63 HYPNOTIC HORIZONS Richard Hill 1 , Daniel Short 2 , Kathryn Lane Rossi 3 , Roxanna Erickson-Klein 4 , and Laurence Irwin Sugarman 5 1 CLINICAL SCIENCE DIRECTOR, THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY; 2 SONORAN UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES; 3 PSYCHOSOCIAL GENOMICS INSTITUTE; 4 MILTON H. ERICKSON FOUNDATION; 5 ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Hypnotic Horizons Hypnosis has a long, fabled history of turning out to be something other than what it first seems. The earliest forms of what we now call hypnosis can be traced back to shamanic/ spiritual healing rituals in nearly every culture since the beginning of recorded history. With unlimited ritualistic variations, practices have in common the power to convey ex- traordinary, therapeutic mind-body changes and beneficial social outcomes. In early Western medicine, through emphasizing suggestion effects, hypnosis focused on obedience to and compliance with an authority figure. Increasingly over the last half-century, this focus has shifted to individual empowerment, personal growth, and the interactional/ relational aspects of such encounters (Erickson & Rossi, 1976/2010; Diamond, 1987; Varga, 2021). As we seek to learn more about hypnosis and consider its future trajectory, we need to consider how hypnosis is fundamentally distinct from other therapeutic methodologies and how distinctions drive science and society to continually update and redefine the phenomenological experiences of hypnosis. Unlike hard sciences, hypnosis scholars continue to debate its precise definition. Accordingly, hypnosis keeps evading consensual boundaries. Despite contentions, the clear practical value of hypnosis is its power as a shared idea to serve specific, individual needs, while keeping pace with the zeitgeist of a changing society. Hence, as the conditions and intentions of hypnosis evolve, so does the significance of its phenomena and therapeutic applications. As with any other social construct (such as health or justice), perceptions and performance of hypnosis continue to evolve both publicly and professionally. From the earliest history of hypnosis, a key feature of fascination, investigation, and identification is the concept of non-volition – a perceived lack of free individual choice (Fromm & Nash, 1992). The authors contend that this issue of “agency” – the attributed source of ideas and suggestions – in hypnotic interactions is a critical factor in the evolution of hypnosis. Over the last decade, a shift in published definitions now places lesser em- phasis on the element of suggestibility and more on the evocation of self-direction, self- efficacy, and mastery within a problem-solving contexts (Hope & Sugarman, 2015; Short, 2022a; Sugarman, 2021). 904 DOI: 10.4324/9781003449126-82 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.