Grounding Hypnosis in Science: The 'New' APA Division 30 definition of hypnosis as a step backwards.

Every decade or so, the Division 30 of the American Psychological Association (APA) has seen fit to redefine hypnosis (Elkins, Barabasz, Council, & Spiegel, 2015; Green, Barabasz, Barrett, & Montgomery, 2005; Kirsch, 1994). In the latest attempt, the Hypnosis Definition Committee (HDC) defined hypnosis as a 'state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion' (Elkins et al., 2015, p. 6). One might justifiably wonder whether important discoveries or scientific breakthroughs or novel theoretical insights motivated the impetus to update the previous definition. In fact, the recently adopted defini…