Vittorio Benussi’s “Emotional Functional Autonomy”: Resumption and Re-Evaluation

This study resumes and reevaluates the research on emotional functional autonomy developed by Vittorio Benussi in the 1920s, using hypnosuggestive methods. Four fundamental human emotions were studied in hypnosis: hope, happiness, despair, and unhappiness. Participants received training aimed at experiencing neutral hypnosis, characterized by the absence of any suggested images or suggested cognition. During the neutral hypnosis, the participants were asked to experience emotions isolated from all cognitive and imaginative experience so as to produce what can be assumed to be physiological responses driven by emotion only. The measured physiological variables were breathing and skin conductance. The study found evidence for a specific respiratory profile for each of the emotions examined.