Authorizing Clinical Hypnosis: From Bicameral Mentality to Autonomy
Laurence I. Sugarman interviewed by Marcel Kuijsten, in Marcel Kuijsten (ed.), Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Society, 2022).
Summary: Laurence Sugarman interviewed by Marcel Kuijsten on his research and clinical experience with autism, hypnosis, biofeedback, and the role of external authorization as described by Jaynes.
Excerpt: Marcel Kuijsten: To start with, let’s talk about your background. How did you first become interested in medicine, how did you first become interested in hypnosis, and please tell us about the type of work that you’re involved with.
Laurence Sugarman: I’ve always been interested in life sciences. I started to figure out how to bake bread when I was about 10, because I thought it was so cool that we could grow yeast and make it bubble into bread that tasted good. My mother was appalled at the mold I grew in the basement, in what I called my laboratory. Like many kids, I was fascinated about how things worked, and how they — and even we — became more than the sum of their parts. …