Hypnosis is a phenomenon involving the interplay between an altered level of consciousness and transference. The alteration in the level of consciousness involves a topographic ego regression, inherent in which is the regression of crucial ego functions that make the infantile transference more intense and also increase the subject's susceptibility to suggestion: the ability to make judgments, reality assessments, and to act deliberately are all diminished; there is a greater acceptance of ideas as implicit, since the origin of ideas is poorly perceived. Transference makes the initial surrendering of the reality orientation tolerable and even desirable because of the promise of infantile gratifications; transference further provides a safe holding environment in which ego regression can be comfortably experienced; transference also contributes to hypersuggestibility out of a promise of a specific constellation of infantile gratifications by paternal and maternal transferences embodied in the person of the hypnotist.