The Transparent Hypnotist

The hypnotist looms before you. Maybe you are lucky and you have been given a few pointers on how to relax or maybe you are still a bit jittery with nervous energy. Maybe you are even wondering why you are here. You have been given instructions to hold your head straight and level. You are then asked to move only your eyes so that they are looking up toward your eyebrows. Now take it a step farther and roll your eyes up even more, as though you are looking up into the crown of your head. Perhaps your eyes are now feeling tired, maybe even slightly strained, but you must keep your eyes in that position for a few more moments and there is one last thing you must do before this hypnotic eye torture is over. With your eyes in that same position, begin to close your eyes. No, do not lower your eye balls. They must remain looking up as you close your eyes.

Okay, take a break for a moment. This little exercise is one that some hypnotist use to get an idea about your hypnotizability. My own training did not cover this approach, but it appears in various hypnosis text and is apparently still used by a few people. I was reminded of it several Monday’s ago when reading an interview about another hypnotist who uses it. So, it seemed like a good idea to really look at it.

This hypnosis susceptibility test was created by Herbert Spiegel, MD, a clinical professor at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Basically, a hypnotist will look at the white area (sclera) of the eye between the lower eyelid and the cornea that can be seen at the end of the process described above. According to Spiegel, the more white space, judged on a scale between one and four (if there is a squint involved this is evaluated and the points added to the score), the more susceptible a person is to hypnosis. This method works 75% of the time, he said in an article in Time Magazine (1977).

I am not sure why I did not learn this little bit of historic hypnosis susceptibility (does anyone teach it now?), but I suspect there were some issues to it. There is the whole you-cannot-be-hypnotized-if-you-do-not-want-to-be thing, so even if you do well with the eye test and do not want to be hypnotized, well, this test is meaningless. And even if you do not do well on the eye roll test, but want to be hypnotized you will still get positive results.

Whether you use this tool as a hypnotist, it does show up in various inductions (very clever). There is a particularly nice one mentioned in Kaplan and Sadock’s Synopsis of Psychiatry. Hypnotists, you should check it out.

So, have you just asked someone in your vicinity to watch you do this and look at the white space? What are the results?

The next stop in our discussion of what happens during a hypnosis session. Last we discussed intake processes.

So, you have filled out the intake form and you sit, maybe twiddling your thumbs, drinking a cup of tea and wondering what comes next. The hypnotist shows no signs of moving and seems like he or she is just chatting with you.

“Great,” you think, “I did not come here for idle chatter. Let’s get on with it.”

The things is, you are getting on with it. This is the part of a hypnosis session called the pre-talk. It is extremely important. This is the opportunity for you to ask all the questions that maybe circling your mind, and you should ask them. Even if it seems like a silly questions (or the dreaded stupid question) - ASK IT! If the hypnotist makes you feel bad for asking anything, well, you should just get up and thank him or her for their time and get the heck out of there.

This is also the time when the hypnotist will give you more background on his or her processes, maybe a little background on the subject of what has brought you there, and will learn about you. Your expectations of the session may be discussed and you may find yourself doing some little tasks that help the hypnotist learn about how you process information. Are you a visualizer, more audibly reactive, or Kinesthetic, to name a few? They may also determine where you fall on an analytical scale. We will talk about this next in an upcoming post.

There are many hypnotist who feel the pre-talk is the most important part of the session. Not only does it lay the ground work and set the tone for the hypnotic work, it often begins the suggestion work. There is often a form of hypnosis at play during this time. It is called conversational hypnosis. Now do not panic. This is no different than many conversations you have through out your life, especially the conversations that influence you to behave a certain way. It is employed in advertising and debate. In fact, you have probably done it to others (been the hypnotist in this case) without ever knowing it.

This is a good stopping place here because it deserves a post in its own right. So stayed tuned. Shortly we will cover the concept of analytic types, conversational hypnosis, and suggestion work in traditional hypnosis.

Over the past weekend I received a package from Vat19.com, whose tag line is curiously awesome gifts - such as a Wall Mount Bottle Opener or other unique toys, of which they sent me to play with and try out. The three items were fake snow (a tiny package of white powder that you add to water and the powder has a mild eruption, creating fine granular looking snow), small candles that have flame colors that match the candle wax color, and a DVD of fireplaces all ablaze. An interesting lot. I had thought I might create an Ellie animation involving all, but my time is too limited at the moment.

I needed to pick one to write about here and though the snow was entertaining, it was such as quick eruption that ensued that I have not been able to effortlessly include it in a hypnosis session (someone who is not so one track mind probably could, but I cannot seem to walk and hypnotalk at the same time, so it would be tough). The candles were great, but that is so classically a candle flame induction, it did not seem creative enough. So that left the video.

After playing it on my computer for awhile (it has a lovely soundtrack), it really is almost as hypnotic as a real fire place. What I learned is that I am drawn to fireplaces because of the warmth factor, so this video does not even come close to helping with that, but it could make for an induction. There are a variety of scenes to chose from, each with their own appeal. The Christmas scene would be good because there is an added element of a toy train traveling through the picture on occasion. This could be a deepener (when you see the train coming through, you begin to relax more and more each time). Another interesting scene on the video is a psychedelic fire that twist and turns and is rather warped. It is strange enough that I think it would hold the conscious mind in awe long enough to use it as an induction. And then there are the simple basic, repetitive flames, perhaps my favorite. Again this could function like a candle flame induction.

So, you may be asking “why not just use a candle?” Good question. So here is my answer: one is often in places that do not allow candles. That is the perfect condition for this video (provided you have a television and DVD player or computer handy). And what about airplanes? Ever been sitting next to a fearful soul that you wanted to help? I can see a lot of potential for this in that situation. Sure you could just do a verbal session, but this would give them something to really focus on. Provided there are no fire phobias…

Perhaps scripts is not the correct word. Notes, maybe.

When I get a new client, as they make the appointment, I immediately start jotting notes and putting together potential ideas (I suspect most of us work this way). And then I go to my other client notes and look at what I did in the past for similar situations. Most of the time it becomes a search for metaphors that were helpful in the past or stories to embed. Once found, these are inevitably tossed out and new ones come to mind. It is as though the voice of my intuition says, “No, that will never do for this client.” Then new ideas come to mind, and most of the time they are a lot more fitting.

With that in mind, it seems like scripts become obscure directly after they are written. There are some that are truly brilliant and may do well most of the time, but it really makes me queasy when I see courses out there that are nothing more than teaching students how to use an index to find the right script.