex, or something else, so you play on fantasies and imagery of that. Any time that you can “play by the rules” of someone’s experience is helpful to work with their expectations as well as their existing “muscle memory.”

Something else to consider is association. Association is an enormous part of both human psychological experience and hypnosis -- some nonstate theories place associative conditioning as central to the way that they view hypnosis as working. Understanding how anchors/triggers work via associative conditioning is important, but it’s also useful to understand simply how someone processes via associations. For example, someone’s experience of pleasure is almost certainly linked to other things in their life, such as memories, certain phrases or ideas, or physical/cognitive patterns that they are used to -- all things that you can invoke in your patter.

These are just a few ideas to get started. It’s worth diving into learning about all sorts of different ways that your partner experiences the world both inside and outside of trance. What you know about their out-of-trance experience will help you facilitate more during hypnosis.

The Role of Trance

All of this emphasis on improving our hypnosis by focusing on the non-trance aspects of suggestion might seem like an argument for trance not being very important. But clearly, that doesn’t match with our feelings and excitement about hypnosis as kinksters -- nor does it really make sense to say that trance isn’t a real phenomenon. But if trance isn’t about suggestibility, then why do we do it, and what is it about? Here are two ideas:

• Trance can be associated with a change in perspective and/or process

There are a lot of different ways to think about what “trance” is. Richard Bandler, cofounder of NLP, famously talks about trance as different kinds of “patterns” that people go through -- a “trance” for working, a “trance” for having a conversation, etc. This idea -- that there are different kinds of trances that we experience, is a useful one, even if we don’t take it at face value.

Essentially, we can conceptualize hypnotic trance as something that is happening when we are experiencing a change in the way that we are processing. When someone is being hypnotized, the experience of trance is one where their focus and attention are changing from the “norm,” and they are going through sensations in their mind and body that they may recognize as different. The way that they think might be different -- spontaneous thoughts, slower or lessened processing, thinking in novel ways, change in memory or perception of time, even racing internal monologue. Any of these variables, and more, might be something that indicates hypnosis.

Even if this doesn’t lead to some fabled increase in “suggestibility,” these changes are interesting and conducive to new experiences. We know that the hypnotic experience is a dynamic one -- it changes through the course of hypnosis, moment to moment, offering possibilities for exciting things to happen. If you glean information of how your partner is processing, you can use that to continue the flow of trance. For example, with someone who goes very much “into their own head” in trance, you could use patter that takes advantage of that: “Focusing on your internal experience so much that your inner monologue gets louder, to the point that you feel like you don’t have control over it -- feeling yourself losing control over your racing thoughts, and then the sense that as I’m hypnotizing you, I’m seducing that loud voice, making it spin its attention around me, making it think about being hypnotized…”

• Trance is sexy

Lastly, it’s worth acknowledging that we are hypnokinksters. For many of us, trance is inherently erotic, and even if it’s not, we’re doing it in an erotic setting. Anything you do with a partner that you are sharing sexuality with is an opportunity to express that sexuality, and hypnosis is incredibly well-suited for this kind of intimacy. (For more information and demonstration about this, see educator MrDream’s class “Inductions and Intimacy.”)

Hypnosis is akin to dirty talk, flirting, physical sex, and other kinds of mental and emotional stimulation. Making the trance experience in and of itself erotic, or acknowledging its natural eroticisim, creates a scenario where you and your partner can engage on a more intimate level throughout the course of the scene. Hypnosis isn’t a means to an end -- a scene is an entire intimate experience from start to finish.

Bibliography

Kirsch, I., & Braffman, W. (2001). Imaginative suggestibility and hypnotizability. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(2), 57–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00115

Spanos, N. P., Stam, H. J., D'Eon, J. L., Pawlak, A. E., & Radtke-Bodorik, H. L. (1980). Effects of social-psychological variables on hypnotic amnesia. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(4), 737–750. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.39.4.737

Wagstaff, G. F. (1986). State versus nonstate paradigms of hypnosis: A real or a false dichotomy? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9(3), 486–487. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00046744

Whalley, M. (n.d.). Scientific theories of hypnosis.Hypnosis And Suggestion. Retrieved September 17, 2021, from https://hypnosisandsuggestion.org/theories-of-hypnosis.html.