vreliminary study of relationships between hypnotic susceptibility and personality disorder functioning styles in healthy volunteers and personality disorder patients | Wang et al. BMC Psychiatry 2011 11 121 http 1471-244X 11 121 BMC Psychiatry RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Preliminary study of relationships between hypnotic susceptibility and personality disorder functioning styles in healthy volunteers and personality disorder patients Fenghua Wang1 2 3 Wanzhen Chen2 4 Jingyi Huang2 4 Peiwei Xu2 Wei He2 4 Hao Chai2 4 Junpeng Zhu2 4 Wenjun Yu2 4 Li Chen1 and Wei Wang2 4 Abstract Background Hypnotic susceptibility is one of the stable characteristics of individuals but not closely related to the personality traits such as those measured by the five-factor model in the general population. Whether it is related to the personality disorder functioning styles remains unanswered. Methods In 77 patients with personality disorders and 154 healthy volunteers we administered the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale Form C SHSSC and the Parker Personality Measure PERM tests. Results Patients with personality disorders showed higher passing rates on SHSSC Dream and Posthypnotic Amnesia items. No significant correlation was found in healthy volunteers. In the patients however SHSSC Taste hallucination b and Anosmia to Ammonia b were significantly correlated with the PERM Borderline style SHSSC Posthypnotic Amnesia was correlated with the PERM Schizoid style b but negatively the PERM Narcissistic style b . Conclusions Our results provide limited evidence that could help to understand the abnormal cognitions in personality disorders such as their hallucination and memory distortions. Keywords Hypnotic susceptibility Personality disorder functioning style Posthypnotic amnesia Taste hallucination Background Hypnotic susceptibility is an inherent capacity or ability of an individual to experience hypnosis 1 . Although being a stable characteristic 2 it hardly correlates with normal personality traits 3 4 . In clinics however higher hypnotic susceptibility has been reported in patients suffering from .
