| |
| |
Hubbard the Stage Hypnotist Series Hubbard, the Master Stage Hypnotist! Index The Anderson Report Use of the "Confusion Technique" in scientology Hypnosis in scientology - The Gradation Chart Revealed - LINK Hypnosis Is Hubbard Denounced by Inventor of the E-Meter Hypnosis Demonstration and Collective on Hubbard's Use of Covert Hypnosis - Exposed Dianetics in the 1952 Journal of Hypnosis and Instantaneous Hypnosis" by Harry Arons scientology's Source of the "E-Meter A Comparison of Hypnosis and Auditing from Ex-Member who Became a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist Hubbard's own statements about Hypnosis from his books and Scientology official publications. The Rape of the Mind by Joost Meerloo 1957 - LINK Support the effort to expose Scientology today! |
 |
HYPNOSIS by G.A. Estabrooks
Chapter 5 THE BASIC NATURE OF HYPNOTISM
MAN is incurably a mystic. Ever since the day, some one hundred thousand years ago, that old Neanderthal man first began burying his dead, probably long before, man rolled his eyes in horror at the forces of magic and the spirits of the departed. After all, he had good evidence. He dreamed and in his dreams he saw his dead enemies, so they were still alive. His hazy thinking could not keep dreams and reality separated. Then again in his dreams he visited places many miles away, so obviously his spirit could leave his own body in sleep and travel long distances. These events were very real to him.
We have a story from Australia that on one occasion a tribe of friendly blacks suddenly swept down on a settlement, killing and burning in the most ferocious manner. Why? The medicine man had a dream. He was at the white settlement and the whites were preparing to attack them, their friends. He was so furious over this treachery that he promptly gathered all his followers together and tried to wipe out the whole lot. From his viewpoint he was quite right. His spirit had visited the white village and, after all, he could certainly believe his own eyes.
This may seem very silly to us but it was terribly real to our ancestors. With the Australian no death was natural, everyone died by magic. So when your brother died the medicine man, with his own magic, found out who killed him. Then it was your duty, as his brother, to carry on the "blood feud," and kill the culprit. His relations did the same and everyone was happy, for these old savages dearly loved the warpath.
One of the very worst tricks you could possibly play on your
enemy was to move him or disguise him when he was asleep. In sleep the spirit left the body and wandered over the country. That was quite clear from dreams. So you waited until your opponent was sound asleep then quietly moved him to another house. Or just as good, you put a mask over his face. Then the returning spirit could not find the body to which it belonged and your hated enemy went insane, robbed of his soul. Ridiculous? Yes, but many a savage has died in quick violent fashion, for playing just such pranks on his neighbors.
Even Plato, the great Greek philosopher, agreed that anyone found sticking pins in a wax doll should be put to death. It was perfectly reasonable. No one would deny the power of magic. One of the best ways of killing your enemy was to make an image of him in wax then stick it full of pins. Better still, put the wax figure in front of the fire. As it gradually melted away he would weaken and die. Indeed only one hundred fifty years ago in Europe we find the hospital conditions terrible. The insane were chained in the filthy cells of Bedlam or other hospitals, sport for the public who were allowed to prod them with poles or stick them with pins. Insanity was the result of evil spirits and man could do nothing against these. God was punishing them for their sins, so man helped on the good work, making their lives a living tragedy.
We must always bear these facts in mind when we consider the history and the theories of hypnotism. Of all branches of science it was the most weird, lent itself best to a mystic explanation, as is evident even today. Many parents who would not hesitate to have their children's tonsils out tomorrow, if necessary, would be pretty horrified if the doctor suggested using hypnotism to cure, shall we say, nail biting. We are not so very far ahead of our head hunting ancestors.
And hypnotism, without doubt originated right back among such ancestors. Not as hypnotism, to be sure, but as part of their religious and mystic ceremonies. For example, in the initiation ceremony of the Chippewa Indians we have as fine a form of
group hypnotism as the best operator could demand. The boys at initiation were lulled into this magic sleep by the chanting of the medicine man and there instructed in tribal customs. Some even developed anaesthesia to pain and later performed prodigies of valor without feeling their own wounds.
But this could hardly be classed as hypnotism, although it was indeed that. The Indian knew nothing of the scientific laws governing the state and while he used it most effectively it was always linked with the supernatural. So also were the sleeptemples of ancient Egypt. To these the sufferer would come, would be thrown into trance by the priest and while in trance would be visited by the various gods who were the patron saints of medicine. These temples later made their way into Greece and Asia Minor, and represent a very interesting stage in the development of hypnotism but contributed nothing. The practices used herein appear to have vanished completely with the arrival of the Christian era.
Then hypnotism and all its many related phenomena passed into oblivion, so far as actual practice was concerned. The Church had a hearty distrust of all such "black cults," linked them to the devil himself, and anyone practicing the same might easily find himself burning at a stake. We have some most interesting tales of persecution during the so-called dark ages, by the Catholic Church at first, but in later times by the Protestant Church and by the lay authorities themselves. We cannot fix blame for this on any one group. All humanity had an unreasoning fear of black magic and rooted it out with savage brutality.
One German story shows how, at least in one instance, the victim turned the tables on his persecutors in tragic style. A German was to be tried for sorcery. He was an alchemist, one of those very early chemists who were regarded as the blackest of the black. He realized he had no chance of escape, so wrote his daughter asking her to come and watch the fun.
Half a dozen judges presided at the trial under the chairmanship of a prince. The culprit was brought in and formally accused of being a wizard. He at once pleaded guilty, and that, so to speak, was that. But with the victim safely convicted his judges decided on getting some information. Very famous in these days was the "witch's supper" at which all these people were supposed to gather and plot against honest men. So one of the judges asked the victim, since he admitted his guilt, to tell them when the witches had last met.
"Sunday at midnight." We imagine that questions were a little more discreet from then on.
The scientific study of hypnotism begins with a Viennese doctor named Mesmer who lived during the American Revolution. As a matter of fact, Benjamin Franklin, as our ambassador to France, sat on a board of the French Academy of Medicine which pronounced Mesmer a fraud and drove him from Paris.
Actually this man was not a fraud in any sense of the word. His ideas are weird as we read them one hundred seventy years after his time, but Mesmer was probably quite sincere in all his statements. We must bear in mind that he lived at the dawn of medical science, at a time when Franklin himself said, "There are good doctors and bad doctors but the best doctor is no doctor."
In reality Mesmer contributed practically nothing to the science of hypnotism. Hull says, "His theories are of very
considerable interest to the historian of the growth of science, perhaps not so much for the amount of truth they contained as because it has taken the world such a long time to separate the grain of truth from its enormous husk of error." (1)Clark L., Hypnosis and Suggestibility, p. 5.
The University of Vienna at that time had perhaps the world's best medical school. Here he wrote his medical thesis in 1766 on the influence of the planets upon the bodies of men! Today no medical school in the world would consider such trash, but times have changed. Then anaesthesia was unknown, the germ theory was still one hundred years in the future and insanity was the work of the devil. So we must judge Mesmer in the light of his times, a capable doctor who dared to blaze new trail and who was master of the medical knowledge of his time, such as it was. To be sure he had a very shrewd financial eye and used his knowledge to fill his own purse. But that is not unheard of, even in this enlightened twentieth century.
Mesmer was a very keen observer. The principle of the magnet with its two poles was just being investigated. He noted that the magnet-like the planets-could exert its influence at a distance. So he worked out his theory. The human body, with its two sides, was like a magnet, with its two poles. Disease was caused by an improper distribution of the magnetic fluid, the animal magnetism which this living magnet threw off and to cure disease we had to restore the balance, so to speak.
This animal magnetism was a gas or fluid, therefore somewhat different from that of the minerals. It was under the control of the human will, hence to this day we have the tradition of "will power" in hypnotism. To direct its flow the individual must concentrate with all his strength and look his victim firmly in the eye. Hence the "dark hypnotic eye." Then as it flowed largely from the hand, the operator would make long passes over the body of his patient, from his head to his toes, passing the fluid into the sufferer's body. Should the subject go into a trance, he was awakened by reversing the process. The passes went from toes to head, so withdrawing the influence. Mesmer actually never got quite this far, but such was the standard practice of his immediate followers, the "Mesmerists," and we see many of these practices still used by the stage hypnotist.
In reality he had quite a lot to go on here, for the magnetic fluid was quite visible-to some people. Many "sensitives" could actually see it streaming from the eyes and hands of the operator. Of course, this was simply a visual hallucination, now so well known in hypnotism. But in Mesmer's time no one realized that such a thing existed so there was no reason to reject the word of those somnambulists who reported and described the fluid in question.
This fluid had many interesting qualities. It could be reflected by mirrors. It could operate at a distance. More interesting, it could be confined in a bottle and shipped to a sufferer in any part of the world. Most interesting of all any good "magnetist" could magnetize any object, generally a tree in the village green. Then the whole village could gather round this tree, receive the benefits of Mesmer's great discovery-and the operator collect his fee.
Mesmer's own clinic in Paris deserves special mention, for it must have been a remarkable sight. The large hall was darkened and soft plaintive music accompanied the treatment. Here was the famous baquet, a huge open tub about a foot high, large enough for thirty people to stand around for treatments. The tub itself was filled with water, bottles arranged in a symmetrical order, iron filings and ground glass. The whole thing was provided with a wooden cover and through this cover came jointed iron rods which the patients applied to their ailing parts. Mesmer himself would appear at the right moment in a robe of brilliant silk, passing his hands over the patients, fixing them with his gaze and touching them with his iron wand. People suffering from all kinds of sicknesses were cured after a
few such treatments. This is, of course, exactly what we would expect from our present day knowledge of hypnotism. Mesmer's success was probably his undoing, for he drew much trade away from the regular doctors. These only needed some excuse to vent their spleen and the opportunity came in 1784 for the French Government appointed a commissionincluding Franklin-to investigate the whole thing. This pronounced Mesmer a fraud. Immediately his popularity fell off awl he left Paris shortly afterward. This verdict meant very little when we consider the ignorance of the eighteenth century doctor. Vesalius was almost burned at the stake when, a little before this time, he insisted on cutting up human corpses to study anatomy. After Leeuvenhoek discovered the microscope and described germs it needed two hundred years and the genius n( a Pasteur for "science" to recognize that they might be of importance So, even had Mesmer been right the verdict would probably have been the same. It so happened he was wrongbut honestly wrong.
But, as we said before, Mesmer contributed practically nothing to modern hypnotism. His theories were completely wrong and most of his pupils followed blindly in his lead. He did, however, "throw the fat in the fire," so to speak. Once he had invented his technique, it was almost impossible not to stumble on the phenomena of modern hypnotism. The fact that {t took one hundred years for the story to unravel itself, and that we still know so little about many important phases merely illustrates the slow pace at which science must progress.
Mesmer did not hypnotize or try to hypnotize his subjects. Nevertheless some of then went into spontaneous hysterical convulsion as they received treatment around the tub. These convulsive attacks came more and more into the limelight. A report from the Royal Society of Medicine at this time says, "From a curative point of view animal magnetism is nothing but the art of making sensitive people fall into convulsions."
In 1784 one of Mesmer's pupils, the Marquis de Puysegur,
stumbled across genuine hypnotic somnambulism. He "magnetized" a young shepherd, Victor, but this boy fell into a quiet sleeping trance instead of into the usual convulsive attack. In this state he went about his business and when he "awakened" knew nothing of what had happened. This was something entirely new and, as such, immediately attracted great attention. Mesmerism, by sheer accident was on its way to becoming hypnotism. To be sure the main interest in this new phenomenon of somnambulism was mystic. The subject was supposed to develop clairvoyant powers, to have the gift of thought transference, even to speak with the dead. At the same time the , mesmerists were getting dangerously near the truth, so near that discovery of the real facts was just a matter of time. By 1825 hallucinations, anaesthesia and the posthypnotic suggestion had all been described.
Yet progress was painfully slow. One of the greatest figures in these days was an Englishman named Braid. He did his early work in the 1840's, first used the term hypnotism, rejected completely the idea of the magnetic fluid and saw that hypnotism was something quite different from ordinary sleep. He also invented an hypnotic technique, still used by many operators, that of gazing at a bright object held in such a position as to strain the eyes.
But we still find that weird mixture of truth and absurd error. Phrenology was then in vogue and Braid supported the theory known as phreno-magnetism. He found with his subjects that if he pressed the "bump" of pugnacity, the subject would promptly want to fight, if it were that of reverence, the subject might fall on his knees and pray. In his later writings he saw the absurdity of these claims and even appears to have hit the real keynote of hypnotism, namely, suggestibility. Braid was more or less the voice of one crying in the wilderness. With his death there was no further immediate interest in England.
The French, however, were more alert to possibilities. Around 1815, the Abbe Faria made a very important discovery. If the
prospective subjects were seated around the room and allowed to relax, then the operator had merely to repeat the word "sleep" several times in an impressive voice. Certain of those present would at once fall into somnambulism. This was a very Important step and the French investigation finally ended in the work of Liebeault, the real father of modern hypnotism.
This man was one of those peculiar people who mark off the milestones in science. A physician, he settled at Nancy, France in 1864. Here he proceeded to practice hypnotism among the poor, refusing any fees for his services. He even wrote a book setting forth his theories on the subject-and sold exactly one copy.
But that did not discourage Liebeault. For twenty years he kept at his task. Then, fortunately, he won the enmity of a great French physician, Bernheim, a professor in the medical school at Nancy. Bernheim for six months had been treating a patient suffering from sciatica, with no success whatsoever. In desperation this patient turned to Liebeault, who quickly cured him by means of hypnotism. This, to Bernheim, was a professional insult. He knew of Liebeault, thought him a "quack" and decided he would expose this medical menace. So he visited his enemy's clinic-and realized that Liebeault was really a genius. Bernheim immediately began a serious study of hypnotism and for the next twenty years devoted all his great talents to serious work along these lines. His position gave the subject respectable standing and to his eternal honor, he never overlooked an opportunity of directing attention to Liebeault. The latter even sold the remaining copies of his book!
Bernheim realized that the key to hypnotism was suggestion. A doctor, his main interest was along medical lines and his great book Suggestive Therapeutics covers this field in great detail. This work stands in a class by itself, only surpassed by the very recent book of Clark L. Hull, Yale University. Hull, as a psychologist, has a much wider range of interests than did
Bernheim, so he broadens the field and attacks the problems with modern experimental methods.
Bernheim perfected the "sleeping technique" now so widely used in laboratory practice and described carefully all the phenomena which we have noted in Chapter II of this work.
But animal magnetism, like the cat, proved to have the proverbial nine lives. While Bernheim was doing his great work in Nancy, France, another Frenchman, Charcot, was investigating hypnotism in Paris. Charcot gives us a classic example of what may happen when an authority in one field attempts work in another. One of the world's great anatomists and neurologists, Charcot did pioneer work in these fields which was of the very highest grade. In hypnotism he made about every possible mistake. This is the more amazing because Bernheim, also in France, pointed out these errors as they occurred.
Major hypnotism, as Charcot labelled his discovery, showed three sharply marked stages; lethargy, catalepsy and somnambulism. In the first, induced by closing the subject's eyes, he could neither hear nor speak. If now the subject's eyes were opened he-or rather she, for he worked only with womenwas still unable to hear or speak. But in this cataleptic stage the limbs would remain in any position in which they were placed. Finally, if the top of the head were rubbed somnambulism was induced. This was practically the same as the trance described by Bernheim.
Many of the results obtained by Charcot were amazing and can be attributed to his complete ignorance of operator attitude. He, as Mesmer one hundred years previously, was convinced that the magnet and the principle of magnetism explained everything. If the subject had a paralysis or a contracture in his right leg, then, if a magnet were brought close to the leg it would immediately shift to the left. More interesting, certain drugs could make their power felt right through a corked bottle. A closed phial of alcohol held near the subject's head would give the proverbial "jag," certainly an inexpensive way of going going on a spree.
Bernheim showed that all these curious effects could be produced when they were described in the subject's presence, and it will be recalled that Charcot maintained his subjects were completely deaf in his first two stages. How a man of his scientific skill could have made such a childish slip is difficult to see, but he did. Bernheim produced all Charcot's phenomena by this means, then went a step further. He substituted for for the magnet a pencil, a piece of paper or nothing at all, but he got just as good results. In other words, the subject knew what was expected and obliged.
In vain did Bernheim point out to Charcot that the subject In hypnotism is never deaf, is always on the alert for any suggestion. Charcot sailed serenely on. More amazing still is the fact that his great pupil, Alfred Binet, sailed right along with him. Another classic example of how the greatest minds may be blinded by prejudice. For Binet was a great mind, the father of the Binet-Simon test, one of the greatest contributions to psychology, and also the author of La Suggestibilite, an original and scientific work. Yet with Fere he published in 1888 Iris classic book, Animal Magnetism. This was no doubt inspired by Bernheim's own work, Suggestive Therapeutics, which came off the press two years before. Binet rose in defense of his beloved master, Charcot, running a series of experiments intended to prove beyond any question that Charcot was right.
Hull, who is very impartial on all subjects, writes as follows on this attempt of Binet, "Even so, the fact remains that there has rarely been written a book containing a greater aggregation of results from wretched experiments, all put forward with loud protestations of impeccable scientific procedure and buttressed by the most transparent sophistries, than this work of Binet and Fere." (2) Clark L. Hull, Hypnosis and Suggestibility, p. 16.
It is curious indeed that two really great men, 2 Charcot and Binet, could have made such grotesque errors as did these two, even when they invaded a field with which they were unfamiliar.
Bernheim and his "Nancy" school finally laid the ghost of animal magnetism, although every so often we find some operator who is still a follower, at least in part, of Charcot's teaching. One of these is Professor William Brown of Oxford, a psychologist of excellent repute. He does not for one moment support Charcot's crude ideas of magnetism but does follow the "Paris" school in one interesting and rather important detail. Charcot worked only with hysterical women patients, and advanced the theory that hypnotism was a symptom of hysteria. This Bernheim vehemently denied and his views are almost universally accepted.
Nevertheless Brown still holds to this attitude and his opinion is certainly entitled to great respect. The writer, one of Brown's former pupils, feels that he is wrong in this stand. The Oxford psychologist is really a psychiatrist. It is just possible that too much association with mental disease has given Professor Brown a bias in this direction, a tendency to regard everything abnormal as symptomatic of a sick personality; but he still lodges a minority protest. The great majority of psychologists would point out that good hypnotic subjects, as a rule seem to be very normal people. To be sure, certain signs of dissociation as automatic writing, sleep walking, even hysteria, generally indicate a good subject. But most people who can be put into trance have no such history. Brown would reply that, in these cases, they are "potential" hysterics and the dispute must rest there until we have more evidence.
Bernheim himself made one serious error. He linked hypnotism with sleep, regarding the trance as a special form of normal sleep. As a matter of fact, this is a very natural mistake to make, one into which Pavlov, the great Russian psychologist, also fell. But if the reader cares to look up the experimental evidence on the subject, as set forth by Hull, he will be convinced that
sleep and hypnosis have very little in common. The subject is so much "awake" that it would be quite impossible for the reader to detect anything wrong, especially when the subject in question has been coached to act "normal." Moreover, if we test the person in trance, we find that he is quite normal in such things as the conditioned reflex, memory span, psycho-galvanic reflex and other psychological tests.
Confusion here is very easy, especially when the "sleeping" technique is used to induce hypnotism and the subject is not allowed to move about. Actually, many subjects will go into genuine sleep, even snore and lose all touch with the operator. When told to awaken they sleep serenely on, but awaken quite easily if the operator gives them a slight shake. So the mistake of Bernheim, Pavlov and many others was quite natural. We needed the modern experimental laboratory to clear up the fog on this point.
Bernheim was familiar with and described in detail every phenomenon of hypnotism with which we are acquainted at the present day, at least in so far as his times and his interests permitted. Such modern psychological problems as the formation of conditioned reflexes under hypnosis he very naturally does not mention. And he was essentially a doctor, interested in curing patients. Here he was eminently successful. But by the same token he was not interested in the possible uses of hypnotism in education, crime, or warfare. Such problems were completely outside his field. Moreover, practically all of these early authorities, around the close of the nineteenth century, were medical men, their outlook was essentially that of Bernheim, so modern psychology naturally finds many a fascinating problem still unsolved.
Suggestion is undoubtedly the key to hypnotism. However, from the theoretical point of view we are today faced with a very interesting problem. Is it suggestion or dissociation which is really the fundamental cause of hypnosis? Does suggestion cause dissociation as illustrated in automatic writing,
speaking with tongues and in all hypnotic phenomena or is it a tendency towards dissociation which makes the good hypnotic subject so suggestible? The writer feels that suggestion is basic. For reasons with which we are not familiar the individual is highly suggestible and dissociation comes as a secondary phenomenon, caused by this peculiarity in personality. But the issue is still open. Also, in so far as we are concerned purely theoretical. We can allow the professional psychologist to ferret out the answer and can proceed with our discussion. We can also leave to him that very vexing problem as to whether all suggestion is really autosuggestion, as Coue maintained.
For our purpose we can say that hypnotism is merely a state of exaggerated suggestibility, induced by artificial means. The vast majority of psychologists would accept this formula, with of course the usual reservations. We do not know what causes suggestibility. Is it acquired or inherited? Does it depend on dissociation or vice versa? We will admit our ignorance and proceed from the assumption that suggestion is the key to hypnosis.
This at once opens other fascinating problems to the general reader. There are other causes of high suggestibility beside hypnosis. These are very evident in our everyday life, in fact they are all important. What is the relation of hypnotism to these other factors ? Is it not perhaps possible to explain all with one general formula? Might we not, using hypnotism as a point of departure, be able to understand the phenomenon of Hitler, the basis of mob psychology?
With this end in view the writer advances the theory outlined in the next few pages. Hypnotism is of fascinating interest, but if it has no use outside the psychological laboratory, or in handling the insane it must, of necessity, be of very little practical use to humanity as a whole. But if we can advance a simple working theory which explains both hypnotism and, say, Hitler at one and the same time, then we are being of much greater service to the general public.
In our opinion we can do so and the reader is asked to give special attention to the following pages of this chapter. The hypothesis we advance is intended to cover the subject in very simple fashion. We purposely avoid many neat psychological questions as being of interest only to the professional psychologist. This leaves us open to the charge of oversimplification but a popular work such as this must view the question "writ large."
The details we leave for those round-table discussions wherein men of science delight to go scalp hunting. As a matter of fact the Iroquois raider and the scientist are twin brothers. Scalp hunting is the great national pastime and a very legitimate pastime at that. If the scientist "leads with his chin," he may be perfectly certain that, before many harvest moons have passed he will be defending the old log cabin against the marauding hordes. That is all to the good. It keeps him on his toes and guarantees scientific progress.
The human brain is a very complex photographic plate. The analogy is crude but it will serve as an illustration. Needless to say it is a repeater in the sense that photos are being registered every moment of our waking existence, and by all the various sense organs of sight, hearing, smell, taste, skin senses and others which are more obscure. We, however, are interested in one peculiarity of this plate which is of great importance. It is provided with its own sensitizer. Most of the photographs, the experiences of everyday life are more or less on a dead level. They make a certain impression, we note it and act accordingly, then we probably forget the photo in question for the rest of our natural lives.
Some photographs-experiences-however leave a lasting impression. Five years age we were in an auto crash. Why should we remember that vividly, but not be able to recall anything else for that entire year, at least not recall without an effort. Just common sense! Possibly, but why? We distinctly and vividly recall that at the age of five, or six, or seven we were bitten by a police dog while visiting our uncle's farm. We will have to think in order to recall any other details of that visit, yet the dog experience keeps flashing through our mind
even when we don't think. Again it is just common sense but why?
Because at that particular moment the sensitive plate in the brain was vastly more sensitive than at any other time during the whole year. The negative was "over exposed," to draw another analogy from photography and the photo indelibly burned into the plate. Nothing we can do in later life will ever remove that scar. All other experiences of that entire year may become cloudy, may finally disappear completely so far as we are concerned, but every time we see a police dog that old experience of thirty or fifty years ago stands out as vividly as if it were yesterday.
Moreover, as we will see in later chapters, these are just the experiences which really count. They determine our personalities. We could take an entire college course on dogs, could meet all kinds of dogs anywhere. We might even write a book on dogs but we know one thing for certain, we do not like the police dog. Why? Because one bit us fifty years ago. It might just as well have been a collie or a bull, but it wasn't. Logic has nothing to do with the situation. It was a police dog so they are damned in our eyes for all eternity.
It is this type of non-logical, highly emotional reaction which makes the world go round, which leads us into the state of chaos which exists at the present day. For society is essentially a society of human beings which, in many cases, takes its cue from some one leader. Should this leader be unbalanced, overambitious, or a weakling, then all too often his followers will be sacrificed at the altar of his fanaticism or his incompetence.
There are, as far the writer can see, two known devices by which the brain plate can be sensitized. One is hypnotism, the other is emotion. Suggestions given in hypnotism or under emotional strain are carried out with an energy which is quite foreign to normal human conduct. The reader will note that suggestion does not have to be verbal nor recognized as suggestion at the time. Any experience flashing on the mind at such times may act as a suggestion. In hypnotism these are generally by the spoken word, but in everyday life this is far from being the case. The police dog incident was a very strong suggestion. The newspaper is one of the most powerful of suggestive media, especially in a controlled press. But the controlled radio is easily the most potent weapon we have for attaining such ends in our modern civilization.
What has all this to do with hypnotism? Let us take a little excursion into psychology for the next few pages and perhaps we can then see the very close tie-up between hypnotic suggestion and the type of suggestion which is so potent in our daily lives, the suggestion which falls on a brain sensitized by emotion.
The great driving force behind all animal activity is the pleasure-pain principle, the search for pleasure, the avoidance of pain. No normal human being will deliberately step on a tack, unless of course there is a higher pleasure involved. If his child is in danger of being burned to death he may not only step on a tack but get fatally burned himself attempting a rescue. These things are relative. We sit quietly in the dentist's chair and submit willingly ( ?) to his tortures for we know only too well that if not today, then six months from today he will have us at his mercy. And that six months will not make the ordeal any easier. Also in the human these pleasures may be ideal. Read the tortures which the early Jesuits suffered at the hands of the Indians in The Bloody Mohawk by Clarke. It does us modern hampered humans good at times to realize what men will suffer for an ideal. Yet that suffering was in answer to the pleasure principle, weird as the contradiction may seem to the average of humanity.
This pleasure principle has its basis in the instinct. In view of the fact that the word instinct is unpopular in scientific circles these days the reader may think in terms of drives or impulses if he chooses. Psychology has officially thrown instinct out the front door, then given it a new name and welcomed it in by the kitchen entrance. The writer prefers the word instinct and will use it in spite of its black name in psychological circles.
These instincts are almost always of such a nature that they
aid in survival of the species, but not necessarily of the individual. Pleasure is the reward which the animal receives for carrying out the instinct, pain is the red light, the warning not to repeat the offense in the future.
Moreover, since these instincts are basic, are the foundations on which a species survives or is exterminated, it is very important that they be reinforced. Closely tied up with these various instincts we have certain emotions, such as fear, rage or love, and these emotions together with their attendant feelings of pleasure or the opposite sensitize the brain. Thus experiences which directly arouse our instincts tend to make a greater impression on the brain plate, to be remembered better, as we say. We can look on them as suggestions.
Finally, just a word as to intelligence. It was long the custom to contrast instinct and intelligence. Instinct represented the baser side of man, whereas intelligence was something on a much higher plane, the pure and noble side of man's nature. Actually intelligence is the servant of the instinct, of the pleasure principle. We use our intelligence to gratify our search for pleasure, be these pleasures low or idealistic. We may reason with a child for days to no effect. We may tell little Johnny that he is not to play with strange dogs, and he is unimpressed. Let one of those same dogs take a nip at him and he has learned his lesson. That one experience, falling on a brain sensitized by fear, will leave a lasting impression. It is "burned in" so to speak.
Hypnotism and emotion, be that emotion pleasurable or the opposite, are the only forces which we are certain have this effect on the photographic plate of the brain. It seems possible that certain drugs, such as alcohol may under certain circumstances, produce the same results, but we are not certain. It is highly probable that hypnotism in its turn depends on emotion. Ferenczi, a psychoanalyst, has given a formula which may very easily express the situation. He says, "Suggestion depends on transference and transference is a shifting of the libido."
In plainer English, his theory runs somewhat along these
lines. In hypnotism the operator takes the place of the subject's parent, father or mother. The subject transfers to the hypnotist Ow feeling he had for this parent as a child. The attitude of the Operator in question will determine whether he is to be father or mother. If the subject, as a child, was submissive to this parent, he will be a good hypnotic subject and vice versa. This Attitude of the child is obviously one of emotion, so that hypnotism, according to Ferenczi, would depend on emotion. A neat theory which may or may not be true. The writer is inclined to favor it.
lie that as it may, we can now perhaps see a little more clearly how the laws of hypnotism may become so very important in our everyday life. Every situation we face in life is a social situation, that is to say it involves other people. Almost invariably this situation involves a leader. He may be appointed, he may seize authority, or he may just gravitate to the top. The boss in the office is a typical example, the dictator on the radio not so typical but far more powerful. Now if by any device this leader can arouse our emotions, can "get under our skins," then his words, his suggestions, falling on our sensitized brains will have far more weight than those same suggestions given us by a stranger or in a magazine article where no emotion is involved. He is, to all intents and purposes, a hypnotist.
Our reactions may be antagonistic-negative suggestionbut we will react violently. But if the dictator or boss in question knows his business he will take care that they do not arouse antagonism. He will appeal to the pleasure principle in some form or other. He will tell us that we are being persecuted, robbed, hemmed in. He will appeal to our patriotism, our love of home and family. He will promise us security, wealth, glory if we but do as he says. And if he knows what he is about we will fall under his spell just as surely as a subject ever falls under the trance of a hypnotist.
This technique of "direct" or "prestige" suggestion we see clearly in the stage hypnotist. His success depends on a forceful, frontal attack. He never allows the subject's gaze to shift from his own and literally bullies him into the hypnotic trance. Here we have clear evidence of the emotional factor in hypnosis. The psychologist in his laboratory also uses this prestige suggestion although in a quieter form. But whether it be the stage hypnotist, the laboratory psychologist or Hitler on the radio results are the same, so far as psychology is concerned. The suggestions fall on a highly sensitized brain and such suggestions have tremendous force, a force altogether out of proportion to any value that the proposals, as such, may have.
Let us now consider a few facts which we have gathered from our study of hypnotism in the laboratory. One in every five of the human race are highly suggestible, at least half are suggestible to a very considerable degree. But here mere figures do not tell the story. That one-fifth has a power far beyond its numbers, for this type of man, acting under direct suggestion, is no mere average person. He is a fanatic in the highest-or lowest-sense of the word.
The writer several years ago had a very unpleasant experience which illustrates the point. He wished to show the power of the posthypnotic suggestion so he suggested to Smith that, on awakening he would go over and insist on sitting in Brown's chair. Smith and Brown were relative strangers. When he was awakened, Smith paused a moment, then got up and walked over to Brown.
"Mind if I sit in your chair?" "Yes. I like the chair myself."
Without a word Smith reached down, took Brown by the shoulder, and literally hurled him across the room. Then he sat down, muttering savagely that if Brown so much as opened his mouth he'd send him through the window as well. And he meant just that. A few such experiences teach the operator to "take it easy." On another occasion the writer suggested to a subject in hypnotism that an individual he particularly disliked was standing in front of the door. Without an instant's hesitation the subject strode up to the door and drove his fist through the panel. The individual who is highly suggestible, whether from hypnotism or from strong emotion, reacts with a passionate fury which leaves us other mere mortals staring in open-eyed wonder. But it is terribly real, as Europe can testify today.
There is still another line of approach which shows us the very close relation between the suggestibility of hypnotism and that arising from the emotions. Basic to psychoanalysis, as outlined by Freud, is the so-called complex. Freud discovered that many of our early childhood experiences are forgotten in a curious sort of way. The forgetting is not passive but active; they do not just fade away into oblivion, they are literally thrown out of consciousness, they are "repressed" into the unconscious.
Such experiences are always unpleasant in nature and are forced out of consciousness in accord with the pleasure principle we have already stressed. Not only will the body not undergo pain willingly, unless for a future pleasure, but the mind also turns away from painful thoughts. The reader can easily think of exceptions, but we would again warn that many apparent exceptions are not real. A person may brood over bad treatment, which is unpleasant, but this in turn may bring up the feeling of self-pity which is very pleasant. Or he may plan revenge, thinking out various ways in which he will even up the score. This also may be pleasant.
Actually, however, the pleasure principle does not work in nearly as clear cut form in the mind as in the body. To a great degree we lose the power of repression after the age of five, although under great stress, as in war, it may still act very effectively. But it does work in childhood and Freud discovered that many of the neuroses have their origin in these repressions. They are "down" but not "out." Why they are not out is beside our discussion here, but once they become installed in the unconscious they can cause a lot of trouble.
For example, a child is badly frightened by a cat. Later in
life he develops a fear, a phobia of cats. Yet strange to say the original experience in which he was frightened has been completely forgotten. Note the close resemblance to the posthypnotic suggestion. All we need is the hypnotist, rather than the cat, to give the suggestion and the parallel would be complete.
These complexes act in very curious fashion. We can tell what causes them but we cannot predict results. A little boy was going to the store. He had to pass through a narrow alley way closed at both ends by a door. He got into the alley, the door behind him snapped shut, the door in front was closed. Then he found there was a dog in the alley as well, which promptly attacked him. This frightened the child very badly. In later life this incident was forgotten, repressed, but the complex did its work. Strange to say, however, he did not develop a fear of dogs, as one would have expected, but a fear of closed spaces-claustrophobia. His main idea was to get out of that closed alley. This was the autosuggestion which, given in a state of great emotion, later came out as a complex-a posthypnotic suggestion.
Another little boy was sliding down hill. His sled collided with a fence and his hand was badly cut. The doctor could not give him an anaesthetic, but had to sew up the hand while he was wide awake, a very painful and terrifying experience. This was repressed and later came out, not as a fear of doctors, but a fear of black bags. The doctor had with him a black bag and the eyes of the child were riveted on this bag, for from here the doctor took the instruments which caused him so much pain.
This particular type of posthypnotic suggestion may come out in various ways, but the complex is, to all intents and purposes, a posthypnotic suggestion. Fright by a cat may appear in later life as a fear of cats. But it may just as easily come out in the form of a compulsion to kill cats. The writer had a friend who got himself in no end of trouble with his neighbors because of this. Or again it may appear as an obsession that people are looking at him with cat's eyes. This may become so strong that
the individual may be very dangerous, even murdering his supposed persecutor.
But note again the very close tie-up between the complex and the posthypnotic suggestion. The complex, we know, is definitely caused by strong unpleasant emotion. Moreover, it works along almost identical lines with the posthypnotic suggestion. Not quite as specific, to be sure, but just as compulsive. Also we would find the other characteristic of the posthypnotic suggestion present if we cared to look, namely rationalization.
So here again we see that emotion and hypnotism seem to sensitize the brain in identical fashion. The suggestion which is given in either case leaves an indelible impression and provokes to acts which are quite apart from any intellectual processes the individual may use.
We may summarize the last few pages somewhat as follows. Suggestibility, present in all people to a greater or less degree, is very marked in certain individuals. This appears due to the fact that their brains can be very easily sensitized to "photographs"-experiences-either by hypnotism or by emotion. We do not know whether the hypnotic subject is always the one who in adult life is open to emotional sensitization, for no great amount of investigation has been done on this question. It does seem highly probable that hypnotism is closely linked to emotion, and these two types of brain sensitization are essentially one and the same.
Hence comes the great importance of hypnotism as a "laboratory" in which to study this whole problem of suggestibility, for the phenomena of suggestion are tremendously important. Around this question centers the whole problem of mob psychology, the psychology of such leaders as Hitler. Without in any way juggling words we can truthfully say that he is one of the greatest hypnotists of all time. Yet he may never have heard of the subject. We will return to this in the later chapters of the book.
0--0
To be continued… Thank you for your support
Arnie Lerma The only person who would tell you not to read about the subject of hypnosis, would be a person who was covertly using mental manipulation and did not want you to find out. Lt. Dennis Marlock, of FraudTech.Org states that Knowledge and familiarity with the tactics is the only way to prevent the effectivness of CONfidence artists.
|
Home | F.A.Q.'s | Legal | News | Support lermanet.com | |
