The British Medical Association and the American Medical Association has called
it 'a temporary condition of altered attention in the subject that may be induced by another
person,' (Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia) but there is still much about hypnosis that
is not understood. Because it resembles normal sleep, it was studied and was found that the
brain waves of hypnotized people are more similar to the patterns of deep relaxation than
anything else. Rather than a psychic or mystical idea, hypnosis is now looked upon as a
form of highly focused concentration in which outside influences are ignored.
The most known feature of the hypnotic trance is that hypnotized person becomes
easily influenced by the suggestions others-usually the hypnotist. They retain their abilities
to act and are able to walk, talk, speak, and respond to questions; but their perceptions can
be altered or distorted by external suggestions. At the command of the hypnotist, subjects
may lose all feeling in a place on the body, and any kind of pain will not cause them any
pain. The heartbeat can be slowed or quickened, and a rise in temperature and perspiration
can be created. They can be commanded to experience visual or auditory hallucinations or
live the past as if it were the present. Also, recently a scientist discovered that the way the
subject's mind experiences time can be altered so that hours or even weeks can pass in
second, from the subjects point of view. Subjects may forget part or all of the hypnotic
experience or recall things that they had forgotten. The hypnotist may also make
'posthypnotic suggestions' that are instructions to the subject to respond to a something
after awakening. For example, the hypnotist might suggest that, after the subject wakes up
he will have an urge to...