هیپنوتیزم: یک توصیفگرایانه

Hypnosis does not leave people indifferent. Due to its history this method, and the theories which accompanied it all along, is considered with great ambivalence by professionals. It is simultaneously devaluated as a method of care and overestimated as a technique of manipulation, it is simultaneously inoffensive and all-powerful. If the ambivalence related to the method is due partly with the heritage left by Freud and Charcot in the 19th century, it is also due to ignorance about it which feeds erroneous representations. We are therefore proposing, in this article, to describe hypnosis as a technique, to present its classified effects as to modifications it entrains in the field of living experience as well as in the field of responses to suggestions. We will present the principal current measuring instruments of hypnosis and will differentiate between terminologies, more particularly between the often confused terms of “suggestibility” and “hypnotisability”. Finally, we will present the distribution of hypnotic susceptibility in the population.