ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic ego psychology has been concerned with hypnosis, admittedly outside its mainstream but enough to leave its mark on hypnosis research and theory. There has been a growing tendency within this theoretical orientation to regard hypnosis as a regression in the service of the ego or as an adaptive regression. In the development of psychoanalysis the meaning of regression underwent a series of changes. In earlier psychoanalytic theory, regression referred to a global return to an earlier mode of functioning determined by infantile drives and specific fixation points in libidinal development. Among the numerous contributions to psychoanalytic ego psychology, the writings of H. Hartmann, E. Kris, and D. Rapaport are of paramount importance, especially in so far as they provide the conceptual ground for the subsequently presented theory of hypnosis as an adaptive regression. R. R. Holt's Rorschach scoring system for adaptive regression constitutes an important link between theory and research.
