The Credibility of Posthypnotic Amnesia: A Contextualists' View

Attributions, Involuntariness, and Hypnotic Rapport

“…However, more than 30 years before Weitzenhoffer provided this characterization, White (1941) maintained that suggestion-related involuntariness was so central to the experience of hypnosis that it was incumbent upon theorists to address this domain of experience. Hypnosis theorists (Arnold, 1946;Bowers, 1976;Coe, 1978;Hilgard, 1977Hilgard, ,1981Sarbin & Coe, 1972;Spanos, Rivers, & Ross, 1977;Spanos 1982;Weitzenhoffer, 1974) have risen to the challenge of explaining the well-documented finding (e.g., K. Bowers, 1981;P. Bowers, 1982;Farthing, Brown, & Venturino, 1983;Spanos, Rivers, & Ross, 1977) that hypnotizable subjects who pass test suggestions characterize their responses as more automatic or nonvolitional than subjects who fail suggestions.…”

“…Bowers, 1982;Farthing, Brown, & Venturino, 1983;Spanos, Rivers, & Ross, 1977) that hypnotizable subjects who pass test suggestions characterize their responses as more automatic or nonvolitional than subjects who fail suggestions. Diverse theoretical accounts have variously emphasized dissociative processes (Bowers, 1976;Hilgard, 1977), vivid and sustained suggestion-related imagery (Arnold, 1946), and contextual and social psychological variables (Coe, 1978;Sarbin & Coe, 1979;Spanos, Rivers, & Ross, 1977;Spanos, 1982). Sarbin and Coe (1979) have observed that subjects' interpretations of their experiences may reflect on implicit distinction between "doings" (seeing themselves as agents of goal-directed, purposeful actions) and "happenings" (viewing themselves as passive respondents).…”

More on Volitional Experiences and Breaching Posthypnotic Amnesia

“…3Reprint requests should be addressed to William C. Coe, Ph.D., Department of Psy-'For a discussion and critique of these first two studies, see Coe (1978) and Kihlstrom chology, California State University, Fresno, CA 93740-0011. (1978).…”

Creatively Imagined “Amnesia”

“…Posthypnotic (recall) amnesia refers to the temporary inability of subjects to remember, after hypnosis, the events of the period during hypnosis for which they have received a suggestion for amnesia (for recent reviews of posthypnotic amnesia see Coe, 1978;Evans, 1980;Kihlstrom, 1977Kihlstrom, , 1978Kihlstrom & Evans, 1979). One essential aspect of the phenomenon of suggested amnesia is that subjects can recall the critical events following the administration of a specific cue which leads to the reversibility of the amnesia.…”

“…Despite a substantial amount of theoretical and empirical analysis of posthypnotic amnesia there remains a number of important issues (for discussion see Coe, 1978;Kihlstrom, 1977Kihlstrom, , 1978Kihlstrom & Evans, 1979) that are not yet adequately conceptualized and researched. One such issue is the relevance of imagery and imagination processes to amnesia.…”