Suggested posthypnotic amnesia in four diagnostic groups of hospitalized psychiatric patients

We studied the parameters of suggested posthypnotic amnesia (initial deficit in recall, reversibility, and temporal disorganization of the initial material partially recalled during amnesia) in 132 psychiatric inpatients with DSM-III diagnoses of schizophrenia (N = 25), eating disorders (N = 77), alcoholism (N = 12), and major affective disorder (depression) (N = 18). We compared the findings on these patients with normal student control groups on the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale (SHSS:C) posthypnotic suggestion item. In general, the small patient subgroups showed posthypnotic amnesia on each of these criteria in similar fashion to normal student populations. Highly hypnotizable patients were more likely to recall their hypnotic experiences in a more random order than the temporally more accurate sequence shown by low-hypnotizable subjects. Schizophrenic patients initially recalled fewer of their hypnotic experiences (indicating some cognitive deficit), and eating disorder patients initially recalled more of their experiences than other patient groups or normal subjects. Nevertheless, all patient subgroups showed significant additional recall after the reversibility cue. The results support the robustness of posthypnotic amnesia in psychiatric patients.