Remembering André Weitzenhoffer, Ph.D.

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Jul 2005 by Frischholz, Edward J

The other significant result of the Weitzenhoffer and Sjoberg (1961) experiment was that the 17-item scale was later refined to a 12-point scale which was published in 1962 as the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C (Weitzenhoffer & Hilgard, 1962). The Stanford Form C scale was a more desirable instrument for measuring individual differences in hypnotic responsivity because it contained both motor items (e.g., arm lowering, arms apart, arm rigidity, arm immobilization) and cognitive items (e.g., anosmia to ammonia, positive taste hallucination, negative visual hallucination, and age regression). Thus, three quantitative scales of hypnotic susceptibility were developed in the Stanford laboratory. Stanford Forms A and B were recommended for an initial screening of a subject's level of hypnotic responsivity (low, medium, high) which could then be confirmed by administering the Stanford Form C scale (low, medium, high, very high). In recognition that he was the driving force behind the creation of these three scales, Weitzenhoffer was listed as the senior author.

André was also interested in how highly hypnotizable subjects experienced hypnotic test items that they passed, theorizing that different subjects may have qualitatively different hypnotic experiences even though they were of the same quantitative level of hypnotizability. He developed the Stanford Profile Scales of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Forms I and II for this purpose (Weitzenhoffer & Hilgard, 1963). In contrast, Hilgard felt that the Stanford Profile scales could be scored quantitatively. As other theoretical differences began to emerge between Weitzenhoffer and Hilgard, André began to look for a position at another University.

Tragically, Weitzenhoffer's wife, Geneva, died in November 1961 of Bulbar Polio and André took on the additional responsibility of raising their two children as a single father. He decided to move back to Oklahoma in the hope that his family would provide additional emotional support and help him care for his children.

At the beginning of the 1962-1963 academic year, André moved from Stanford back to Oklahoma where he took a job as Clinical Research Psychologist at the VA hospital in Oklahoma City, and he remained there through 1980. He became an Associate Professor of Medical Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center from 1962 to 1974, and was promoted to Professor in 1974-a position he held through 1981. In addition, André also worked as a clinical psychologist at the Alcohol Treatment Center Program at the VA Medical Center from 1980 through August of 1984.

In 1962, André published a paper in the SCEH journal on "The Significance of Hypnotic Depth and Therapy" (Weitzenhoffer, 1962a). Written while he was still at Stanford, this paper claimed that there was little or no relationship between trance depth and therapeutic outcome. André noted how some highly hypnotizable subjects did not seem to profit from treatment which used hypnosis while some low hypnotizable patients did. However, André did not attempt to relate the type of treatment utilized to his own theories of hypnosis or to specific types of clinical disorders. He also seemed to be using the word "depth" synonymously with the phrase "hypnotic susceptibility." Later, the Spiegels would argue that such issues are very important in understanding the clinical significance of hypnotizability and its relation to therapeutic outcome (Spiegel & Spiegel, 1978). Yet, Weitzenhoffer remained convinced that empirical attempts to correlate hypnotic responsivity with treatment responsivity would not yield any significant relationship between the two (Yapko, 2005).