The skill of perspective taking can be particularly effective in engaging skeptics who may be turned off by “soft” concepts like psychological safety. This approach can help build psychological safety for creative, collaborative problem-solving in the workplace. The authors of the book, Amy C. Edmondson and Per Hugander, share a perspective-taking exercise that can help bring diverse teams together.
To engage skeptics in culture interventions, leaders should change the soft language from “psychologicalsafety” to “action-oriented perspective taking” and watch their engagement grow. This approach can help build teams’ psychological safety for creative, collaborative problem-solving.
In the context of culture and innovation concerns, leaders are meeting employee demands for more flexible work arrangements. To engage skeptics, leaders should encourage everyone to be as objective as possible, focusing on evidence and examples and refraining from judgments and conclusions.
Introducing perspective taking as a skill offers an alternative way to engage skeptics and has been shown to drive performance in diverse teams. By incorporating perspective-taking as a skill, leaders can help build psychological safety for creative, collaborative problem-solving in the workplace.
📹 How To Work With Skeptics
Just some thoughts on how to deal with skeptics of appreciative interventions from my experience of working with organisations.
📹 A skeptic’s deep dive into hypnosis
You’re getting very sleeeeeeeeepy. Sleeeeeeeeeeepyyyyyyy. In one form or another, hypnotic trances have been interwoven …
Hypnosis was used on me and my brother when we were young children and the hypnotist did tell us to forget certain things, and it took us about 5 years to regain our memories of it and regain control of our own minds. When our parents found out, they called the hypnotist to return because they’d used the hypnotist to keep us under control and from exposing their crimes. We both refused to go under hypnosis then (we were 8 and 9 years old) so he arranged with our parents to return at 3:45am and sit me up in bed and hypnotize me while I was in a more suggestible half asleep state of mind, then he went to my brother’s house and did the same. Although I have been gradually breaking that up, I still have ongoing lasting effects on my life decades later. I’m really angry about it because I didn’t want that. It’s like mind-rape or -rape. Authority had a lot to do with it, especially when we were 3 and 4 years old. We stood up to the authority when we were 8 and 9 years old and refused to be hypnotized. However, when he was telling my parents that he would come over at 3:45am, he mentioned something about rem sleep and brain waves (theta? gamma?) This scientific article is interesting. Something did happen to my brother and I. It had started out with Mom asking for hypnosis to help her quit smoking/ cussing and dealing with stress. My brother acted out the post hypnotic suggestion that was given to mom, so she had the hypnotist return to hypnotize him and undo that. Meanwhile I was also perusal nearby and I may have also been accidentally hypnotized at the same time.
I use hypnosis within a non-state, neo-braidian theoretical framework – psychosocial that is – and in conjunction with CBT, that is Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) among other things. I found your article accurate and very informative and kudos to you for this scientific divulgation effort. I wish more of this quality content could be found in the field of psychology today! You actually inspired me to go and read Braid, to whom we owe the word “hypnosis”, as well as “psychophysiology”, I always wanted to read his diaries and collected works, but never got around to do so. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I’m currently doing CBT with Hypnotherapy for personal stuff. I’m two months in, and it is working well for me. I love everything shared in this article. My therapist shared the issue with using hypnosis for smoking (not my issue). Totally agree that this is not for everyone, but I have tried just about everything else. My sessions are wonderful. Note that I have had meditation practices my whole life. To me, hypnosis is a guided state of meditation. I love it. Great article essay. Thank you.
I remember there was a hypnotipst during my college freshman year. I volunteer just to try it out. The hypnosis by no means worked, but i remember thinking id feel bad for just ruining the guys gig so i just went along with it. I always wondered about any time id see people “hypnotised” on tv or whatver if theyre doing the same thing lol
I got rid of a lot of childhood trauma with hypnotherapy. It helps, it works if you want it to, iIt is all up to you. How badly do you want it and are you really willing to give up the trauma by accepting the change. A lot of people don’t want to, they fight it. You/they don’t want to lose the sympathy, I have a sister like this she is the perennial victim. I didn’t want sympathy or anyone’s pity, i wanted the pain to stop. It depends on how much trauma you are willing to give up. The therapist only tells you what you ask her to say prior to the sessions, it is a list YOU give her/ him of what you want to change, remove or reprogram . If they give you a post hypnotic suggestion, it is in keeping with your wishes. You are in control, you don’t lose your mind like they show on TV you are fully awake, but relaxed. Kind of like when you wake up and are in that “soft” phase half awake/half asleep, it’s then that you yourself can reprogram your mind. Just be careful what you say, think this out during the previous day just before you go to sleep is best. What do I want to say, what do I want to change? You are as suggestible as you want to be.
My greatest gripe with hypnosis is that it’s so incredibly easy to abuse. Human memories are easy to manipulate when you’re 100% awake and conscious about what’s happening to you. Hypnosis just makes the process that easier. Remember Satanic Panic? It was brought by fake memories “recovered” by a dude who would sleep with his “patient” All you have to do is asking leading questions. Instead of “did something happened that day” you ask “what happened to you that day” and brain starts generating a story. You can traumatize someone by creating fake trauma
This was a good dive into hypnotherapy. I was in college (psychology) during the late 1980s and also witnessed all the ads for a one-day smoking cessation “clinic” held at local hotels, etc. I looked upon them with skepticism too. I have used hypnosis and hypnotic techniques as a counselor, but in addition to other, on-going, types of therapy. A “one day and done” type of thing will usually not work. And even if it is a role-playing exercise, if it leads to good change and improvements in client happiness, I am happy about that.
This is the first article I’ve ever seen from you/this website, and when you said “until next time, I’m Micah-” I went: “what!? No! I’m Micah! What kind of hypnosis did you do on me to get my name!?”😂 In all seriousness though, this was so well put together! I’m definitely going to have to subscribe if all your articles are this well done!!!💛
44m “There is some research showing hypnotisability is associated with absorption, like someone’s ability to become really engrossed in activities” This is key. A problem I have with the article is that it seems to define the phrase “altered state of consciousness” so narrowly as to disconnect it from what people generally mean by that phrase. I think it’s a mistake to require an altered state of consciousness to be distinct and sharply delineated in order to qualify as such. We can get a better handle on the subject by examining how hypnosis relates to other states of consciousness that we experience in our everyday lives, of which absorption is an excellent example.
OMG HOW DID I NOT SEE THE AD COMING YOU LITERALLY SAID BRILLIANT SEVERAL TIMES AND I DIDN’T CATCH ON JVKDJDHRKFJF More seriously – all this really just seems to confirm how I already felt about hypnotherapy. For context, I was sent to a hypnotherapist to fix my sleep (because it’s better than actually trying to find the root issue, eh?). After the first session, she told my mom that I was very receptive to hypnosis. After the second session, she just looked confused. The first time, I had mobilized a huge amount of willpower to sit perfectly still. I had gone along with her suggestions and metaphors, and stepped outside very much intending to use the tool she had given me during the session to help me sleep. Next time I showed up, I hadn’t used the tool once. It had completely slipped my mind – just like every. fucking. time. i did something like that – bc what she had suggested was something I had tried over and over again my whole life, and it had never worked a single time after I first established it. That second session, I sat down, and I was unable to mobilize as much effort to sit still, and couldn’t concentrate one bit. Years later, I have realized I can use meditation to put myself in that ‘state’ on my own in fifteen minutes when it had taken her an hour to take me there. And turns out my sleep issues are mostly bedtime procrastination, and the fix so far seems to be to do more during the day so I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on life when bedtime comes around. Wow.
I would really love to know more about self-hypnosis, especially as it relates to pain management. I’ve always been interested, but to access a therapist cost money which, as a disabled person, I’ve never managed to collect the appropriate amount. Great article! Thank you! I love a skeptict’s take, even if the have a turnaround. Or, maybe especially if they have a turnaround. 🙂
Nice llittle entry level article into this subject, you did well, and a healthy dose of skeptisim (critical thinking) is always “de rigueur” I totally agree. However, the more you delve into the mysteries of the mind/body equation, the more there is still to discover it seems. Shoud you decide to do a part two, may I suggest you talk about Milton H. Erickson. I followed his example in my early days as a therapist before moving on to another ancient technique called Directed Waking Dreams. Robert Dessoille and Henri Corbin are names to look up in that field.
I went to help out a friend who was training one time and chose to be put off eating crisps,. It worked for a while, but after a month I was happily munching again. Two weeks after, I had bought a bag and the taste was unpleasant- I binned the whole bag. I had visualized the crisps and then replaced the mental image with one of a block of lard. I was sceptical, but also willing to give it a go. Interesting topic!
People, you go in and out of trance all day long: perusal tv? you’re in a trance, playing computer games? you’re in a trance, driving your car? you’re in a trance, staring into space disassociated? you’re in a trance, concentrating on anything? you’re in a trance. So trance states are normal and nothing to be afraid of. Hypnosis is ONE means to entering a trance state for a specific purpose. And if you don’t want other people putting you into a materialist propaganda trance and programming you to desperately want things you don’t need – TURN OFF THE TV.
hi i came across your website a few days ago and immediately subscribed. I honestly thought that you were a big youtuber with 1+ million subs just from the quality of your articles alone. what i wanted to say is keep making articles theyre awesome and im sure many others besides me love them as well!! just wanted to say that😁 (sorry english isnt my native language)
I think hypnosis has to do with two things, how “good” we are at dreaming and how socially conscious we are. Have anyone researched if people who don’t care about social standards are easier or harder to hypnotize? Simply put, I think if we care a lot about what others think we are easier to hypnotize.
When I was a child I helped my father push his car out of the snow. He couldn’t shift it on his own so just thought, “Why not ask the son” without expecting much, I was probably only about seven or so. I imagined, I had a very active imagination, that I was a superhero. Together we shifted that car and my dad was shocked. Ever since then, I didn’t think myself special, I knew I’d accessed something in imagination and became fascinated by the psychology of it. Hypnosis and suggestion, given that the study showing participants could act hypnotised through essentially play proves it relates to imagination.. It seems related to that ability we have to “virtualise” reality in order to solve problems, imagine new outcomes or push ourselves out of negative patterns enforced by our material conditions.
I really appreciate your honesty on this. I’m thinking about whether EMDR (the parts with evidence), meditative practices including breath practices and hypnosis have similar mechanisms. You mentioned theta waves and I was reminded of alpha-theta neurofeedback (increases theta waves like hypnosis) which is used for processing memories as well. I’m not up-to-date on the literature but I have always wondered how much of the effect of neurofeedback on ADHD in kids was the process which requires sitting still and focusing. This starts to bleed into perusal a sunset and other focusing practices.
I learned that some therapists conflate the term hypnosis with guided meditation. It’s kind of weird but…. some of them really do mean guided meditation. A therapist did it with me and I had the same thoughts as you. But again, it was just me sitting there counting the breaths with my eyes closed. So yeah, it depends on the context.
I was fully prepared to be super-irritated by this article, but this was great, very fair. I think non-state theory is definitely where it’s at, and that the experience of the classical “hypnotic trance” can be a byproduct of suggestion and expectation, but also not required. I’m glad you mentioned the ability to train receptivity to hypnosis as well, that is something really cool. In most hypnosis as I learned it, there was a conception that anyone could be hypnotized, but coming from a state-based theory it was more of the hypnotist being skillful in finding out how to do it, rather than explicitly training the client, which is so cool. I know people who have gone from almost zero hypnotizability to being highly hypnotizable. For an analysis of hypnosis and memory, Daniel Craig’s “Memory, Trauma, Treatment and the Law” goes VERY deep into the debate over recovered memories, how both sides of the debate generally make simplistic arguments for political reason, and looks at the science itself, and looks into both usefulness (or not) in therapy and factual reliability. Have to admit, I was surprised about smoking. I was definitely under the impression that it was helpful. That’s too bad.
Take for instance the US military veteran told he will never walk again, 10 years later he is running. The power of the mind is limitless. For 30+ years I was addicted to several substances, nothing helped me quit, how I quit was me. One day I decided to quit and really wanted to. I wasnt trying to convince myself nor be persuded by others nor data. It took me to actually want to quit and I did, I just stopped, I suffered zero withdrawl and have not looked back since and have never felt any desire to go back to it like I used to, I simply quit, just stopped and treated it like any other day.
A really good hypnotist will be able to tell by several cues given off by the subject whether they are highly prone to suggestions, symptoms that a person trying to fake being hypnotised will have no knowledge of, and therefore cannot fool them into ever being able to have the wool pulled over the hypnotists eyes, Null experiment, relies heavily on the skill set of the hypnotist and the high suggest ability of the subjects
I did a hypnobirthing course before child birth. I think it definately kept my calm im not sure it did anything to reduce pain however. Ive also had it done as part of a work team building thing. It again was like a pleasant half dreamy state. I no way was i never out of control and to the best of my knowledge never barked like a dog. In my experience I think it is very useful as a relaxation tool.
Having been trained in medical hypnosis, I found it to be a useful tool in therapy with certain patients, especially those with depression, anxiety, pain, and certain physiologic disorders. Since I practiced in a university town, a number students sought help with test anxiety and hypnosis was particularly effective with this group. Like you, I found it not especially effective with addictive disorders, though it could help with dysphoric emotions. Having seen it work in so many cases, I have no doubt that hypnosis can be an effective tool in certain circumstances. For example, in the clinic where I worked one of the social workers arrived one morning with a severed tooth ache and could not see her dentist till the end of the day. She asked if we could do hypnosis to alleviate her pain. Fortunately, she was a good hypnotic subject and we were able to eliminate the pain until she got to see her dentist.
This is an excellent article that does describe most of what I do as a hypnotherapist. But our field has advanced a LOT since the days of Freud and Mesmer. Today I can walk you through the origin event that caused something like a phobia and defuse it at its source. Most clients walk away wondering why they ever had such a silly reaction in the first place! The power of the mind is truly amazing, and yes, hypnosis definitely works. 🌹
1.Preparation •Introduced the concept in a non-bias social form 2.Induction •Had the audience focus on the history and origins 3.Deepening •Invited us to deepen our understanding of modern practice 4.Suggestion •Then Asking us to imagine a version of ourselves that either does or does not believe that we might be highly suggestible. I also would like to note that he does not list the actual on screen text of the final part of the modern process which would be something like 5. “Reawakening” or whatever. So essentially he’s leaving us in the state of suggestibility and intentionally not taking us out at that point which is the halfway point of the article❤ 🪄👾😵💫👾⏳
I really enjoy your content and find it quite informative. Not that you’re taking suggestions, but my only suggestion is to redo the article on psychodynamic therapy. I don’t think many contemporary psychodynamic psychotherapists consider themselves Adlerian, or associate what they do in therapy with a lot of Adlerian theory. I think, on average, psychodynamic therapy is guided by object relations theorists, such as Klein, Winnicott, and Kernberg. There are many self psychologists as well. Maybe read “That was then, This is now” by Jonathan Shedler for a view on the current state of the field.
So, two thoughts. One, could something like self hypnosis account for at least SOME accounts of UFO sightings and abductions? It seems like many of these accounts occur while driving at night, and there is sometimes very relaxing and trancelike about driving at night I’ve personally found. Have there been any studies on this? Second, since trance-states are an important part of many religious practices (you mentioned meditation in the article, but also prayer and ecstatic dancing and singing spring to mind), has there been any research into what role hypnosis might play in those practices? Cool article! Thanks!
This is perhaps one of the best articles on the topic of hypnosis on YouTube all together, and that’s saying something because I follow hypnotists on here on another account. Excellent article and while I already knew most of this I still found myself thinking about new things during it and will be using this article as reference for my college project on non traumatic forms of dissociation as hypnosis features quite a bit in it and having a good deep dive article on the subject is really useful. As for state vs non-state, I honestly think the truth is probably somewhere in between or beyond such a simple spectrum. Non state theories propose a lot of things which have shown themselves genuine time and time again but other things such as the concept of covert hypnosis also seem to have a genuine impact in my own research, even if it isn’t the supernatural influence Hollywood tries to prop up and fearmonger with. I think the future of hypnosis research is going to be very interesting, although I wish the public was more open to the topic so it wasn’t so hard to run studies on the topic. websites like yours help with that, so cheers! Oh, and that hypnotic segment leading into a sponsorship was devious, hope it worked well lol
I had hypnosis therapy a few times (different types of hypnosis) and it never went deeper than being relaxed, just like before falling asleep, but I was never in a trance. I saw it working on ther patients much differently, they went much deeper and needed to be guided out. EDIT: One of the people who were deeply hypnotized was actually one of the therapists who wanted o try it out. She was really gone for a while.
I never used to think I could be hypnotized. I went to a comedy show with a friend once and decided to try and see if I could, following all the instructions and letting myself get into it. I felt something happening and think it might have worked, but my friend shook me because he didn’t want to be sitting by himself for the show 🙂
I was hypnotized the first time when I was 21 in a bar. I didn’t feel anything, so when the entertainer came to me to check if I was ‘under,’ I’d decided I didn’t want to go on stage and that I wouldn’t do what he told me to do, but he gave me the suggestion that I would not be able to open my eyes and then when he said, “open your eyes” I was incapable of opening them as hard as I tried. The second time I was hypnotized I quit smoking, after 28 years in just one hour of being under the suggestions. If you are a skeptic, it probably won’t work for you. It’s not a passive thing. You actively take part in it by doing everything the hypnotizer says to you. I would be careful about who I allowed to put suggestions in my head- it absolutely works.
This article is very mesmerizing! I’ve been told everyone has a different level of susceptibility to hypnosis. Some are easily hypnotized, while others are incapable of being hypnotized. This may have ties with certain mental sensory perception characteristics (dysikonesia) such as hyperphantasia and hyperauralia. There are degrees of each characteristic, along with a normal range. Aphantasia is the lack of internal visual imagery, while anauralia is the lack of internal auditory imagery. Hyperphantasia and hyperauralia are characterized by heightened mental imagery to the point in which one could mistake imagination for reality. It would be awesome if you made a article on the psychological characteristics. I believe there might be a link to paranormal and supernatural experiences.
As someone who has been interested and involved in hypnosis for many years, I learned some new stuff from this article and at the same time, relate to your conclusion so much. Hypnosis is just… wild. And the more you think about it, the wilder and more interesting it gets. It’s something that feels like it can’t be true, and at the same time, we know it is, and when you experience it, it feels completely natural. Whenever i hypnotize someone, it is the weirdest experience, because – like you said – it feels like, there has to be more to it? But if you hypnotize someone, you know what you are doing. You know you aren’t using any magic spells. Sure, you use some strategies that you know tend to be more effective, but in the end, you are just confidently guiding someone through an experience – and at some point, somehow, you just… say things… and to the person you are hypnotizing, they become true / they happen. It feels like bullshit, even while you’re doing it. That moment where the impostor syndrome is at its peak because I just think “i just said some words, why would this work?” and then it does… It feels close to magic – it isn’t, of course, since no laws of physics or similar are broken. I fascinates me. Brains are just so weird.
I’ve been hypnotised to help with Parkinsons disease. I also use self hypnosis for relaxation and for a form of anaesthesia I call “Going somewhere else” This is useful during dentistry (six implants put in in one session) and other medical procedures. For relaxation I use a recording of one of the hypnotherapist sessions which she kindly recorded, or listen to a piece of music (usually “Albatross”by Fleetwood Mac on a repeat of about fifteen minutes. Maybe connected or maybe not, I can dowse, but don’t know how. I believe there is more power in our brains than we realise, if only we knew how to apply it.
What I’m gonna describe here refers to an observation I made regarding my own response to a mid-ad bumper. I think I witnessed and experienced a form of hypnosis. When I used to watch the BBC World New on cable TV, they would always start with a 60-second countdown. Initially the article images would pan and transition between things landmarks and scenery (London Bridge, Big Ben, nature, etc.) while a countdown timer was displayed in the corner. Towards the end of the countdown you’d see a large globe with thin circle radiating from the center and at that point it seem to all be a stylistic choice. All the while they’d be playing the BBC World New Music with the cool drum beat. Okay, so far so good.. You’d get the final drum-beat, followed by the news anchor’s introduction, followed by proceeding to read the news. Read-on to jut a little longer for the fun part. During the commercial break (TV ads), there would be a point where you’d see the BBC logo w/ the spinning globe (if memory serve me right). Radiating from the central circle would be thin circular lines Juts kind of expanding and fading away one after another. It was basically the same graphic and animation that you would see at the tail-end of the intro/opening. So from the top: you’re perusal commercial ads, and after the 2nd or 3rd ad you see the BBC glove and the radiating circles, sometimes accompanied by the cool drum beat. Now, here’s the important part. By the time you have seen the 2nd or 3rd ad during the commercial break, I would be looking down at my laptop screen focusing on whatever I was doing.
Excellent article and solid presentation except… the music. Ugh, SO distracting. It would be interesting to see your take on cults and crowd control. Are you familiar with the book ‘Psychology of Crowds’ by Gustave Le Bon. It would be a good time in America’s history to learn about brainwashing, how to avoid it and how to come back from it. Thank you.
@14:00 Your description reminds me of when police check horizontal gaze nystagmus by moving a penlight back and forth just above your eyes. People were drinking lots of alcohol back in Mesmer’s time too due to lack of clean water. Spirits (alcohol) and hypnosis (mesmerizing) Is there something there?
Just read Andre Weitzenhoffer’s THE PRACTICE OF HYPNOTISM. Be sure to get the revised version published in 2000. It’s literally 50 years after the first version, and he’s pretty bitter that no one has gotten any further about what hypnotism “is”. Also, curses on Stanford for creating a reverse standard: somehow, folks who can ignore distractions and follow the hypnotic suggestions are “suggestible”. Seems more like they have a lot of self-discipline.
I believe we have instinctive beliefs which can control our actions just like hypnosis. Take a small doll, for example: you may tell a person who is superstitious that by holding a doll for 7 minutes he or she will have good luck for a whole week. If that person believes in such, the brain will think of scenarios to make it a good week. However, if you take the same doll and give it to another person and tell that person that that doll will give him or her bad luck if hold for 7 seconds, their mind will think of ways to make that week a horrible week. The brain is a very sensitive organ, and the worst par about it, it was not meant to see reality, only the perspective of such. It was built that way by natural selection because it is the best manner in which such organ can protect the body form danger.
I hypnotised myself four times–from infancy through to late adolescence. The first time I decided to fail in everything so as not to be a threat to my father (after seeing his fear of me on his face). The second catastrophe was when I feared mum was going to bash me when I felt intense jealousy of my brother, but instead of being honest, I hid it and became outwardly the good older brother. I became a robot, but aware that I would awaken in ten or so years hence. Unfortunately, I didn’t, because dad left mum, which set me off on my next disastrous self-hypnotic state. I have been trapped ever since. I won’t bore you all with further details. The mind is both incredibly powerful and pathetically weak. Parenting is too important to be allowed to be practiced by immature people. I am not unique–millions, perhaps billions of us are destroyed because of ill-prepared, emotionally immature parents.
The state of mind sounds very similar to dreaming. The desired effects from hypnotism, even the placebo effects can all be achieved through lucid dreaming. The setup, state of mind, requirements, and outcome are all the same. For hypnotism and dreaming. The two poorly understood topics could benefit off from each other.
As soon as you mentioned new skills, I knew the ad was coming, but why am I signing up now? WHY AM I SIGNING UP??? on a more serious note, it seems to me that if a requirement for being hypnotized is wanting to be hypnotized and trusting that hypnotism works….. then it indeed works on gullible people only.
i was hypnotized at a comdey show in houston,the laff stop. wrote my name down as did others, passed it up stage, and waited thats when, uh i dont actually recall, its been decades, but i do know, i was to act like micheal jackson when called and i was feeling really nervous about it, like told my date, im not doing it, ill be next door at the other bar, bye and went into the bathroom, well the moment i heard my name, i gulped and then responded coming out the door and running onstage and acting a fool, on article to just great. i sat back down and couldnt believe what i had just done, solely out of embarssments it was very simple, never felt any different i simply dont under stand the mechanics of how that works and i was a psych major a bartender, a pusher and my own bar mentalist in low levels i just dont get it i really didnt want to do it and tried to escape and it did me no good, what so ever. it is TOO POWERFUL (i was far from a fan of mj at the time,. far from being a fan)
That was the first time I heard hypnotism doesn’t work for smoking cessation. My Mom’s dying of COPD, from lifelong smoking addiction. She finally quit after a hospital stay forced her thru withdrawal & for the first time she didn’t just re-start. But she quit long after the diagnosis + after being on oxygen. I remember her paying so much money for smoking cessation programs while I was growing up, including multiple hypnosis efforts. We didn’t have a lot of money & I remember a lot of fights & tears over her smoking. She had so much shame about all the times she’d quit, secretly go back to it, get found out, be apologetic for a minute then brazenly chain smoking again, the cycle over + over. It’s infuriating to me the tobacco companies have never been forced to deal with the human devastation (as well as other ones eg environment) despite it being legally proven over & over again they knew what they were doing & who they were doing it to. Yet individual addicts still bear the most cost, the most shame, the most harm. Don’t even get me started on the Sacklers. The shame is so misplaced when it’s on the addict & not on the profiteers of despair.
Derren Brown is one guy that seems to be well versed in hypnosis etc. He said that when doing workshops about hypnosis, that there were 3 types of people. Those who just played along, others that were sort of under the spell, and some who were totally hypnotised. It’s a fascinating subject. The brain/mind: An impossible thing.
I have found through studying my dream state that my mind splits into two parts during my dream state. I have dubbed them the “watcher” and the “storyteller”. The watcher experiences the dreams and records those experiences into memory. When I awake, I feel like I was the watcher. The storyteller has my imagination and can access memories, it invents the dream and communicates it to the watcher. Through comparative analysis of my imagination and what sorts of things I think about while daydreaming, I have come to notice the very distinct signature of my mind in everything which occurs in my dreams. I wonder if hypnosis also separates these two parts somewhat?
My experience with hypnosis is: it is suggestion. With-out auto. That’s why if you want to use hypnosis to solve a specific problem the success heavily depends on the hypnotist’s understanding of your problem in the first place… Which means auto-suggestion / self hypnosis should be far more effective. At least if you understand yourself AND know what would be a good solution but you were unable to apply it until now.
Thanks for confirming that assent constituted some kind of suggestibility. All of the discussion I’ve been exposed to on hypnosis seems to rehash the same undefined or loosely defined terms. I like something a bit more concrete. Part of the issue for me is that they don’t really know what’s going on in terms of hypnotism. I’m probably not very hypnotizable. I can relax my body and focus on something else all the while maintaining awareness of body position, etc. For example, the one example where they have you hold your arms straight out in front of you, imagine that one arm has weights on it and the other has helium balloons pulling it up, then when you open your eyes one arm has dropped and the other has risen. However, my arms are still straight out in front of me. I can also relax, close my eyes, and listen to someone tell me all kinds of sweet suggestions all the while maintaining a conscious inner dialog analyzing the suggestions, taking notes of the quality of upholstery of whatever thing I’m laying on as well as the operation of the HVAC, the acoustic analysis of the room, and any number of contextual factors. At the end the practitioner may say, “When I count to three you will return to an awakened state,” or some other such thing, and I suppose they want me to open my eyes as though I’ve been “hypnotized” this whole time. I can take or leave anything they said to me the entire session because I’ve already thought it through. “I’ll count to three and you will open your eyes, but you will not be able to speak.
I wonder about the refocusing of attention aspects of hypnosis. Today the arthritis* and tendon damage in my hands hurts a lot, however when I stroke my cat the pain is markedly reduced. She doesn’t have anti-inflammatory properties AFAIK. So I ascribe the change to my concentration on the cat/fur. *this feels like a toothache in my joints.
You could easily make a modern study with a large amount of people, where you compare “sham” or “placebo” hypnosis to “real” hypnosis (whatever this even means). But they would not do this, because there would be no significant difference between the 2. ANY treatment that is relatively expensive and is based on placebo is inherently a scam, no way around it. (Because placebo is the baseline to see if a treatment has a real, significant effect, it needs to out perform placebo, not be placebo)
So, first: Eye fixation, plus relaxation, plus visualization — that’s a fairly standard hypnotic induction. Combining that with an ad is just … sorry. Nope. Now, going into this article, I was expecting a bad treatment of hypnosis. A skeptic, doing an “is this real?” article? I was expecting to be really upset, and coming here to argue. I’m not. You were pretty good on the coverage, and I like how you actually changed your mind. Good. I’m also a recreational hypnotist. I’m not going to be on stage, primarily because I don’t have the training in being entertaining. But I do hypnotize people (with consent), and based around their goals and desires. I have seen some people (not many) where that “hollywood trope” level of response really happens. The biggest issue with the “non-state” explanation of “it’s social roleplay” that I know of, that you did not cover, is that it is possible to hypnotize someone without them realizing it. And get the hypnotic responses and behaviors, the “trance state” effect, without the person being aware that they have been placed in trance. The biggest issue that I can think of with the “Hypnotic state does not exist because we cannot isolate it” is that you are looking for the *trance state*, and hypnosis is just one of many examples of trance state. If you want to find a hypnotic state that is different from trance? The hypothesis is (and my N count is low, and it’s not double blind) is that trance state, including meditation, hypnosis, those temple-things, etc.
I honestly don’t know what to think but what I can say is that over 20 years ago during a housing boom I was working for a developer whose residential crew included a middle-aged Eastern European expert carpenter who drank & smoked all day, every day & the standing arrangement with the boss was he got a bottle of his favorite vodka every Friday afternoon. I’d say he was the most functional drunk I’ve ever met – and very even-tempered no matter how inebriated. I assumed that’s my his drinking was tolerated. I went out drinking with him just once – and that was more than enough for me. Years later I found out that someone, probably a new lady in his life, persuaded him to try giving up his bad habits and, so the story goes, ONE, just ONE session with a Ukrainian and he quit drinking & smoking permanently. Having worked with him for a couple years & witnessing his staggering consumption, that news was as mindblowing as if I’d been told I’d won the lottery
26:22 My theory is that the use of passive verbs produces a dissociation between the “Being Self” & the “Doing Other”. “The suggestion stage” starts right at the beginning! A hypnotist can make someone do something they wouldn’t normally do, for instance they might suggest playing a prank on a third person & give the subject a gun, whilst saying “here, take this water pistol & squirt so & so with it”. Read “Open to Suggestion” by Robert Temple for an excellent analysis of this aspect of the subject.
I had a therapist who wanted to hypnotize me and I let him try it twice. The first time I just sat there with my eyes closed trying not to laugh, but I let him finish up and didn’t say anything. I listened to everything he had to say, and it was uniform pablum about me somehow magically feeling better because he told me to. The second time I ran out of patience for the whole performance and stopped it after a couple of minutes and I told him it wasn’t working. I’ve met two therapists who were in real awe of their “ability” to hypnotize people and that just reduced my respect for them. I’ve got ADHD and my mind is a constant chatter box. Thirty minutes of quiet talking from someone isn’t going to do shit for helping me find my keys the next day. Know what does help? Medication. That’s where the rubber meets the road. And what are the numbers at 31:42 based on? Self report? Hypnotists opinion? Mesmer pulling it out of his ass? Who made those numbers up, because everything else you say makes it clear there is no solid proof of anything. It’s the Talking Placebo. If you get just the right patient in just the right mood they can get some relief. But it’s not reliably reproducible, and hence the purest of Quackery.
Nice article, I am a person who has hypnotized people in the past for stage acts, think of the bar scene and for laughs, not for medical purposes. And even though this was almost 20 years ago, and i am sure more is known about the subject then we knew back then. I am surprised there was no talk about the left and right brain hemispheres, the conscious and subconscious. I have seen the abilities a person has under a deep trance state, we may not have a lot of knowledge about this subject, but the power of the subconscious mind when given the opportunity to have more control then the conscious side of our brain, well it’s best to say we are a completely different person. For example public speaking for a lot of people is very hard to do to the point of panic attacks for some, that is your conscious brain at work, your subconscious brain this is not a issue and if we had the power to shut off our conscious side and let the subconscious take over when needed we would be a lot easier on our self, maybe to the point we wouldn’t need half the medicine we take now.
In taking meditation seriously, one of the hardest thing for mean was being able to sit with no thoughts creeping into my mind. I was hypnotized and I feel the effect was similar, but the mechanism is different. It quiets your inner monologue However, it seems that is not required. Seperate from hypnosis, I found that simple telling people things they already know, makes them much more concrete in that persons head. For example, you have to stop smoking, it is going to kill you. Sure, the person already knows that, but telling them directly with confidence is likely to create a moment of commitment in that person and remove all rationalizations. How-ev-er, there is clearly an altered state with successful meditation and hypnosis where, for example even if something is bothering you on your body or you have an itch you won’t scratch it because it feels so detached. So I do consider that a part of hypnosis rather than just a simple power of suggestion and I think that these really need to be looked at separately as to what helps and what is simply there
I’m kind of glad that the formation of false memories was covered here. I’ve heard some extraordinary stuff from people who have undergone “regression hypnosis”. For example, a person undergoes the procedure to find out if they’ve been abducted by aliens. I can definitely see the act of hypnosis, and suggestibility, along with one’ preconceived notions could yield a “result”. At this point I’m inclined to be suspicious of said result.
Mesmer’s story sounds suspiciously similar to the founder of Christian Science Mary Baker Eddy, and L. Ron Hubbard’s claims about Scientology. How they all had the same idea and kept rebranding it over and over until it took. And it was all centered around a magical undefined force that they alone seemed able to wield.
You know, as you were doing that pseudo-hypnotizing bit at the end, my mind just couldn’t follow along. I was suspicious, questioning everything you said. I began asking myself if you were about to advertise Brilliant when you said, “Imagine yourself as a curious and eager learner…” And sure enough. Sigh… If you want to lead someone on an imaginary journey, paint mental landscapes, create mental experiences, you need to give your victim’s mind time to comply with your suggestions. For example, I can’t conjure up a calm, tranquil place in less than 2 seconds; I need time to gauge what I presently feel would be most calm and tranquil, search my catalog of real life calm and tranquil experiences for scraps and fragments I can use, fine-tune things, then focus on trying to experience the calm and tranquility of my imaginary place. It takes me quite a while to paint and experience such things.
We saw a live show with Martin St James, Australia…. Our friend a pretty tough, bout 30 yr old bricklayer, got picked from the audience & reluctantly agreed but avowing he couldn’t be hypnotised… Soon he’s acting like a chook, clucking n all, soo funny, after his trance he’s hopelessly embarrassed, never lived it down 😱🤣
Great article, As a trained Clinical Hypnotherapist, I can say whilst you got so much of what’s happening, you missed out completely on the Therapy aspect of Hypnotherapy and the idea of Subconscious mind and conscious mind, for example many times when we are emotionally triggered, it has more to do with the past than what’s happening in the present, this past lives in your subconscious mind, as a memory and importantly an association. Your conscious mind and subconscious mind is separated by a filter which allows things in and rejects things as not needed or useful. This filter blocks your conscious mind for delving past this, through a combination of progressive relaxation and in a way overloading your conscious mind a Hypnotherapist creates a small overload which allows them to access directly the subconscious or their client too because all Hypnosis is really self hypnosis. In this state, the client can access memories with vivid clarity rapidly. Within the subconscious mind everything is considered True, because otherwise the filter would have blocked it. So if you place a suggestion … it becomes true … if as a child when you did not have a protective filter .. you decided the world was not safe and you had to always be careful … that becomes a truism for you … which many times expresses itself as Anxiety. When the therapist guides the client back to this child, through what we call Hypnodrama and Rescripting and suggestion / instruction … We heal that version of the child, remove the limiting belief and replace it with the resource we used to heal it.
I had one session of past-life regression hypnosis some years ago, and it was a profound experience for me. I went into it blindly, not really knowing what to expect, and the stuff that came out of my mouth during that session… Well, I have zero idea where most of it came from. I saw and learned some deeply interesting things. Was it real? I don’t know. It certainly felt like it. Years later, I don’t really care if it was real or not, because it helped me in a very unique way. It helped me to focus on some long-standing issues I’d been having that I wasn’t conscious of. And maybe that’s all there is to it, a technique to get (some) people to think differently about things in a potentially beneficial way. Nothing controversial or pseudo-scientific about that. If it were, then all those medicines that only work for a portion of the population are also pseudo-scientific, and if every doctor who misdiagnosed a patient had their license revoked, we’d have no more doctors.
tbh i feel like hypnosis is just making someone think about 1 thing only you could force someone to think something with some psychological tricks, but only for a very shot period of time before they realize what’s going on like you know… for example answer as quckly as possible: which side makes the first move in chess? what do you get when you combine all wavelengths? what’s the purest color? what’s the color of the clouds?\r what’s the color of the teeth?\r what’s the color of the marble? what do cows drink? some ppl might say milk because they’re forcused on the color white, you already give them minimal amount of time to think and answer, basically locking the mind to focus on 1 thing
let’s make it clear: i believe in hypnosis but i would never get hypnotized because i am VERY easily influenced even when fully awake, sober and feeling good, and i have no trust in people who made controlling people their jobs. i mean i think that might just be because of my tourettes and my very high impulsivity lmao ps: idgaf if it’s not an actual altered state of mind, if it works it works and if it can help people it should be used
I became interested in this many years ago after meeting someone who was about to have root canal treatment on one side and a tooth extraction on the other. He had problems with anaesthetics so could not use them. So is hypnosis real, well if you can have that done and still comunicate with the dentist during the procedures then YES. State or non-state – I think state. I used hypnosis a lot decades ago and my experiences felt like a different state. You talked about non-state being perhaps some sort of performance with the hypnotist. Maybe wanting to please, seem normal within the context of what was happening, even subconsciously. At least a conversation / interaction between two people. What you didn’t seem to cover was AUTO (self) HYPNOSIS. How does that fit in with everything you covered (perhaps another article). This is what I used to do (can’t do it now, shame) and is why I think it is a different state. I used to feel everything disappear. It is the most relaxed anyone will ever be, more so than sleep for instance. As I became good at it, I would start, and then feel my body “disappear” from my feet to my head. Then all my surroundings. What people refer to as the third eye is where my mind (existance in fact) seemed to be. (People can experience the third eye thing – location wise in an awake state just by closing their eyes concentrating on inches in front and about an inch or so above the spot between their eyes). Once I was in that state, I would use it for my exam revisions etc.
I strongly suspect the hypnosis mechanism overlaps with sensitivity to ‘the mythic’: the same method as charisma, social behavior, identity, poetry, art, and being taken over by the vibes of the moment. The place where the Sacred and (anti-)Beauty form. Which does, I believe, have the potential to reinforce memory as it accentuates attention both as subjectivity and the brain’s resources. Relying on your description, the non-state hypnosis perspective is already pursuing similar angles; particularly the recognition of role and developed social expectations. Performativity doesn’t exist in isolation etc.
Is there any meta-analysis comparing CBT alone to CBT-with-(any-other-treatment)? Because the typical conclusion of CBT+(hypnosis) is better than CBT alone is that (hypnosis) has something to it… but I wonder if it’s the other way around. If CBT is best in conjunction with other techniques? I know CBT is the gold standard, and have been through it along with other types of therapy (for anxiety/depression/C-PTSD), but I found CBT much better at acute symptom management and masking/conforming than addressing longterm issues and processing trauma that caused the symptoms.
Knowing that I reacted very poorly to the dental deadening drugs of the 70s and that I could easily be hypnotized (had been several times before), I had dental work (drilling for a caps on multiple teeth) done under hypnosis. It was not completely pain free as under anesthesia, but it was quite bearable. I know that one anecdote is not proof, but it worked for me. Somehow I suspect I’m not the only human on the planet who can say that.
I volunteered to showcase hypnotism once in college, it didn’t work. Years later, after trying every possible solution to quit smoking, i went to hypnotherapist. I didn’t expect much due to my previous experience, but thought that it wouldn’t hurt at least. To my surprise, it actually helped me immensely! After leaving the session, i light up cigarette right away and thought “what a waste of money this session was”. But little by little i noticed that the cigarettes didn’t have to same effect anymore, they didn’t give me the same pleasure. In only couple days, i had quit smoking entirely and haven’t gone back since. This is completely anecdotal and im aware it might be placebo, even though i was skeptical. However, looking back, it was the best investment I’ve ever made. Couple years ago i went back to the hypnotherapist, this time with much larger topic. I was depressed and hoped hypnotheraphy could cure that. Well, it didn’t. I personally think it can be effective when you have a very specific problem, like smoking. You can be suggested to not get pleasure out of cigarettes as much, but you cannot be suggested to not be depressed. Oh and btw Im doing much better now.
Here’s how I look at hypnosis. Pretend one is at a funeral. Then a close acquaintance makes funny faces with the intent to make one laugh. Suddenly, the urge to laugh is almost uncontrollable. Not everyone will have that urge, of course, but some do. Understanding that uncontrollable urge may unlock mysteries of hypnotism.
okay this is going to be a longer comment, sorry in advance. i tried to find a YouTube article of this, but no luck. when i was younger, before YouTube was really big, somebody offered to hypnotize me at a party. yeah sure, why not? so they disappeared for a moment and came back with a dinner plate and set it down in front of me. okay, that’s kind of weird, i thought, but whatever. they told me to close my eyes and listen to the sound of their voice. they tell me to feel the shape and texture of the plate. feel every surface of the plate. okay that makes a little sense now, i guess. now feel the shape and texture of your face. okay, so it’s shape and texture hypnotism, of course. then i hear some chuckling and so i open my eyes. they had taken a candle and held it to the bottom of the dinner plate so it was covered with soot, which i then touched and subsequently transferred onto my face. i think it is a great prank. nobody can get hurt, and it’s easy enough to clean off. but it did make one girl cry when i “hypnotized” her, so, use your best judgement.
This was an interesting watch. I sort of fell on the side of being a proponent of hypnosis as a therapeutic tool before perusal, but I’ve been walked through some of the research before, just as this article did, so… But I think – well, first of all, I think that the scientific study of psychology is hard, but second – I think that the delineation of a psychological “state” as something that hypnosis might be as opposed to something more of a kin to our “regular” psychological state felt somewhat – vague and arbitrary? Like, what psychological states do we currently recognize? (I know that there is material on this, I’m just not up to speed with it…) And, in keeping with so much materially oriented science, why would we not accept a gradual change from “psychological state as usual” to “psychologically distinct state” – with all the grey areas that that implies? …well, I guess a lot of conceptual headway is made by starting to explore simpler, more crude ideas and then, as they show their limits, gradually refining them into more subtle, more precise ideas. The same with a scientific exploration of what hypnosis might be, as it very clearly looks like it is “something”. (Maybe not something entirely distinct from other things that we have different names for, but nevertheless.)
If you can fall asleep then why couldn’t you fall in hypnosis (or any other “transcendental” state of mind) as well? You can also think that being awake and to be able to have rational thoughts (corresponding to external causality we are able to observe) is just a temporary, more or less unstable achievement of your mind (basically evolutionary and therefore always “work in progress”).
So many times I have tried it and it has never worked. Perhaps I have to “actively believe” before it will work on me? Maybe? I don’t believe in it bc it doesn’t make logical sense to me. If I can’t understand how to get myself to enter into the trans willingly then it won’t work because I don’t know how to do it…even if it is explained to me. Like it really has to be broken down ” Barney the Dinosaur” style so I can grasp the concepts of the steps.
I was curious about hypnosis a couple of years ago and found a local “accredited” practitioner. He wanted $600 up front for three sessions and I would have had to commit to the whole package before the first meeting. Having watched this, I’m rethinking whether hypnosis is quackery. I still think that guy was a quack, though.
Hyptnosis is absolutley legit. I’ve learned how to hypnotize my girl friend who was an abductee and that is really the only way to regress her memories. Who you watch a 50 year old women lying there, cringing (when she should be relaxed) and crying for her mother, (who died when she was only 3 years old) and wondering why she’s on a ship and in a dark room with a two legged alligator, (amongst many other terrible memories) you would be a believer too. I promise each one of you… and i am far from a professional of hypnotism. My trick i use is to first give her a full body massage, and calmy speaking to her to get her to be completely relaxed. I tell her to take several very derp slow long breaths, and once i believe she is perfectly calm, and relaxed, i have her simply go back to a memory, or i might remind her of a certain day… and i carefully study her body language and the results are absolutely out of this world… for her any ways, but it isn’t even hard to do.
Ooh I like that. “Curious skeptic.” One of my primary issues with people that like to call themselves skeptics, is they often aren’t really that skeptical. It’s very common for them to take any popular establishment belief, and uncritically believe it. Really, on faith. I’m not saying, that most of the time that’s a safe bet, but it’s not really being a skeptic. But being a skeptic also isn’t NOT believing whatever the established institutions tell you either, which is where people fall off the other side. And since no one has enough time or money to setup and run all of their own experiments to check everything they think they know, inevitably they’re going to end up believing “facts” based on authority, which is a logical fallacy, so what does one do? I think a lot of the issue comes down to a desire to feel certain, but we don’t need to be so certain. We can have a position without being certain about it, and that humility is fun. My dad thinks I watch conspiracy articles all day on YouTube (which he’s not entirely wrong about, not all day, but a couple a week) and uncritically believe them. His fault really, we watch a lot of Bigfoot and Bermuda triangle specials on TV when I was a kid, but I guess he doesn’t have enough faith in his “facts and data” assertions he taught. Really, I believe almost nothing with absolute certainty, and when I fact check “conspiracy theories” I often find a lot of truth to them I wouldn’t have found if I WASN’T curious. My favorite example is chemtrails.
Skeptic? Not me. Got taken for twenty dollars by a hypnotist. Gave him and another hitchhiker a ride to a store. It works. It is a bad thing to give this training to the unscrupulous. Another person gifted this was Joe Hunt: Billionaires Boys Club. He was trained at an early age to do it by his father.
Sounds pretty underwhelming. Like when you learn more about placebo effects and the sloppy research that has been done there. Great article though! I always wondered about the scientific legitimacy of Hypnosis – especially stage hypnosis seemed odd to me. But apparently that’s not possible with people, who really don’t want to be hypnotised. So basically they just take people, who want to be hypnotised in order to not have people, who won’t play along, i assume.
I’ve always tried to keep a purely scientific point of view on everything, but I’ve always felt there’s at least something real about hypnosis. I’ve seen my cousin get “hypnotized” on stage but what really sold me was my, very good, therapist legit using it as part of his treatment of me and the fact the CIA had dumped millions of dollars into researching it in the 70s lol
Hypnosis is real. I haven’t seen the whole article yet, but we have essentially irrefutable scientific evidence this is the case. Perhaps during the article you talk about the Stroop color and word test, but this test essentially proves that people really are experiencing an hypnotic suggestion in a way that is literally impossible (and provably impossible) to fake.
This is me thinking out loud in print and not an attempt to educate anyone. Our mind has influence over our body. Enough said? Our mind influences our perceptions. I found hypnosis nonsensical entertainment for most of my life. I’m a firm believer in the scientific method. Your article sums up how I view hypnosis succinctly. Another words hypnosis may work but to what degree, that can vary greatly. IF one is invested in it working. We can and often do influence our own health. People with a positive attitude, whatever that may be, have fewer mind specific disorders. And a sour outlook of the world can eventually result in physical manifestations of actual disease such as inflammation. Inflammation within the body can lead to chronic conditions such as chronic pains and immobility. Acetaminophen, aspirin and other drugs can reduce inflammation chemically, so can the mind do so without the chemicals? If one wants it, one can influence it. To what degree would depend on the source of the inflammation and ones own beliefs and wishes whcih varies greatly throughout ones life. People cannot physically influence anything outside their own bodies. As mush as I wished ESP reflected reality when I was young. Interesting article you made. You sound similar to myself in how you view the world, at least as much as perusal one highly edited article would indicate. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
When I am hypnotised I think and do things ina logic way for that moment only after acting out the hypnosis idea I can wake up and discover I was hypnotised, it was not my own thoughts and actions I was a sort of robot, of course I am responsible for acting out as a robot but I was not myself. I have seen addiction transferred to a person in a different form from a person who was really addicted but didn’t want to know about it. Sorry to black magic.
Concept: Hypnotism is just a scientific rediscovery of the human affinity for ritual. To summarize my thoughts quicker than thorough, because our brains are godtier pattern finders, we are very fond of satisfying patterns. When we experience a particularly satisfying pattern, our mind becomes very focused on it. That can be exploited. Pairing those satisfying patterns with additional information allows that information to enter the mind significantly easier and with less filtering. This mechanism manifests in so many ways under casual and domestic circumstances, it may as well not mean anything. Epiphanies often take place during a person’s routine, and people often think better when they’re walking. But there are ways to draw more performance out of the mind, and it’s usually with intent and expectation. You find records of it everywhere. Someone goes somewhere to do something a little magical, and thus experience something beyond the everyday. Ritual. Hypnosis was invented on the back of mesmerism, which was pretty much the day’s glorified form of faith healing. I posit that faith healers are all hypnotists after a fashion, as all examples rely on the same fundamental mechanism of patterns that please the mind to engage with. In fact, most quack medicine is also relying on this mechanism, as are practitioners of the esoteric and the occult. Give them something they like, get them to choose participation themselves, build the expectation it works, slip in some new details. It’s our ancient mindhack.
Maybe a article on historic types of mental disease, like hysteria. I’m sure there are many more interesting things buried there, if hysteria isn’t enough to cover a 54(!) minute article. (lol) Also the treatments and reasoning for them. I’m thinking stuff like balancing the 4 biles, that weird electric machine and of course the massage rod.. 0.0
as an Alien being I can tell you we might have hypnotised you to make this article, funny part is we used that very same style of pocket watch, only ours was nicked off HG Wells in 1898.. near Horsell Common.. also, we like cow-face soup, it’s a delicacy, you Earthishers eat fish eggs and live molluscs.. you can’t judge us. 👽😆
Here is an interesting test. Take three groups of people, 1/3rd are highly hypnotisable. One third are highly resistant. One third are a good mix of the two. Have the first third put into a trance. Have the second third pretend they are in a trance. The remainder just sit at a desk. Give all three groups some kind of memory task to perform. If the sheep and the pretenders perform the same, but the third group perform differently, the resistant people are being hypnotized by pretending they are hypnotized. Something that would be fun to do, find a clinical hypnotist, schedule an appointment. Tell them that the patent went to an entertainment hypnotist and now thinks he actually is a chicken. Then bring a chicken in a cage to the appointment and see how long it takes them to call the cops.
Listen to the first 10 mins of this, regarding what mesmer was doing, then go read the paper by john Archibald wheeler on geons…. You will realize it is the fractal toroidal moment, a magnetic mono pole that exerts a gravitational field. Now I’ll leave it as a exercise for you to figure out how it connects with consciousness. This is either one heck of a whitewash you are doing, or perhaps you might benefit to take a step back from your certainty and reconsider things.