Editing Hypnosis (section)

=== Conditioned inhibition ===
[[Ivan Pavlov]] stated that hypnotic suggestion provided the best example of a conditioned reflex response in human beings; i.e., that responses to suggestions were learned associations triggered by the words used:

{{blockquote|text=Speech, on account of the whole preceding life of the adult, is connected up with all the internal and external stimuli which can reach the cortex, signaling all of them and replacing all of them, and therefore it can call forth all those reactions of the organism which are normally determined by the actual stimuli themselves. We can, therefore, regard "suggestion" as the most simple form of a typical reflex in man.<ref>Pavlov, quoted in Salter, ''What is Hypnosis''?, 1944: 23</ref>}}

He also believed that hypnosis was a "partial sleep", meaning that a generalised inhibition of cortical functioning could be encouraged to spread throughout regions of the brain. He observed that the various degrees of hypnosis did not significantly differ physiologically from the waking state and hypnosis depended on insignificant changes of environmental stimuli. Pavlov also suggested that lower-brain-stem mechanisms were involved in hypnotic conditioning.<ref name="Pavlov">{{cite book | vauthors = Pavlov IP |title=''Experimental Psychology'' |location=New York |publisher=Philosophical Library |year=1957}}{{Page needed|date=September 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Barker W, Burgwin S | title = Brain wave patterns accompanying changes in sleep and wakefulness during hypnosis | journal = Psychosomatic Medicine | volume = 10 | issue = 6 | pages = 317–26 | year = 1948 | pmid = 18106841 | doi = 10.1097/00006842-194811000-00002 | s2cid = 31249127 }}</ref>

Pavlov's ideas combined with those of his rival [[Vladimir Bekhterev]] and became the basis of hypnotic psychotherapy in the Soviet Union, as documented in the writings of his follower K.I. Platonov. Soviet theories of hypnotism subsequently influenced the writings of Western behaviourally oriented hypnotherapists such as [[Andrew Salter (psychologist)|Andrew Salter]].