⚔️ Scandals in the history of hypnosis: Hilgard vs Spanos
Ernest Hilgard's original experiment (1970s) said something quite unsettling:
Under analgesic hypnosis, if you ask a "hidden part" of the patient, that part says it does feel pain, even though the conscious part says it doesn't.
Boom. The mind wouldn't be a unified whole. It would be... divided.
Imagine the context.
Hypnosis had a bad reputation: showmanship, exaggerations, people who promised too much and understood too little. Some abandoned it entirely — not because it didn't produce effects, but because it was neither reliable nor controllable — and built other, theoretically "safer" systems (hello, psychoanalysis 👀).
And then he appears:
The old sage of Stanford.
Hilgard.
Respectable. Measurable. Publishable.
He develops hypnotic susceptibility scales. He does something key: he turns the subjective into something measurable.
And from that comes his great thesis:
The mind is not a single thing. It can divide into partially independent systems.
Thus the famous:
"hidden observer" is born.
But science doesn't advance in a straight line. It advances through blood, fights, and wounded egos.
And then enters:
The young rebel.
Nicholas Spanos
Who basically looks at all this and says:
"Not so fast, old man."
Spanos does something beautiful: he doesn't attack the result... he attacks the design.
He replicates the experiment, but changes one key thing:
What he tells the participants.
Group A: "Your hidden part will feel MORE pain than the hypnotized part" Group B: "Your hidden part will feel LESS pain than the hypnotized part"
Result:
Each group reports exactly what they were told would happen.
And there comes the hammer blow:
The "hidden observer" is not a discovered entity. It's a phenomenon created by the experiment itself.
They aren't faking. This is important.
It's not that they're "acting" in the sense of lying.
👉 They construct the experience in real time, guided by:
expectations context what they believe is expected of them
They want to be "good hypnotic subjects."
And that shapes what they feel.
Modern translation:
Hypnosis is roleplay.
But not in meme version.
In the more uncomfortable version:
It's a social technology for constructing experience.
And it doesn't end there.
Round 2.
📍 1983 — Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Spanos publishes:
"The hidden observer as an experimental creation"
And on the other side, Laurence & Perry (Hilgard's team) basically respond:
"Are you sure about what you think you've demonstrated?"
Their criticisms:
"Spanos, you get the effect 100% of the time. Hilgard never claimed it was universal. Something's off." "You don't show the complete interviews with subjects. Hilgard did. What are we actually seeing?" "Your design already tells people what should happen. Of course they'll go along with it."
The underlying argument:
Spanos isn't disproving the phenomenon. He's showing how easy it is to produce it.
But Spanos doesn't back down.
He doubles down.
And responds with the subtlety of a sledgehammer:
"You have misinterpreted my positions. Your criticisms are misleading or invalid. The data do not support dissociation. The 'hidden observer' is an experimental creation."
No "maybe." No "interesting point."
It's:
you are wrong.
Straight for the jugular.
And in the middle... the editor.
Because someone decided to publish ALL of this in the same journal.
Two incompatible models. Two opposing interpretations. Same stage.
Peak scientific content.
The academic version of watching people fight on Twitter.
Beautiful.
Hilgard dies in 1994.
Does the fight end?
No.
Spanos continues.
He publishes his sociocognitive model for years:
Hypnosis is not a special state. It's expectation + role + social context.
And every time he explains it...
Hilgard is there.
As a ghost antagonist.
This leaves something uncomfortable floating in the air.
Even if Spanos is right...
Even if the "hidden observer" is shaped by expectations...
👉 why does the brain respond so well to those expectations?
Why can words + context modulate pain, memory, perception?
Maybe Hilgard wasn't completely wrong.
Maybe the mind does divide.
But not into "hidden parts" waiting to be discovered.
Rather into configurations that emerge according to context.
And that's where things get interesting.
Because if Spanos is right:
Hypnosis doesn't reveal a hidden truth of the mind.
It reveals something else.
Something more uncomfortable.
That experience itself can be constructed... with surprising ease.
And in that sense,
hypnosis wouldn't be something strange.
It would just be the most visible version of something we do all the time.
Without realizing it.
✦ᛉumeᛋᛇ✦
✦ — — — — — — — — — — ✦
✦ Source: Yume Desu
✦ Date: 2026-05-27
✦ Status: Fragment
✦ Record: Complete