'State of focused attention’

Press, 9 August 1985, Page 5

'State of focused attention’

Hypnosis might be defined as a state of focused attention where a person can become more open to suggestion, says a lecturer in psychological medicine at the Otago Medical School.

Dr Paul Merrick said from Dunedin yesterday that there had been much debate about whether a person under hypnosis was in an altered state of consciousness.

“I would prefer to call it a state of focused attention.”

The use of hypnotism by the police was more of a legal question than a psychological one, he said. Dr Merrick said that he agreed with the judgment of the Court of Appeal that hypnotism should never be used without the careful

consideration of the evidential risks. Events recalled under hypnosis would not necessarily be totally accurate, said Dr Merrick.

Persons trying to recall events could inadvertently “fill in” gaps in their information. As a result, the event was to their mind reconstructed in a logical manner.

A person under hypnosis was, from a physiological point of view, in a heightened state of relaxation. It was used in New Zealand by some dental and medical practitioners and clinical psychologists, generally as an adjunct to achieving some kind of therapeutic goal. Dr Merrick said that hypnotism was not widely used

here and “went in and out of favour.”

A person could be put under hypnosis in a number of ways. Clinical psychologists used techniques such as counting or having the person focus on a particular part of their body. Stage hypnotists used more ostentatious means, such as discs, to hypnotise their subjects. Dr Merrick said, however, that the evidence favoured the idea that a subject took an active part in becoming hypnotised, helped by the hypnotist.

Some researchers also believed that a person could not be made to do something they did not want to, even though they were under hypnosis.

Dr Merrick said that there were several stages of hypnosis, which ranged

from a lighter to a deeper state. Age regression was another phenomenon of hypnosis. He said that he did not believe the use of hypnosis was any more dangerous than other things ordinarily done in psychology. A person trained as a clinician was careful in its use.

“Any psychological technique has its inherent dangers if it’s used incorrectly or inappropriately,” he said.

Asked how it could be determined whether a person was in a state of hypnosis, Dr Merrick said that there were few objective criteria.

There were, however, some guidelines and tests which could indicate that a person had been hypnotised.