François Roustang on Hypnosis.

François Roustang. (1994) Qu' est-ce que l' hypnose? Les editions de Minuit.

A Definition of Hypnosis

“Hypnosis is not founded, as is psychoanalysis, on the study of neurosis, hypnosis in not based on psychopathology and is not seduced by madness.....: (1994:10)

“Hypnosis does not study the human subjects for itself, in what we have called her psyche, because hypnosis only considers the person in and through her environment, only in and through her relation to the world; hypnosis thus no more subjective than objective, no more individual than collective.” (1994:10)

Paradoxical Wakefulness

“Hypnosis reveals itself as an increased vigilance capable of taking into account the totality of the parameters of existence, a sort of generalised vigilance that includes and overcomes a more restrained vigilance that we experience in daily life.” (1994:14)

“It is not the increased intensity of imagination that engenders hypnosis, but rather the hypnotic state, the paradoxical wakefulness, that allows the imagination to be deployed in order to transform our relationships with things and human beings.” (1994:14)

Hypnosis... ' allows to arise in the present unknown possibilities......its is thus an intervention, an operation, or action.' (1994:10)

Hypnosis discloses 'a manner of being in the world, a way of positioning oneself within existence, a modality of functioning in the world.' (1994:15)