ABSTRACT
Can anyone be hypnotized? The complex issue of who can and cannot be hypnotized has been heavily researched, rationally discussed, and hotly debated by some of the most respected people in the field. It’s easy to appreciate why when you start at the very beginning of the salient issues: how shall we operationally define key terms such as hypnosis, hypnotizability, suggestibility, responsiveness, depth of experience, and absorption to measure them across a sufficient number of individuals to learn anything meaningful? The semantic differences are significant and give rise to differing qualities of experience (Wagstaff, 2010). Is hypnotizability the same as suggestibility? Is hypnotic responsiveness the same as hypnotizability?
