ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the case illustration which is the conscious experience of hypnosis as positive and agreeable is reversed in the TAT stories. The "hypnosis" card was administered as part of the TAT, and the TAT as part of a battery of psychodiagnostic tests. In the first illustration, the conscious reference to hypnotic darkness and the comparison of hypnosis to a rainy day are characterized as pleasant and agreeable, although the effort at denial wears thin. In the second illustration, the agreeable hypnotic experience, which was better than sleep and helped alleviate a tension headache, is in marked contrast to the dead person who cannot be brought back to life by the mad scientist whose grandiosity is thwarted by the dead subject. In the third illustration, the hypnotic passivity stressed by the subject was likened to a satisfying sense of relaxation. Projective tests following experimental hypnotic sessions may reveal greater conflict and anxiety in hypnotized subjects as compared to nonhypnotized subjects.
