ABSTRACT
Chapters 1 and 2 have placed a good deal of emphasis on the experience of individuals during hypnosis and the fact that theoretical frameworks for explaining subjects' involvement in hypnosis are converging upon internal processes at work within the hypnotic setting (E. R. Hilgard, 1975; Spanos & Barber, 1974). Among theorists who consider hypnosis to be an altered state of consciousness (e.g., E. R. Hilgard, 1965, 1974; Orne, 1972, 1974; Orne & Hammer, 1974; Shor, 1970, 1979), the principal reason for holding that view stems almost exclusively from subjects' reports that, while hypnotized, they experience their environment in a particularly distinctive fashion, different from that of their normal waking state. For instance, Orne (1972) clearly reflects the state theorist's appeal to phenomenal events when he comments: "The hallmark of the hypnotic phenomena ... is the nature and quality of the concomitant subjective events [p. 421]." Theorists who reject the notion of hypnosis as an altered state of consciousness (e.g., Barber, 1972; Sarbin & Coe, 1972; Spanos & Barber, 1974) also highlight the experience of subjects within their own particular theorizing (see Chapter 1 for further discussion); for these theorists, however, the altered experience of subjects is not considered in any way to reflect the influence of a particular hypnotic state. For instance, Spanos and Barber ( 1974) consider that: "hypnotic phenomena involve genuine changes in the subject's experience that cannot be explained away in terms of faking or sham behavior (p. 508]."
