4. Can anyone be hypnotized, or only certain people?

4.2. The "Fantasy Prone Personality"

T.X. Barber and his colleague Sheryl Wilson did some interesting researchwhere they apparently identitified some loose correlates to hypnotizability,and which appear to enhance an individual's capacity to respond to hypnoticsuggestion.

Called the 'fantasy prone personality,' (FPP) these correlates do not seem toform a unitary personality type, but represent a diverse group of naturallyimaginative and visionary individuals.

Josephine Hilgard and other researchers have also found similar results, thatsome people have particularly rich inner fantasy lives and cultivate alifetime of vivid imagery experience corresponding to an openness to unusualexperience, extraordinary memory in many cases, capacity for intenseconcentration, sharp sensory acuity, and unusually strong somatic responses tomental imagery (such as response to placebos).

FPP may also describe the people who most frequently report various psychicphenomena, and 75% of FPP subjects in one study reported having experiencedorgasms from fantasy alone. 65% reported fantasies of hallucinatoryintensity.

This helps support Barber's earlier contentions about hypnotizable subjectsalso experiencing similar kinds of phenomena without specific hypnoticinduction.

See Wilson and Barber, "The Fantasy Prone Personality: Implications forunderstanding imagery, hypnosis, and parapsychological phenomena," in Imagery, Current Theory, Research, and Application, from Wiley Press.