If you are reading this essay to find out ‘how it’s done,’ then let me save you some time. Now would be a good time to move on to another article because the answer to that question lies elsewhere. Go back to watching the football. The point of this article is this; whether one is using hypnosis as a therapeutic tool or performing hypnosis on the stage, some of the same fundamental problems arise.
The first of the problems, and to all practitioners the most basic and one which simply will not go away, is that not all people are responsive enough to suggestion, or guided imagery for that matter, to achieve hypnosis in the first place. What can be achieved relatively easily in the therapy room is often impossible in the stage setting, something we will look at later on. Nevertheless, the eternal question still arises: ‘Why some and not others?’ James Esdaile, working in India in the 19th century summed up the problem thus;
“As yet, I am sorry to add, I cannot, with any degree of confidence, say who are the persons susceptible to the mesmeric influence, without first trying. But it is satisfactory to know, that by far the majority of persons acted upon by me, and my assistants, have been affected in different degrees, all of which are invaluable to their possessors, for the relief and cure of their diseases; and in most of the failures I have little doubt that we should have succeeded, if the process had been prosecuted.”
[Mesmerism in India: James Esdaile.]
The Effect of Suggestion on Individuals and Groups
Since I finished writing All in the Mind (some of which is, I admit, based on the academic research of others, although all have been justly credited) I keep stumbling on more examples of how suggestion influences our daily lives without us having the slightest inkling that it is happening. I am constantly reminded of the famous stage hypnotist Robert Halpern, a man with a rather chequered career – something typical of many stage hypnotists. He used to begin his spectacular stage show at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow by telling his audience “we all respond to thousands of suggestions every single day of our lives without realising it.” When I first saw him in 1979, I thought that this opening statement was more to do with showing the audience what a genius he was – what a brilliant understanding of the human mind this man must have! – than a true representation of the facts. How wrong I was. Tottering about the stage, every bit the nutty professor, dressed in a black dinner suit with black velvet lapels and pockets, replete with medallions (very much in vogue in the seventies) he would then spend the next three hours proving the point. What Halpern lacked in content, he more than made up for in length – habitually late for performances, his shows seldom finished before midnight: four hour shows were not unusual. He was a great fan of the brilliant Frankie Howerd and I observed that some of Howerd’s camp persona often came through in Halpern’s own stage presence. Still, the privilege of watching Robert was part of my own voyage of discovery into the world of hypnosis. Nonetheless, three decades later, his words echo down the years and rattle around in my own head as I become increasingly aware of how simple, subtle suggestions have altered my own perceptions of reality. I am also ever more aware, not to say occasionally frustrated, when I can’t help but notice how much suggestion influences others around me. “No no no no no!” I want to cry. “Can’t you see what they’re trying to do? Can’t you see what’s happening?” But to no avail. Life seems to plod on as we, the larger human organism, with its almost infinite sub-groups, get carried along on a tide of disinformation and manipulation.
Here’s the latest example I turned up reading a copy of The New York Times on Saturday 4th April 2009 on a rather long and otherwise uneventful flight from Dubai to my home in Cape Town. These things are handed out for free when one travels on Emirates (simply the best airline in the world at the time of writing, and I should know, I’ve travelled on a few in the last 30 years.) In fact, now I come to think of it, a lot of my background reading has been done at 35,000 feet. Anyway, it was written by someone I admit I had never heard of and probably will never hear of again, one Nicholas D. Kristof, a self-styled expert on something or other, and his article was ironically entitled Beware of Experts so it immediately caught my attention. That and the fact that accompanying it was a nice picture of some sheep.
The gist of Mr. Kristof’s argument is that experts talk as much humbug as the non-experts and he went on to prove this was indeed the case by citing some rather exciting research which I am going to briefly regurgitate here. The first example has become known as ‘The Dr. Fox Effect.’ Dr. Myron L. Fox in actuality does not exist because Dr. Myron L. Fox was an actor, employed on this occasion to give a vacuous speech on precisely fuck all to an audience of professional educators. Billed as an expert on the application of mathematics to human behaviour, Dr. Fox’s speech was full of meaningless facts and figures interspersed with some good jokes, as is the tradition on these occasions, but completely and utterly devoid of any substance whatsoever. After the speech, the attendees were asked to comment. Most were very impressed although one protested that it was “too intellectual a presentation.” This just goes to show that when presented with an alleged expert, even the sharpest minds become numb with adulation.
A different study, carried out by Professor Philip Tetlock at the University of California, Berkeley, monitored 82,000 predictions by 284 experts over a period of 20 years. He found that the expert’s predictions were only a tiny bit more accurate (less than 0.2%) than random guesses and quotes – this level of accuracy being no better that a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board. The worrying thing is that he also found that these same experts were able on average to move public opinion by three percentage points. Even more worrying is that this overall trend was not affected in the slightest by such factors as how many years experience the experts had in their chosen fields, how many letters they had after their names, or whether their expertise lay in politics or economics or pottery. They were on the telly, and that was enough. The experts who shouted and waved their arms about a lot and wore unusual clothes got booked more often than those who didn’t shout or wave their arms about a lot, or wore unusual clothes (Larry King Live on CNN is full of them.) Professor Tetlock’s book Expert political Judgement (2005) is now on the list of books I must read next.
The book I have just finished, Predictably Irrational – the Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by MIT Professor Dan Ariely, is also a revelation for the uninitiated. I’m not going to spoil it for you by quoting any of Dr. Ariely’s research here, but it is well worth a read. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the best books on human behaviour as influenced by suggestion (even though he rarely uses the word ‘suggestion’) ever written. Not as good as All in the Mind obviously, but much more succinct and to the point than any of those waffling and rambling tomes on NLP and the like. Grab yourself a copy and read it – you won’t be sorry.
Alternatively, you could take a look at Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. OK, it was written in 1852 and largely deals with the collapse of Tulip prices in Holland after what can only be described as rampant speculation by er… tulip price speculators, but nonetheless, a picture perfect example of suggestion influencing… well, you get the idea.
Just as an aside, but equally pertinent, you might be interested to know that bars and restaurants prefer to serve drinks, especially ‘shorts’ in tall glasses rather than the more squat tumblers. The reason? Pour a drink into a tall glass and the perception is that you’re getting more drink for your money. An optical illusion of course, but it works. And it helps sell more alcohol. Most of us, when we drink at home, tend to pour about 30% more alcohol into a tumbler because of the perceived volume. And it gets you pissed more quickly.
And now, for that most important and capricious of all human emotions – Motivation. Two psychologists, Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwartz, finding themselves at a loose end one day at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor decided to see if they could motivate a group of 20 students to take more regular exercise. The experiment they devised was brilliant in its simplicity. It also worked rather well. They printed off two identical sets of instructions for the exercise regime but used two different typefaces; the first, an easy to read Arial, designed to be easily read (hence its popularity in word processing) the second, an obscure and therefore unfamiliar Brush font which was much more difficult to read. The students associated the ease of reading the Arial typeface with the ease of doing push-ups. Those that received their instructions in the more difficult to read Brush font, didn’t even bother to head for the gym. The idea behind this remarkable experiment is that if the task is made to look easy, it will be easy. Song and Schwartz double-checked their results by getting the students to make Japanese Sushi rolls. The results were the same and were published in the October 2008 journal Psychological Science. Business executives who commission Time and Motion studies to improve productivity and effectiveness in the workplace will no doubt be in touch with these two.
So, if only in order to save time, let’s agree on what we all deep down know to be a fundamental truth in the first place: human beings are easily persuaded, swayed, influenced and prejudiced very easily indeed. In All in the Mind I explained how the knowledge that human beings can be influenced is used to great effect in advertising and by politicians. The really good politician, the truly excellent orator knows how to manipulate people’s thinking. Bill Clinton for instance relied heavily on the power of narratives about individuals to get his point across. So did Jesus, particularly in the Parables, which is one reason why Jesus’ stories are so easy to identify with. The one about the return of the prodigal son immediately springs to mind. These stories are easy to understand simply because they are so accessible. Or maybe that should be, they are accessible because they are easy to understand. In Bill Clinton’s case too, he used stories about individuals to make his point instantly understood – always a safer bet, because humans would much rather hear news about people than a stream of faceless facts and figures.
This is why an audience of individuals very quickly coalesces into the larger organism of a group. The tendency for humans to bunch together is not limited to the effects of cleverly constructed speeches or advertisements exhorting us to one particular course of action. Man is a gregarious creature after all, and coming together in groups has always been a matter of survival. The feeling of safety created by being part of a group, especially in the face of danger has distinct and obvious psychological advantages, not the least of which is comfort and support. Despite their basic training, soldiers often group together in the heat of battle despite the disadvantages. Listen to any old soldier talking about their wartime experiences and they all say that being in the close company of one’s friends makes the danger more endurable.
When talking about hypnosis, Direct Experience is of prime importance. You could read a million books and still be no further advanced in your knowledge than if you had successfully hypnotised one subject. With hypnosis, practice and experience counts for a lot. Nonetheless, Indirect Experience is also of importance, particularly as even experienced practitioners of the art tend to disagree about certain fundamental principles. Experience harvested from as wide a variety of sources as possible is invaluable if one is ever to learn the truth. These cumulative experiences can then be distilled into understanding.
The Disparity in Subjective Experience
I have stated before that I believe most modern day stage hypnotists to be woefully incompetent, and I stick by this view. For the majority of them, the attitude ‘it works, and that’s all that is required’ remains prevalent. Their lack of knowledge is breathtaking and this has to be a source of concern, after all, there is truth in the old adage a little knowledge can be dangerous: recent studies in psychology prove that there is always something new to learn. The disparate opinions expressed in regard to what actually constitutes hypnosis, brings us back to the example of the five blind men and the elephant. In the case of the majority of stage hypnotists, it would be the five blind idiots and the unpredictable elephant.
It is well known that no two individuals behave the same. Again, I use my own experience as a stage hypnotist to illustrate the point. Some are able to achieve a visibly deep ‘state’, displaying all the telltale signs of complete physical relaxation, rapid eye movement and body inertia, and in the main, these people are usually the best subjects – but not always. Occasionally these would-be stars of the show will not play the game when called upon to do so by the hypnotist. There’s nothing you can do about it; rather disappointingly, you have to let them go back to their seats, which of course is the last thing a stage hypnotist wants to do, especially one who makes the mistake of thinking he is there to make a point, and must prove that point at all costs.
Every stage hypnotist has at some stage (this is actually quite a regular occurrence) found himself having to deal with a subject who appears to be ‘asleep’ but who will not respond to any of the suggestions at all, despite any amount of prodding and pushing. What is different about these individuals? It is my opinion that this particular type of response, or lack of response (I call it playing dead on the battlefield) is caused by the person simply not wanting to respond. Maybe it’s because they feel embarrassed, or perhaps it’s because the experience of being hypnotised was not anything like they expected. Maybe it’s because they still feel in control and therefore not hypnotised. Whatever the reason, they lack the confidence to open their eyes and say ‘thanks, but no thanks. (More often than not it’s because they genuinely do not want to ruin the show.) People who find themselves involved in brawls often seem to feign unconsciousness. The mentality behind this behaviour is that they hope that their tormentor won’t notice them and leave them alone, or that by collapsing, they will no longer present a threat. ‘Playing dead’ is a survival strategy for some animals and humans alike. Either way, it is important for the stage hypnotist to be aware that the sooner these volunteers are sent back to their seats in the audience, the better they will feel and the better it will be for everyone concerned. The dangers of pressurising subjects on stage are well understood, but not always by stage performers.
Then, there are the individuals who, at the end of the induction, give the appearance of not being hypnotised at all, and yet are as eager to take part as the best of them. It is easy enough to explain this away by shrugging off the mystery and commenting that everyone is different and that’s just the way it goes in this game, and when do I get paid? But that explanation isn’t by any stretch of the imagination, good enough. We’re back to the age old problem – why some and not others? Is hypnosis an unusual or special state of mind or merely the focus of attention to the exclusion of everything else whereby the subject feels relaxed and comfortable enough to go along with the suggestions? The answer is not at all straightforward.
Stage hypnotists never have the opportunity (much less take the time and trouble) to talk with their subjects after a show, even though the law in the UK requires the hypnotist to remain on the premises for 60 minutes after the show has finished in case there are any problems, the idea being that the hypnotist would be available to deal with any problems that may arise by way of debriefing the terrified subject. Then the problem arises of what sort of debriefing would be available from someone who knows nothing about the background psychology and whose only hope is that the problem will probably solve itself after a good night’s sleep. Not likely if the unfortunate’s friends and relatives are egging them on. These problems are discussed in great detail in the chapter Inside Stage Hypnosis, in All in the Mind. However, these days I find myself speaking at a lot of student psychology conferences where there is an opportunity to question, to examine, to explore what it was exactly that just happened. What I am really interested in finding out is how many of the volunteers were, as stated above, relaxed and happy enough to go along with the suggestions in an environment where it was appropriate to do so, and how many felt that they were genuinely in an altered state of consciousness, one in which they felt they had abdicated control?
For this enquiry to be scientific, one must be careful not to inadvertently implant suggestions that could influence responses either way. But here’s the thing: sometimes I start the demonstration by telling the students that there really is no such thing as hypnosis, that it’s all just a matter of response to suggestion, and that no one is going to fall asleep, no one is going to lose consciousness and so forth. Other times I purposely forget to mention this and go for it anyway, hypnosis being presented as a foregone conclusion. The big surprise is that so far, and it matters not one whit which way I do it, the results are always the same. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell the little darlings that this is not an altered state of consciousness, that they will remain in ultimate control at all times, always around 30% to 40% report that they did feel as if something profound and highly unusual had taken place.
Ah, I hear you say; but surely this experience, by its very nature, is purely subjective – one man’s state of altered consciousness or if you like ‘trance’ is another man’s simple relaxation – it just felt a bit different because it’s the first time they tried it. And I suppose it all comes down to individual perception of what is actually happening. The problem is, all these volunteers are smart, intelligent psychology students, not about to be bamboozled by the arch bamboozler himself. And yet it does not matter how deeply one delves into their subjective experience, there remains that 30 to 40 percent who will stick by it.
So in the interests of completeness, I devised another little test. I ‘lock’ a volunteer’s arm in a teapot-like position and offer him a hundred English pounds if he can then move it. So far, I have not lost any money, and I have done this quite a few times now. Even when I say that the audience would rather them have the money, and they need not feel guilty about taking it, it makes no difference. Admittedly, I only do this after I have had chance to select the most responsive and suggestible – I’m not completely stupid!
Again, in the interests of the search for knowledge, I frequently seek out those who tell me they really felt like they were in a ‘deep trance’ and talk to them on their own, in other words, where there are no pressures, about their experience. Often, because of the nature of the environment, some come up to me at the end to discuss it. And in an effort not to appear intimidating or pressurising, I often send a young lay to enquire for me. The result is the same. I could understand it if some students stuck to their guns to save face for whatever reason, but every single one of them?
I am inexorably drawn to the conclusion that there are at least two, and possibly more, vastly different phenomena going on here, all brought about by the same relaxation process and that inadvertently, these phenomena have been grouped together under the umbrella of hypnosis, without much second thought. Perhaps it is only after one has taken the trouble to find out does this disparity in states come to one’s notice, but now I am aware of it, it makes sense. If indeed there are widely different things going on, that would explain, now I think back on it, all the unpredicted responses over the years. It is no longer enough to accept that ‘it just works most of the time because it does’ as a reasonable or rational explanation of what we are doing. This is something that needs to be looked into as a matter of urgency.
I care very much about what I do for a living, and I believe the time has come to expand the boundaries of research in the hope that the mystery may yet be solved. Unfortunately, unless I put together a proposal entitled Hypnosis and its Effect on Climate Change it is highly unlikely that I will get a grant to explore this further and so it will just have to be a matter of plodding on regardless, adding to my own experience and hopefully coming up with better answers.
