IF LIFE IS A STAGE, THEN HYPNOSIS IS A ROLE
Hypnosis: A Social Psychological Analysis of Influence Communication – Theodore R Sarbin and William C Coe
At Cosmic Pancakes! you might start to notice a bit of a theme: the books we read tend to be either hilarious, pompous nonsense, salacious (and questionably sexy) fictional accounts, or important academic texts. I’m happy to say that this book falls into the latter grouping, and is part of a collection of perspective-based attempts at explaining hypnosis that were published in the 70s and 80s. Around that time the ‘state debate’ was raging in academia (as it still is outside of academia today) and I find it an incredibly interesting time to read about.
In a nutshell, when you have academics taking up mostly binary positions, with those positions becoming more and more entrenched as more and more books and papers are written to argue and defend their positions, it is entertaining, as an observer, to know that at least one side of the argument is going to be wrong. Big time. Like, fundamentally incorrect. As in, on the wrong side of history. Neither side thought it would be themselves, of course, but as an outsider we don’t need to care which side would eventually win; just that the battle itself is remarkable to watch and, hopefully, evidence would eventually arrive to decide the victors or, at the very least, the losers.
In case you need a reminder, one cohort of academics believed vehemently that a hypnotic state exists and that people enter it when they are hypnotised; and the other side spent their time pointing out why that seems unnecessary in one breath and almost ridiculous in another. I find that I’ve arrived at these books in mostly reverse order – more recent texts pointed me towards the Barber, Spanos and Chaves book that debunked a lot of what was believed about hypnosis (and has since become my favourite hypnosis book ever!). That, in turn, was an answer (of sorts) to Kenneth Bowers’ book defending the trance position and what he seemed to believe was the very special nature of hypnosis and suggestion. But, of course, Bowers was only really answering this seminal book by Sarbin and Coe, which is the subject of these meanderings.
Sarbin (and Coe, but I guess mostly Sarbin) was the leading proponent (and maybe the original definer?) of the role enactment theory of hypnosis. Now, as with many things in hypnosis, this has been mostly misunderstood, both by state-leaning academics at the time of publication (in 1972, fact fans) but also by practically everyone else since. On that basis alone, I think it’s an important book to read and understand; but I think it’s much more than that, because I think it paved the way for Kirsch and Lynn’s response expectancy theory and also their response set theory.
So what’s it all about and why is it so misunderstood? Well, to grasp that you really need to put yourself in the shoes of someone who absolutely believes – as in, Has Seen It With Their Own Eyes – that the hypnotic state is A Real And Tangible Thing. Of course it isn’t, but you need to start from this perspective if you want to appreciate why this book is so maligned.
So there you are, sure in your knowledge that hypnosis involves a trance, and in walks Sarbin (and Coe) telling you that not only are you wrong about that, but also that it’s all role play! (They actually talk much more in terms of role theory and role enactment, but all the statists heard was ‘role play’.) And of course that sounds a lot like ‘make believe’, ‘playing along’, ‘acting’ and, if you take it to its logical conclusion, ‘deception’.
But that isn’t what Sarbin and Coe meant, was it? Was it Kenneth? Was it John? Was it Ernest? Was it Josephine? Was it Helen? Was it Kevin? Was it Peter? Was it Peter (the other one)? Was it David? Was it Erik? Was it Pamela? NO! It. Was. Not. What. They. Meant!
When you read the book (and I urge you to get a copy, one way or another, and actually read it, digest it, think about it, sleep on it, dream about it, and reread it) you realise that a great part of it is dedicated to explaining that role theory and role enactment is absolutely NOT playing along, acting, or deception; at least not in the way those words are typically used. But as a politically hot topic of the day, when the authors used role enactment as a way to explain that trance is a myth, many of these state-based theorists assumed that they meant that it’s all fake. And not only all fake, but that all the hypnotised people had been playing along the whole time.
Obviously, that would be quite emotive! The thing they’d spent so long investigating was basically their participants deceiving them? Nobody wants to feel that. And I think that this emotion clouded their judgement, and meant that they didn’t read what was actually written and instead responded to what they thought the headline was.
So let me make this clear: Sarbin and Coe never said that hypnotised people (in general) were playing along or deceiving the scientists. They never disputed that the phenomena felt automatic and involuntary. They just argued why that was the case, from a perspective that didn’t require a hypnotic state. That was it. They recognised that suggestions caused behaviour; they just didn’t believe that the people were in a trance.
Instead, they suggested that hypnotised people were enacting the role of hypnotised people. A role that so many of us know about: on command of the hypnotist, the person falls into a hypnotic sleep, and then acts out behaviours and beliefs bestowed upon them by the hypnotist, in an automatic and involuntary manner. Most of us have a model of this, and maybe have some memory of seeing it on TV or in films.
“But wait, Kev,” I hear you cry, “isn’t that precisely what ‘playing along’ means?”. I can see why you’d think that, and you’d be in good company – but no. Sarbin and Coe presented the idea that all behaviour is automatic and involuntary (hello response set theory) and that templates of behaviour are automatically chosen based on expectations (hello response expectancy theory). They explained at length how language and thinking develops in infants (in an automatic way); how some forms of acting (including and beyond ‘method acting’) can involve becoming so lost in a role to the detriment of apparent agency; and how the word ‘imagination’ has its roots in sculpture and only became an internal process through the development and use of metaphors.
Put together, they show that it is not that we have agency and then give up agency when we are hypnotised, but that we are all acting automatically all of the time, and it is just our adoption of the 'hypnotised person role’ that makes it appear that we have relinquished the agency we so apparently need to feel we have. As they point out – and as Barber, Spanos and Chaves pointed out in their book later – even the most hypnotised people can defeat amnesia suggestions, report pain when given suggestions for analgesia, and decide not to follow through on post-hypnotic suggestions when the context changes.
It’s not that they’re acting hypnotised – no more than we are otherwise acting ‘not hypnotised’ right now –it’s just that in the right circumstances they adopt the socially expected and convenient role of the hypnotised person, quite possibly better and more readily than many others. To them, it still feels automatic and involuntary, and that’s the point. Sarbin and Coe take nothing away from what hypnotised people experience, except to say that the trance they think they’re in is part of the role they’re enacting, but they explain hypnotic behaviour in terms that fit perfectly with modern, accepted, cognitive psychology.
From a practical perspective, role enactment theory is a great way to approach hypnosis. Assume your participants know how they’re supposed to act when hypnotised, and then encourage them to adopt that role: automatically, involuntarily, and uncritically. If you’ve ever seen Martin S Taylor perform, then you’ll have seen that in action.
From an academic viewpoint, however, saying everything is automatic loses the nuances between planned and reactive behaviour, and therefore gives little credence to intentionality. It also doesn’t really say much about the sensation of automaticity or involuntariness, which, if they’re correct in their theory, is still a distinguishing feature between everyday automatic behaviour and hypnotically caused automatic behaviour. It feels as if there is still more to be explained than the authors had considered.
That all said, the most important aspect of the book is that it became a weapon in the academic state debate. It forced sides to be taken, and it forced claims to be questioned. I have to wonder if the debate would have become so entrenched and bitter had this book never been written.
Amy likes to point out that hypnosis is a metaphor for a metaphor. On reading this book, I think she’s probably right. Thinking about how academic hypnotists think about hypnosis appears to expose that second-level metaphor.
