Post-Hypnotic Suggestion News Blog

The expression, "post-hypnotic suggestion," is somewhat misleading. Really it refers not to suggestions given after the trance, but to those offered during it to be executed subsequently. Bernheim described the phenomenon in his Suggestive Therapeutics as "inducing in somnambulists by means of suggestion, acts, illusions of the senses, and hallucinations which shall not be manifested during the sleeping condition, but upon waking."The first scientists who studied the phenomenon were Liébeault, Richet, Bernheim, and Delboeuf. Their principle interest was amnesia. They discovered that one of the most common results of deep hypnosis is a complete inability on the part of the patient to recall anything that transpired during the sitting. Soon they found also that an appropriate suggestion during the trance will produce the same effect, even if the state was not very deep.Amnesia was originally regarded as essential to all post-hypnotic suggestion. Even today it is usually asserted that "post-hypnotic commands are as a rule better executed if amnesia is present.