Have you ever been hypnotised? For one of those comedy hypnotist shows, past-life regression sessions (band name!) or for more serious reasons? What was it like, what happened?
I’m in two minds about hypnotism, it seems like one of those nebulous concepts that really shouldn’t have any foundation to it but I’ve heard too much from too many people to dismiss it.
I would never be hypnotised myself because I don’t like the concept of giving someone else control over me like that but I do find the concept interesting, doing a past-life regression would be interesting if only to see what my subconcious came up with…if I was a dashing WW2 fighter pilot I’d know I was projecting!
I’ve been to several comedy hypnotist shows and while they were entertaining I’m not sure how much was real and what was simply acting, for example at one show my cousin volunteered and took part for a short time, he later told me that the hypnotist had leaned down to him and whispered, “Play along and don’t fuck this up”.
However at a different show two male friends also ‘volunteered’ (the hypnotist did the interlock your fingers and then try to remove them thing). Seeing that they were friends the hypnotist played a trick telling both of them that one of them was actually an attractive girl and they were in a nightclub together. It was both amusing and somewhat disturbing to see them flirting to the point where the hypnotist had to put them back to sleep before they started making out! I don’t think there was any repressed homosexuality thing there and don’t believe they were just playing along due to how embarrassed they seemed after and the amount of stick they got. When asked they said it seemed the situation was both real and unreal at the same time.
So basically I don’t know what to think of the issue!
Penn and Teller did a great *Bullshit *episode on hypnotism. The notion that people can be made to do things they would object to outside of a hypnotic state is bullshit. Moreover, stage hypnosis is all for fun. It’s either manufactured with audience plants, or just playacting. The type of people who volunteer to go up on a stage are exactly the kind of people who fake it/go along with it for attention. It’s merely entertainment.
As to whether I’ve actually been hypnotized, well, I would say yes. Even though I’ve never been hypnotized in person, I have entered many “hypnotic states” via audios and videos (which feel the same as entering meditative states, for me). I’ve listened to a LOT of hypnosis audios and watched many hypnosis videos on youtube. They’re really not much different from guided meditation–there’s a lot of overlap. The only difference is hypnotists tend to issue stronger commands, where meditation is more gentle suggestions (although both forms can do both, depending on the speaker).
For whatever it’s worth, I’ve noticed that I prefer being guided/hypnotized by male voices (particularly intellectual-sounding accents like Scottish, Irish, non-cockney-British, and Australian). There is an element of submission to being hypnotized or allowing yourself to be guided in meditation, and I tend to strongly resist submitting to males with lame accents (like southern or valley-boy) and females. I think it may possible be due to growing up with a mother so controlling it became second-nature for me to resist her. But who knows for sure? Brains are weird!
FYI, all incidences of regression (past-life, alien-abduction, recovery of suppressed memories) are believed to be falsely implanted by the hypnotist and embellished upon by the patient. THAT is highly unethical, and should really be illegal. For instance, people may become convinced that they were molested by somebody in childhood, when it never actually happened. Their testimony puts innocent people in prison.
A university friend of mine knew hypnosis. One night about five of us agreed to lie down and submit to his attempts to hypnotise us. I’m not sure how typical his success was but he succeeded in hypnotising two of us. I didn’t go under and I wonder if it was because I was so curious about the process that I was being too alert and analytical rather than relaxing and going with it.
Much fun ensued with the two who did go under as we were able to quietly suggest what we should do. He bought the last one out of it though after we suggested that every long object was a knife. That probably crossed a line as she began to get a bit scared so we put an end to it as soon as we realised that was a bad idea. She wasn’t upset but it just showed that you have to think through all your suggestions. The whole hypnosis process appeared to be about trust - most interesting and quite a delicate process.
On balance we concluded that weed and hypnosis can be mixed safely as long as you don’t involve weaponry.
Edit: and as Rachel says above I doubt anyone would be able to get someone to do something that they would normally disagree with.
I don’t think so. Seems to me that anyone submitting to hypnotic regression wants stuff to be trawled up and will happily throw anything they can out there. Of course I hope you understand I know almost nothing about hypnosis, but I think that those two statements are mutually acceptable.
You’re probably right - it just seemed like there was a bit of tension between the two notions.
What about the non-stage (but also non-psychiatric) examples of, say, people being apparently hypnotised so as to forget the existence of the number 3?
I can’t link to any examples from here, but from memory, the subjects appeared to be genuinely experiencing the thing - and were very perplexed. Are these examples ever real, or are the subjects just good actors? (and how can we know?)
When I was about 18 or some horrible age, I went on stage for one of those hypnotists- Martin St. James or some other travelling charlatan.
It became obvious very quickly that i wouldn’t be up there long. I had a reasonably open mind but - hey nothing, and I was thrown off stage first draft.
I underwent hypnotherapy twice, two years ago, for depression.
It was fucking weird. I was fully conscious the whole time, and I didn’t really feel that it worked at all.
However, both times about ten minutes in, I lost proprioception. My head felt huge and as if my face were pointing to the left, even though I was sitting in a chair facing forward. My hands felt like they were far away. It was really disturbing and stopped me from going back.
So the therapy didn’t seem to do much, but there was definitely something weird going on.
I’ve since read up on this and found that proprioception has often been described during deep meditative states, so I presume I was in a simulacrum of one of them.
I was part of a stage show once. There were no plants, but everyone on stage was basically an extrovert who liked the idea of being the center of attention without being embarrassed. I was pretending the whole time, and I’m sure the rest of us were, too. It was like playing a part in a play – the “hypnosis” gave you an excuse to be silly in public without any consequences (you could always say afterwards, “I don’t remember any of it.” <cue creepy music>).
As part of a stage show? Never. In therapy? Yeah, a few times, but never to get me to do weird shit. It was more like guided meditation.
On a more philosophical level, one could say that we’ve all been hypnotized. Sitting in a movie theatre totally engrossed in the story is a form of hypnosis. But aren’t we all sort of in life’s great movie theatre? Being hypnotized is easy. Waking up out of it is harder.
I had exactly the same experience at a show when I was in college. I was totally pretending and definitely would not have done anything too outlandish. There were probably a dozen participants and after the show I asked the others if they were also just playing along. Most agreed, but I remember two girls who seemed legitimately to not remember the experience that had taken place just minutes before. Nothing so outrageous happened that they should have lied about it, but I still have a hard time believing their story.
A young woman once told me she’d been reading up on hypnosis, and had been wanting to try it out; I’d always wanted to see what it was like to be hypnotized, and so let her have at it. “You’re going into a deep, deep sleep,” she said, “a deeper sleep than any you’ve ever had before. You’re going into a deep, deep sleep…”
I asked her later how it went. “You fell asleep,” she said.
The funny part is, I eventually married someone who looks remarkably like her – which is odd, as she wasn’t at all my type.
Well, some people theoretically are more hypnotizable than others. In college we used the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibilityscale to classify participants in an experiment as ranking low, medium, or high in susceptibility, based on their scores. Those in the high range really did seem to take something away from the experience that most others did not.
No. Wait, that’s not what I mean. Years ago I went to a hypnotist, so no. Not no. That’s not what I meant. The answer is no. Aagh! I’m trying to say that no… why does this keep happening. I definitely did … no. Forget it. No.
I’ve been hypnotized twice, both times because I wanted to be. Once was by my therapist, who I trusted, but who was not what I would call a professional hypnotist. But he seemed to know what he was doing, and it was in interesting experience. I was not unconscious or unaware of what he was saying, but I had a reluctance to speak or move for fear of coming out of the hypnotic state. And I was able to access some early memories that I had lost access to.
The other time was by a professional hypnotist, to whom I went for help losing weight. Although I’m pretty sure I was hypnotized to some degree, the session did not do me any good towards my goal.
Roddy
We did some hypnotism/meditation in my drama class in high school to help us get over stage fright. I don’t remember all of it exactly, but the instructor told some long rambling story and we were supposed to imagine ourselves in the story. At the end we climbed up a pyramid and at the top was a door. When we walked through the door we could open our eyes and we would be totally relaxed. It worked pretty well for me, not sure about the rest of the class. Before this I could barely function at all in this class. I would literally start shaking from fright whenever I had to get on stage. After this though, I had no problems at all with anxiety. I would just close my eyes and imagine myself going through the door at the top of the pyramid and I would instantly feel much more relaxed.
I went to a psychologist/hypnotist while in grad school. I brought my husband with me for the first couple of sessions because I worried about the whole deal. For me it was basically enhanced relaxation therapy. I was totally anxting out about my orals.
The Dr. got me calmed down and walked me thru my orals twice a week for about 3 months. He also taught me relaxation techniques to use on my own while studying. Previous to the relaxation techniques I would stand up after 6 hrs of studying and find I could not unclench my jaw and I had massive head-aches.
So I don’t know if it was hypnosis or what but it worked for me. I still use the relaxation techniques he taught me.
