After a long time exploring hypnosis and wondering about its mechanics and functions and digging into everything I could, I have come to somewhat of a complete answer to the question of...
"What is hypnosis?"
I went through a lot of different answers over time, specifically attempting to peel back layers of arbitrariness to how we define hypnosis, and through learning how it works and talking with many other hypnotists and subjects about their views, the conclusion I've come to is simple: Hypnosis is not a state or a unique nonstate interaction. Hypnosis, and specifically hypnosis, does not actually exist.
The things that construct hypnosis do exist. In my opinion, those things are: focus, suggestibility, dissociation, and compartmentalization.
Focus in this analysis is defined as the threshold that defines what of the information we take in at all times is given attention. It is a filter limited in size that optimizes what our minds need to be aware of. It is specifically and deeply important to note that focus is limited.
Our entire sense of reality is always constructed out of a limited amount of stimuli, and so, small things, depending on how intense of focus is, can construct a significant portion of what our mind is taking in. To borrow the example of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the people who from birth have only been able to witness silhouettes casting on to cave walls, that amount of, stimuli is what composes their entire construct of what reality is. If, one day, the lights went out, it would be tantamount to an apocalypse.
In the act we call Hypnosis, the hypnotist attempts to consume as much of one's focus as possible as to project their ideas as largely as possible in the minds of their subjects.
Suggestibility in this analysis is defined as the simple and almost boring to describe function of the mind responding to new stimuli. If you respond to any new amount of information to enter your mind from reading a new word to feeling temperature to having your heart broken after a breakup. It might seem redundant to cast such a wide net for suggestibility, but if you remove all arbitrary restrictions, this is truly what suggestibility is.
Our minds have no connection to some absolute truth. To our minds, all information taken in is, at first, equally real to us. We need to create the understanding that some stimuli is fake and some is real, and that step comes after the initial absorption of information. Even the concept of fake and real need to be learned.
Our minds react strongly to purely hypothetical information all of the time. Anxiety, depression, worrying about future tests or the next job evaluation. If our mind believes with all of its heart that a bear is standing right behind us, our body will jump into fight or flight. The "actual reality" of the situation is irrelevant to the brain because it's not something the brain could ever connect with. Our minds, by design, extrapolate on limited information. We are designed to be suggested. Hypnotists simply exploit this necessary aspect of the mind.
Dissociation in this analysis is defined as any function of the mind that separates its awareness or means of processing information from its current, immediate environment. The actual traditional definition of dissociation obviously applies, but so does "meditation" and "immersion" and "highway hypnosis" and "flow states". The mind is always somewhat dissociated, just like it is always in a state of uneven focus and always suggestible.
If it separates you from the current, tangible, "real" moment and places you within a state of heightened focus on hypothetical or fake information, it is some function of dissociation.
This can be assisted by cutting off things like eyesight or fixating it on one point so that new information stops being taken in. This is also what leads to easier thinking while doing familiar tasks like chores or showering. The stimuli around you is so familiar that the mind has nothing to process, leading to an increase in internal thinking. Look into the default mode network if you're curious about learning more.
Compartmentalization in this analysis is defined as the process of drawing a conceptual outline around something in order to make it one defined thing. The field of analysis surrounding this is called Ontology, the study of what makes a thing a thing. In our minds, this is the process of building blocks of knowledge.
You can learn specific concepts like "chairs" or "self" or "red" and then build associations between those things, creating cities of knowledge where each thing connects to another in order to inform our perception and processing of everything we ever take in.
Compartmentalization is the thing that makes learning possible, and we exist constantly within perceptive structures that turn the chaotic series of stimuli we're always absorbing into a thing that makes sense. It is also the thing that makes triggers possible, it's what conditioning functions with.
We, as hypnotists, literally teach the concept of the trigger and build its associations so that the memory can then later be referenced.
When these interact, we have a dissociated subject (making them more able to accept hypothetical information and suspend their disbelief) whose focus has been drawn in strongly (thus making the information taken in construct a much larger piece of their reality), in order to suggest ideas to the mind that it partially takes as fact despite the hypothetical nature in order to compartmentalize and condition specific desired responses within the subject.
One could then say that hypnosis is this interaction. However, when considering such a thing, holes begin to form in that idea. The strongest case against it is actually quite simple and quite immutable: these four things already interact with eachother all of the time. In fact, they're designed to, it is the entire point of each function to do so. It would be defining hypnosis as the process of percieving.
You could then say that it is the faulty interaction of these four things. Hypnosis would then still apply to phantom pains and psyching yourself up and going to therapy. Hypothetical and often wrong feelings and ideas self-suggest us an uncountable amount of times per day.
What if, then, it was the intentional exploitation of these four elements? Well beyond the fact that almost nobody who does hypnosis knows about these things and that it can be done without knowing anything about hypnosis, it would again be defined as psyching someone else up or lying to someone or reading a book made by anyone that is not yourself.
This is all to say that nothing about hypnosis is unique at all. Every function and idea that could be applied to hypnosis could be applied to a wider function or idea, and so every attempt to define hypnosis begins creating arbitrary distinctions, ones that just nervously ignore every blurry line.
Once every possibility is whittled down, the only remaining one is that hypnosis is the act of participating in hypnosis.
While hypnosis is not a state, it is compartmentalized as one. It is the concept of a state of mind in which you can be suggested and controlled. It is the concept of a state of a heightened version of each of these four elements, and the compartmentalization of it as a state is the thing that gives hypnosis power.
It is a natural consequence of the mind's awareness of itself and its own manner of perception, a cognitohazard that is self-referential and self-reinforcing, using the real functions that our minds use to imagine a specific and distinct thing that occurs when they combine and the powers that are possible once that concept occurs.
Hypnosis itself is a conditioned concept.
Experienced subjects drop into trance easier not because they've being "conditioned better to hypnosis", it's because new subjects literally do not know or understand what it is. Experienced subjects draw on memory to fall into hypnosis, they are referencing the concept in their mind and emulating what it is that they believe it to be.
The concept of hypnosis is triggered by ideas that make the subject remember hypnosis.
This also means that hypnosis is different for every single person that is made aware of it. They all share similarities, but it makes it that so long as that something is rested in perception, the subject can be manipulated in almost any way so long as they believe with all of their mind that they can be affected that way.
If a subject believes they can lose full control of themselves, it will happen.
This makes it so that first impressions can matter a lot, that trauma and fears and anxieties can entirely change of how conditions and processes hypnosis, and that the concept can be changed and reconditioned over time, meaning nobody is hopeless.
To conclude, hypnosis is an imaginary but inevitable idea that uses each function that is associated with it to create itself and reinforce itself, and its existence as a state or process/interaction and defined concept in the mind that legitimizes it and allows us to detach ourselves from our own control.
It is not a state, but a concept of a state or process, and a concept that can be spread and taught and reinforced collectively through the idea of it existing.
This is, after a very long time of searching, what feels to be a satisfying relatively unified theory of hypnosis for me, and has tied off the majority of loose ends I had for it.
As a last note, don't take "imaginary" as a means to believe that it is weak or fragile. While it in itself does not exist in the way most things do, as spoken about before, "imaginary" can be as real to us as "real". Our minds don't necessarily know the difference.
Even further, this should be deeply freeing to know. Hypnosis can be whatever you want it to be. If it exists in perception, you can work to tweak it. Context always matters though, of course.
I hope you enjoyed reading. I don't know if anyone other than me has concluded this (I mean I'm sure others have), but I hope that something has been gained from your own perspective.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
