ABSTRACT
It is hazardous to predict the future of hypnosis, particularly in view of past fluctuations in its acceptability and practice. Today, our civilization is in a period of re-assessment of its human values; antiscientific trends appear to be gaining ascendancy. Such intellectual oscillations have occurred in the past, as in the revival of fundamentalist religion in America in the midninteenth century, after a period of very liberal deism. We note the growth of nonestablishment religious groups and of faith-healing sects, as well as the rise of Eastern religions and such offshoots as secular meditation groups. Many of these groups make claims about pain relief.
