Hypnotic Suggestibility, Susceptibility, and "Depth" Scales in Clinical Settings

For most people, hypnosis provides a set of enabling beliefs, which make it more plausible to accept suggestions than would otherwise be the case, regardless of whether, or to what degree of "depth," they experience a trance. If you first use an eight-word induction, or a handshake induction, or go "Aah, eeh, ooh ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing-bang," or use whatever other kind of induction procedure you wish as long as it is sufficiently credible to the hypnosis partner, your suggestions are much more likely to be accepted with an induction than without one.

But for the experientially gifted, who are what Hilgard referred to as "hypnotic virtuosos" (or somnambulists, or grade 5, etc.), these fortunate individuals are much better at learning by experience. For more information, see my blog entry entitled, "Experiential Therapy for Personal Transformation," March 22, 2010.

At the opposite extreme, the experientially challenged are not likely to benefit from either conceptually-worded or experiential suggestions. (Just try to get someone like this to benefit from either one of them:)


Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
-- Edward Edwin Markham, "The Man With the Hoe."

We are still evolving, and our ability to respond differentially in hypnosis is just more evidence of this fact. But suggestibility, susceptibility, and "depth" scales are not very helpful in assessing these differences. As Steve Lynn and I put it:

Some hypnotists today still consider level and depth of hypnosis as an essential predictor of how successful their suggestions are going to be. However, current research findings strongly suggest that ". . .how clients respond to suggestions depends less on the nature and success of a particular induction than on the following variables: (a) clients' prehypnotic attitudes, beliefs, intentions, and expectations about hypnosis; (b) their ability to think, fantasize, and absorb themselves in suggestions; (c) their ability to form a trusting relationship with the hypnotist; (d) their ability to interpret suggestions appropriately and view their responses as successful; (e) their ability to discern task demands and cues; (f) their ongoing interaction with the hypnotist; and (g) the appropriateness of the therapeutic methods and suggestions to treating the presenting problem (Barber, 1985; Lynn, Kirsch, & Ruhe, 1996). Accordingly, clinicians should devise inductions and suggestions with these variables in mind and tailor their approach to the unique personal characteristics and agenda of each client they encounter" (Gibbons & Lynn, 2010, p. 289).

Whether or not our suggestions are multimodally and experientially worded can also make a difference, depending on the variables just mentioned and the ability of the partner to respond to them.

This does not mean that you should avoid the use of "deepening" techniques. When you "take somebody deeper," you are really increasing rapport, and not doing much to change their score on the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, the Davis and Husband Scale, the Stanford Scales, etc., which in clinical settings are next to useless in comparison to the variables mentioned earlier in this posting.

The scales have utility in research, of course, when statistics rather than individual performance is the focus of attention. But when you do an experiment, you have to treat everybody in each of your your experimental groups exactly the same -- and that means you're not going to be able to help a lot of other people you otherwise might be able to help, because you won't be able to individualize your treatment.


Reference

Gibbons, D. E. & Lynn, S. J. (2010) Hypnotic inductions: A primer. In S. J. Lynn, J. W. Ruhe, & I. Kirsch (Eds.) Handbook of clinical hypnosis, 2nd. ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.