Josephine Rohrs Hilgard

Josephine Rohrs Hilgard (12 March 1906 – 16 May 1989) was an American developmental psychologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. She was a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford Medical School. She conducted research on mental health and developed the theory of "anniversary reactions", which described how psychiatric issues might be triggered at anniversaries of significant events in a patient's life. She also specialized in hypnotherapy, and published research on the theory and practice of hypnosis.

Biography Josephine "Josie" Rohrs was born and raised in the community of Napoleon, Ohio. She graduated from Smith College in 1928, and earned her PhD in child psychology from Yale University in 1933. She married Ernest Hilgard, a fellow psychologist whom she had met at Yale, in 1931. Hilgard reviewed this early work in her last peer-reviewed journal article. She found that there was a relationship between individuals' absorption in hypnotic experiences and their history of imaginative involvement as children.

Hilgard also conducted research on the use of hypnosis to manage pain. She wrote two books on hypnotic analgesia: Hypnosis in the Relief of Pain (1975; co-authored with her husband), and The Hypnotherapy of Pain in Children with Cancer (1984; co-authored with Samuel LeBaron). She co-authored the Stanford Hypnotic Clinical Scale for Children.

In 1982, the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis presented Hilgard with the Bernard B. Raginsky Award for being a "distinguished teacher, researcher and pioneer in the field of hypnosis." In 1985, the International Society of Hypnosis awarded her the Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal for Excellence, for being a "distinguished clinician and scientist whose insightful research serves as a model for the integration of clinical sensitivity and scientific rigor."

Selected works

Books

Articles