Spanos Obituary-Long
Chaves, John F.
interest in knowing more about him and his work. I was asked
by the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis to prepare
an obituary for him that was published in their newsletter. I am
attaching a copy of the obituary for those who are interested.
John F. Chaves BITNET: jchaves@siuemus
School of Dental Medicine INTERNET: cha...@bach.siue.edu
Southern Illinois University O:618-474-7203
Alton, IL 62002
NICK SPANOS: AN APPRECIATION
It is with deep sadness and regret that I write to inform you of the
tragic death of Prof. Nicholas P. Spanos in a plane crash on Martha's Vineyard,
Massachusetts, on June 7, 1994. The accident occurred shortly after he had
taken off from the Katama airfield near his home on Martha's Vineyard to
return to Carleton University. His death is an incalculable loss to his
family, his many friends and colleagues, his students, and the profession.
Nick was only 52 years old and had been a frequent contributor to the
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis and to meetings
of the Society for more than 25 years. Although most members of the Society
knew him through his writings, few had an opportunity to get to know him
personally. I would like to use this occasion to help you to know him better.
Nick received his A.B. (1964) and Ph.D. (1974) from Boston University
and his M.A. in Psychology in 1968 from Northeastern University. I first met
Nick in 1964 while we were both graduate students at Northeastern University
in Boston. We both studied hypnosis with Hal Zamansky, although our primary
interests at the time were in other areas. We also had the good fortune to
meet another graduate student, David Calverley, who was working as a
research assistant to Ted Barber at the Medfield Foundation. I started
working with Ted in 1965. Nick followed in 1967 after deciding to discontinue
some preliminary work he had been doing on physiological mechanisms of memory
and appetite.
He joined the research team at the Medfield Foundation and also did
clinical work in the day-care unit of the Medfield State Hospital. His clinical
interests at this time included hypnosis, psychodrama, and behavior
modification. He soon became one of the most productive members of the Medfield
research team and one of the most popular staff members at the hospital. He
developed an extraordinary rapport with patients and was frequently seen
driving them to downtown Medfield for a sandwich and coffee and at other
times involving them in his research. Nick treated them as if they were members
of his family, and they responded in kind. Nick was characteristically generous
to his friends, colleagues and students, especially those in need. It was
common to learn that he had arranged temporary housing for people in need at
his family's home in Boston or at the Ferns Deluxe Motel in nearby Saugus,
which was owned and operated by his mother Pauline.
While at Medfield, Nick was strongly influenced by both the
theoretical orientation and the example of scholarship and hard work set
by Ted Barber. One book (Barber, Spanos & Chaves, 1974), three chapters and
approximately 30 articles were published by Nick between 1967 and 1975.
Although many articles were coauthored by others at the Foundation,
Nick was the senior author on most of these papers. Although his interests
were always wide-ranging, he was particularly fascinated with the nature of
hypnotic responding and the ways in which hypnotic subjects came to construe
their responses as involuntary. This effort nicely complemented the ongoing
research at Medfield that had placed more emphasis on overt responses to
hypnotic suggestion.
Nick was a wonderful collaborator. He loved to write and enjoyed debating
esoteric issues in hypnosis research with his colleagues at the Foundation.
He invariably brought a deep level of scholarship and critical thought to
these discussions. Nick had few boundaries between his personal and
professional life. He could be found in his office any time, day or night,
weekday or weekend. As a corollary, he expected his friends, students, and
colleagues to be available at all hours as well, an expectation we were never
able to correct. We all learned to expect and accept those late-night
telephone calls from Nick because they were always interesting and
provocative and left us more fully informed than we were before.
In 1975, Nick and I left Medfield. He joined the Psychology Department
at Carleton University while I moved to the School of Dental Medicine at SIU.
Although in different locations, we continued to collaborate and visited each
other frequently. Nick was promoted to Full Professor in 1981. The years at
Carleton were wonderfully productive for Nick. He established a Laboratory for
Experimental Hypnosis and immediately began attracting an excellent group of
graduate students. A devoted and proud mentor, Nick was among the most
popular professors at Carleton and would often have 20-30 students working in
his laboratory at once. This would include a mix of undergraduate honor's
students, as well as master's and Ph.D. candidates. Many of those who earned
their M.A.s and Ph.D.'s with Nick have gone on themselves to make significant
contributions to the field. Eight of them, with some of our like-minded
colleagues, contributed to our edited volume (Spanos & Chaves, 1989) that
attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of the cognitive-behavioral
perspective in hypnosis.
Nick's laboratory became the most productive research center on
experimental hypnosis in the world. His interests were extraordinarily
diverse and included such topics as UFO's, the Salem witchcraft trials,
glossolalia, multiple personality disorder, demonic possession, eyewitness
testimony, false memories of abuse, and also more traditional areas of
hypnosis research, especially memory and pain. He was an outspoken critic of
neodissociation theory. He bolstered his theoretical criticisms with
extensive experimental evidence showing that the experiences of hypnotic
subjects depend on contextual factors, misattributions, and sensitivity
to instructional demands. His work was always historically rooted and
emphasized the importance of social psychological factors in understanding
the behavior and experience of the hypnotic subject. The notion of hypnotic
behavior as a strategic enactment was central to his thinking.
By one account (Bowers & Davidson, 1991), through the 1979-1989 decade,
Nick was a coauthor or author of 7% of the entire published literature on
hypnosis. That level of productivity never abated. His death actually came at
the height of his productivity. There are many more important contributions
that will be appearing under his name for the next couple of years. Among
the most important of these are a review of hypnosis and multiple
personality disorder that just appeared in Psychological Bulletin (Spanos,
1994) and a book on the same subject that is currently under editorial
review.
Nick's influence did not end with his own publications. He was a
formidable debater, a skilled researcher and methodologist, and devoted
skeptic. Even those who disagreed with him knew that he would scrutinize
their work closely and that they would have to take his criticism into account.
Accordingly, his work has exerted a strong influence on virtually
everyone who has contributed to the field in recent years. Indeed, it has
become rare to see important contributions that do not refer to his work. Even
those who disagreed with him had to take his views into account. Although he
could be highly critical of the work of others, he also sought out criticisms
of his own work, which led him to publish one of his more important papers
(Spanos, 1986) in the Journal Brain and Behavioral Sciences, because it
invited critical commentaries from those working in the field.
The same passion he displayed in his professional activities was
also displayed in various avocational interests that developed over the years.
Motorcycling, canoeing, karate, horsemanship, and flying were among the
intense interests he displayed at various times in his life. After earning
his pilot's license and buying his first plane, he was able to commute
rather easily from Carleton University to Martha's Vineyard where he owned
a home with his sister Evangeline. He loved flying and quickly qualified
for his instrument rating and later took lessons in aerobatics and began
preparing to qualify for his commercial rating. He was always interested in
improving his skills and loved to share his joy in flying with his friends.
Nick abhorred pomposity and affectation. More than anyone I have every
known, Nick lived the life he wanted to live, with apologies to no one. He
could be irreverent and iconoclastic. That was a part of his appeal and the
part that was often most visible to others. His shyness, compassion, kindness,
and generosity were less obvious, but equally characteristic.
Nick was very close to his beloved mother Pauline who suffered a serious
stroke last year. He was deeply pained by her disability and frequently
visited her in Maine where she is living with his sister Evanthea. Nick is
also survived by his sister Evangeline from Boston, who had also been a
graduate student with us at Northeastern. He had great affection for
his sisters. Although Nick never married, in recent years he enjoyed a deep
and satisfying relationship with his companion, Cheryl Burgess. Cheryl
collaborated on several important articles and chapters with Nick.
Nick loved Martha's Vineyard. He was planning on retiring there eventually,
surrounded by his books, the ocean, and tranquility. He was a frequent visitor
to my home on Cape Cod and, in recent years, we discussed that we would
eventually be neighbors again when I retired to the Cape. It is a great source
of sadness to me that our plan will never be realized. He enriched the lives
of all those he touched. He will be greatly missed.
John F. Chaves, Ph.D.
School of Dental Medicine
Southern Illinois University
Barber, T. X., Spanos, N. P., & Chaves, J. F. (1974) Hypnosis, imagination
and human potentialities. New York: Pergamon Press.
Bowers, K. & Davidson, T. M. (1991) A neodissociative critique of Spanos'
social-psychological model of hypnosis. In S. J. Lynn & J. W. Rhue (eds.)
Theories of hypnosis: Current models and perspectives. New York: Guilford
Press.
Spanos, N. P. (1986) Hypnotic behavior: A social-psychological interpretation
of amnesia, analgesia and "trance logic." Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
9, 449-502.
Spanos, N. P. & Chaves, J. F. (1989) Hypnosis: The cognitive-behavioral
perspective. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
Spanos, N. P. (1994) Multiple identity enactments and multiple personality
disorder: A sociocognitive perspective. Psychological Bulletin.