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Seventy-seven subjects participated in a 2 X 3 factorial experiment which examined the effects of hypnotic induction and types of suggestions on sleep mentation. Immediately before going to sleep at night, half of the subjects were exposed to a hypnotic induction and half were not, and all subjects were given either authoritative, permissive, or no suggestions to think and dream that night on a specific topic. Subjects reported their thoughts and dreams when awakened at sleep onset and during rapid-eye-movement (REM) and non-REM periods. The intricate findings indicated that hypnotic induction and types of suggestions exerted complex effects on nocturnal thinking and dreaming. The contents of the dreams were affected by an interaction between hypnotic induction and types of suggestions, and the hypnotic induction increased the number of nocturnal thoughts which pertained to the specified topic.

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