I was “stage hypnotized.” For myself (and, I expect for everyone else ever) it’s a simple matter of: I get to be on stage, act like a complete ass, get a ton of attention and praise, and then pretend I wasn’t in control of myself so no one can make fun of me? I’m in!
I think some people may have monologue that go on in a more sub conscious manner, but as far as I know, that’s all stage hypnosis is. Tons of fun, tho.
What made you unsuitable?
He didn’t say, so I have no idea why the hypnotist thought I was unsuitable. Maybe he didn’t like redheads.
I was wondering if you refused to do something or expressed skepticism in some manner that marked you as someone who wouldn’t play along.
What’s funny is that he just got tired of typing out “sic” and just went ahead and made the change to “hypnotized” in the last paragraph.
We’ve done this relatively recently. Twice.
Hypnotism: how real is it?
You wouldn’t do anything under hypnosis…
And, just to ‘cut to the chase’, a specific single post of mine from that second thread:
Some facts about hypnosis
sigh No, it isn’t. There is no altered state of consciousness. There is no empirical evidence whatsoever to back up this utterly baseless claim. Stage hypnosis works because some people enjoy being given permission to do silly things and be stars for a while, using their imagination to comply with suggestions. So-called ‘therapeutic’ hypnosis is a pleasant experience for the same reason as many other therapies, ie it’s relaxing and someone is taking a genial, good-natured interest in you, and it’s effective only to the same extent as any other form of what sociologists call ‘ritual magic’ ie it works because you believe it works.
If that’s the best, I’d hate to see the worst. There is no comparison here. When you drive a familiar route, you sometimes pay little attention because the required brain functions have become ‘chunked’ (look it up) to the level where very little conscious attention is required. So your mind is free to thnk about other things. No special state of consciousness. Just normal consciousness, doing something that happens normally when one task is very familiar and routine.
I have heard lots of people say all that happened to them is that they felt like playing along with the ruse and so hypnotism is just an erosion of the inhibitions or something - however, I believe specific cases (such as the woman who was made to forget the number 8) don’t fit into this explanation at all - I can’t help wondering if the ‘Yeah, I knew what was happening all the time and played along’ thing is actually a fiction woven by the mind, because the alternative (‘I was not in control’) is uncomfortable.
Still, if that sort of thing happens, then it’s entirely plausible that other ‘chunked’ complex actions could be set in motion by very small and subtle triggers, against the apparent volition of the subject.
I used to have a roommate who did hypnosis for terminally ill patients as a form of pain control. She dated a stage hypnotist for awhile, so he used to hang out at our house and we used to go to his shows. As far as I know it was legit and “loss of inhibitions” was what was going on. I never participated in his shows, but I did allow my roommate to hypnotize me one night when I was really homesick. As other people have said above, I was completely aware of my surroundings and what was going on, but I was just in this deep, very relaxed state and I was able to sort of visualize myself doing what I wanted to be doing in a very, to my mind, realistic way. It was pretty cool and I could definitely see how hypnotism could be useful in a pain management context.
Incidentally, the stage hypnotist I knew was really freaky and my roommate ended up breaking up with him because he was cheating on her…with his sister (he met her for the first time as an adult, but still).
I’ve volunteered twice for stage hypnosis shows and both times have been weeded out as “unsuitable” after a few minutes. Everyone that I know personally who has volunteered has also been rejected as unsuitable (about four or five people).
Whether this means that the others are somehow “in on it” I can’t say, but I do find it odd that people on this thread admit to “faking it”, or at least “playing along”. If I’m going to get hypnotised to do stuff, I don’t want to have to “play along”! I guess that’s what makes me unsuitable, though 
I guess approaching it with an analytical mind to see how the hypnosis works, as I did, immediately makes it unlikely that it will work…
I just hypnotized you. I know you don’t THINK that you were hypnotized, but trust me, you were. :rolleyes:
Huh? What point are you trying to make?
re: the quit smoking/drinking hypnosis. My dad was a heavy, 2 pack/day smoker for decades, from his time in the Navy in the '50s into the late 80’s. He tried many times to quit, unsuccessfully. Then one day his workplace went smoke-free, and offered free hypnosis therapy to any employees who wanted it.
I remember when the got home after his session. “Did it work?” I asked. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I was hypnotized. And I still want a cigarette as badly as ever.” But despite what he admitted were constant cravings, he never smoked again.
So one anecdote is not evidence, but from personal experience I am reluctant to dismiss this technique altogether.
I just looked up chunking and that is pretty cool.
Highway hypnosis is a recorded phenomenon, though. When you’ve been driving for a long while, or doing something mundane over and over, it’s an example of automaticity: your conscious self, focused elsewhere, dissociates from the subconscious, and weird things happen (white-line fever).
I’m not sure about being compelled to do anything under hypnosis, but strange things do happen.
Years ago I learned hypnosis from a former stage hypnotist. He happened to be friends with the family of a guy I worked with and several of us from work were invited around to meet him. There were hordes of people in this little suburban home and he started holding court demonstrating hypnosis and giving people suggestions and all of us were participants and audience combined. This went on all day into the evening.
For a group of us this became our regular weekend activity. For weeks we would spend all day, with a varying group of other people, being repeatedly hypnotised, given suggestions, having guided meditations and trying all kinds of experiments.
For economy at the end of the day the hypnotist would put everyone under, remove any stage suggestions he had given and leave some general beneficial suggestions.
Over a period of months these sessions became so popular, by word of mouth, that they had to be conducted at the YMCA. My friends and I had not been for months and some of us dropped in to see how the “new class” was going (and check out the girls - there were always lots).
The hypnotist had some people up on stage and was telling one guy, “Soon I will awaken you and you will feel great but whenever you hear me say the word jungle you will become Tarzan and start beating your chest …”
I was paying little attention but as soon as he said the word “jungle” I was up on my feet beating my chest and making Tarzan’s call. While I was in my now hypnotic state he made a joke about it all and removed the suggestion. Eventually we worked out that some weeks before I had left early one afternoon and not had my suggestion removed in the mass removal.
From now on, you will spell the word losing correctly. You will do this every time, except when you are correcting somebody else’s spelling. Excellent.
Another thing to note about stage hypnotists: Notice that they always have a large group of people (10-20) on stage at once. First of all, this helps to relax inhibitions against looking like a fool: It’s a lot more comfortable to look like a fool if there are 19 other fools up there with you. Second, they only need one or two to get really interesting, and steal the show: It doesn’t matter if most of the folks on stage are fairly boring.
This was the case with my show. I wondered if those one or two were the shills; the consensus here appears to be that they were merely the least inhibited.
Skammer - I’m not suggesting anyone should dismiss anything. I didn’t say that so-called therapeutic hypnosis doesn’t work. I’m stating that it can work, in some cases, but only for the same reason and in the same way as any other type of ‘ritual magic’.
Some people also manage to quit smoking through an NLP session, an aromatherapy session, a session with a witch doctor, a remote ‘session’ conducted by a reiki practitioner, by focusing on a needle placed by an acupuncturist, by drinking water dressed up as a homeopathic ‘cure’, and in countless other ways.
All of these practices are just ‘ritual magic’ in practice. The two hallmarks of ritual magic are (a) they only ever work on people who believe in them (as opposed to ibuprofen, for example, which will affect even people who don’t believe in it), and (b) you can tinker with the specifics of the ‘practice’ or ‘therapy’ all you like, and it makes no difference to the results (example: you can stick the needles exactly where acupuncture theory suggests they should not go, and your success rate will be exactly the same).
Why does ritual magic work? Interesting question. We don’t know. The subject’s belief (the belief they invest in the so-called therapy or ritual) seems to work as a stepping stone or a bridge to accessing / triggering their own capacity to achieve a change in behaviour or patterned response. I would say the capacity is there all along, but the participation in the ritual makes it more accessible for reasons we don’t yet fully understand.
But… getting back to hypnosis… it’s definitely nothing - nothing at all - to do with altered states of mind, altered or different states of consciousness, or states of mind in which someone else controls what the subject does, thinks, feels or experiences.
Am I right in asking if you’re distinguishing between stage / practical hypnosis, in which the hypnotizer compels you to do something, and a hypnotic state?
Because there’s evidence of people going into hypnotic states, but whether they can be compelled to do something in this state is a lot more questionable…