AudreyK: Thank you for your interest and information. Unfortunately, though, my beliefs haven’t changed. I’d like to say why they haven’t but I don’t think I can. The reasons are too weird and too private. I’d like to leave it at that. In an effort to redirect the conversation though I would like to ask why you think human beings have hypnotisable brains at all. I asked that once before, admittedly, but never got an answer. From an evolutionary standpoint what genetic advantage does an easily hypnotised person have? Or would the advantage be held by the hard-to-hypnotise?
HBO, last week, had an American Undercover on faith healers, it was interesting although it had a big axe to grind. They talked about mass hypnotism and whatnot, but was I found most interesting (and pertinent to this discussion) was the claim of a scientist who was looking into hypnotism. He came up with a method to hypnotize those who were un-hypnotizable(sp?)…due to the refusal to give up the control that others have mentioned. His method was this:
He would have the person staring ahead in a darkened (but not black) room, he would be sitting behind the subject doing the usual rigamarole, “you are getting verrrry relaxed, etc.” He would then say, “you are starting to see a blue light filling the room, it is getting bluer and bluer…etc.” As he was doing this he would actually fade in a blue light. The room truly was getting bluer, but the person was under the impression that it was getting bluer because he/she was being hypnotized.
The experimenter did the same thing with music. “you are hearing music <cue music>” “the music is fading away<end music>”
So, according to him, it worked by psyching out the person into believing that they really were being hypnotized, which caused them to lower their guard, which caused them to be hypnotized for real. A mental judo job.
I doubt, however, that that would give the hypnotizer any more control over the person than the normal hypnotism way. Also, since I saw it on TV…on a show with an axe to grind, I would take it was a grain of salt.
Absimia
You may be interested in checking out this book on line. Chapter Three goes into some detail about hypnotism and mental coersion.
Be warned, the book hails from the mid-1950s, and speaks of such unlikelihoods as this gem:
“The mass criminality of the guards in concentration camps finds part of its explanation in the hypnotizing influence of the totalitarian state and its criminal dictator.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I was “hypnotized” in my first Psych class. The setting was this:
I was in front of the room, my feet on one chair, head on another and one more chair under my butt, completely stretched out. The idea was that he could talk me into being “stiff as a board”, pull the chair out, and I would be no worse for wear. I would be balanced with my head on one chair and my feet on another. I was willing to try since I know that NO amount of free will would allow me to hold myself like that- I tried, believe me. (You try it- bet ya can’t)
So he starts talking, my eyes are closed. He got really close and was talking about being on a beach, smelling the ocean and tanning lotion, blah, blah for I don’t know how long…eventually I felt so relaxed it was like being asleep, but not really. My eyes felt rolled back in my head and were still closed. I could feel my eyeballs moving back and forth fast, which was way weird.
I did hear a slight gasp from someone in the room and I felt like I was waking up, but he talked me back in. After a few minutes he brought me awake and I was in the same place as when we started. I was then told that he DID pull the chair out, talk to me for about 2 minutes, then replace it. The gasp was from a student when he pulled the chair out.
Wild stuff, I tell ya. Very cool. I was not at all afraid while he did it. I was so relaxed that I now study how to put myself in these states for stress relief.
Zette
Hypnotism, suggestibility, brainwashing, and victimization
While it can be argued that one is unable to force a person to act in a way that goes against core values with Hypnotism, Brainwashing (Thought Reform, Cult Indoctrination, Psychological Coercion) is a different story. Repeated abuse/rape/molestation can be one of the tools used in the Brainwashing arsenal. I think that it is safe to say that a non-molested, boundaries intact, adult can fall into the category of ‘un-hypnotizable’; but the dynamics of those who have been raped/molested/abused at a young age are quite different.
There is a late night talk show called Loveline where an addiction medicine specialist and a wry comedian take calls 5 nights a week from folks (usually teenagers) who have questions about relationships, drugs, sex, etc. This show has been on the air for 18 years, and the doctor (Dr. Drew Pinsky) has been the host the whole time. A good portion of the callers have serious problems with intimacy and relationship (as could be argued does a good portion of the general population). One theme that has come through to both hosts is the amazing ability they have (after taking so many calls) to peg the callers who have been abused, even to the point of the year they were abused and by who, just by hearing their voices. My take on this is that abusers (a.k.a. ‘evil-hypnotists’) are able to weed out the ‘good victims’ from the general population from visual and verbal cues. A similar method is also used by stage hypnotists to find folks who are ‘suggestible’. Victimizers are then able to get their victims into harmful situations with an ability to gauge their victims actions and react in a way that will bring the interaction to the victimizers envisioned ends.
I formulated a theory about hypnosis once that I must admit came out of an old M.A.S.H episode. It was the one where M.A.S.H. personnel are hiding in a bus with some Korean families. They are concealed but the North Koreans are close by and any sound coming from the bus will mean the passengers will all be killed. A woman’s baby starts to cry and the only thing she can do is smother it to death in order to save the others.
The success of the Christian religion is based, apparently, on the willingness of early Christians to nurse back to health people who had contracted contagious diseases. 2000 years ago most victims of infectious illness were just abandoned. Christians invented nursing and so kept the number of adherents to their faith growing. What I’m saying is: ancient tribes who could keep their children quiet had more chance of avoiding attack and increasing their numbers. Hypnotisable children in those circumstances would be evolutionarily advantageous. In the same way milk is only intended as a food for babies maybe hypnosis is only supposed to be used as a baby calming mechanism.
This sentence: “What I’m saying is: ancient tribes who could keep their children quiet had more chance of avoiding attack and increasing their numbers.”
Should read: ancient tribes who could keep their children quiet had more chance of avoiding attack and annihilation and so their numbers would increase.
sorry
Do you believe in astrology too?
I understand that, but what about this scenario - the person being hypnotized IS the type who might become violent if he felt that he was being cheated on. What if the hypnotist who showed my nephew ‘A naked picture of someone you know’ instead said he was showing him ‘A naked picture of your girlfriend that your cousin took’. Maybe he could even make him see a picture that was even more incriminating - ‘Here’s a picture of the person who murdered your sister’ - a person would WANT to see a picture of someone who killed a loved one, but who knows who they would see in that picture if it was a figment of their imagination?
I think we’d just be guessing if we gave reasons why humans are hypnotizable. Or at least I’d be.
In all seriousness, I don’t think you can ask if there’s any genetic advantage in being hypnotizable or not easily hypnotizable because I don’t think suggestibility is a heritable trait. Some people are just more suggestible than others, and I don’t think genetics plays a role in determining that.
Granted, I’ve never seen, heard of, or searched for studies on the heritability of suggestibility, so if anyone has, I’d be grateful if they mentioned it or passed on a link.
absimia– did the guy just outline his experiment idea, or did he actually test it out on people?
Zette, take out the part about lying across a chair, and you’ve got what I do in class. Your class sounds funner than mine, though. 
Did you volunteer to be the “board”, or were you picked?
CheapBastid, although I seldom watch TV, I have seen enough to be familiar with Loveline and the handsome Dr. Drew Pinsky. If I recall correctly, Dr Pinsky is only in his mid 40s. So I doubt that he’s been doing Loveline for the last 18 years. He would not even have started medical school yet.
Again, I doubt suggestibility is a heritable trait, so I don’t think we can talk about its evolutionary advantages.
Also, keep in mind that it takes ten minutes at the very least to lead someone into the relaxed state of hypnosis. I don’t think any parent would have the patience or presence of mind to talk their children into that state if a battle was looming. I don’t think their kids would listen, anyway. And you can imagine how hard it’d be to hypnotize a baby. They don’t take suggestions very well.
Badtz Maru
To recap, your nephew was given a picture and told it was a nude photo of someone he knew. He wasn’t told it was his girlfriend, but that’s who he saw.
In hypnosis, you follow the suggestion of the hypnotizer. Now, this is just a guess on my part, but when a detail is absent (in this case, who the naked person is), the hypnotizee will fill in the detail on his own. When your nephew was given the picture, he probably reasoned (perhaps unconsciously), “Well, the only person I’d really want to see naked is my girlfriend”, so his mind filled in that detail. The nude picture of someone becomes a nude picture of his girlfriend.
So if it works that way, if he was given a picture and told it was the person who murdered his sister, he should see a picture of the person he wants to see there-- the person he thinks killed his sister. He wouldn’t need to be hypnotized to suspect this person, just as he wouldn’t need to be hypnotized in order to want to see his girlfriend naked. It would be the person he suspected even before he was hypnotized. The picture of the person who killed his sister would become the picture of the person he thinks killed his sister.
So, let’s say, the hypnosis is over, and because he was told that the picture was of his sister’s murderer, he is absolutely convinced that the person he saw in the picture is his sister’s murderer. (For the sake of this post, let’s say the guy’s name is Joe Shmoe.) Being the violent sort, your nephew goes out, and finds and shoots Joe Shmoe.
If this happened (and I do hope it’s just hypothetical… your niece isn’t really dead, right?), your nephew alone would be responsible for killing Joe Shmoe. The hypnotizer, in all likelihood, would not be responsible for any of it. I can think of three reasons why:
-
the hypnotizer never suggested to your nephew that killer was Joe Shmoe-- your nephew inserted that detail on his own,
-
the hypnotizer never suggested your nephew kill Joe Shmoe. He did that on his own as well. And
3), the hypnotizer never guaranteed (nor could he guarantee) that the picture was definitely of your nephew’s sister’s killer. Your nephew operated on his own assumption that the picture was, without question, of the killer, that Joe Shmoe was guilty beyond all doubt.
Audrey K asked:
absimia-- did the guy just outline his experiment idea, or did he actually test it out on people?
When they showed the fella, he was actually doing it to some person. So I would assume he has/is testing it out on people. I went to the HBO website to see if it has links/more info on its documentaries…but it ain’t no PBS. No luck there. I can keep trying over lunch and see if I can’t find the prof’s name.
absimia
There doesn’t need to be an evolutionary advantage for it to happen. My guess is that it is an “unintended” (read that term very loosely) consequence of how our brains our designed. That is, there is evolutionary pressure for our brains to act in manner A, and in manner B, and it turns out there’s this weird interaction between A & B which can make some hypnotizable.
You could also thing of it as: What is the evolutionary advantage to not be hypnotizable? Many animals are (just watch Crocodile Dundee in action! ).
Also note that there are many cultural and social aspects to how our brains develop.
Ya know, there probably weren’t that many hypnotists out on the savannah where we evolved.
This is an interesting idea, but I doubt it is true. The existence of hypnotism doesn’t require that there needs to be an evolutionary advantage to being easily hypnotized. And if its evolutionary purpose was to serve as a child-calming device, I would think that we would have some record of some culture somewhere on earth using hypnotism in this way. I know I have never heard of such a thing. To the best of my knowledge hypnotism’s only cultural role beyond entertainment or relaxation is as a part of religious rites.
Well, he asked for a volunteer, and I’m always the brown-noser in the class yelling “me! me! pick me!” so I got picked
Zette
Back in the OP, G. Nome wrote:
> I don’t like revealing personal details but for the sake
> of this thread I will say that I when I was a teenager I
> had the experience of being molested when I was asleep.
> That is, I was awoken from sleep on a number of occasions
> by the “molestation in progress”. Some people are drugged
> and don’t wake up at all in situations like this.
Did you attempt to have this person prosecuted for this? Were they convicted? Have you had counselling for it? Hypnotism doesn’t work the way you think it does. I think a bigger problem for you than worrying about hypnotism is getting over this dread of being in another situation like the one you were in with the molestation.