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CLINICAL FORUM
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that Mary was able to achieve arm levitation, as well as self-reported
time distortion and posthypnotic amnesia. It certainly could be argued
that her time distortion and amnesia weremere artifactsof her cognitive
difficulties, however, her amnesia was specific to only the items during
hypnosis that she was suggested to forget.
After achieving
arm
levitation, Mary's hand moved
to
her face as she
was given the suggestionthat her hand would become "stuck
like
amag-
net" to her face.Next, shewas instructed that, "at the count of three,you
will awaken from hypnosis only from the neck up
so
that you can con-
verse with me, but your body will remain in hypnosis." She was also
given
a
suggestion to evoke a negative visual hallucination so that, dur-
ing
our
conversation, her visual field would be
so
narrowed that she
"would be able to see only me
and
be blind to all other visual informa-
tion." Furthermore, Mary was instructed that she would then "return
fully to hypnosis both in mind and body" at the very moment that
I
would touchher left kneecapwithmy right hand. Sheresponded to each
of
these suggestionsprecisely as they were given. During our conversa-
tion (when Mary's body was "in hypnosis from the neck down"), she
reported that she could only seeme and was unable to locate her hand,
which of course was "stuck" to her face as suggested. This negative
visual hallucination was evoked
to
suggest the possibility that Mary
could similarly experience negative hallucinations in the kinesthetic
realm as needed during her upcoming
LP.
Consistent with the sugges-
tion to do
so,
Mary immediatelyreturned to deep hypnosis the moment
her kneecap was touched.
Concordant with
a
suggestion during hypnosis to do so, Mary also
experienced the positive kinesthetic hallucination of a
fly
on her hand,
which she vigorously tried to scratchand swat away.This techniquewas
used both as a hypnosis-deepeningprocedure and as a way to hypnoti-
cally seed the possibility that she could change the qualitative nature of
anyphysical sensationsduringher imminent
LP
to that of a
fly
(aswillbe
discussed later).BecauseMary successfullyexperienced threevery diffi-
cult types of suggestions(positivehallucination, negative hallucination,
and posthypnotic suggestion),we inferred (albeit informally) that Mary
was of moderate to high hypnotizability.
While in hypnosis,Marywas given a hypnotic rehearsal of the entire
LP
procedure from start
to
finish. Despite
our
concern that she might
have problems with memory
loss
related to
this,
we conducted the hyp-
notic rehearsal with the hope that it might be something she would
remember at some level. Prior to this appointment, the neurologist pro-
vided a detailed description of the planned
LP
to the first author, with
regard to timing and sequencingof the various stagesand types of sensa-
tions to be expected.
This
information allowed for a highly accurate and
customized hypnotic rehearsal of the entireprocedure. Webelieved that
hypnotic rehearsal was essential, because it served to decrease patient
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