This weekend just gone by, I embarked on the journey that is my hypnotherapy diploma with my new set of students… Yes indeed, the road ahead is long and arduous, but we have the skills among us and years of our forefathers experiences to live up to… We shall all prevail…
Ahem, ahem… I shall end attempting to sound like a fantasy novel… As a youngster being raised in surburbia in Southern England, my world was inhabited my monsters… And mythical creatures, wizards, warlocks, trolls and all kinds of other things…
As a form of escapism, and much to the ridicule of my football team-mates and friends (the ones who did not know who Iron Maiden were, for example) I often retreated into the world of fantasy roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons. My parents worried about the people I mixed with there, who generally did not bathe as much as my other friends and wore Iron Maiden t-shirts and so on…
It was a place where I found distraction, adventure and mastery of my fate in a magical world where I was often the hero, though also sometimes the anti-hero of my own plot line. For many of the others there, it was a place where insecure, introverted, or less socially skilled could slay goblins, wield impressive swords and amass kudos, treasure and notoriety – for some, the perfect antidote to a mixed up world.
I read and re-read Lord of the Rings and works related to those of Tolkien… But I stopped playing those kinds of games when I went to college; girls and football became more important… Though in recent years, my favourite films have still been the Lord of the Rings trilogy and favourite novels all been fantasy and sci-fi…
When I look at the state of play today, something has radically changed… Fantasy roleplay and gaming has gone mainstream. Properly mainstream. Think of the popularity of online games such as Warcraft and Everquest, look at the success of Harry Potter, and other role-playing hobbies.
I became interested in hypnosis initially because I thought of it as another form of escapism… It is funny, just this weekend gone, as I explained theories of state and non-state ideologies of hypnosis, I realise how my own opinion, understanding and experience of hypnosis has changed… And how much my perception of escapism has changed…
The more I reflected on my and society’s interest in fantasy and gaming, the more doubts I seem to have. Yes, roleplaying games had helped me “escape” a life of school pressures and incessant need to rebel against the system… These days I wonder how healthy it was to have devoted so much mental energy to a fantasy world that didn’t exist.
Had my fellow fantasy role playing gamers and I just checked out of real life and the real world? Were there any long-term effects? Did a need for escapism explain why my life went so dark for alengthy period of time as a young man?
What about the 12 million (and counting) subscribers to World of Warcraft (WoW)?
The readers of Harry Potter?
The adult men and women who own and play Xbox and PlayStation consoles religiously?
Then what about people who escape to indulge in their own min? Through the use of hypnosis, many people believe it gives us access to other places whereby we can escape… Often, this can be a good thing – we all know about the value of people having a ‘happy place’ inside their minds that they can transport themselves to, don’t we?
Is this “escapism” normal? Is fantasy in all its forms fundamentally a good thing? Are some subcultures more dangerous than others? What healthy role does fantasy and escape serve? Surely it’s not all evil… And I don’t think I turned out all that bad in the end…
Many people believe that escapsim is a trance state of some kind, that being absporbed in your imagination is a hypnotic state of some kind… it has all been giving me much food for thought this week…
I’m not really too much of a “fantasy buff”. I quite like Lord of the Rings but- whilst other fans and moviegoers are enthralled by the films- I tend to be checking my watch and whispering: “why exactly did that scene with the hobbits take about half an hour?” And as for Sean Bean in the first film…well…in the time it takes his character to die, you could have gone on a fortnights holiday, come home, slept, had some chips from the chip shop…. Saw Lord Of The Rings The Musical a few years back, that was quite good. But as I say, I’m not much of a fantasy fan.
That said, I have been watching Merlin on BBC One a bit too much lately. But that has more to do with the woman who plays Morgana than anything else. If there’s some place you can go to apply to be her brave knight, I’ll be there in a flash. Right, enough about all that.
I was always more of a Doctor Who fan. Always wanted to be The Doctor. Travel anywhere in space and time, new woman every few months and the only serious enemies are basically pepper pots that can fly.
As for the darkness in escapism. Yeah, sure, it’s there. But there are an awful lot of people who think they know what the real world is. I’m not even sure the term “real world” holds up as a concept. So long as the person is not lost to whichever world they find themselves in or enjoy being in, not much harm can come from escapism. If you play World of War Craft but still know your own name, your family, your friends and who you are, that’s fine. Whatever a person enjoys doing- so long as it harms, hurts or humiliates nobody- is perfectly fine. Darkness does not necessarily come from escapism. Darkness can find you anywhere. Indeed, these days it’s more likely to find you in the so called “real world” than it is in any fantasy world.
The world you inhabit doesn’t matter. Where you escape to doesn’t matter. What matters is the protection and survival of the self. If the self is intact, you can change things or break out of a world that could cause hurt or harm. The self is the important thing. I speak to a lot of people who think that, because they enjoy playing computer games on a weekend and the like instead of getting out of their trees on booze in bars and nightclubs, that some how means they are sad or losers or loners. If you truly enjoy something and it brings pleasure to your life and it harms, humiliates and hurts none, it’s 100% fine. Indeed, the more varied stuff you do and enjoy, the more interesting a person you are.
Note: my lawyers have asked me to point out that my definition of “if it hurts, harms and humiliates none” also includes the words: “so long as it is legal”.
Thanks for your contribution Marty, much appreciated…
Hi Marty,
“What matters is the protection and survival of the self. If the self is intact, you can change things or break out of a world that could cause hurt or harm.”
How many people do you think are able to do this?
Living in a phantasy world starts with being a very youg child( I am convinced that children do this all the time and develop a lot af skills this way)- how do you find the right time to jump off and start taking live serously and know your SELF so you can protect it? And how do you know what is save anyway? Trial and error?