Well, it really is with a due sense of dread that I am having a very hypnosis and hypnotherapy centred blog entry today… I do often tend to get carried away with other subjects from time to time…
A due sense of dread because I find myself being hypnotically drawn in by things that irritate the living daylights out of me in my beloved hypnosis field… I may need to see a hypnotherapist about that!
Ok, let me explain…
Yes, there is another, uninspired, uninventive, unimaginative titled hypnosis article in the Times recently… Titled “Look into my eyes.” Oh come on.
Blimey… this is nearly as predictable as using “you are feeling sleepy” as a title… It would not be as bad if it had not been the mainstay title for so many hundreds (feels like thousands) of articles about hypnosis or hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapists do not say this… Ok? Journalists listen, we do not say that. Not ever.
When I finally get over the title and move on… Phew…
Once the article has denounced some reasons as to why hypnosis may have a precarious reputation (maybe because purile journalists cannot think of better titles for their articles!) the article actually offers a nice run down of how hypnotherapy can be very helpful and cites three hypnotherapists who work in specialised areas here in the UK… I am in a great mood today, aren’t I? 😉
Thanks to the guys on TV’s Little Britain comedy show (and their hypnotist character Kenny Craig) the last few years have had more than their fair share of social gatherings, being introduced to new people and upon finding out that I am a hypnotherapist they say that line “look into my eyes, look into my eyes, not around the eyes, look into my eyes” — oh joy. That is so delightfully fresh and witty. You are sensing my sarcasm here, right?
One of the few things that is even more tired than this “look into my eyes” quote, or unimaginative headlines… Is when people attempt to gain interest in their product, article by sensationalising what can be done with hypnosis… Trying to make it seem more believable by giving evidence about the seemingly terrifying things hypnosis can do… Without actually giving any evidence at all… Especially irritating when written by a supposedly credible author like Fred Burks in this hypnosis article. It states that:
“[Deleted] stated that he had constantly used hypnotism as a means of inducing young girls to engage in sexual intercourse with him.”
According to the revealing government document that Burks has got an unverified copy of on his website, the person mentioned here was the instructor in a secret CIA mind control training program back in 1951. The hypnotic suggestion used was that she was to believe that the instructor was her husband and she desired intercourse with him.
If I am going to be generous, perhaps it takes an incredibly suggestible or vulnerable person that was carefully selected for such a thing to be able to occur… Then perhaps even combined with a particularly desinged environment or psychological context and of course an incredibly effective hypnotist or someone perceived as being a real authority. This might bring such a sotry into the realms of believability for me.
The article claims that people are hypnotised to believe certain things and trained to plant bombs and all sorts of other things.
Some of which are things that can happen to us all naturally any time we want. Negative and positive hallucinations occur daily to most people, small amnesia episodes happen all the time too, not only do we forget things, but details get filed away if not important.
All that the hypnosis is doing, is amplifying and exaggerating these phenomenon. Which in turn makes it look like hypnosis is creating the phenomenon.
We cannot do anything that we cannot do. Strange sentence huh?
Also, bear in mind that the subjects were in an environment of expectation and research — there are many factors influencing this spurious set of tales about what hypnosis can do to people.
I tend to think that if anyone could truly start creating animated individuals that could do their bidding in reality and perform tasks beyond these mild and minor effects, then surely we would know about it, it would be documented and there for us all to see. it would make the change process a HUGE amount easier for the hundreds of hypnotherapy clients I see each year!
Yet people get intrigued and enticed by the notion that hypnosis is somehow making things happen to people and that there is some deep, dark secret way of using it even more powerfully that only secret departments know about! Pah!
If the behaviour isn’t already there, no amount of hypnotism will produce it.
For example, a stage hypnotist might be able to use their skills to improve the performance of somebody who’s a world class juggler tossing swords and flaming lanterns around… And I’m pretty certain that if I went up on stage and was hypnotised into believing I was a world class juggler I still wouldn’t be able to juggle flaming machete’s without losing or burning a finger or two! Would I?
I want to quote what someone wrote in my members area when we discussed this:
Correct me if I’m wrong, stage hypnotists are unlikely to go to those kinds of places. I recall seeing Paul McKenna on UK TV many years ago hypnotise a guy into believing he was Mick Jagger. For somebody who was an ordinary man in the audience and not a professional impersonator, his performance was astonishing. He was Mick Jagger. Or was he? Perhaps it was merely a close enough effort for us to think he was. After all, do we really have more than a general appreciation of Mick Jagger’s mannerisms? It was really a testimony to the brain’s ability to bring together hundreds maybe thousands of stored impressions of Mick Jagger in an instant and to act them out. Mick Jagger is a very safe bet, it seems to me. Perhaps if Paul McKenna had hypnotised the guy into believing he was, say, Jerry Lewis, somebody with an equally distinctive stage persona but relatively unknown to British audiences at that time, the outcome would have been far less impressive.
Very salient point.
Ok, it is all off my chest for another couple of weeks… I want to end on a bright note though… The Bristol Zoo in Ireland is helping people to overcome their fears of
spiders. That is right, they offer a class with a hypnotist Mary Ison.
How awesome is that? I was delighted to show a similar thing happening in London zoo last year and am really pleased to be mentioning this again today.
In this hypnosis article, it states:
“At Bristol Zoo Gardens we have responded to the demand for people wanting to get over their fear of spiders by offering courses to help them do so.
“On our spider phobia courses, the emphasis is on changing the balance of control, from spiders being in control of people’s lives, to people being in control of themselves and their environment.”
Love it.
I’ll be back to being cordial again tomorrow… Perhaps 😉
