"Hypnotism: the consensual management of the capacity
for inductive reasoning." At least, that’s my definition of hypnotism.
Let’s look at it bit by bit.
‘Consensual.’ Hypnotism is generally a one to one or
one to many aspect of communication in which the parties have agreed to engage.
It shares certain characteristics with brain washing and mind control (in the
same way that the palliative provision of morphine shares certain
characteristics with a junkie shooting horse) but differs fundamentally by being
consensual.
‘Management.’ Hypnotism is not therapy, per se. It is
the establishment, maintenance and dismantling (or, ‘management’) of a
phenomenon conducive to the exercise of therapy.
‘Capacity for inductive reasoning.’ There are two main
kinds of intellectual reasoning; inductive and deductive. Inductive reasoning
enables us to conceive the big picture from it’s constituent elements.
Deductive reasoning allows us to appreciate the constituent elements from the
big picture. When a trance is induced a hypnotee is moved to a state of mind
where their capacity for inductive reasoning can be suspended. Dave Elman, doyen
of medical hypnotists, called this the ‘establishment of selective thinking’
(Findings in Hypnosis). The capacity for inductive reasoning can be suspended
completely, in which case the hypnotee is left only with the ability to deduce.
For both stage and clinical hypnotism, however, it is preferable that the
hypnotee’s capacity for inductive reasoning is only suspended with regard to
specific suggestions made by the hypnotist. Thus when a stage hypnotist tells
his hypnotee that they are in love with a mop, they will be. They cannot
inductively reason ‘it is a mop used for cleaning floors and generally I
prefer to love women therefore I do not love this mop.’ They can only deduce
all the behaviour which flows from their model of ‘love’ and express those
behaviours accordingly. At the same time, however, they can hold a perfectly
rational discussion about macro economics (or whatever) in which they can both
induce and deduce normally.
So, hypnotism is the consensual management of the capacity
for inductive reasoning.
Lots of people can get limb catalepsy, or ideo motor
responses, and think they are doing hypnotism. Some people think eye closure
equals hypnotism. It doesn’t. They may have achieved some kind of trance, but
trance and hypnotism are not the same. As Elman says of his famous eye closure
“But does that mean that you are hypnotized? Indeed, it does not. It is merely
the entering wedge, and hypnosis is not obtained until selective thinking is
firmly established.”
Of course, anyone can talk a good case. Doing it is something else. Here's a demonstration of me actually hypnotizing a someone.
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