What is hypnosis?

People who work with hypnosis often want to label everything that has to do with an altered state of consciousness as hypnosis. That is a political game, denied by the etymology.

If you like it, or not, the Greek word hýpnos (ὕπνος) does mean “sleep”! Therefore, if the person (actually, his conscious mind) is not more or less asleep, it by definition cannot be called hypnosis…

In my book about regression therapy I have, to mark a difference, introduced the word agrypnosis, picked up by few. It is derived from the Greek word ágrypnos (ἄγρυπνος) that means “wake, sleeplessness.” If the person is more or less awake, even though being in some kind of an “altered state” of consciousness, this would be the appropriate term.

Being asleep in some kind of a session means that the rational mind is at least partially put asleep so that it does not really participate in whatever experience the person then has. Typically, the person will have forgotten it, or most of it, after waking up. This can, of course, be prevented by means of a posthypnotic suggestion: “After waking up you will remember everything!” But if that is not done, the so-called posthypnotic amnesia may occur. The experience is not automatically integrated with the rational mind.

In an “agrypnotic” state, the person’s rational mind does participate in whatever experience he or she has and remembers it afterwards. The experience is automatically integrated with to-day’s rational mind, which I consider important for the therapeutic use of a regression. There is no such thing as a “postagrypnotic amnesia.”

In a deep hypnotic regression, the person to day is fully in the consciousness of the person of the past and does not know things that were unknown at that time. If there were no cars then and I ask about a car, I will get the puzzled question: “What is that?” In an agrypnotic state, the person will say: “There were no cars at that time.” As concerns therapeutic effects, these can rather be achieved with posthypnotic suggestions. In contrast, “postagrypnotic suggestions” are not needed. Furthermore, the person will not be very suggestible in an agrypnotic state.

A rare phenomenon is xenoglossy, speaking a language the person does not know to day (but knew in another lifetime). This only occurs in deep hypnosis and not in an agrypnotic state. In the latter, the person knows the content or meaning of what was said or written, but cannot reproduce it in the old language. He or she says it in the language used to day.

Admittedly, there is no sharp line between agrypnosis and hypnosis. A state can be more or less hypnotic, indicated, e.g., by afterwards not remembering everything that came during the experience, or having a somewhat vague memory of it, and needing a little time to understand concepts that were not known then. If the experience occurred in an agrypnotic state, the person may afterwards even be able to tell things he or she did not tell during the experience.