Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Altered States of Consciousness
Altered States of Consciousness
consciousness
Meditation
• Reduces stress
• Enter “trance” state
• Focus on some object
• Mantra
• deeper state of
relaxation or
awareness
• Prayer
Biofeedback
• Biofeedback is a form of alternative
medicine that involves measuring a
subject's quantifiable bodily functions such
as blood pressure, heart rate, skin
temperature, sweat gland activity, and
muscle tension, conveying the information
to the patient in real-time. This raises the
patient's awareness and conscious control
of their unconscious physiological
activities.
Hypnosis
• Hypnosis definition
– Procedure in which a researcher, clinician, or hypnotists
suggests that a person will experience changes in
sensation, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, or behaviors
• Who is susceptible?
– individuals with the remarkable ability to respond to
imaginative suggestions
– best known test: Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale
– asks individuals to carry out a series of both simple and
complex suggestions
– high scorers are usually easily hypnotized
Hypnosis
• Behaviors
– Hypnotic analgesia
• refers to a reduction in pain reported by clients
after they had undergone hypnosis and received
suggestions that reduced their anxiety and
promoted relaxation
– Posthypnotic suggestion
• given to the subject during hypnosis about
performing a particular behavior to a specific cue
when the subject comes out of hypnosis
Hypnosis
– Posthypnotic amnesia
• not remembering what happened during hypnosis
if the hypnotist suggested that, upon awakening,
the person would forget what took place during
hypnosis
– Age regression
• refers to subjects under hypnosis being asked to
regress, or return in time, to an earlier age, such
as early childhood
– Imagined perception
• refers to experiencing sensations, perceiving
stimuli, or performing behaviors that come from
one’s imagination
Hypnosis
• Medical and therapeutic applications
– Medical and dental use
• used to reduce pain through hypnotic analgesia, to
reduce fear and anxiety by helping individuals
relax, or to help patients deal with a terminal
disease by motivating them to make the best of a
difficult situation
– Therapeutic and behavioral uses
• useful in helping clients reveal their personalities,
gain insights into their lives, and arrive at solutions
to their problems
• Useful, temporarily, in cessation of smoking, weight
loss
The Hypnotist
DRUGS
Drug Tolerance
• The diminishing effect with regular dose of the same
dose.
– Must take more of same drug to produce same effect