| Abreaction | The act of reviving the memory of a repressed disagreeable experience and giving expression in speech and action to the emotions related to it, thereby relieving the individual of its influences. |
| Affect Bridge | A technique by which significant memories are recovered by inducing an intense emotional state in a client and asking him or her to remember a past instance when he or she felt the same way. |
| Age Progression | Simulated time orientation. The hypnotic subject hallucinates living in the future while retaining his or her chronological age. |
| Amnesia | Loss of memory or inability to recall. It may result from organic or functional causes and may be generalized or for a circumscribed period of time. In retrograde amnesia, there is a loss of memory for events over a period of time prior to a trauma. Hypnotic amnesia is always reversible and may be spontaneous, suggested, partial, or total. |
| Analgesia | The loss or reduction of pain sensation without loss of consciousness. When produced in hypnosis, it is called hypnoanalgesia. If used to decrease pain, hypnoanalgesia can be retained by posthypnotic suggestions. |
| Anesthesia | The loss of sensory modalities. In hypnosis, this is called hypnoanesthesia and is used in major surgical and dental procedures. Chemically induced anesthesia may be general (unconsciousness) or local (specific area insensitivity). |
| Anorexia Nervosa | A life-threatening psychoneurotic symptom in which the client, usually a young woman, diets to the point of emaciation. The anorexic typically has a loss of appetite and a loathing for food. |
| Approach | System of operation or way of working; characteristic modus operandi. |
| Authoritarian | The approach of hypnotic suggestion that is commanding and forceful in nature, imposed by the hypnotist. |
| Autohypnosis | Synonymous with self-hypnosis. |
| Autosuggestion | Suggestions made by the subject to oneself. |
| Bulimia | A psychoneurotic disturbance resulting in a morbid increase of appetite, causing an insatiable desire to eat constantly. |
| Catalepsy | A condition characterized by rigidity of skeletal muscles. May be accompanied by waxy flexibility, where limbs remain in any position placed, as though molded in wax. The medical term is cerea flexibilitas. |
| Clinical Hypnosis | The therapeutic uses of hypnosis. |
| Conscious | Awareness; alertness; referring to the state of being subjectively aware. The left hemisphere function that maintains interpretative contact with the environment. |
| Delusion | An irrational belief tenaciously held in spite of all evidence to the contrary. |
| Dissociation | The ability of the hypnotized subject to detach from the immediate environment, sometimes experiencing themselves as if outside their body. Also refers to dividing the psyche into parts functioning independently (e.g., automatic writing). |
| Endorphins | Naturally produced peptides in the brain that have pain-relieving effects similar to morphine. |
| Forensic Hypnosis | The legal application of hypnosis. |
| Fractionation | A deepening method involving repeated cycles of hypnosis and dehypnosis. |
| Glove Anesthesia | A hypnotically suggested anesthesia in the area of the hand covered by a glove, from fingertips to wrist. Neuroanatomically impossible. |
| Heterohypnosis | Hypnosis induced by another person (a hypnotist). |
| Hypermnesia | Memory recall with retrieval of forgotten information. The brain stores everything and forgets nothing when proper associations are stimulated. |
| Hypersthesia | Heightened sensibility to work. |
| Hypersuggestibility | An above-normal responsiveness to suggestions. A subject easily influenced and able to achieve profound hypnosis is hypersuggestible. |
| Hypnagogic | The transitional state between wakefulness and sleep. |
| Hypnoanalysis | The combined use of hypnosis and psychoanalytic techniques. |
| Hypnoidal | Resembling hypnosis; often designates the lightest degree of hypnosis. |
| Hypnopompic | The state of consciousness upon waking from sleep. The mirror state of hypnagogic. |
| Hypnosis | An altered state of consciousness characterized by hypersuggestibility, usually induced by another person. |
| Hypnotherapy | Any therapy in which hypnosis is the core of the treatment. |
| Hypnotic | Pertaining to or associated with hypnosis. |
| Hypnotism | The study and use of suggestion; the science of hypnosis. |
| Hypnotizability | The degree of individual susceptibility to hypnosis. |
| Hypnotic Susceptibility | A personality trait determining a person’s ability to be hypnotized and reach certain depths of hypnosis. |
| Ideomotor Action | Involuntary muscle responses to thoughts, feelings, or ideas. |
| Ideosensory Action | The brain’s involuntary evocation of sensory images (visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, olfactory, or gustatory). |
| Illusion | A misperception of sensory stimuli; all senses are subject to illusions. |
| Imagery | The ability to mentally recreate ideas, pictures, or feelings. |
| Induction | The process of producing hypnosis using specific techniques. |
| Indirect Hypnosis | Hypnosis induced without the subject’s conscious awareness. |
| Matching | A rapport-building technique from NLP involving adopting another person’s behaviors, gestures, tone, or expressions. |
| Negative Hallucination | Failing to perceive something that is actually present. |
| Neuroplasticity | The brain’s lifelong ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections. |
| Operator | Another term for hypnotist. |
| Permissive | A non-authoritarian induction style that offers options and makes the subject the source of the response. |
| Positive Hallucination | Perceiving a stimulus that does not exist in objective reality. |
| Posthypnotic Response | Actions carried out after hypnosis in response to a suggestion given during trance. |
| Posthypnotic Suggestion | A suggestion given during hypnosis that manifests after awakening. |
| Revivification | Reliving a prior life period. The subject returns to a physiological state from that age, with later memories removed. |
| Self-Hypnosis | Hypnosis induced in oneself for self-improvement or healing. |
| Somnambulism | Commonly known as sleepwalking; in hypnosis, it refers to the deepest stage of trance. |
| Subconscious Mind | Mental processes outside conscious awareness, often linked to imagination, memory, and creativity. Highly accessible during hypnosis. |
| Subject | An older term for an individual undergoing hypnosis. Modern usage favors client. |
| Subjective Time | Time as perceived by the subject, not necessarily corresponding to actual time. |
| Suggestibility | The capacity to accept and act on suggestions. |
| Suggestion | Hypnotic communication. |
| Time Distortion | Hypnotic suggestion altering the perception of time, making it seem faster or slower. |
| Trance | A state synonymous with hypnosis, often used by Milton Erickson and his followers. |
| Trance Logic | The ability of a hypnotized subject to accept and tolerate logically contradictory experiences. |
| Unconscious Mind | A postulated region of the psyche holding repressed urges and wishes; often used interchangeably with subconscious. |
