Consciousness

• seCtIon FIVe: BoRDeRLAnDs
  Maybe both state and alteration are red
  herrings. And this would mean there is
  even more work to do than we thought
  in making sense of what all the varieties
  of conscious experience might contribute to the mystery of ‘consciousness itself ’.
  It would also mean that we ignore at our peril forms of experience we may fear,
  disapprove of, or have no interest in, since any defence of a single baseline ‘nor-
  mality’ looks decidedly shaky.

No State Label Epiphenomenon Quantitative Qualitative

FIGURE 13.9 • Kirsch (2011) suggests that
theoretical positions are on
a continuum rather than a
dichotomy. Might this idea be
helpfully applied to the contentious
question of whether hypnosis is an
altered state or not?

Doblin, R. (1991). Pahnke’s ‘Good Friday Experiment’:

A long-term follow-up and methodological critique. The

Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 23 , 1–28.

Provides lots of methodological detail on Pahnke’s orig-

inal experiment on psilocybin and spirituality, including

reports from participants and ethical considerations.

Jay, M. (Ed.) (1999). Artificial paradises: A drugs

reader. London: Penguin.

Contains brief extracts from de Quincey, Huxley, Freud,

Davy, Hoffman, Shulgin, James, Siegel, Leary, Tart,

Grof, and many others.

Kallio, S., and Revonsuo, A. (2003). Hypnotic

phenomena and altered states of consciousness: A multi-

level framework of description and explanation. Con-

temporary Hypnosis, 20 (3), 111–164. Peer commentary

and authors’ response in Gruzelier, J. (2005). Altered

states of consciousness and hypnosis in the twenty-first

century. Contemporary Hypnosis, 22 (1), 1–54.

An account of ASCs aiming to address the state/non-

state question about hypnosis, with a programme for

future research embracing multiple levels of description.

READING