Dr. David Spiegel

Yeah.

Whereas the low hypnotizable is, nah, you know, they judge everything.

So it defines a set of natural abilities that get mobilized that can be good things or sometimes problematic.

Yes.

There is a genetic component to hypnotizability.

In the dopamine metabolic pathway, there is a heterozygous and a homozygous component to the dopamine processing.

If you're heterozygous, that is ideal for hypnotizability.

So people, you maintain a sort of steady, relatively high level of dopamine, and they tend to be more hypnotizable than those who are homozygous in either direction.

There's also an experiential component, and it can either be a good one or a bad one.

Children who have parents who engage them in imaginative involvements, who read them stories every night at bedtime, who tended to encourage children to use their imagination, they tend to be more hypnotizable as adults.

But sadly, there's a bad one, and that is that children who have been mistreated or abused tend also to be very hypnotizable because they can't let go of that ability.

They use it as a defense.

And I've had patients who said that when my father would beat me or abuse me, I would just go to a mountain meadow full of wildflowers.

And, you know, he's got my body, but he hasn't got me.

So for some, unfortunately, children, it's a defense mechanism as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And people will tell you this, you know, in a car accident, you know, time goes very slowly.

You know, it took a couple seconds and it felt like half an hour.

Soldiers in combat will do things under terrible duress.

that they may not even remember doing.