Psychosomatic Medicine 23:384-391 (1961)
© 1961 American Psychosomatic Society

Posthypnotic Stimulation of Hypnotically Induced Conflict in Relation to Psychosomatic Reactions and Psychopathology

Under deep hypnosis, 11 normal adult subjects were given a pseudo-experience that generated intense feelings of hostility toward a given individual. Posthypnotic conflict was created by instructing the subjects to act upon these feelings if they should become aware of certain classes of words that were related to the pseudo-experience. Critical words were paired with neutral words and were tachistoscopically presented in a modified ascending series of exposure times.

Repression was conceptualized as a continuum, and an objective index of the degree of repression of the induced conflict was formulated. The degree of repression was found to correlate 74 with the proportion of somatic reactions to critical word recognition.

The symptoms were differentiated further and classified in terms of a number of clinically meaningful categories. These were correlated with the degree of repression, and it was hypothesized that the degree of repression is an important factor in determining the type of posthypnotic complaints and reactions.