Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis by Robin Waterfield Read Free Book Online Page B

Association. There are plenty of other such bodies – perhaps it is time for some unification. But you should certainly look into the hypnotist's credentials, make sure that he or she is affiliated to some such organization, and even check out the organization itself. Hypnotic treatment is likely to be pretty expensive, so you should take these precautions before committing yourself.
    The hypnotist is unlikely to have an intense, staring gaze, or to be wearing a star-spangled cloak. Nevertheless, the respect in whichfact and fiction come closest – though not really very close at all – is in the person of the hypnotist. By this I mean that some of the traits of the fictional or stage hypnotist are exaggerations of the real-life person. As explained in the Introduction, there is bound to be inequality of will between the hypnotist and his client, in the sense that you are to a degree putting yourself in his hands. Now, you are going to put yourself in his hands only if you trust that he is going to do you good, and you will feel this trust only if he exudes an aura of confidence. In other words, while he is unlikely to have a domineering personality, he will have enough self-assurance to put you at your ease, just as any expert in any field must. But it will be the self-assurance of someone you can trust to act as your guide, not of someone who will attempt to dominate you.
    Confidence, then, is one essential quality of a successful hypnotist. Another is patience, because it may take some time to put a subject under. He will also have created a comfortable and comforting environment, designed to put his clients at their ease, with muted colours, few sharp edges, no bright lights. He might also, without the client's knowledge, use artificial means to make the client feel at home. One common such technique is mirroring, in which the therapist adopts the same posture, breathing, tone of voice and so on as his client, or in general uses body language, to make him feel that the hypnotist is someone just like him, someone he can trust. Recent studies have shown that body language and tone of voice are far more important than the actual content of speech in establishing a connection between people. One way or another, without making a fuss about it, the hypnotist will throughout the session be intently focused on you, the client, and sensitive to the slightest gesture or twitch which might indicate resistance or the opposite, and give him further clues as to what is going on.
    A hypnotist uses suggestions, and this is a word which will recur countless times in this book. The subject responds to the hypnotist's suggestions, but that does not mean that he is suggestible in the sense of ‘gullible’, nor does the fact that psychologists rate our ‘hypnotizability’ (as they call it) on scales of ‘susceptibility’ bear any such implication. There are basically three kinds of suggestion that the hypnotist might make: suggestions designed to induce hypnosis (‘Your eyelids are feeling heavy’), suggestions during hypnosis to beacted on immediately (‘You will hear no sound except the sound of my voice’) and suggestions during hypnosis to be acted on later (‘After you wake up, you will no longer feel any craving for a cigarette’). These last suggestions are called ‘post-hypnotic suggestions’. They are not, as the term might imply, suggestions given after the hypnotic session, but suggestions given during the session which take effect after the session is over.
Techniques of Induction
    In his autobiographical
Moab is My Washpot
comedian Stephen Fry recounts how he visited a hypnotist to get him over his fear of singing in public.
    The business of being put in a trance seemed childishly simple and disappointingly banal. No pocket watches were swung before me, no mood music or whale song played in the background, no mesmeric eyes bored into my soul. I was simply told to