Martin Theodore Orne
Orne is best known for his pioneering research into demand characteristics, illustrating the weakness of informing participants that they are taking part in a psychology experiment and yet expecting them to act normally.
He was well known as a researcher in the field of hypnosis and is also noted for his involvement with the poet Anne Sexton, and with the trials of Patty Hearst and Kenneth Bianchi.
degree from Tufts University Medical School in 1955, with a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center.
[3] Of particular significance was Orne's characterisation of the hypnotic state of consciousness, which included a phenomenon called "trance logic".
The latter refers to "the apparent tendency of hypnotized individuals to engage simultaneously in logically contradictory or paradoxical thoughts and perceptions and to be oblivious to their incongruity.
It has been suggested that trance logic represents evidence of parallel processing in that there appears to be simultaneous registration of information at different levels of awareness" [ APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2022].
[2] His first published paper focused on issues and myths of hypnosis and age regression in adults.
[4] Orne received CIA funding through Project MKUltra Subproject 84 but was given no special direction for his research.
[7] Orne did not believe it was possible to use hypnosis for the purpose of creating a Manchurian Candidate stating, “When the layman inquires whether hypnosis can be used to induce antisocial behavior, he generally wonders whether a hypnotist can induce trance in a total stranger and then compel him to carry out behavior for his own personal and private benefit--the subject somehow becoming the helpless tool of the powerful hypnotist."...
Fortunately, the Manchurian Candidate still remains fiction.” [8] Orne sought to prove his stance by replicating experiments previously believed to have demonstrated hypnosis could coerce subjects into "unacceptable” or “antisocial” behavior – such as handling a poisonous snake or throwing acid on a research assistant.
He concludes: “The popular view which holds that hypnosis is able to exert a unique form of control over the hypnotized individual, which can compel him to carry out otherwise repugnant actions, must be rejected.
