Hypnosis: Attracting Your Success: Mind Control, Self Hypnosis and nlp pdfdrive com

Stage hypnosis
Stage hypnosis, as practiced in the 18th and 19th centuries (and even today, in
some entertainment settings) is probably the root of many peoples’ suspicion of
the hypnosis. While some practitioners (LaFontaine, for example, mentioned
below), believed their stage acts were contributing to the clinical development of
hypnosis as a medical treatment, others believed that “the show was the thing”,
As Shakespeare wrote.
As an entertainment, stage hypnosis was extraordinarily popular and continues
to be, with varying levels of rigor applied by stage hypnotists. Some of these
have been known to place “ringers” in their audiences, who stand in for
legitimate audience members, performing pre-arranged “tricks” for the sake of
entertainment and to enhance the performer’s reputation. Ringers and stooges
(discussed below) also serve the purpose of establishing legitimacy, thus
increasing suggestibility in audience members.
Performers like these depended on three key ingredients in order to hoodwink
their fans (who perhaps were completely fine with being hoodwinked, for a good
night out). The first of these was social pressure. In a group setting, people tend
to be much more willing to “go along to get along”. Nobody wants to be the
spoilsport who lets on that he or she hasn’t actually been hypnotized. So
audience participants in public hypnosis events tend to feign a trance state in
order not to spoil the fun. The same effect can be found in numerous settings in
which people are willing to safeguard secrecy to prevent inciting the anger of
those who believe what they’re hearing/seeing.

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The second ingredient was the careful selection of audience members to be
called to stage to be hypnotized. By asking the audience to follow a suggestion,
hypnotists, in concert with assistants observing the audience, could identify
those most prone to suggestion and also the most extroverted (and thus
entertaining) people present.
Finally, deception played an important part in the spectacle of hypnosis as
entertainment, with many performers employing drama and simple magic tricks
to dazzle their audiences. Often, deception would involve the performer
whispering to participants, once on stage and in the full glare of the footlights, to
“pretend”, or to “play the game”. This strategy would offer the audience
member, already identified as suggestible and readily compliant, no way out. In
for a penny and thus, in for a pound, the hapless participant would be left with
the choice of either playing along or running everyone’s night out. Not unlike
the use of “ringers”, “stooges” were employed by performers to follow them
from town to town and act as the first audience members on stage. This practice
served the purpose of establishing validity and ensured that other audience
members would follow suit, as well as undergirding the performer’s “street
cred”.
Stage hypnotists also modelled a cult of personality, portraying themselves as
possessing charismatic gifts which made it possible for them to create puppets of
other people, once hypnotized. As we’ll see later on in this book, though, that’s
not the aim of hypnosis, nor its reality. In truth, hypnosis is only guided by the
hypnotist. The stage hypnotist of the entertainment’s heyday is, in fact, the locus
classicus of the term “Svengali effect”. With the hypnotist cast in the role of
mysterious and all powerful puppet master, audience members would be seen to
have lost control of their wills, in confrontation of the overwhelming charisma of
the hypnotist. As we’ll see a little later on, these practices were so widespread in
the United Kingdom, that legislation was required to curtail them, which led to
the Hypnotism Act of 1952.

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Throughout the 20th Century and to the present day, stage hypnosis continues to
attract enthusiastic audiences. One of the best known stage hypnotists is the
Amazing Kreskin, who has been vocal in his opposition to the unscrupulous
practices of some of his fellows, particularly the use of ringers and stooges. 
Kreskin, however, is also remembered for his prediction of a mass UFO sighting
over Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2002. Naturally, this didn’t come to pass, but
hundreds of UFO enthusiasts camped out in anticipation of the non-event,
nonetheless. Kreskin’s subsequent media release claimed that the entire affair
had been a stunt to prove the power of suggestion in the post-9/11 world. But it
seemed he’d been planning to stage such an event since 1973. At that time, he
claimed the power of suggestion could “make people see flying saucers”. So,
despite his apparent distaste for ringers and stooges, it seems this well-known
hypnotist’s self-perception also erred on the side of “Svengali”.
Many hypnotists of the period, though, were skilled in the craft and were
genuinely able to induce “trance states” for the entertainment of their audiences. 
As we’ll read shortly, James Braid was inspired to establish his own school of
thought around the practice of hypnosis because of a stage hypnosis show he’d
attended. Despite some of the practices inherent, then, it’s clear that behind the
“roar of the grease paint, the smell of the crowd” there lay a solid basis for what
was to become a viable and scientifically-supported clinical discipline.
Mesmer
If you’ve ever wondered where the term “mesmerize” came from, look no
further. This Austrian physician is considered to be the father of the western
understanding of hypnosis and it’s from his name the term derives.
Mesmer’s study of hypnosis began in 1770, when he started to research what he
referred to as “animal magnetism”. This was also referred to as “mesmerism”, a
term which endures to this day.

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Magnetism, in general, had been studied as early as Paracelsus, but with
(perhaps unsurprisingly) mixed results. It seems that early adherents of
magnetism had associated this energetic reality with the cosmos, the pull of the
planets in their heavenly rotations and the concurrent effect of minerals on the
human body. But Mesmer saw magnetism in an entirely different light. He
posited that this energetic force was present only in the human/animal world.
The term “animal” in the phrase “animal magnetism”, doesn’t have the sexual
connotation, in Mesmer’s usage, that we often associate with it today. Rather,
Mesmer used the word “animal” to refer to the Latin animus, which literally
means “breath”. The term is a direct offshoot of the Creation narrative in
Genesis, in which divine breath animates the human proto-type and which, in
other forms, animates all living creatures. In modern Latin-based languages, the
word animus is still extant. In Italian, for example, anima means “soul”. And so
it seems that Mesmer drew a direct line from the magnetic energy to the soul in
all living creatures, particularly the human soul.
But Mesmer’s methodologies were called into question by the medical
community of his day and ultimately, he died in obscurity, despite the fact that
his defense of mesmerism employed what is most probably the first experiment
involving the use of a placebo as a control against its efficacy. Banished from
France, after being found guilty by an examining committee of propagating false
medical practices, Mesmer was to die in obscurity.