Hypnotic analgesia: a laboratory pain suggestion

Hypnotic analgesia is a suggested change in pain report (and sometimes in related behaviour) during a hypnotic session. It is a methods term for a laboratory phenomenon. It is not a chronic-pain clinic package.

Key evidence

Hilgard and colleagues’ 1975 PNAS paper asked whether hypnotic analgesia behaved like opioid analgesia. In that design, naloxone did not reverse the hypnotic analgesia. That is a pharmacological probe of mechanism, not a grade for later pain RCTs.

The measurement tradition behind who can produce such suggestions is hypnotic susceptibility. The theoretical vocabulary is dissociation. The person is Ernest Hilgard.

Condition evidence pages grade clinical pain or medical procedures separately. This page does not.

Limitations

Student or laboratory pain (for example cold pressor) is not chronic clinical pain. One antagonist study is not a network meta-analysis.

What we don't know yet

How this 1975 result maps onto later neuroimaging of suggested pain is a study-library question, not a glossary claim.

This page is informational only.