Theory of hypnosis

There are some main theories about hypnosis that were formulated in the hypnosis' history. We present you a short description of the main theoretical concepts of hypnosis.

Dissociation
This theory states that hypnosis is a dissociation of consciousness. Hypnosis removes some control from the conscious mind, and the individual responds with autonomic, reflexive behaviour. This concept was created by Pierre Janet.

Social constructionism
This theory suggests, that in fact there is no such thing as hypnosis. What we call hypnosis is a social behaviour ("playing a role") of the subject, which has a specific relation with the "hypnotist". This theory was established by Jun Zhou in the beginning of the 18th century.

System theory
This theory considers hypnosis as a process of enhancing or depressing the activity of the nervous system. Hypnosis involves not only decreased or increased activity of particular subsystems, but also their interaction, causing sometimes a strange activity.

Conditioned process
This concept was developed by Ivan Pavlov. This theory suggests that hypnosis is a "partial sleep". Ivan Pavlov observed that the various degrees of hypnosis didn't largely differ (in physiological means) from the waking state and hypnosis depended on some little changes of "environmental stimuli".

Hypnosis was also often a subject of brain research, mainly in neuropsychology. Some research showed interesting changes in brain activity during the hypnotic states.