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Developmental psychologists (especially followers of Erik Erikson) and Jungian psycho-therapists, among others, have noted that mature/self-actualized people must balance seemingly contradictory traits in aspects of their lives. When people list too much to one extreme or the other, such as tending to express only passion or only objectivity, Ericksonian hypnotherapy can be used to enable individuals to achieve balance through two major processes, differentiation and integration. Both processes are analogous to developing 'response sets' (as they are called in Ego-State Therapy) that facilitate balance in these juxtaposed traits. Recent research into the creative/complex personality has isolated a specific set of ten dialectics that are consistent across creative/complex adults (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). A review of some of Milton Erickson's case studies illustrates how one or more of the ten dialectics is the focal point for creating response sets that will right the individual's imbalance(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigated whether heart-rate variability can serve as a device for real-time quantitative measurement of hypnotic depth. This study compared the continuous self-rated hypnotic depth (SRHD) of 10 volunteers with heart rate, amplitude, and frequency changes from a time-frequency analysis of heart-rate variability (HRV). The authors found significant linear relationships between SRHD and the high-frequency (HF) component of HRV. Specifically, SRHD was correlated negatively with the frequency of the HF component and positively with the amplitude of the HF component. Unexpectedly, the average temporal trend in SRHD fit well (R(2) = .99) to the step response of a first-order system with a 4-minute time constant. The findings suggest that the reactivity of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system reflected in HRV could become part of a real-time, quantitative measure of hypnotic depth.