Lessons from Turning a Hypnotized Person into a Chicken

"Help! m a student in Dr. Gibbons' Psychology class!"

When I opened my psychology practice in New Jersey, my first hypnosis client asked me, "You aren't going to turn me into a chicken, are you?" 

"No," I replied with a smile,  "That's for stage hypnotists." But I did once. And this experience taught me more about hypnosis than I have learned from any other source.

Several years ago, when I was discussing the topic of hypnosis in an Introductory psychology class, I asked a student who had previously shown herself to be adept at hypnosis if she would be willing to help me illustrate how easy it was to turn a hypnotized person into a chicken. She readily agreed.

After hypnotizing her, I told her that I would count backwards from ten to one, and that by the count of one she would have been turned into a chicken.

"You will always be able to hear and respond to my voice," I continued, "and I will return you to your normal state in a few minutes, before I bring you out of hypnosis. But until I do, you will experience the world exactly as if you had been turned into a chicken. You will remember everything I have said, and it will be a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Okay?"

She nodded in agreement, and I counted slowly backwards from ten to one, providing suggestions along the way that she could feel herself changing into a chicken; and at the count of one, I announced that she had become a chicken. "Would you like to open your eyes and walk around a bit?" I asked as I gently took her by the elbow . She did so, walking slowly with a pronounced limp.

"Why are you walking like that?" I asked.

"I'm a chicken," she answered in a high, cackly voice, much to the amusement of the class.

I guided her back to her desk and counted from one to ten, interspersed with suggestios to restore her usual perceptions, and then concluded the hypnotic demonstration. I asked her if she had really felt like she was a chicken, and she thoughtfully nodded in agreement. 

If she had really believed that she was a chicken, why didn't she scurry away in fear as soon as I approached her? Why did she allow me to slowly walk her around the room, limping slightly instead of struggling to get away, as a real chicken would surely do? Why was she able to understand my spoken question? How was she able to answer it by saying, "I'm a chicken?" And why were the suggestions so easy to undo, as if she understood English as well as she ever did?

We could talk about a "hidden observer" that always knows what's going on and maintains control, no how matter deeply a person is hypnotized, as Hilgard (1974) did. We could talk about "trance logic," which is similar to the logic which is found in dreams, as Martin Orne (1959) did. But why should we infer the presence of extra mental processes such as these when they are not needed?

What she had actually believed and responded to was the narrative of what had taken place (Sarbin & de Rivera, 1998). She knew that she was a student in my class, and she knew that she had consented for me to hypnotize her. She was what Hilgard often referred to as a "hypnotic virtuoso." She still had the kind of "Alice-in-Wonderland" imagination which we all have as children, but most of us lose access to as we become adults. Therefore, she was able to act, think, and feel as if she were a chicken for the purpose of my demonstration when she volunteered to do so.  

The demonstration was undertaken in the spirit of fun, and everyone understood that. But the transformational effects of believed-in  imaginings can be powerful indeed if they are meaningful enough to alter the ongoing  narrative of a person's life story., as illustrated by the changed lives of many Fundamentalists who report an experience of having been "saved" (Gibbons & deJarnette, 1972).
  

If you can safely suggest that you are turning a hypnotized person into a chicken, why can't you safely tell hypnotized people that they are dissolving into the infinite love of the Multiverse, or the Creator Himself, and that this is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to them, so that they can get some good out of it?  You can --  and I it works!. See the posting on this Blog entitled, "Multiversal Hypnosis,  Your Superpower."

References

Gibbons, D. E. & De Jarnette, J. (1972). Hypnotic susceptibility and religious experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 11(2), pp. 152-156. 

Gibbons, D. E., & Woods, K. T. (2016). Virtual reality hypnosis: Explorations in the Multiverse. Amazon Books 

Hilgard, E. R. (1974), Toward a neo-dissociation theory: Multiple cognitive controls in human functioning. Perspectives in Biology & Medicine, 17(3), pp, 301-316. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Orne, M. T,  (1959), The nature of hypnosis: Artifact and essence. Journal of abnormal and social psychology,  psychnet.apa.org.

Sarbin, T. R., & De Rivera, J. (1998),  Believed-in imaginings: The Narrative Construction of Reality (Memory, Trauma, Dissociation, and Hypnosis) . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Of COURSE Hypnosis CAN be Used for Mind Control, Seduction, or Committing a Crime!

During the break between classes, a student once told me that her father used to hypnotize her mother every night and tell her what he wanted her to cook for dinner the following evening. She would not remember this, but he would always prepare his chosen meal as if she had thought of it herself.

Of course I cannot diagnose anyone I have never met, but this pattern perfectly fits the definition of a dependent personality disorder. People with this diagnosis want to be told what to do, instead of making up their mind themselves. When people

with dependent personality disorder are hypnotized, the hypnotist can easily get them to comply with many instructions, merely by suggesting that this is what they are going to do. 

Hypnosis itself is not an instrument of mind control, but it provides both the opportunity and the occasion for a person who wants to be told what to do to go ahead and comply with the instructions and suggestions that he or she is given.

With regard to the question of whether or not hypnotized individuals are more susceptible to sexual seduction,  the short answer is no, but the longer answer is sometimes yes. Let me respond by asking three questions. First, does seduction ever occur outside of hypnosis? The answer is obviously yes. Second, does hypnosis make people any more virtuous than they were before? Of course, the mere act of being hypnotized does not automaticrally change you into somebody who has a 

stronger moral code. Third, is it logical to assume that fantasies of seduction under hypnosis only occur to hypnotists themselves, and never to hypnotic subjects? Obviously not!

As far as the commission of a crime under hypnosis is concerned, laboratory investigations into whether or not hypnosis can be used for antisocial purposes such as committing a murder or other offense invariaby fall short of the mark, because the circumstances are not sufficiently taken  account. Imagine that Prof. Snarf has asked for volunteers in a psychological experiment. They are given a hypnotic induction, followed by  instructions to pick up a beaker of acid and hurl it in the experimenter's face, to pick up poisonous snakes, or to shoot the experimenter with a supposedly loaded gun. (All of these instructions have been used in actual experinents!) Would you really believe that a reputable scientist would let you commit a murder as part of a psychological experiment? Or would you be inclined to believe that because you are ordered to do these ridiculous things there must be a reason for it other than the one that was given, so you might as well go ahead and do as you are told? Many would be inclined to,choose the second option (Sarbin & De Rivera, 1998). Dr. Martin Orne coined the term demand characteristics to refer to this tendency of a subject in an experiment to act in the way that the subject thinks that he or she is supposed to behave, rather than simply reacting to the instructions in themselves.

Some years ago, I was asked to testify in the case of a man who had falsely advertised himself as a psychologist and had begun hypnotizing teenage girls in the area, one of whom subsequently accused him of rape. In order to make its case that hypnosis could be used to compel behavior, the prosecution had pointed to an incident in eastern Europe several decades earlier, in which a stage hypnotist had handed a man a pistol loaded with blanks and commanded the man to shoot him. The hypnotized subject, who was an off-duty police officer, drew a loaded revolver from his pocket and shot three members of the audience. I testified that while hypnosis cannot force people to people do something which is against their moral and ethical codes, it is impossible to conclusively demonstrate in the laboratory whether or not hypnosis could be used to compel anti-social behavior. You could never actually allow such behavior to occur in an experimental setting, or in any kind of staged demonstration, and the subjects know it! But, in what I like to call "the laboratory of life," the results are more clear-cut. Hypnosis in its modern form has been around for over two hundred years; and if you have to go half way around the world and back several decades in time in order to find even one instance of its alleged use in the commission of a crime, then it would be easier to conclude that this individual was psychotic or mentally deranged than to conclude that his or her behavior was the result of the alleged coercive power of hypnosis. If hypnosis could be used in such a manner, by this time its anti-social applications would be well-documented and systematically employed -- in organized crime, in international espionage, by thwarted lovers, and in many other settings. And the evidence simply is not there.

When a hypnotist is accused of rape or seduction, the problem is not with hypnosis itself, but with the power differential which is inherent in a therapeutic relationship, as it is when the abuser is a person in a position of high status, as was the case with Rasputin, a priest and an advisor to the Tsarina in the court of imperial Russia. This trust must never be abused. The responsibility always lies with the person in authority. It is necessary for the trusted person to maintain strong boundaries and to stop any inappropriate relationships from developing, even if a client displays seductive behavior due to transference, a personality disorder, mental illness, physical attraction, or simple intimidation.. A teenager would be especially susceptible to such suggestions; and If he or she subsequently accused the hypnotist of rape, then the chances are that the hypnotist  abused his or her position of trust and authority in order to have sexual relations with the victim, which is tantamount to rape. Therefore, the prosecution's mistake was to attack hypnosis itself, rather than the power  s

differential between the hypnotist and his teenage victim. (He was still  convicted, however, because it was found that the girl was underage.)

It would be a serious mistake in situations such as these to assume that fantasies of seduction under hypnosis occur only to hypnotists and never to their subjects -- in which case, the problem is still not with hypnosis itself. However, if mutual consent is not freely given ahead of time, there is  a very high incidence of "buyer's remorse," due to the fact that the subject usually has conflicting motives.

Instances such as these tend to be reported in great detail by the media, and are amplified still further by depictions of hypnosis in fiction. Because of the publicity which results from them, there are many people who will not have anything to do with hypnosis .And because these abuses continue to surface from time to time and are sensationalized by the mass media, the public is probably never going to be won over completely, despite our repeated assurances that hypnosis is perfectly safe when used by ethical and appropriately trained professionals.

Whenever something acquires unsavory or unpleasant associations, the response of society is usually to reframe it if the practice is retained. Old people become seniors citizens, a public toilet becomes a restroom, and a feebleminded child becomes an exceptional or special needs child. In the minds of the general public, the term hypnosis continues to be plagued by outmoded, Nineteenth-Century, Svengali-like stereotypes - but it works!  So what's a body to do??  I would like to  suggest that we take refuge in the time-honored practice of re-framing, as I have done, and refer to a new discovery -- multiversal meditation --  along with some examples of its successful use as a method of altering the ongoing narrative of one's life story. A press release might come in handy in this regard -- especially if you take the reporter on an experiential tour of the multiverse!

(I am grateful to Dr. Añnette K. Schreiber for her assistance in the preparation of this post.

Reference

  
Sarbin, T. R., & De Rivera, J. (1998),  Believed-in imaginings:The Narrative Construction of Reality (Memory, Trauma, Dissociation, and Hypnosis). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

What is Hyperempiria?

As I have stated elsewhere, evolution did not come to a screeching halt with the first bipeds who could accurately be labeled homo sapiens. We have been developing the powers of the mind in new and exciting ways ever since. However, the more highly evolved among us frequently need the services of a hypnotist to function as an enabler, coach, or personal trainer to show us how to use these emerging abilities with confidence, because they are so different from the current patterns of thought which we are used to in everyday life

Confucius said, “Tell me and I may not remember. Show me and I may forget. Involve me and I will understand.” This type of stress can best be counteracted by the type of hypnotic involvement which allows us to experience first-hand a reality in which all the negative things that ever happened have been paved over with joy, and bring the lessons of these experiences back with us.

There are many altered experiences of consciousness which are induced by procedures designed to increase tension, alertness, and physical activity rather than by expressed or implied suggestions of diminished awareness which are commonly grouped under the term hypnosis. Banyai and Hilgard (1976) specifically mention the 'spontaneous' trance states occurring during certain religious gatherings among the Holy Rollers, Snake Charmers, and other revivalist groups (Sargant, 1957, Williams, 1958). Comparable results are found during tribal ceremonies (Field, 1960; Murphy, 1964), in the famous trance-dances in Bali (Sargant, 1957), the fire-walkers trance (Thomas, 1934), and the ecstatic trance of the "howling or "whirling" dervishes (Williams, 1958). In the more advanced cultures highly suggestible mental states have been produced by grilling or brainwashing (Sargant, 1957), and a hyper kinetic trance appears to be associated with the emotional contagion encountered in a group or mob setting (LaBarre, 1962).

Banyai and Hilgard went on to describe a now-classic experiment in which 50 subjects rode a bicycle ergometer under load, keeping their eyes open while exercising and receiving suggestions of alertness. This was randomly alternated with a standard hypnotic induction procedure using eye fixation and relaxation, and the results were measured by eight tests of responses to suggestion. Both conditions, on average, produced about the same increase in responsiveness to suggestion, and the highly susceptible subjects reported that in both cases altered states were achieved. The authors concluded,"The results obtained in the experiment suggest that by our completely active-alert hypnotic induction procedure it is possible to induce a state in which all the important characteristics of hypnosis occur, except the resemblance to sleep .. . .Although the subjective alterations differed between the two kinds of induction, the highly susceptible reported that in both cases altered states were achieved" (p, 221).

When the Hare Krishna movement was at its height in the United States, we invited the group to present at our graduate psychology colloquium at West Georgia College. Their presentation included a group chant, which began calmly enough; but after a few moments, the room seemed to explode with emotion as their chant reached a crescendo which continued for several minutes. It was obvious that the participants had entered an experiential trance which, according to their own statements, was both the focus and the energizing force which empowered their movement.

Most of us are also familiar with the details of the Mesmeric "crises," and how they resulted in either temporary or permanent "cures" of many ailments which today we would refer to as psychosomatic or hysterical in nature.

I conducted some research which links being exponentially gifted with the ability to experience the Fundamentalist experience of "salvation", which many people describe as a life-changing event (Gibbons, 1988; Gibbons & DeJarnette, 1972). Hyperempiria,or suggestion-enhanced experience, has also been found to be helpful in facilitating meditation and prayer, and for such diverse experiences as the alleviation of depression and the enhancement of personal intimacy through experiences of mystical intensity. Most recently, Kelley Woods and I have been using hyperempiria as the induction of choice to conduct people to the Multiverse (Gibbons & Woods, 2016).

References

Banyai, E. I., & Hilgard, E. R. (1976). A comparison of active-alert hypnotic induction with traditional relaxation induction. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 85,pp. 218-224

.

Field, M.Search for security: An ethnopsychialric study of rural Ghana.Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 1960.

Gibbons, D. E. (1988) Were you saved or were you hypnotized?The Humanist, pp. 17-19.

Gibbons, D. E. & De Jarnette, J. (1972). Hypnotic susceptibility and religious experience.Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 11(2), pp. 152-156.

Gibbons, D. E., & Woods, K. T. (2016). Virtual reality hypnosis: Explorations in the Multiverse. Amazon Books.

LaBarre, W. They shall take up serpents. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 9 6 2.

Murphy, J. Psychotherapeutic aspects of shamanism on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. in A. Kiev (Ed.),Magic, Faith, and Healing.New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964.

Sargent, W.Battle for the Mind.Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957.

Thomas, E. The fire walk. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research,1934.42,292-309.

Williams, G. W. Hypnosis in perspective. In L. M. LeCron (Ed.), Experimental Hypnosis. New York: Macmillan, 1958.

Helpful Links for Life Management

Here, in no particular order, is a list of links to some of the Blog entries which are most frequently used by my psychology clients. When you clck on a link and it takes you ro rhe Blog, just scroll down and the post that you have clicked on will come up first.. Then you can repeat this process for each additional link.

I hope you find them useful!

Google keeps a running tally of the most frequently read posts on my Blog, and the following one has usually been close to the top of the list for several years:

How to Get a Good Night's Sleep

Family systems theorists have long been aware that the person who comes to therapy is often not the one who needs it the most. There may be another family member whose toxic personality is driving them into therapy. Here's how to recognize and hopefully begin to deal with such a problem. While an actual diagnosis can only be made by a trained mental health professional, here is how to spot a friend, co-worker, or family member might have a personality disorder:

Is a Toxic Person Driving You  Crazy?

Cognitive-behavioral psychology teaches that it is not what happens to you, but what you think about what happens to you, that makes you angry, depressed, or upset. Here are three ways of dealing with these thoughts:

False Beliefs that are Driving You Crazy

False Perceptions that are Driving You Crazy

Activities which Help You Get Off the Merry-Go-Round

When cognitive-behavioral therapy first became popular, the British National Health Service decided to make it available to all it's citizens by putting it up on the Internet for everyone to use. Since the Internet does not recognize national borders, you can use it too!

Cognitive Behavioral Downloads for Clients and Therapists

Viktor Frankl was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp in World War II. He discovered that the most important reason that people were dying all around him was not the cold and the starvation, but giving up hope. When he resumed his practice at the end of the war, he concentrated on helping his patients to find meaning in their lives as the way back to health. Here's a link to his audiobook:

 Man's Search for Meaning 

ALL of us have struggled with  problems of addiction to negative thinking! The folks at www.smart recovery.org, have developed a method for changing the beliefs which guide our lives which is based on Albert Ellis's Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.
There are several helpful aids to life management in their tools and homework and articles and essays section, which apply not only to recovery from addiction but also to life in general.

Multimodal Suggestion and the Healing Power of Love

Martha was a 50 year old insurance executive with three grown children. "In my large Irish family," she told me," "disagreements were handled in one of two ways, either by laughing at them or by ignoring them."  She dreaded holidays and the rancorous family quarrels that would inevitably ensue around the dinner table.

Martha had recently celebrated her 15th year of sobriety, and had chosen to make Alcoholics Anonymous her substitute family.  She had come to view her husband, a Texas police official whom she saw only infrequently, as a confirmed narcissist. She had not seen him since he had demanded several months previously that she fly a set of business papers  directly to him instead of mailing them. 

She prayed frequently, and stated that this gave her some relief. In my clinical psychology practice, she  responded well to hypnotic voyages to the Multiverse, the Universe of all possible Universes (Gibbons & Woods, 2016), where she could feel herself herself dissolving ito the infinite love of the Multiverse itself as a means of overcoming the effect of previous environmental stressors. 

When I asked her about what this experience felt like, she commented afterwards that she thought that it was God. I asked if she would like to hypnotically experience an actual union with God Himself, and she unhesitatingly agreed. 

When we got to this portion of her Multiversal journey, I gave special emphasis to the suggestions that this was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her; and that it was as if all of the love, and all of the rapture that had ever been felt by all of the people who ever walked the face of the Earth were hers to enjoy and hers to be, now in these golden moments of delight. I usied suggestions for time distortion to further heighten their effectiveness, suggesting that even though she may actually have been hypnotized for only a few minutes, it would seem as if she had been away for an entire lifetime, and the benefits of herv hypnotic journey would be correspondingly increased  After the induction was completed, I emphatically observed "Well, I'll bet that family arguments can't bother you now!" She smiled blissfully, and nodded in agreement.

Meister Eckhart was a preacher in the 12th century who  taught that we should see ourselves as empty vessels waiting to be filled with the love of God. He was charged with heresy, since this would imply that there was another way to feel the love of God in addition to the sacraments; but he died before his trial could be completed. His work lived on, however; and his writings were praised by recent Popes. 

Since my training is in general experimental psychology, I have no way of knowing whether Martha was really in communication with the Divine. However, this is  the reality of her own personal experience and  this experience is having a positive effect upon her life, which is the goal of all successful psychotherapy. Here are the multimodal suggestions which I used, which taken. together form the acronym best me.

Belief systems. Now, as I continue to speak, you can gradually become aware of yourself standing in front of a pair of large wooden doors, which are the doors of a great cathedral. If you accept each detail of the scene as I describe it, without trying to think critically, your imagination can be free to allow you to experience the situation just as if you were really there.So just let yourself stand there a moment, gazing at the carved wooded doors, as you prepare to enter. [Brief pause.]

Now, as the doors swing open, you first traverse a small area paved with stone, stopping at the font if you desire, and pause before a second pair of doors which leads inside.

Emotions. You can feel a surge of happiness and anticipation as you pass through a second pair of doors and into the dimly lit interior. As your eyes gradually become accustomed to the dimmer light from the stained glass windows, take a moment to look around in wonder at the magnificence of all you see.

Sensations and perceptions. Let yourself breathe slowly and deeply, as you inhale the faint aroma of incense, and listen to the gentle tones of music floating upon the quiet air.

Some distance away from you stands the High Altar, bordered by banks of gently glowing candles. You select a pew and, after pausing to genuflect if you wish, you enter the pew and take your seat or kneel once more.

Thoughts and images. Let your mind flow with the experience, and allow it to fill you to the very core of your being, until you feel as if you are able to hold within your own consciousness an awareness of the entire Universe, and all its beauty. As it does, you can feel yourself gradually becoming aware of the presence of a Consciousness other than your own.

As this Consciousness begins to merge with yours, you can feel the power of an infinite healing energy filling and flooding every muscle, and every fiber, and every nerve of your entire body. And it's as if all of the worry, and all of the tension, and all of the care that you have ever felt are being driven out and replaced by the power of this infinite, unbounded, healing love.

As your own consciousness merges ever more completely with this Infinite Awareness, you feel as if you are able to hold within your own mind an awareness of the entire Universe, and all its beauty ‑‑ infinite, beyond infinity, and eternal beyond all measure of eternity. And in this sense of total oneness, you are able to freely communicate all your deepest thoughts and needs.

Motives. The experience, as it continues, is providing you with all that you had hoped to obtain from it. The serenity and the peace which you find here will remain with you, as a source of deep inner strength which will enable you to cope much more effectively with all of life's problems.

Expectations. You will treasure the memory of this experience as it meets your needs in the future; and each time you return, you will be able to derive new benefits which will meet your needs even more effectively.

Reference

Gibbons, D. E., & Woods, K. T. Virtual reality hypnosis: Explorations in the Multiverse. Amazon Publishers, 2016.

Multiversal Meditation: for Work-Related Stress

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,  

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers."

--William Wordsworth, c. 1802 

Many of the clients in my general psychology practice may loosely be included under the description of "the worried well." They often respond to Multiversal hypnotic meditation with dramatic results which are similar to the personality changes observed in people who have undergone a Fundamentalist experience of  "salvation" (Gibbons & de Jarnette, 1972), because it gives them an entirety different perspective on life. 

Bill, a high school graduate in his late twenties, was formerly employed as a "picker" in a large, semi-automated warehouse where his performance was continually being timed according to how fast he could fill the orders he was given. Currently, he was employed as a delivery driver, but the pace was similarly hectic. He was happily married to a medical receptionist, and they had no children. 

I had been seeing Bill on Saturday afternoons on a weekly basis for about three months, to help him to de-stress after a long week, when he mentioned that his wife of six months noticed how "mellowed out" he was when he came home after a trip to the Multiverse. He added with a smile that they often spent the rest of the afternoon making love, which he had sometimes been unable to do before he started to see me because of his chronic job-related stresses. In view of the fact that the present results are a by-product of my client's repeated trips to the Multiverse, specific suggestions for sexual enhancement would probably be highly effective; but in view of of the couple's age and the relatively short time they had been married, suggestions of this type were obviously not needed.

Wordsworth was surely correct in  his observation in 1802 , but if only he could see us now!

Reference

Gibbons, D. E. & De Jarnette, J. (1972). Hypnotic susceptibility and religious experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 11(2), pp. 152-156. 

How to Deal With Passive-Aggressive Behavior

The BEST ME Technique for Constructing Multimodal Suggestions

We all try to compose our suggestions as carefully as possible to completely involve our hypnosis partners in their content. Once we have done so, the BEST ME Technique can serve as a final checklist to ensure comprehensiveness. . (Gibbons & Woods, 2016). 

The Best Me Technique utilizes the simultaneous involvement of Beliefs, Emotions, Sensationand physical perceptions, Thoughts and images, Motives, and Expectations, to involve one's entire being in the content of s suggested experience. Taken together, the elements of this technique form the acronym, BEST ME (Gibbons & Lynn, 2008), and may be summarized as follows.

Belief systems which orient an individual to person, place, time, and events may be suggested as being different, allowing the participant to mentally transcend present realities.

Emotions may be enriched, intensified, weakened, or combined with others.

Sensations and physical perceptions may be suggested and experienced with an intensity approaching those of real events.

Thoughts and images may be created and guided in response to explicit or indirect suggestions.

Motives may either be suggested directly or implied as a consequence of other events.

Expectations may be structured concerning the manner in which the participant will look forward to and remember suggested events which will occur in the future, and the manner in which suggested experiences will subsequently be recalled and interpreted in memory.

Here is a case example. I was working with a client who has PTSD, stemming primarily from previous sexual abuse by her husband. She married him on her eighteenth birthday in order to get away from home. He was from South America, and he only stayed married to her long enough to get his Green Card to become a U.S citizen. He would watch pornography morning, noon, and night; and when they did have sex, it was "all for himself," as she put it.

After a spree of wild promiscuity induced by anger at her husband, ("World, here I am!" she once said to me, in reference to this period in her life). she began living with a pilot who was several years older than she was, with whom she had fallen in love. But, every time they got emotionally too close for comfort, it would trigger her previous trauma. She would turn hostile and pick a quarrel, nagging him endlessly until they would briefly break up. 

Using the Best Me Technique to provide suggestions to induce a higher state of awareness I provided suggestions as follows:

B. In this higher state of consciousness and in this higher level of reality, focus the power of your mind to recapture and concentrate into one single moment, all of the love that you and your lover have shared in the past. If you can believe in it you can believe it, and if you can believe it you can make it happen!

E Now,  multiply  this love 10 times over. Believe it will happen, expect it to happen, and feel it happening!

S, Concentrate this love and send it  to him like a laser beam. Feel it now, flowing into every fiber and muscle and nerve of his body and feel him beaming it back to you.  Believe it will happen, expect to happen, and feel it happening!

T His love for you is now so great that it is impossible for him to be romantically or physically or emotionally attracted to anyone else.

M.  Your fears of abandonment have been eliminated, and you are able now to surrender yourself to loving him totally and completely, in body, heart, mind, and spirit.

E. Whenever you and he make love in the future, you will be so intensely aroused and so highly responsive that it will fulfill you as a woman more deeply than anything you have never known before. Let yourself believe in it with every ounce of strength that is in you If you can believe in it, you can believe it; and if you can believe it,  you can make it happen!

After the suggestions described above, I provided an opportunity for my client to mentally make love to her boyfriend, while I remain silent to protect her privacy and allow her to imagine every detail of the experience herself, in much more intimate detail.

No matter how freely they discuss the intimate details of their lovemaking, there are still certain explicit details which they might prefer to remain private. The following application of the Best Me Technique allows a client to pave over previous experiences which have inhibited their ability to completely let go during the most intimate moments of the act of love:

The client had told me that she is especially fond of making love in the woods behind the house which she shares with her boyfriend. After the foregoing suggestions were given, I would proceed as follows:

 B. Now the scene is changing once again, and you and your lover are all alone in the woods. He has brought a blanket with him, and he and spreading it out on the ground so that you can make love under the stars.

 E. We are going to use this passion to pave over all of the thoughts that have been bothering you Believe it will happen expect it to happen, and feel it happening.

 S, as the night slowly passes, you Join. so çompletely in  mind, and body and spirit that you have become one in every sense of the word. Believe it will happen, expect it to happen, and feel it happening.

 Now I will stop speaking for a few moments so that you can guide the rest of the experience yourself.

 [After about a five-minute pause;]

T. Finally, as the sky above you begins to lighten, you sink back exhausted with joy, The intrusive thoughts you may have had in the past have been completely covered over by the power of your love,  and you are truly one in body, heart, mind, and spirit.

 M  You will have neither the energy nor the inclination for thoughts of   any other type of release; for your fulfillment here as a woman [or a man]  has led you to joy beyond your wildest dreams

 E. Each time these hypnotic experiences are repeated, they will become more vivid,more desirable, more intense and more fulfilling.

The client reported that these suggestions were effective in ending their pattern of frequent quarrels resulting in a temporary breakup whenever their emotional relationship became too intense. She referred to the current portion of their relationship as a "honeymoon." The last time I saw her, however, she said that the old fears had surfaced once more.

I suggested that this time, she and her boyfriend would be making love in a parallel universe, in which the stormy and traumatic events which she experienced during her adolescence and early adulthood never happened. 

She is employed as a flight attendant, and on this latest visit she had to leave her phone on because she was on call for the upcoming Thanksgiving week end. Halfway into the self-directed portion of the experience, her phone went off. She gave no indication of having heard it. I apologetically spoke to her, and she opened her eyes as if being awakened from a nap. The caller turned out to be her brother. "We have twenty minutes to respond," she told me, and decided to turn the phone off for the remainder of the session.

"Now you can go all the way back into hypnosis, very rapidly," I said, and began an abbreviated progressive relaxation induction to take her back to the portion of the experience where she was making love to her boyfriend in a parallel universe, and directing the experience herself.

A few seconds into this induction, she giggled suddenly. I stopped and asked her what was the matter. She sad, "I didn't know I could go all the way back there so fast. WHEEE!" We both laughed, and I completed the induction. She later reported that the experience was highly effective. When I last heard fromher, she and her boyfriend were looking for a houwe in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania -- near a school!

References

Gibbons, D. E., & Lynn, S. J. (2008). Hyonotic inductions: A primer. In Ruhe, J. W., Lynn, S. J., & Kirsch, I. (Eds.) Handbook of clinical hypnosis, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Assn.

 Gibbons, D. E., &; Woods, K. T. (2016). Virtual reality hypnosis: Explorations in the Multiverse. Amazon Books 

The Next Step Upward in Human Evolution

With 99% of the same genetic makeup as our closest simian cousins, the chimpanzees, there is little doubt that our evolutionary development has been lopsided. We have highly developed frontal lobes which enable us to formulate lofty ideals and distant goals, but all too often our emotional centers prevent us from achieving them. More than once in the last century, we have come close to annihilating each other; and many social institutions are devoted in whole or in part to regulating our behavior so that we do not destroy one another individually.  

Human, evolution did not come to a screeching halt with the first bipeds who could accurately be labeled homo sapiens. We have been developing the powers of our imagination in new and exciting ways ever since. We frequently need the services of a hypnotist to function as an enabler, coach, or personal trainer to show us how to use these emerging abilities with confidence, because they are so different from the current patterns of thought which we are used to in everyday life. Using the BEST ME Technique of multimodal suggestion for the simultaneous involvement of Beliefs, Emotions, Sensations and physical perceptions, Thoughts and images, Motives, and Expectations, for greater involvement and effectiveness.(Gibbons & Lynn, 2008), it is possible to fully experience the rewards of distant goals now, in the present, when they are most important for motivation, making it much easier to live up to the goals and ideals which evolution has enabled us to construct but have heretofore been difficult to achieve (Gibbons & Woods, 2016).

The next major breakthough in human evolution is likely to be of a  spiritual nature. The saints and mystics of every major religion have attested to the life-changing properties of experiences in which they felt that they were in the presence of the Creator, returning with a sense of the indwelling presence of God.  People who are sufficiently advanced in their evolutionary development may be hypnotically brought ino the presence of the Creator Himself, and return with an enduring sense of the indwelling presence of God, no longer broken by the stresses of life, and living like they have never lived before! 

Regardless of whether or not our clients' metaphysical beliefs are the same as ours or whether we have no metaphysical beliefs at all, the challenge facing all of us is to help our clients to to make the fullest use of their emerging imaginative abilities by regularly practicing hyperempiric meditations such as these, for the facilitation of human growth, the ennoblement of the human spirit, and the enrichment of human existence.

References

Gibbons, D. E., & Lynn, S. J. (2008). Hypnotic inductions: A primer. In Ruhe, J. W., Lynn, S. J., & Kirsch, I. (Eds.) Handbook of clinical hypnosis, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Assn.

 Gibbons, D. E., & Woods, K. T. (2016). Virtual reality hypnosis: Explorations in the Multiverse. Amazon Books.

Limitations of Mechanically-Based Virtual Reality Systems

In spite of all the money which is currently being thrown at them, mechanically based systems of virtual reality are necessarily limited to the single sense of preception. And how "real" is that when they are STILL working with only one dimension of experience? Here is an example of what we as hypnotists can do to involve one's whole person in the content of a suggested experience  (Gibbons & Lynn, 2008; Gibbons & Woods, 2016).

The Best Me Technique utilizes the simultaneous involvement of Beliefs, Emotions, Sensations and physical perceptions, Thoughts and images, Motives, and Expectations, for greater involvement and effectiveness. Taken together, the elements of this technique form the acronym, BEST ME.

Belief systems which orient an individual to person, place, time, and events may be suggested as being different, allowing the participant to mentally transcend present realities.

Emotions may be enriched, intensified, weakened, or combined with others.

Sensations and physical perceptions may be suggested and experienced with an intensity approaching those of real events.

Thoughts and images may be created and guided in response to explicit or indirect suggestions.

Motives may either be suggested directly or implied as a consequence of other events.

Expectations may be structured concerning the manner in which the participant will look forward to and remember suggested events which will occur in the future, and the manner in which suggested experiences will subsequently be recalled and interpreted in memory.

When I was teaching at what is now the University of St. Francis de Sales, a student with whom I was well acquainted came to my office and said, "Hey, Prof! You gotta do something. I'm not studying!" Final examinations were coming up soon, and he was in the last semester of his senior year.  His grade point average was marginal at best. Since he had been a willing participant in earlier hypnosis research, I knew that he was a high responder. After hypnotizing him, I proceeded approximately as follows:

Belief systems. Now you can feel your awareness of the present beginning to fade, as you become ever more clearly aware of yoursel seated at your graduation ceremony, waiting to go up and receive your diploma. Just picture the scene, and imagine yourself excitedly waiting there, until it becomes just as real and just as clear to you as if it is happening right now.

Emotions. Let yourself feel an ever increasing sense of pride and achievement as you savor this moment to the fullest. As you look around at your fellow graduates and at the crowd of family, friends, and well wishers who have come to share in your success, you can truly rejoice in the thrill of all you have worked so hard to accomplish.

Sensations and physical perceptions. The graduates are getting up one row at a time to form a line beside the stage until their name is called. When it is your turn, you join the line and await your turn to go up and shake hands with the Dean and receive your diploma.

Thoughts and images. And all the time, you are realizing how much this means to you, and how much it has all been worthwhile.

Motives. Now, as you walk across the stage and shake hands with the Dean, he smiles and hands you your diploma, and you return to your seat, let yourself take a few moments now to bask in the satisfaction of a job well done, and savor your achievement to the fullest. [Pause.]

Expectations. And each time that you return to this treasured memory of the future, it will become easier for you to act, think, and feel as if it were impossible to fail. Believe it will happen, expect it to happen, feel it happening, and savor in advance the fruits of your success!

We repeated this exercise five times in the final two weeks of the semester, and he did successfully graduate. Of course, it helped to have the active participation and encouragement of a faculty member who believed in him and was rooting for him; and the effectiveness of hypnotic suggestions must be evaluated in terms of the personality and unique characteristics of the individual to whom they are given, and the total context of the situation within which they are presented.  But what would we have been able to do with virtual reality goggles, even if they had been available at the time?

References

Gibbons, D. E., & Lynn, S. J. (2008). Hypnotic inductions: A primer. In Ruhe, J. W., Lynn, S. J., & Kirsch, I. (Eds.) Handbook of clinical hypnosis, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Assn.

 Gibbons, D. E., & Woods, K. T. (2016). Virtual reality hypnosis: Explorations in the Multiverse. Amazon Books