A subject may also be given a posthypnotic suggestion: for example, that after hypnosis, when the hypnotist picks up a pencil, the subject will stand up, stretch, and change chairsbut forget that he had been told to do so. The range of such experiences is very broad: a hypnotist may ask a subject to extend his arm and suggest that he is holding a very heavy object, whose weight is pressing the hand and arm down a hypnotist may ask a subject to interlock her fingers and suggest that her hands are glued together so that they cannot be pulled apart a hypnotist may suggest that there is a voice asking questions over a loudspeaker, to which the subject should reply a hypnotist may suggest that a subject cannot smell an odorous substance held near his nose or a hypnotist may suggest that a subject is growing younger and reliving an experience from early childhood. After a subject's eyes have closed, the procedure continues with suggestions for various sorts of imaginative experiences. Hypnosis is typically induced by suggestions for relaxation, focused attention, and closing one's eyes. Hypnosis is a social interaction in which one person, a hypnotist, offers suggestions to another person, a subject, for experiences involving alterations in perception, memory, and the voluntary control of action.
#Altered states of consciousness update
We also discuss restricted environmental stimulation and update the committee's previous reviews of sleep learning and meditation (see Druckman and Swets, 1988:Ch.4 Druckman and Bjork, 1991 :Ch.7).
Chief among these is hypnosis, a technique that has been widely used in attempts to enhance human performance. Accordingly, in this chapter, we consider the effects on human performance of a number of conditions that are conventionally defined as altered states of consciousness. But it is also not clear that the relationship between mind and brain is such that it will ever be possible to specify unique psychophysiological correlates of different states of consciousness. In some instances, this lack of clear specification reflects the state of current technology and incomplete knowledge from available experimental work. However, such clear specification of the four features does not characterize most altered states of consciousness. For example, dreaming sleep is induced by going to bed, closing one's eyes, and counting sheep by subjective reports of a lapse in consciousness or dreaming by observable behaviors such as closed eyes, prone position, and slow breathing and by high-frequency, low-amplitude, desynchronized brain waves accompanied by rapid, synchronous eye movements. Of consciousness would be associated with a unique combination of these four attributes. In this respect, altered states of consciousness are relevant to enhancing human performance.Īn altered state of consciousness can be defined by four features (Kihlstrom, 1984): (1) operationally, as the product of a particular induction technique (2) phenomenologically, as an individual's subjective report of altered awareness or voluntary control (3) observationally, as changes in overt behavior corresponding to a person's self-report and (4) physiologically, as a particular pattern of changes in somatic functioning. Yet, in contrast, an individual in an altered state of consciousness may be more aware of events than usual or otherwise able to transcend the limits of normal voluntary control. For example, a person may be unaware of current or past events that nonetheless are affecting his or her experience, thought, and action or a person may represent objects and events in a manner that is radically discordant with objective reality or a person may be unable to exert ordinary levels of voluntary control over attention and behavior. People experience themselves as deliberately focusing attention on one object or idea rather than another and choosing among them to respond to environmental demands or to achieve personal goalsgoals of which they are aware.Ī person is in an altered state of consciousness to the extent that these monitoring and controlling functions have been modified or distorted (Farthing, 1992 Kihlstrom, 1984). Consciousness can also be characterized as the experience of voluntariness.
Conscious people experience concurrent, retrospective, or prospective awareness of events in their environmentan awareness that exists even in the absence of their ability to report it to others. Consciousness can be characterized as a state of mental alertness and awareness.
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