Is it possible to be Hypnotized?

What do you think of when you think of hypnosis? A soft deep voice talking to you? A pendulum swinging back and forth in front of your face?  Magic? Brainwashing? Control?

When I think of hypnosis, I think of my mom.  When I was 13 we were on a cruise that had a hypnotist and she volunteered.  Every one is open to suggestion to some extent, but some people are much more hypnotizable than others, and my mother is one of them.  I watched astonished and laughing until I cried as she was convinced she lost her belly button, crawling around on the stage looking for it.  She got pulled over by a cop mouthing "oh sh*t!" She buckled up in her space ship and went to Mars.  She jumped back and forth on the stage acting like a type writer, even though her ankle was so black and blue from springing it she could barely walk. And when she came back to her seat, we asked her which planet she went to and she smiled acting like she remembered and said "Um, Pluto?" That was the moment when I truly believed hypnosis was possible.

So, let's define what hypnosis really is:

Hypnosis is a social interaction in which one person 

(the hypnotist) suggests to another (the subject) 

that certain perception, feelings, thoughts, or 

behaviors will spontaneously occur

There are a few different ways that psychologists explain the hypnotic state.  Hypnosis as a social phenomenon, and hypnosis as divided consciousness:

Hypnosis as a social phenomenon

Some believe that hypnosis is reflecting the power that social influence has over us.  This doesn't mean that people are faking being hypnotized it just means that they really start to fill their roles. As they trust the hypnotist they begin to allow that person to take their attention and fantasies in different directions.  This is similar to what actors can experience when they are really engulfed in a role they are playing, in that moment they really feel like the character they are playing.

Hypnosis as divided consciousness

There is a very distinct brain activity that accompanies hypnosis.  For example in one study deeply hypnotized people were told to imagine a color and areas of their brains lit up like they were truly seeing the color.  Researcher Earnest Hilgard (1986-1992) believed hypnosis involves social influence but also a state of dissociation, where the person is actually splitting their different levels of consciousness. Dissociation allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others.  Hilgard did a study where he had someone place their hand in a bucket of freezing water and say how painful it is, then he hypnotized them and told them the water wouldn't cause them pain.  They still noticed the coldness of the water, but felt no pain.  

Another way hypnosis can help pain is called selective attention.  PET scans have shown that while being hypnotized there is a reduction in the part of our brains that processes pain, this might have explained how my mom could jump around like a type writer with a hurt ankle.