When most of the people hear the word Hypnosis, they will automatically imagine a person waving a pocket clock in order to make another person to act like a chicken, dog or walk like’s zombie or even do action against their will (kill someone, rubbing people).

But the reality is different; hypnosis is a mental state (according to “state theory”) or imaginative role-enactment (according to “non-state theory”), in which the hypnotized person is not in a semi-sleep state but better he is hyper attentive and has absolute free will. This mental state is induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction (which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary instructions and suggestions) or may be self-administered (“self-suggestion” or “autosuggestion”). Braid, the inventor of hypnotism (hypnotism derive from the term “neuro-hypnotism” – nervous sleep), described hypnotism as a state of physical relaxation accompanied and induced by mental concentration (“abstraction”).

In 2005, a new definition of hypnosis, derived from academic psychology (Society for Psychological Hypnosis):

“Hypnosis typically involves an introduction to the procedure during which the subject is told that suggestions for imaginative experiences will be presented. [..]. A hypnotic procedure is used to encourage and evaluate responses to suggestions. When using hypnosis, one person (the subject) is guided by another (the hypnotist) to respond to suggestions for changes in subjective experience, alterations in perception, sensation, emotion, thought or behavior.”

According to Freud, the mind can be divided into two main parts:

• The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think, act and talk about rationally (when you extend your hand in order to retrieve something). A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness (like a definition). Freud called this ordinary memory the preconscious.
• The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences (just like when you lock a door but later on you are not sure if you locked or not the door, because our unconscious mind told us to get the key and lock the door).

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