Dissociated control as a paradigm for cognitive neuroscience research and theorizing in hypnosis

Abstract

For much of its history, hypnosis has tended to be somewhat of a rogue topic, difficult to connect with the main body of psychological understanding. Hilgard's (1977) neodissociation theory of hypnosis represented an attempt to integrate a scientific understanding of hypnosis into the broader landscape of psychology. He commented, 'Any satisfactory theory of hypnosis should also be a theory bearing on psychology at large' (Hilgar 1991, p. 101). Accordingly, he attempted to explain hypnotic phenomena in terms of underlying cognitive control mechanisms and the alteration of their function in hypnosis (Hilgard 1991, 1992). He posited a system of multiple cognitive control subsystems that can operate somewhat autonomously, but which are ordinarily subordinate to a higher order executive system that monitors and coordinates the interaction among them. He hypothesized that hypnosis somehow alters the executive functions and their hierarchical relationship to the subsystems of control. For example, he indicated that the hypnotist may take over some of the executive control functions that would otherwise be managed autonomously by the subject. Hilgard's attempts to develop and clarify these ideas took two rather distinct directions, relying on different conceptions of dissociation, the idea at the centre of his theory. On one hand, the term 'dissociation' can be taken to mean a 'disassociation' or 'disaggregation' of mental processes, whereby processes that are normally closely related become functionally more separate. Along these lines, Hilgard remarked, "If dissociation is conceived broadly to imply an interference with or loss of familiar associative processes, most phenomena of hypnosis can be conceived as dissociative" (Hilgard 1991, p. 84). One of Hilgard's most important speculations about such disassociation of processes concerned the possible loss of integration of the monitoring and control functions of the executive system. For example, in hypnotic age regression, when the hypnotic subject experiences himself or herself as a child, 'all available information is not used by the activated subsystem, and the monitor does not offer a correction; hence imagination may be confused with external reality' (Hilgard 1992, p. 97).