Hypnosis definition

No single definition adequately captures the range of practices that fall under the CAM rubric. Those that define CAM as practices that are not part of mainstream medicine, or as practices used by patients to manage their own health care, or as therapies not widely taught in Western medical schools or available in most hospitals, fail to capture the complexity of this field. CAM includes health-care practices that range from the use of vitamins, herbal remedies, and massage therapies to the ancient traditions of Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, along with chiropractic techniques, naturopathy homeopathic medicine, meditation, hypnosis, acupuncture, and a host of other less well-known approaches to health and health care. 

This may seem somewhat artificial at first, but we will come to see that consensus trance is a much more pervasive, powerful, and artificial state than ordinary hypnosis, and it is all too trancelike. Consensus trance involves a loss of much of our essential vitality. It is (all too much) a state of partly suspended animation and inability to function, a daze, a stupor. It is also a state of profound abstraction, a great retreat from immediate sensory/instinctual reality to abstractions about reality. As to the definition of trance as a state of ecstasy, consensus trance has its rewards, but it is questionable to call it ecstasy. ... 

Sometimes in ordinary hypnosis the subject unconsciously projects his childhood attitudes onto the hypnotist. This is the transference dimension of hypnosis, which we discussed in Chapter 9. It definitely increases the hypnotist s ability to alter the subject s reality and control his behavior. 

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