Ah, here we go:
The Skeptic’s Dictionary entry on Mesmerism: http://skepdic.com/mesmer.html
The Skeptic’s Dictionary entry on Hypnotism: http://skepdic.com/hypnosis.html
Note that the Skeptic’s Dictionary treats mesmerism as a separate effect from hypnotism. (The article on Mesmerism also goes onto several side-tracks that have nothing to do with Mesmer or mesmerism. C’est la guerre.)
given that it hypnotism requires a certain state of consciousness, one can assume that both verbal and written forms of “input” can be passed to the “hypnotized”.
it would be reading without judging, just accepting.
ive experianced a state of hypnosis when i am almost asleep. i have also noticed the same with other people. if you talk to a person that is falling asleep, that person often replies with strange words. a question like “what are you going to do tomorrow” might be replied with; “no mom, not now”.
think of “clockwork orange”, in relations to visual hypnotism. (i know its not exacly like that, but its similar)
bj0rn - 
When you know that your time is close at hand
Maybe then you’ll begin to understand
Life down here is just a strange illusion
from Tracer’s link to the Skeptic’s Dictionary, a definition of hypnosis:
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From the Encyclopedia Britannica link (above), another definition of hypnosis:
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From Compton’s Encyclopedia, 1997 edition: an explanation of how hypnosis works (italics mine)
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From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, 1997,
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From the Merriam-Webster thesaurus:
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Bjorn, I believe you are confusing “being hypnotized” with “being mesmerized.” As you can see above, a state of “being hypnotized” can only be induced by another person, in other words, by a hypnotist. However, people do casually use the word “mesmerized” to mean something like “hypnotized”. When someone says, “I was mesmerized by his performance”, he doesn’t mean he was actually hypnotized, or in a “state of hypnosis”, he means the performance was so good that he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
And yes, you’re right, it is perfectly possibly to stare at a page of writing and to become “mesmerized,” in other words, you fall into a kind of trance state, not quite asleep but not quite awake. However, in the technical sense of the word, you are not “hypnotized.” Your conscious mind hasn’t really lost control, you just feel as though it has. The page you are staring at cannot make you go and do something against your conscious will, such as bark like a dog, not the way a hypnotist who puts you into a real hypnotic trance can.
I’m not sure what your reference to “Clockwork Orange” means. Do you mean the scene in the movie where they force Malcolm McDowell to watch movies as part of his “aversion therapy”, to cure him of his violent tendencies?
Watching a movie is not the same thing as looking at the written word. The movie is bright, and colorful, and loud, and jumps around a lot. Words on a page just sit there. Yes, I suppose it’s possible that some people could, while watching a movie, lose control of their conscious mind because of what they saw on a movie screen, but I think that as soon as they got up and left the theater, going out into the real world, their conscious mind would snap back into place. If you know of any cases where someone HAS become actually “hypnotized” through watching a movie, I would be interested to know about it.
You DO realize that “A Clockwork Orange” was fiction, specifically science fiction? Forcing someone to watch violent movies as part of “aversion therapy” doesn’t really work. In real life, the Malcolm McDowell character would have emerged from the screening room with his violent tendencies unchanged.
Your statement that
** and that
** seems to refer to the fact that AFTER people have been hypnotized by the hypnotist, he can then give them both verbal and written instructions.
Again, from Compton’s Encyclopedia,
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Thank you for inviting me so often to join your debate. Now that you have described yourself as some kind of human rohypnol I thought I should thank you now before you disappear. I’m not completely Yahoo or Straight Dope literate yet so I don’t know exactly what a debate entails - it seems to be run in the same way as the message boards. I do have one or two more thoughts on hypnosis if you’re interested - I’ll wait for your reply. What if the white queen believed 5 impossible things and one possible thing - a bullet in the brain if she says that again.
thanks notthemama, i did not realize mesmerism and hypnotism didnt mean the same thing. perhaps i was talking about mesmerism. perhaps i was only talking about the hypothesis of the given situation(hypnotism through written text).
i do realize that “a clockwork orange” is fiction. but do realize that the movie is based on theories/facts from psychology. its called something like: “connecting” (dont know the correct english word for it, but this one describes it quite well i belive.).
for example: you eat something you have never tasted before, shortly(the next day) you get a stomach ache. you connect that stomach ache to the food you ate yesterday, even if it wasnt the food that caused the ache. as goes for malcolm mcdowell in “a clockwork orange”, he is given a medicine that causes nausea and/or other physical uncomforts. when he watches the violent movies he begins to feel bad, and he connects that feeling to the movies, because thats what he is experiancing, even if that is not the cause of him feeling bad.
this is a psychological proven fact.
psychology 101
i find this very similar to hypnotism, exept the fact that the patient doesnt have to be “willing”.
bj0rn
OK, “conditioning”, yes, now I know what you’re talking about. You’re right, it is very similar to hypnotism, except that the patient doesn’t lose control of his conscious mind–he’s sitting there in the chair or whatever, being conditioned, and he knows he’s being conditioned (whether he likes it or not.) When you have “conditioning” done to you against your will, that’s called “brainwashing” (at least in James Bond movies ).
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This is also from Compton’s, under “Learning”:
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I guess they don’t call it “aversion therapy” anymore, they call it “behavior modification”, probably because it sounds more positive.
I believe that conditioning, or behavior modification, or whatever you want to call it, has been proved not to help in situations where a person has really serious problems. The instance I’m thinking of is when they’re trying to rehabilitate child molesters. For years they’ve tried what they used to call “aversion therapy”, but I believe that this has now been discredited. It just didn’t work-- the sexual need for little boys or girls went deeper than conditioning could affect.
There’s a drug called “Antabuse”, that they give to alcoholics, to try and get them to stop drinking. If you’re on this drug, and you drink alcohol, it makes you throw up. They have now found that really hardened alcoholics, the serious problem drinkers, will go ahead and drink anyway, even if it makes them throw up. The need for drink is that great.
I don’t know if they’ve tried conditioning on the violence-prone, or whether it might work. No doubt somebody somewhere got some money to do a study, but I’m not aware of it. I would have to say that probably in real life, Malcolm McDowell would have left the theater unchanged. He was one sick puppy.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
I have a question…one that my psychiatrist never really answered…maybe one of you could take a stab at it.
When I was undergoing a series of very violent nervous breakdowns brought on by repressed memories of a violent and traumatic event from my childhood, my doctor decided to place me under hypnosis to “aid in the recovery of these memories.”
Well; we were in his office and he and the hypnotist put me under. Not even two minutes later, I had managed to get off the couch, rip diplomas and pictures of the walls with such force that plaster came with them, I had knocked over the bookshelf, and was about to stab the doctors with a pen.
I don’t know why they didn’t wake me up earlier; or if they even could.
Can any of you maybe explain to me why I reacted that way? Why didn’t they wake me up? And how did I manage to do things while hypnotized that I normally do not have the strength(adreliline rushes exempted)to do?
(It’s late and I’m tired; yes I know that my spelling probably sucks. I’m sorry.)
Phoenix
Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis.
Carmina Burana: Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi–O Fortuna. Carl Orff: 1937
The message is not importante
its something similar to opening a jar. that lid never seems to want to come off. and all of the sudden, without any usage of force, it suddenly pops open(usually after you have given it to someone else for opening).
that and the fact that plaster isnt that difficult to “break”.
notthemama: subjects of aversion therapy(conditioning) do not have to be aware what is going on. isnt it more effective when they dont know whats going on?
the thing with malcolms aversion therapy(although fiction) that made it work, was in my opinion the music(beethoven), which was his favorite. he experianced being a victim when beethovens music was played during his therapy.
as goes for child-molestors, drunks etc…if they were to experiance their own doing, without a chance to escape. i do belive it would have some effects on their behaviour.
even though it does not work in practice like some people want, it has been proven that “conditioning” works. and i want to state it as a hypothesis that the mental state required for hypnosis is the same mental state that is used when you are conditioned. awareness or not has not got anything to do with it. it might be subconscious or it might not. basically the mental state is not a conscious one, and because of that(using that hypothesis); could people be conditioned/hypnotized through text(them reading words)?
bj0rn - chickens for sale…!
(You know, I find it helps to copy it to WordPad and then fix all the punctuation errors, etc., so they’re not so distracting. Then I usually light some incense, sacrifice a chicken to the spirit of Kate Turabian, and get really drunk. Then it actually starts to make sense.) - notthemama
Well, Bjorn, I’m just going to have to continue to disagree with you on the subject of whether people can be hypnotized or conditioned through reading. Everything I’ve read about it so far, in encyclopedias and other places, during this debate seems to indicate to me that, in order to be hypnotized or conditioned, you have to have a strong outside stimulus of some kind. Reading a book isn’t a very strong outside stimulus. I would classify it as a more internal stimulus.
Reading is a fairly passive activity. All that’s happening in your brain when you read is that your brain is processing the words; it doesn’t involve any portions of your brain other than the small part devoted to verbal processing. Hypnotism and conditioning, it’s clear to me, involve a much larger portion of your brain, because there are sound cues, and visual cues, and touch cues, all of which your brain has to handle.
Either a hypnotist is standing there in front of you hypnotizing you, or else someone who is conditioning you either for or against something, is standing there in front of you, providing the stimulus.
Can you find a reference somewhere to somebody actually being hypnotized or conditioned through reading? I would be interested to see it.
You say, “the mental state required for hypnosis is the same mental state that is used when you are conditioned.” I’m sorry but I’m going to have to flat-out disagree with you on that one.
All the references to hypnosis, above, state quite clearly that hypnosis is a state that comes and goes. You are either hypnotised, or you aren’t. You are either in the hypnotic trance, or you aren’t. Conditioning, however, is permanent. It’s always there, in your brain.
But I think I see what you’re getting at. You’re comparing a post-hypnotic suggestion to conditioning, and yes, you’re right, they are similar, but I think there’s one important difference.
A hypnotist can implant a post-hypnotic suggestion by telling a subject, “Whenever you hear the words ‘Afghanistan banana stand’, you will stand up and sing ‘Rule Britannia’ in an Elmer Fudd voice.”
You can also be conditioned that, whenever you hear someone say the words, “Afghanistan banana stand”, you will stand up and sing ‘Rule Britannia’ in an Elmer Fudd voice.
However, the difference between the two is that the person who is carrying out a post-hypnotic suggestion doesn’t usually know ahead of time what’s going to happen. Oh, sure, after he comes out of the original hypnotic trance, the hypnotist can tell him, “By the way, I implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion to the effect that whenever you hear the words 'Afghanistan banana stand, you will stand up and sing ‘Rule Britannia’ in an Elmer Fudd voice.” However, the subject won’t have any conscious memory of being told that. He’ll shrug and say, “Okay, whatever.”
Then, later, after he actually does hear the words “Afghanistan banana stand,” and stands up and sings “Rule Britannia” in a Elmer Fudd voice, as soon as it’s over, he won’t remember doing it.
He’ll be astonished to hear people around him say, “Hey, man, what gives? You just stood up and sang ‘Rule Britannia’ in a Elmer Fudd voice.” He’ll say, “Yeah? Must have been my post-hypnotic suggestion kicking in…”
The person who is conditioned to stand up and sing “Rule Britannia” in an Elmer Fudd voice whenever he hears the words “Afghanistan banana stand” is always aware of this fact. He knows that as soon as he hears the words, “Afghanistan banana stand,” he’s going to have to stand up and sing “Rule Britannia” in a Elmer Fudd voice. He will probably go to great lengths to keep people around him from ever saying the words, “Afghanistan banana stand.”
Someone who only has it as a post-hypnotic suggestion won’t care whether people say it or not, because he won’t ever actually remember what happens whenever he hears those magic words.
That’s the difference, I think.
As for “Clockwork Orange”, I guess I’m going to have to go rent it and watch it again before I discuss it any further, because I realized that I don’t remember it as clearly as I thought. It’s been a while since I saw it.
Phoenix, I think Bjorn is right. Evidently you had a lot of rage built up and it all just popped out.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
notthemama: i belive you speak the truth. i would like to add yet another question to the debate though: "if a person is reading a book; and “help me” by the beatles is begin played in the backround. will the person reading the book remember; “hey, i was reading this book when they played this song”, the next time he hears the song?
if so, he has been conditioned(in a way) to remember the book whenever he hears the song(similar to your ‘banana stand’ example above).
[hypothesis]
now if the book he remembers contains text like: “bananas are from afghanistan”, the reader will probably/perhaps(this is a hypothesis) remember that.
so the question is: if the reader is asked, while the song “help me” is being played, where bananas come from. will he answer; “from afghanistan!”?
[/hypothesis]
what would that be, conditioning or hypnotism?
bj0rn - chickens for sale…!
(You know, I find it helps to copy it to WordPad and then fix all the punctuation errors, etc., so they’re not so distracting. Then I usually light some incense, sacrifice a chicken to the spirit of Kate Turabian, and get really drunk. Then it actually starts to make sense.) - notthemama
I’d have to say that I don’t think it’s either hypnotism OR conditioning, that it’s just when you link memories, when you “associate” memories with other experiences. Like when people say they can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, or when they heard about the space shuttle exploding.
Your example would involve only one instance of hearing the song and seeing the words. For it to be conditioning, you’d have to do it over and over again–play the song while looking at the words. For it to be hypnotism, you’d have to be told by the hypnotist, “Whenever you hear ‘Help!’, you will remember that bananas come from Afghanistan (or whatever it was).” You would have to be told it by someone else, you couldn’t hypnotize YOURSELF into it.
(p.s. so you don’t embarrass yourself next time you’re talking to Americans, the song is always known as just “Help”, not “Help me”. 
)
Marcel Proust has a famous bit in one of his novels about the smell of madeleines (which is a kind of cookie, I think) suddenly taking him back to childhood. That’s not hypnotism or conditioning, it’s just remembering.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Clockwork Orange was about freewill and determinism. Human beings are defined by their ability to choose between good and evil and free will is necessarily a part of this. In the movie M. McDowell chose to lose his freewill in return for his freedom from prison. He agreed to be made permamently docile and unaggressive. On a paranoid level, I suppose, hypnosis (for me) has the potential to fit in with this idea. If people could have cheap, effective perfect healthcare but it was dished out to people without freewill by a aristocratic medical elite (a la Plato) what would they choose? Hypnosis as demonstrated by stage hypnotists appears to be too powerful (and ancient) a force not to consider this. People who become stage hypnotists’ volunteers may have less paranoid insights - who knows?
G.Nome, if I understand you correctly, that’s the most interesting thing I’ve heard anybody say all week. Am I understanding you correctly–you’re saying, “What if we had an aristocratic medical elite with tremendous hypnotic powers, and people would agree to lose their free will, be hypnotized into obedience, if in return they would get cheap, effective, perfect health care?” You’re asking whether people would be willing to make that tradeoff?
Hmmm.
That would be a toughie for me. Obviously, my personal answer would be “no”, but that would be because I’ve already tasted the delights of free citizenship, and I’ve heard plenty of evidence from non-free places like the Soviet Union, etc. to tell me that I “don’t wanna go there”.
It might possibly work with people who had never been “free”. There are a number of Third World dictatorships where it could be argued that, even if the citizenry isn’t actually, technically, “hypnotized”, they are definitely under the thumb of the rulers. However, they generally don’t have any health care at all, let alone “cheap, effective, perfect health care”.
It might also possibly work with people who had such low self-esteem, such bad self-images, that they’d welcome anybody anywhere who would tell them what to do. But I have trouble visualizing an entire nation of people like that.
It’s kind of a science fiction question, isn’t it? I know I’ve probably read some science fiction book somewhere that deals with it, but offhand I can’t think of the title.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Free will is a difficult thing to discuss - whether it is an illusion hardwired into the mind etc etc. Maybe it’s better to think in terms of autonomy or self respect. I’ve been told people become volunteers at hypnotists’ shows because they like being humiliated - it has something to do with an infant’s need to please its parents. In Thomas Mann’s story Mario and the Magician a hypnotist is murdered by someone who has definitely been over humiliated. As for the aristocratic medical elite - they all better look like Noah Wylie.
Speaking of A Clockwork Orange:
The MAD Magazine parody of the movie changed one subtle detail. Malcom McDowell’s character was subjected to violent and sexual movies (one of which had Beethoven’s music in it) with his eyes pried open and his head in a vice, in order to make him revulsed by violence and sex. But in the MAD Magazine version, they didn’t give McDowell’s character any drugs to make him feel bad! He started retching just because the movies were so awful!!
I thought it was a wonderful touch. Sly, cynical humor, in a similar vein to the Mad Scientists on Mystery Science Theater 3000 using bad movies to break their subjects’ will.
Oh, and the MAD parody changed one other detail, too: After he was released, McDowell’s character didn’t merely double over in pain whenever a violent impulse struck him – he actually barfed all over his would-be victim. Which was about as effective as attacking the victim would have been.
I don’t want to get hijacked into the big issue of “free will” here, OK, G.Nome?
Let’s just stick to hypnotism.
It may be true that the reason people volunteer to be stage hypnotists’ “guinea pigs” is that they enjoy being humiliated, but it may be equally true that maybe they are just goofy “party animals” who get a kick out of being on stage, no matter what the hypnotist may tell them to do.
And, of course, that wouldn’t be applicable to people who undergo hypnosis for various practical reasons, such as psychotherapy, helping the police, etc.
I’m not sure who Noah Wylie is. Why should the aristocratic medical elite look like him? 
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
My “new topic” question on hypnosis was motivated by the feeling that on some level hypnosis could be understood as rape. The Noah Wylie remark is a low-brained rape reference. My jokes probably can’t get any worse so I’ll stay on the same subject. Does the concept of mind rape exist? It doesn’t seem to mean much to the hypnosis “Party Animals” that’s for sure - but would they play games involving the other sort? Cybergurus talk about downloading consciousness into machines - would hacking then be another word for rape? What hypnotists can actually achieve is open to question - even among those who look at them negatively. Can they access a person’s darket secrets, make them absent minded enough to fail exams or have car accidents? I don’t think Skeptical Inquirer scientists believe hypnotised people make good police informants anyway. Has this debate become(because of my contributions) much darker than others? Is it still Straight Dope friendly? Or not?
Re hypnosis as a form of “mind rape”: I think it’s pretty clear from the authorities I cited above that you can only be hypnotized WITH your consent. You cannot be hypnotized against your will. You must agree to cooperate with the hypnotist. Therefore, I don’t think there’s any parallel that can be drawn between the two things.
As for “party animals” being pre-disposed towards rape, I think there are plenty of non-party animal rapists out there.
The concept of “mind rape” does indeed exist, but I’m afraid it’s only in science fiction. The concept of “downloading consciousness into a machine” also exists only in science fiction. If, in a science fiction story it was posited that a machine contained a human consciousness, then yes, I would suppose that hacking might possibly constitute “mind rape”, although I think that a closer analogy might be something like “home invasion” or “unlawful entry”.
I do not agree with your statement that “What hypnotists can actually achieve is open to question.” I believe it’s quite clear what it is that hypnotists can actually achieve. You seem to feel that “hypnotism” is some sort of murky gray area. I believe that it is actually a quite clearly defined field of scientific study.
You ask, “Can [hypnotists] access a person’s darket secrets, make them absent minded enough to fail exams or have car accidents?” Yes, I suppose a hypnotist could “access your darkest secrets.” As a matter of fact, that is precisely the way they use it in psychotherapy, to help the patient remember bad things that happened to him, so that he can get them out in the open and deal with them.
I presume that by “car accidents” you are referring to the possibility that a hypnotist could implant a post-hypnotic suggestion to order you to “drive the car into a tree when you hear this song playing on the radio.” Again, I think it’s quite clear from the cites above that a hypnotist can’t make you do anything that goes against your deepest wishes. I would assume that ordering someone to drive his car into a tree would be “against his deepest wishes.” I suppose that you could order him to simply “jerk the wheel to the left when you get to the corner of Elm and Main” or something. However, if you’re planning on using this as an excuse in Traffic Court (“Your Honor, I was under the influence of a post-hypnotic suggestion…”), I would strongly advise you not to. Traffic Court judges don’t have much patience with that kind of thing.
The only way I can imagine that a post-hypnotic suggestion could cause you to fail a test would be if it were something like, if it was a multiple choice or true/false test, I suppose you could be told, “Answer ‘A’ or ‘False’ to everything.” But if you’re planning on using that excuse to explain to your teacher why you failed a test, I would suggest that you not try that, either.
I’m not sure what you mean by the statement, “I don’t think Skeptical Inquirer scientists believe hypnotised people make good police informants anyway.” You have the words “skeptical inquirer” capitalized; does that indicate that this is some sort of movement or organization? I’m sorry but I’ve never heard of it. If, however, what you mean is “skeptical, inquiring scientists”, then I would have to disagree with your statement. All the “scientists” I know are, by definition, skeptical and inquiring, and their skeptical inquiries in the form of research over the last 100 years have shown that yes, hypnotism works, and that, in fact, it does enable the witness to a crime to remember many more details about it. Hypnosis is an established police tool.
No, G.Nome, this debate is not “much darker” than the others, nor has it become less Straight Dope-friendly. Are you disappointed? 
We are always delighted to talk with people, as long as they are reasonably polite, understand the basic rules of both debate and civilized conversation, and don’t troll.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen