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. Although references to the regressive aspects of hypnosis are scattered throughout the early psychoanalytic literature, it was P. F. Schilder who first formulated what may be regarded a forerunner of the hypnosis-as-adaptive-regression theory. The expressed purpose of the research was to examine the hypothesis of hypnosis as adaptive regression. Specific predictions were that incidence and variability of primary process manifestations would increase in hypnosis, and that defensive and coping functions would yield scores at least equal to but probably greater than the waking scores. The quantitative reduction of defense and coping scores can be accounted for on the ground that hypnosis entails a constriction and attenuation of the perception of reality.
