CARTA DE CONFORMIDAD

When a man who bills himself as a hypnotist makes grown men dance around or impersonate Elvis on stage, we call his subjects ‘hypnotized’. When cult members are made to act against their best interests, even to the point of suicide, we might refer to them as ‘hypnotized’. Yet paradoxically we are told that we cannot be hypnotized to do anything against our will. We could also use the same word to describe someone being talked into hallucinating, or undergoing surgery without anaesthetic. You might think a participant on my show who is acting unusually is under some sort of ‘hypnosis’; certainly I am often described as a ‘hypnotist’ by journalists. Business seminars sometimes teach ‘hypnotism’ or ‘hypnotic language patterns’ to their delegates to improve their influential power, and internet seduction courses offer similar promises to lonely males (as far as I’m aware). Characters in films are induced by sinister characters to commit crimes – they are ‘hypnotized’. In February 2005 the Los Angeles Times reported that on the streets Russian gypsy ‘hypnotists’ were making people hand over their belongings without question. We also refer to recordings of relaxing music mixed with empowering suggestions as ‘hypnosis tapes’, and we might talk of being ‘hypnotized’ by dreamy music or a candle-lit church service. Some people tell me they don’t ‘believe in’ hypnosis; others seem to use the word to describe almost anything.

Is there one type of hypnosis that is real, and other cases where the word is just used metaphorically? How can listening to a relaxation tape and being made to commit a crime be the same thing? Does hypnosis require a ‘trance’ state? If someone is put into a special trance and told to unconsciously carry out something when they awake, can that be the same as suggestions given in a normal waking state?

There are currently two major clinical schools of thought with regard to what hypnosis is. The first promotes it as a ‘special state’. Paramount to the logic of this school of thought is the idea that the hypnotized person is able to achieve things a non-hypnotized person cannot. If it can be shown that there is nothing special at all about hypnosis, then this line of thinking becomes redundant. Pitched against these ‘state’ theorists are the ‘non-state’ theorists who argue that in fact the various phenomena of hypnosis can be explained quite happily without thinking of ‘trances’ or ‘hypnosis’ as meaning anything special or peculiar or akin to a special state of mind. Their thesis would fall if the ‘state’ theorists could prove that something unique happens to the person who is hypnotized. Occasionally, one reads in the paper that hypnosis has been ‘proved’ to be such and such, or that a subject hooked up to an EEG machine shows this or that brain activity when in a trance, but these are largely press releases from the ‘state’ theorists who have an inherently more media-friendly view of the field. Such articles are invariably a little sensational and, despite them, the ‘non-state’ theory is becoming the received way of understanding what hypnosis is. And of course, we must remember that it is largely up to the ‘state’ theorists to prove their point, not the ‘non-state’ guys to try to prove a negative.

It may seem odd to think that all the bizarre phenomena we might associate with hypnosis can be explained in normal, non-hypnotic terms. Don’t people suddenly give up smoking? Act like lunatics on stage? Enjoy eating onions for our entertainment? Even undergo surgical operations quite painlessly? The key to understanding how this might be is first to forget the idea that there is any one special thing called ‘hypnosis’. I tend to see it like ‘magic’, in the sense of conjuring. We know magic isn’t real: it just boils down to a diverse set of techniques expertly employed by a skilled and charming entertainer with a goatee. He may palm cards, use gaffs and duplicates, employ special cabinets and secret twins, or execute a cover-pass while tabling the deck and keep a break with the third phalange of his left pinkie. Methods might be fascinating, simple or stupid, but the effect is the thing. However, we use the term ‘magic’ to describe the end result. The ‘magic’ is the final effect when all those methods are combined to form a particular type of performance. The word is an easy way of describing the mixture of methods and techniques the performer employs (‘he does magic’), and also gives the spectator a word to describe her own experience of the performance, which might range from puzzlement to utter transportation (‘it was

magic’). The word is useful because we understand by it that a certain thing has taken place which breaks down into different mundane components, but the end result is what matters.

I think it is rather the same with hypnosis. The hypnotist uses certain methods, or the subject shows certain behaviours, which when put together create an overall effect we can label as ‘hypnosis’. We can comfortably call it that without needing a single definition of what is really going on. Also, in the same way that a magician might secretly apply ‘magical’ methods or trickery outside a performance environment to bring about some desired result we wouldn’t really think of as magic (clever shoplifting brought about through misdirection, for example – we’ve all done it), so too, seemingly, hypnotic techniques can be employed covertly in a way that might also make us question whether there is a better word to describe them in that context. ‘Suggestive techniques’, for example, could be a better term for what might be used in a situation where ‘hypnosis’ is apparently happening but the obvious trappings of trance and so on are absent. Equally, in the same way that magic is easier to recognize or define when one has a clear interaction between a magician and spectators, so too hypnosis becomes easiest to label as such when there is a person or agency (sometimes a recorded voice) playing the part of the hypnotist and another person in the role of subject.

So what actually does go on then? What is the nature of that interaction if it is not strictly ‘hypnotic’ in the same way a trick is not strictly ‘magical’? The fascination with this question is one that has occupied me from when I first began using relaxation techniques on my fellow students. Whatever it was clearly relied on the expectation of my subject rather than any special powers I might have developed, but how might that lead to some of the phenomena I was producing? I was able to convince some highly susceptible friends of mine that I was invisible, to the point where I would have them freaking out at floating objects in their bedrooms. Surely no amount of mere expectation could create such an event?

There are real problems with being able to tell what actually happens. To return to our ‘magic’ analogy, imagine we are a race of aliens trying to work out what the experience of magic is. (Before certain factions of my fan-base get too excited, let me clarify that I don’t believe there are real aliens trying to work this out. For a start, they’re too busy impersonating our world leaders.) What would we have to go on? We could watch some magic ourselves, but a) it might not really do anything for us, and b) it would tell us only what our own experience is. We could run tests where we interview people who have witnessed magic tricks and try to find out what it was like. Certainly people say ‘it was magic’ and ‘he did some magic on me’ in the same way they say, ‘I was hypnotized’ and ‘he hypnotized me’, so certainly this holds as an analogy. However, we would run into a few problems. Firstly, the range of responses to a trick might be enormous. Some people might believe it was real magic; others might not believe it was real ‘magic’ as such, but might believe that the magician possesses an extraordinary psychological or even psychic skill. Some might find it an irritating puzzle; others might have seen right through it but feel it would be rude to say so. What one might find quite commonly, though, would be the experience of people being happy to play along ‘as if’ it were magic, to the point where they are happy to use the word ‘magic’ in describing it. Certainly they wouldn’t want to upset the magician by telling him they didn’t think the trick was real: that would be spoiling the game. It would seem a very tricky thing to investigate (pun initially not intended then noticed on later reviewing and intentionally kept, but only after insertion of this parenthesized clarification).

Similarly with hypnosis, it is very hard to tell what a subject’s experience consists of. On stage, a common finale is for the hypnotist to make himself invisible (as I’ve mentioned I did with my friends) and then articulate puppets to elicit strong reactions from the punters on stage. This is often termed a ‘negative hallucination’, where the subject is instructed not to see something that is there, instead of vice versa. It obviously does not entail really seeing through anything or anyone, but it is presumed that the subject might hallucinate what he knows is behind the ‘invisible’ object to fill in the blank he imagines. Generally this good-natured fun can provide a fascinating end to an enjoyable and intelligent show, and can be every

bit as entertaining as the one where the woman kissed the vibrator thinking it was Brad Pitt.

I also used to finish with the invisibility suggestion, but as I would generally follow the performances with an informal chat about it all, I would always ask the subjects what they had actually experienced. Out of the, say, ten or so subjects who were given the suggestion, the responses might break down in the following way. Two had obviously been able to see me and had been openly separated from the rest of the group. Two or three would swear that the puppet and chair were moving all on their own and that they could not see me, even though they may have guessed I was somehow remotely responsible for the chaos that ensued. The remaining five or six would generally say they were aware I was there moving the objects, but that something in them would keep trying to blank me out, and they could only act as if I were invisible.

This is a very interesting state of affairs. It begs the next question: is there a qualitative difference between what happened to the people who knew I was there but made themselves ignore me and those who said they really didn’t see me? The former case sounds as if the subject was concerned with complying with my requests, albeit at a very immediate gut level, due perhaps to a certain pressure to conform. This ‘compliance’ explanation is an important one. It is not the same as consciously ‘faked’ behaviour, but neither is it a special product of a real trance. The case where I was apparently not seen at all seems to suggest a genuine negative hallucination. But how do we know that the latter group didn’t see me? Only because they testified so. They were being given every chance to ‘own up’, but clearly we can read their answer as simply more compliance. If you are going to fully enter into an imaginative game where you really try to experience the hypnotist as invisible, and then later the hypnotist asks you what you experienced, is it not reasonable to expect that one of the following situations might then occur?

1. The subject is a little embarrassed at the idea of owning up to not having quite experienced what was being asked for, and prefers to insist that it was real.

2. The subject is prone to convincing herself of all sorts of things in everyday life as very suggestible people tend to do, and really did convince herself at the time that it was entirely real. This is preferable for her to the thought that she was freaking out on stage for no good reason.

3. The subject has entered into the hypnotic experience with enthusiasm and has enjoyed being a star of the show. Now she has a chance to outshine the others by demonstrating that she was indeed the most successful on stage: she really experienced it, while most of the others did not.

Now, the moment we talk about compliance, or less-than-honest testimonies, it sounds as if the subjects are merely faking. This does not have to be the case. There is a wide range of possible experiences that can explain the behaviour of the subject on stage (or in the laboratory) which may or may not involve simple faking:

1. Firstly, there is the case where the subject is indeed faking, and is being encouraged to fake by the hypnotist. In many commercial or cabaret shows, the hypnotist is interested only in putting on an entertaining evening. The professional will happily whisper to a participant to ‘play along’ rather than have the show fail. Paul McKenna tells the true (I hope) story about a successful hypnotist (you know who you are) who was having problems one night with his subjects. To remedy the situation, he whispered off-mic to the most extrovert guy on stage, ‘Play along and I’ll give you fifty quid after the show.’ The subject decided to act the part for the cash, and soon became a spectacular fool on stage, accepting anything the hypnotist said and lifting the show immensely. At the end of the act, the hypnotist sent him back to his seat, then pretended to re-hypnotize him as he sat back with his friends. He clicked his fingers and the stooge dutifully acted as if he had fallen asleep. ‘When you wake up,’

the entertainer declared into the stage mic, ‘you will believe that I owe you fifty pounds. And the more your friends tell you I don’t, the more annoyed and insistent you’ll become that I do! Wakey wakey . . .’ Just love that story.

2. The subject is faking, but only because he feels too embarrassed to call a halt to his performance. In a full theatrical show, or where the hypnotist is rather intimidating and deals unpleasantly with those who ‘fail’ to fall under his spell, it is very difficult to put your hand up and say, ‘Actually, you know what? It’s not working on me.’ This is just the result of social pressure, and happens quite a lot.

3. The subject is really trying to experience the suggestions as real and is helping the process along by doing his best not to ‘block’ them and really ‘going for it’. In effect he is still acting them out, and playing the part of the good subject, but he will be more confused as to whether he was hypnotized or not. More often than not he will imagine that he must have been under the hypnotist’s power, as the show certainly swept him along. Classically, he will say that he ‘could have stopped at any moment’. This third option is, I think, quite a common experience.

4. The subject is again very happy to help the process along by acting out the suggestions regardless of any strange compulsion to do so, but at the same time is the sort of person who can easily ‘forget himself’ and seize the permission granted by the hypnotic demonstration to act outrageously. Perhaps this is helped also by being the sort of person who is naturally effusive and who tends to accept unquestioningly what he is told by authority figures or people he has a strong rapport with. Afterwards, it is more comfortable for him to put his actions down to an amazing experience he can’t explain, credit the hypnotist fully and believe he was in a special state. Most probably he will believe the hypnotist has his perceived ability anyway, so it’s an easy step to take.

Whether or not this is all there is to hypnosis, it is certainly possible to explain what happens in ordinary terms without recourse to the idea of a ‘special state’.

It is clearly remarkably difficult to defy the instructions of an authority figure. My favourites amongst you chose to watch The Heist and will have seen the re-enactment of Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience experiment of the 1960s. In both the original and our version,*1 the subject comes to the laboratory and meets a scientist and a middle-aged confederate of the scientist who is posing as another subject. Each subject chooses his role as either ‘teacher’ or ‘learner’ in a rigged draw, and the confederate becomes the ‘learner’. The unsuspecting teacher then watches the bogus learner get strapped to electrodes designed to give electric shocks. The learner, according to plan, informs the scientist that he has some heart trouble. The teacher is then taken into another room and sat in front of a terrifying machine that can apparently deliver shocks to the learner from a harmless 15 volts to a deadly 450 volts in 15-volt increments. Labels underneath the voltages describe the shocks as ranging from ‘Slight Shock’ to ‘Danger: Severe Shock’, and then to a sinister ‘XXX’. The teacher then asks memory questions to the learner through a microphone and has to shock the learner each time he gives a wrong answer. The shock is to increase by 15 volts with each incorrect response.

In reality, of course, the learner-confederate receives no shocks at all. However, in some versions of the test, taped screams and refusals to carry on are played from the other room in response to the supposed punishments. That is, until the learner suddenly becomes silent, and the highest shocks are then delivered to a horrible unresponsiveness from the other room.

Milgram’s test, familiar to any psychology A level student, was designed to see how many people would continue administering electrical doses to the point where they were clearly lethal just because the scientist was insisting that they continue. Psychologists were asked to predict the results, and they guessed that one-tenth of 1 per cent of subjects would continue with the experiment to this point. The extraordinary result, which has been sustained through re-creations of the test, is that around 60 per cent

of people will go as far as to deliver the lethal shock. Not, that is, without much sweating or trembling and frequent complaints to the scientist, but still they carry on.*2