Does a person in hypnosis lose self-control?
• Just as many people think that a hypnotized person will carry out any suggestion given to him, people also fear that they may lose control of themselves in self-hypnosis. This is totally untrue. One will do nothing in hypnosis that she/he would not do under the most normal circumstances. Suggestions given to a person in hypnosis, whether by himself or by someone else must be acceptable to both the conscious and the unconscious parts of the mind. Can hypnosis totally block out all attention to things that happen in normal life? Yes – if the subject specifically wants to. However, people in hypnosis usually are aware of everything that goes on around them; they are merely so relaxed that they do not pay attention to anything except the matter they are focusing on. HOW does hypnosis differ from altered states of consciousness induced by such drugs as LSD, mescaline, or other hallucinogenic drugs? The key word here is self-determination: • Subject Matter – Usually no one can predict the
