Articles: Index
Hypnotic Effects
This article first appeared on Dr. Bryan Knight's page
How powerful is hypnosis? What can it really achieve?
Speculation as to hypnotic effects, amnesia in hypnosis, people doing what they wouldn't normally do, etc. overlooks a very important point; we only have the hypnotised individual's word for what they do or do not feel. There is nothing magical about hypnosis; some people can achieve an apparently coma-like condition in minutes, some only the lightest of trances after an induction of an hour or more. And I'm talking about the person being hypnotised, not the hypnotist, because that is where the ability for depth of trance lies, though too many hypnotists believe the 'power' lies with them.
A subject will generally feel what they expect to feel. The hypnotist's skill is unimportant - it is the subject's belief system that matters. If the 'best hypnotist in the world' were to go on stage to hypnotise an entire audience, the entire audience might well go into hypnosis IF they knew he was 'the best hypnotist in the world'. If, on the other hand, they believed he was a just a truck driver acting the part of a hypnotist for fun, they simply would not go into any form of trance at all. Or would not believe they had.
Too many hypnotists and hypnotherapists believe their own publicity, and imagine that they have some sort of control over their subjects and the ability to 'make' them do things they wouldn't normally do.
But you simply cannot know whether or not an individual would like to be able to perform a particular act in a normal waking state. Hypnosis lowers the critical faculties - that is well established. It is deinhibiting. So an individual may then feel able to behave in some extrovert or outrageous way that s/he would normally find 'impossible'. But they are not being MADE to do anything - they are being ALLOWED to do something.
The confused belief arise out of the fact that people may well do things they would not, or could not, normally do - but they will not do things that they genuinely would not WANT to do. For it is the moral code, the true underlying belief of what is wrong and what is right that cannot be breached by hypnosis. It might be breached by convincing the subject in some way that the proposed action actually fitted in with their moral belief, but that would not be hypnosis, it would be NLP reframing. A simple command given under hypnosis could not do it, however skilled the hypnotist.
Dont Believe All You See
Stage hypnosis can have you believing all sorts of silly things. But those individuals have been selected by the stage hypnotist for their hysteric nature and their suggestibility. And when, on stage, they are told to 'sleep now' there are not a lot of people who have the nerve, in front of an audience, to say: "Sorry! It hasn't worked!" So they sleep. Now they've done it! They have tacitly accepted that they are hypnotised, and because every body knows they are hypnotised, they will have to do whatever they are asked to do - within reason. They can always disown it after the show, by saying: "Well, I don't remember. After all, I was hypnotised, wasn't I?"
I have carried out literally thousands of inductions, mostly for clinical and therapeutic reasons, but a few for experiment. With few exceptions, people have reported that they felt exactly as they were led to believe they would feel. Or said they did.
I have also spoken to a large number of individuals who have participated in stage hypnosis shows. When asked how they felt, most said that 'they hadn't gone under' but had had to pretend they had, out of embarrassment. Most of those that insisted they were 'well gone' changed their mind as soon as I told them I was a professional in the field and that I know that there is actually no such thing as a 'hypnotised feeling'. Anywhere between a complete retraction and a mild qualifying statement - "Oh, well, of course I did ham it up a bit... but only a bit, really." One or two insisted that whatever, they were truly 'out of it'. Hmm. Only got their word for that, of course. If they were, how do they know that they were?
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