There is no doubt that hypnotic suggestion can bring about a separation of activities in a way that could not be duplicated by ordinary volition. This separation is most marked for processes that lie within the realm of consciousness; it diminishes to the vanishing point as one proceeds to those unwitting implicit processes that give little token of themselves in awareness and little foothold for volitional influence. Only with this qualification can the concept of dissociation be applied to hypnosis. Dissociative boundaries by no means necessarily follow natural lines of cleavage; they do not have to surround innate biological systems nor are they required to enclose systems built up in the person's experience. This fact tends to shift interest from dissociation to suggestion which would seem to be the more inclusive even though not the more definable concept. Whatever the nature of the hypnotic state, it does not seem to be adequately conceptualized by dissociation. The pathway to the theory of hypnotism passes first through suggestion and then to some further concepts capable of ordering the facts. What these concepts may be is the topic of another paper (see 16: 577). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)