Theodore Xenophon Barber (1927–2005) was an American psychologist who researched and wrote on the subject of hypnosis, publishing over 200 articles and eight books on that and related topics. He was the chief psychologist at Cushing Hospital, Framingham, Massachusetts, from 1978 to 1986. Barber was a noted critic of the field of hypnosis, questioning the ways in which the concept of hypnosis had been used as an umbrella term for diverse phenomena. Barber was one of the first two prominent anglophone psychologists, along with Theodore Sarbin, to question the "altered-state model" of "state model" of hypnosis, arguing that the varied phenomena labeled "hypnosis" could be explained without resorting to the notion of an altered state of consciousness. Life Born in 1927 to Greek immigrant parents in Martins Ferry, Ohio, Barber graduated early from high school and then attended St. John's College in Maryland. He earned his doctorate in psychology at American University (1956) in Washington, D.C., and then moved to Boston to complete postdoctoral research in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard with Clyde Kluckhohn and William A. Caudill. After working as a research associate at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, he joined the staff of the Medfield Foundation in 1961. Barber was director of research for the Foundation and served as chief psychologist for the hospital. His research was continuously supported through this period by grants from the National Institutes of Health. In 1978 he became a chief psychologist at the Cushing Hospital in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he remained until his retirement in 1986. Barber had a son X. Theodore Barber and two daughters Elaine Barber and Rania Richardson. Major works Hypnosis Barber's most referenced book is Hypnosis: A Scientific Approach (1969). He argued in this work that hypnosis and related constructs are "unnecessary and misleading and that the phenomena that have been traditionally subsumed under these terms can be better understood by utilizing a different set of concepts that are an integral part of present-day psychology." It was positively reviewed by the scientific community. Psychologist Theodore R. Sarbin noted that the work "demystifies and demythologizes" the subject, "the construction of hypnosis as a special mental state ha[s] no ontological footing." Throughout his numerous articles and research programs, he argued that diverse variables affected hypnotic responsiveness and that hypnosis could be elicited without any hypnotic induction at all. He posited that contextual variables—like merely defining a situation