Hypnosis methods: definition, induction, and measurement

This section is a methods library, not an outcome table. The pages below define how researchers talk about induction, suggestion, and measurement. They are Grade M (methods / mechanism). For trial grades, start at how we evaluate evidence. Clinical hypnotherapy is described on the hypnotherapy pages.

Key evidence

A usable spine:

1. Hypnotic susceptibility: who responds, on which scale.
2. Hypnotic induction: Braid’s 1843 eye-fixation account and later verbal methods.
3. Suggestion: Nancy’s claim that suggestion, not a fluid, is the working idea.
4. Trance: a contested word; laboratory work often measures suggested responses instead.
5. Dissociation: Hilgard’s laboratory account of split control.
6. Absorption: Tellegen and Atkinson’s trait measure.
7. Response expectancy: Kirsch’s non-state account of what people expect to feel.
8. Ideomotor response: Carpenter, 1852: idea directing movement without volition.
9. Hypnotic analgesia: a laboratory pain suggestion, not a clinic package.
10. Hypnotic catalepsy: Bernheim’s suggestive immobility, not Charcot’s three-phase neurosis.

People and eras that sit behind these terms are in the history chronicle.

Limitations

Method pages compress debates. Primary texts and DOIs beat workshop glossaries.

What we don't know yet

How far any one scale or theory predicts later clinical outcomes is a research question. It is not answered here.

This page is informational only.