Theodore Xenophon Barber was an American psychologist who researched and wrote on the subject of hypnosis, publishing over 200 articles and eight books on that and related topics. He was the chief psychologist at Cushing Hospital, Framingham, Massachusetts, from 1978 to 1986. Barber was a noted critic of the field of hypnosis, questioning the ways in which the concept of hypnosis had been used as an umbrella term for diverse phenomena. Barber was one of the first two prominent anglophone psychologists, along with Theodore Sarbin, to question the "altered-state model" of "state model" of hypnosis, arguing that the varied phenomena labeled "hypnosis" could be explained without resorting to the notion of an altered state of consciousness.
Life
Born in 1927 to Greek immigrant parents in Martins Ferry, Ohio, Barber graduated early from high school and then attended St. John's College in Maryland. He earned his doctorate in psychology at American University in Washington, D.C., and then moved to Boston to complete postdoctoral research in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard with Clyde Kluckhohn and William A. Caudill. After working as a research associate at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, he joined the staff of the Medfield Foundation in 1961. Barber was director of research for the Foundation and served as chief psychologist for the hospital. His research was continuously supported through this period by grants from the National Institutes of Health. In 1978 he became a chief psychologist at the Cushing Hospital in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he remained until his retirement in 1986.
Major works
Barber's most referenced book is Hypnosis: A Scientific Approach. He argued in this work that hypnosis and related constructs are "unnecessary and misleading and that the phenomena that have been traditionally subsumed under these terms can be better understood by utilizing a different set of concepts that are an integral part of present-day psychology." It was positively reviewed by the scientific community. Psychologist Theodore R. Sarbin noted that the work "demystifies and demythologizes" the subject, "the construction of hypnosis as a special mental state ha no ontological footing." Throughout his numerous articles and research programs, he argued that diverse variables affected hypnotic responsiveness and that hypnosis could be elicited without any hypnotic induction at all. He posited that contextual variables -- like merely defining a situation as hypnotic or inducing goal-directed behavior -- served as a theoretical basis for hypnosis. His research showed that merely priming a subject to expect to be hypnotized could produce hypnotic results, and he found that a subject's score on a hypnotic suggestibility scale could be increased through both motivation and expectation. At first perceived as an iconoclast or "hypnosis opponent," his research and views came to be taken more seriously by the psychological community. Barber and David Smith Calverley often worked and published together. They worked on measuring hypnotic susceptibility or suggestibility. One result of their research was showing that hypnotic induction was not superior to motivational instructions in producing a heightened state of suggestibility. The Barber Suggestibility Scale, a product of their research, measures hypnotic susceptibility with or without the use of hypnotic induction. Barber served as president of Division 30 of the American Psychological Association and of the Massachusetts Psychological Association and was a fellow of both organizations. He served on the editorial boards of many journals and received the Presidential Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Field of Hypnosis from the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, as well as the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Scientific Hypnosis from Division 30. For all his criticism of the theoretical underpinnings and interpretation of hypnosis, Barber acknowledged that dramatic outcomes were possible when such processes were properly utilized. Later in his career, Barber addressed newer but competing theories of hypnosis that were based on dissociation. He proposed a three-dimensional description of hypnosis. He theorized that there are three distinct subtypes of good hypnotic subjects: the fantasy prone, the amnesia-prone, and the highly motivated positively set subjects.
Other interests
Although hypnosis was the main focus of Barber's research, his other interests included investigator bias, psychical phenomena, and comparative psychology, as reflected in his book The Human Nature of Birds. His later unpublished work focused on the mind–body problem and is purported to advance a type of panpsychism. At a meeting of the executive council of CSI in Denver, Colorado, in April 2011, Barber was selected for inclusion in CSI's Pantheon of Skeptics. The Pantheon of Skeptics was created by CSI to remember the legacy of deceased fellows of CSI and their contributions to the cause of scientific skepticism.
