HYPNO2

Hypnosis

We have seen that a wonderful mechanism efficiently focuses our awareness on a small segment of the innumerable signals constantly seeking attention. Thus, the vast majority of incoming signals are ignored. Furthermore, priority is assigned to those being considered. We have seen that focusing and sorting are influenced by suggestion, and that the normal mental quality of suggestibility may be misused.

Discrimination, the other concept important in our discussion, you probably already understand. It is used in valuing and in the recognition of right and wrong. With an understanding of awareness, suggestibility, and discrimination, we are ready to discuss hypnosis.

Definition

The hypnotic trance is a package-like phenomenon, which includes: (1) an increased degree of suggestibility, (2) an alteration or distortion of awareness, and (3) a reduction or loss of the power to discriminate. An individual's capacities of suggestibility, awareness and discrimination naturally vary However, when these factors are controlled by another individual, we call the process hypnosis. In this state a person's will - the ability to decide and act independently is relinquished, and the will of the hypnotist is accepted in its! place. The awareness thus becomes subject to alteration by the hypnotist's suggestion.

Characteristics of hypnosis

1. Not everyone can be hypnotized.
2. It is difficult, if not impossible, to hypnotize a person against his or her will.
3. Babies cannot be hypnotized, but children are more susceptible than older people.
4. People may be hypnotized as individuals or as members of a group.
5. To enter the hypnotic trance, a person must desire hypnosis and believe that it will occur. Trust and confidence which amounts to faith in the hypnotist, must replace fear.
6. Susceptibility may be increased by an urge to please the hypnotist, by repetition and by fatigue.
7. As the trance deepens, response becomes more absolute.
8. Hypnotic influence may continue after release from the trance.
9. The hypnotized individual risks being used as a instrument by an unscrupulous hypnotist.

Now to expand some of these points: Susceptibility to trance may increase with repetition. This perhaps occur through learning mechanisms. (2) Bernheim, (3) who practiced hypnosis extensively, made this observation: "Many person . . . are influenced at the very first seance, others not until the second or third. After being hypnotized once or twice, they are speedily influenced. . . . Patients in whom hypnotic suggestibility is very well developed [respond], however slight may be the idea of sleep that is given them."

Those who recognize the moral accountability for self-control, which accompanies the freedom of God's grace will appreciate Ellen White's warning: "No individual should be permitted to take control of another person's mind . . . Temporary relief may be felt, but the mind of the one thus controlled is never again so strong and reliable." 4

As rapport on a one-to-one basis increases between a willing individual and a hypnotist, the depth and certainty of response increase.

Hypnosis requires trust. To produce confidence during the induction of a trance, the hypnotist often predicts that his subject will experience certain sensations which would be felt anyway but might remain unnoticed. The hypnotist suggests a few little maneuvers to divert attention. As the subject complies with these suggestions and discovers that the predicted sensations are occurring, confidence develops. He tells himself, "Sure enough I am being hypnotized." Releasing his self-determination, the trance begins.

Hypnotists often assure their prospective subjects that hypnotized persons cannot be caused to do anything contrary, to their basic standards of right and wrong. Unfortunately however, most of us seem to have inherited tendencies toward evil. Some authorities on the subject assert that one who has a repressed inner urge to commit some criminal act might readily do so when the restraining effect of better judgment has been removed and the act is suggested by the hypnotist. (5)(6).

Bernard C. Gindes, discussing hypnosis as an adjunct to psychotherapy, says, ". . . I have expressed the opinion that with adequate conditioning criminal acts can be facilitated through hypnosis. I would not underestimate the potential capacity of a strong suggestion in an adaptable mind."(6)

Furthermore, mind control does not necessarily end when the hypnosis session is over. By "therapeutic suggestion" psychoanalysts believe hypnosis enables them to implant impressions in the subconscious minds of their patients. For instance, 'Even though you relinquish all active control over the subject when you awaken him, the posthypnotic suggestions you have made still control him and his thoughts and actions They have become . . . an integral part of his mental process.

"The continued control of the hypnotist over the subject's subjective mind leads to a gradually increasing influence over the subject's objective process as well, and thus to remodeling of his entire thought pattern. This is the basis of therapeutic hypnosis based upon implantation of suggestion in the subject's subjective mind with continuing (posthypnotic) effects. "(7)

How hypnosis is induced

Warning to the reader: Hypnosis is not entertainment. I urge [everyone] to avoid any involvement with its practice...
.

The importance of understanding how a person is guided into hypnotic trance will become evident when we look at possession and some of Satan's religious counterfeits in the next chapter.

Bernard C. Gindes defines for the would-be hypnotist "the hypnotic formula." Particularly notice two points: first, how confidence in the hypnotist resembles what the Christian calls faith; and second, the necessity of diverting the subject's attention.

"The actual mechanism of hypnosis depends upon a fixed formula; when this is carried out meticulously, hypnosis must follow . . . . MISDIRECTED ATTENTION + BELIEF + EXPECTATION = THE HYPNOTIC STATE."

Creating these conditions for the hypnotic state involves diverting the mind from questioning what is happening, personal surrender to the hypnotist, and building up expectation.

"Imagination is the integrating factor which welds belief and expectation into an irresistible force. Fear can be utilized for added stimulus; the subject's wish to depart from 'reality' causes him to welcome hypnosis as a desired experience. The subject's entire personality must be aligned with the aid of imagination in a definite course to aid and abet the experienced hypnotist. " (8)

Some of the many variations in behavior which may occur as a result of hypnosis are described in the chapter about my own experience. (ED's note: The chapter referred to here is not yet on line.) Other examples are alluded to in discussing spirit possession ... The following section considers conditions which are often confused with hypnosis.

Conditions resembling hypnosis

A number of hypnosis-like (hypnoid) states probably depend on the neurophysiologic mechanism involved in hypnosis. In typical hysteria, a trance-like distortion of awareness, and perhaps behavior, develops in a person under severe emotional stress. This often seems to serve a useful function in diverting the attention of the person himself and/or others from an intolerable problem. Or it may, for a time, side step making a painful decision or taking other undesired action. Because of this, it is sometimes called a 'conversion reaction.'

While isolated examples of hysteria are seen related to the stressful variations of everyday life, probably the most dramatic and severe examples of major hysteria are war neuroses.

"Very many of the more spectacular reactions to war stresses could be labeled as 'anxiety hysteria.' Indeed, one of the commonest final reactions to stress in patients of previously stable temperament, as opposed to the unstable, was the development of hysterical responses . . . .

"Once a state of hysteria has been induced . . . by mounting stresses which the brain can no longer tolerate protective inhibition is likely to supervene. This will disturb the individual's ordinary conditioned behavior patterns. . . states of greatly increased suggestibility are also found - and so are their opposite, namely, states in which the patient is deaf to all suggestions, however sensible . . . .

"Critical faculties may become inhibited in these states of anxiety hysteria. . . . Police forces in many parts of the world rely on this inhibition of critical faculties and normal judgment to obtain full confessions from prisoners subjected to debilitation or emotional stresses, without the need to injure them physically."(9)

Hysteria and hypnosis resemble each other in several ways but they differ in one important aspect. Hypnosis requires surrender of the will to another individual. By contrast, in cases of major hysteria, the affected person's ability to cope has been exhausted by the fatigue of prolonged excessive emotional stress until his mental processes are simply out of order. Of course the Christian may look to God's promise: "Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace - in peace because they trust in you." (Isaiah 26:3)

Autohypnosis (or self-hypnosis) is said to be the cause of behaviors with many features typical of hypnosis except no hypnotist is recognized. Some consider hysteria to be self-hypnosis. Conversely, hypnosis has been described as artificially induced hysteria. Some also equate glossolalia, spirit possession and spirit medium experiences with self-hypnosis.

But the idea of hypnotizing one's self is illogical. How does one surrender self-control to himself without still being in control? Generally, cases called self-hypnosis may be explained as post-hypnotic influence, as hysteria, or as possession by a supernatural spirit. And in the final analysis are we not looking at the same basic phenomena in different packages. Is not the same satanic power the real agency in control - perhaps even in hysteria? We must ask similar questions about the supernatural influences in Eastern religions. An element of transcendental meditation resembles hypnosis. This will be discussed when we comment on possession in the next chapter.

A delusion of the last days

In their book, The Seduction of Christianity, Hunt and McMahon recognize hypnotism as part of the world influence often called the New Age Movement.(10) " It requires little insight to realize that in order to establish Antichrist's official world religion in the space age, where science is worshipped, it will be necessary to merge religion with science. One place where science and religion have met is in the growing practice of hypnosis. Though an integral part of occultism for thousands of years, hypnosis has now been accepted as 'scientific' and is even being used by hundreds of Christian psychologists".(10)

References

2. Andre M. Weitzenhoefer, General Techniques of Hypnotism, p. 271. Grune & Stratton. New York, 1957.

3. H. Bernheim, (Trans. from 2nd rev. ed. by Christian Herter), Hypnosis & Suggestion in Psychotherapy, p. 4. University Books. New Hyde Park, New York, 1 964.

4. Ellen. White, Medical Ministry, pp. 115, 116 Pacific Press. Nampa, Idaho, 1963.

5. Bernard Hollander, Methods and Uses of Hypnosis & Self- hypnosis, Page 170 in the 1979 edition published by Melvin Powers, Wilshire Book Company, North Hollywood, California. First published in London, 1935.

6. Bernard C. Gindes, New Concepts of Hypnosis, p. 93. Copyright 1951 by Bernard C. Gindes, M.D. Renewed 1979 by Hanna E. Cindes. Used by permission of The Julian Press, Inc. Also see: Louis West and Gordon H. Deckert, Journal of the American Medical Association, April 5, 1956, Vol. 192, pp. 9-l2. Copyright 1965, American Medical Association.

7. Raphael H. Rhodes, Hypnosis, pp. 116, 117. The Citadel Press. Secaucus, New jersey, 1950.

8. Bernard C. Gindes, Op. Cit., pp. 77, 78.

9. William Sargant, Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-washing, pp. 59, 60. Doubleday & Company. Garden City, New York, 1957.

10. Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon, The Seduction of Christianity, p. 73. Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR 97402, 1985. Also see: William Kroger and William Fezler, Hypnosis and Behavior Modification: Imagery Conditioning, p. 412. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, PA 19105. 1976. And: Kenneth R. Wade (not related to the author), Review and Herald Pub. Assn., Hagerstown, MD, 1989.