however, this registering appears to be absent of the distress and suffering that would be experienced in a normal non-hypnotic state.
Another reason to believe that pain is being registered at some level but ignored by the conscious mind is the fact that this phenomenon has been reported in past research. Specifically, in early research a similar split in consciousness was observed under conditions of automatic writing when the hand doing the writing was pricked with a needle. In these studies, the "hand" communicated the pain to the hypnotist by writing while the conscious mind of the subject did not know what was happening.
Moreover, there appears to be evidence of the split in consciousness even in cases where hypnosis has not been used. For example, in the early part of this century, Meyers reported several instances in which people given chemical anesthesia for surgery were later able to bring the pain and other events of the surgery to conscious recognition. In one case, the memory of what occurred during an operation was recalled in a dream.
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