Dollyboy
Posts: 1
Joined: 10/7/2011 Status: offline
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I have some hands-on experience, as I am actively studying hypnocoaching, and preparing for a NGH (National Guild of Hypnotists) exam... And well, I'll be completely frank here. Lots of hypnotists like to weave magical tales around their craft, as if it was illusionism, and the magic needed to be kept up. Hypnosis is NOT magic. It's psychology. Now I'll be the bad magician who tells the secret behind the trick. The trick they do on stage shows with suspending someone by their neck and heels is nothing special, you can do it if you have the guts. It's called planking and students are doing it all around the globe. If you aren't athetic at all, I'll give you the easy route. Lay down on your back, and then lift yourself up by flexing your muscles. You'll be suspended by your skull and your heels. Congrats. There are several mechanisms behind the SOCIAL phenomenon that we call hypnotism. I'll go through some of them. Mechanism #1: Social agreement and group pressure. You know how a person should act under hypnosis. To do otherwise would be breaking a social deal. It's like as if you sat in a restaurant, and then when the waiter comes to ask what to bring you, you stood up and left. Not something you normally do. Mechanism #2: Dissociation of responsibility. In hypnosis, the hypnotist constantly reinforces the fact that he or she is in control, and is giving commands. The social perception of hypnosis stresses this as well. Not being responsible for one's actions can lead to crazy stuff, just google the Milgram Experiment. For example, lots of people love to show themselves off and make fools of themselves. They just need an EXCUSE to do so. Like getting drunk, getting high, or well, getting hypnotized and ordered to act like chickens. It's not like the MUST act like chickens, they are actually releived that they can act like total idiots and yet avoid being branded as idiots. Mechanism #3: Intensive rapport and communication. In hypnosis, a very powerful rapport is built up between two people. AFAIK, this effect is mostly based on the "hardware implementation" of social skills in our head. You can experience these hardwired responses by noticing that when people smile at you, you are likely to smile back... Or when someone yawns or sneezes, you may get the urge to do the same. This is the reason that most aspies think they cannot be hypnotized - they can be, but this effect is a lot weaker on them. This allows for wonderful stuff. Like in hypnosis, you can VERY EASILY make someone fall in love with you. It's not enough by far to "fuck someone up", but totally enough for bitter heartbreaks... Mechanism #4: Shifting of attention. Hypnosis uses the shifting of attention a lot. Well, at least it should. Most hypnotists don't know shit about how to properly use it, and still manage with the above three quite well. By directing someone's attention, clinical hypnotists can actually use hypnosis as a way of anesthetizing patients for operations. This is powerful stuff, and as BrainCoder said, it can be used to find areas in someone's personality that are accepting of an idea, and exclusively give it control. You can make people do things this way that they will genuinely regret afterwards. But hey, it's not different at all from what most men experience when they are horny. Ever got that guilty feeling after having an orgasm, that you have done things for sex that are TOTALLY out of your normal conduct? Well this is pretty much the effect we are talking about. Still not enough to "fuck someone up" - or well, that depends on what you mean by "fucked up". Enough to make a closet homosexual become a total gayboy, and maybe later regret it bitterly. Enough to make a shy girl become a submissive painslut, and be totally disillusioned and burned out in a year, not wanting to ever hear about bdsm, ever again. Totally not enough to destroy lives. Mechanism #X: The biggest one of them all. The Other Human Being. Strange, inexplicable and scary things can happen in hypnosis. People may "not come back" easily, stick with suggestions for a long time as if they were etched into their souls, change their personalities, go crazy, whatever. IT'S NOT HYPNOSIS that did this to them. It's their own mind. You didn't push them over the edge. In hypnosis, they saw a good opportunity and JUMPED. They have been totally fucking batshit MAD all along, just held some semblance of a social personality to fit in. This is an extremely small minority, but still, this is why you must be ABSOLUTELY on top of your game before doing hypnosis. The crazy guy/girl may actually go batshit on you, and while we all know it's not hypnosis that did this, a federal judge may see it otherwise. And if you're not a psychiatrist, you simply NEVER hypnotize anyone with a known or suspected mental disorder.
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