Fantasy Proneness: Hypnosis, Developmental Antecedents, and Psychopathology

• Published in: The American psychologist 1988-01, Vol.43 (1), p.35-44
• Main Authors: Lynn, Steven Jay, Rhue, Judith W
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Child; Child Abuse - psychology; Creativity; Early Experience; Fantasy; Human; Humans; Hypnosis; Hypnotic Susceptibility; Imagination; Mental Disorders - psychology; Psychopathology
• ISSN: 0003-066X; 1935-990X
• DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.43.1.35

This article presents a summary of the findings of our ongoing research program on the fantasy-prone person. In seven studies, nearly 6,000 college students were screened in order to obtain five samples of 156 fantasy-prone subjects. Fantasy-prone subjects (fantasizers) were selected from the upper 2%-4% of the college population on a measure of imaginative involvement and contrasted with nonfantasizers (lower 2%-4%), and medium fantasy-prone subjects (middle range). General support was secured for Wilson and Barber's construct of fantasy proneness: Fantasizers were found to differ from nonfantasizers, and in many cases also from medium-range subjects, on measures of hypnotizability, imagination, waking suggestibility, hallucinatory ability, creativity, psychopathology, and childhood experiences. Differences in hypnotizability were most reliable when subjects participated in a multisession study and were screened not only with the screening inventory, but also with an interview that substantiated their fantasy-prone status. However, our findings indicated that less correspondence between fantasy proneness and hypnotizability exists than Wilson and Barber suggested. Hypnotic responsiveness is possible even in the absence of well-developed imaginative abilities, and not all fantasizers were highly hypnotizable. Fantasizers recollected being physically abused and punished to a greater degree than other subjects did and reported experiencing greater loneliness and isolation as children. Many fantasizers appeared to be relatively well-adjusted; however, a subset of fantasizers were clearly maladjusted based on self-report, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), and Rorschach test data. Because of the diversity inherent in the fantasy-prone population, it is misleading to think of individuals at the extreme end of the fantasy-proneness continuum as conforming to a unitary personality type.