Romantic Love and the Power of Suggestion

  

Professor Irving Singer, in a free online MIT course entitled, Philosophy of Love in the Western world, states that romanti doc love as we know it today was practically unheard of in Western culture until it became popularized by wandering French troubadours eight hundred years ago, and further amplified by the invention of the printing press, which publicized the great works of romantic literature such as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra ("Hark! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the Sun!" or,"Shall I abide in this dull world which  in thy absence, is no better than a stye?)

With this model held up for all to see, the prevailing expectations of what it feels like to be "in love" evolved in an ever more extreme direction. For many years, one way to write a new hit song was to describe the experience of being in love in more glowing terms than the songs which were popular at the moment. The reviewer of the 1955 movie, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, writing in The Independent on February 8, 2010, stated: "Remember the lyric: 'Once, on a high and windy hill, two lovers kissed, and the world stood still. . . .' It still makes my knees weak."  Today, as products of a culture which glorifies romantic love, we tend to view human experience through these cultural lenses, and choose bits from history which confirm these stereotypes.  

The power of suggestion can do more than simply make us feel weak in the knees. In Victorian times, women were considered to be such delicate creatures that they were expected to faint if the air in a room suddenly became stuffy, or if they were suddenly and unexpectedly kissed by someone to whom they had become attracted -- and many did! 

The effect of suggestion and imitation in producing such a high degree of organismic involvement became dramatically evident shortly after World War II, wh oren the young crooner Frank Sinatra caused legions of teen-age "bobby-soxers" to swoon when he hit his high notes. It is therefore possible to conclude that the experience of "falling in love" as we know it today, and all that goes with it, is also an effect of social modeling and the power of suggestion. 

Suggestion has the power to teach behavior as well as to shape it. In 1933, after moviegoing had reached its height, Herbert Blumer found that many people said that they first learned how to kiss by watching motion pictures. Even today, many people probably still pick up  a few pointers about how and when to approach a partner for that all-important first kiss from motion pictures and from television.

Remember the modeling effect of romantic love portrayed in Romeo and Juliet, and Antony and Cleopatra? Today, searchable data bases of Internet pornography  contain literally millions of submissions, and almost anyone in the world can upload their own contributions to them. The entries are frequently ranked in terms of popularity, so that those which are viewed most often rise to the top. Some of these data bases require no fees, passwords, or proof of age, and are supported entirely by advertising. 

Will today's teen-agers and young adults learn sexual behavior by watching pornography, in much the same manner that people of earlier generations learned how to kiss by watching motion pictures?  Will traditional notions of romantic love be modified to allow a much more permissive model of sexual experimentation? While the exact nature of such chnges is difficult to predict, it is clear that the most popular depictions of pornagraphy, with millions, and sometimes tens of millions of reported views, I

the same influences of suggestion, modeling, and imitation that caused women to faint in Victorian times when a man kissed them, or teen-agers to swoon when Frank Sinatra his golden tones after World Wat Ii, can be expected to have a similar effect on the way that sexual behavior is both l perceived and experienced. 

Multiversal Meditation for Re-Energizing a Previous Mystical Exprience

People of many different religious traditions have attested to the life changing potential of metaphysical experiences involving the experience of contact with a consciousness beyond one's own However, in this culture, people who have had this type of experience often don't talk about it because others may simply dismiss them as being a crackpot. When such a history is present, however, it can serve as a focus for completely re-framing one's view of the self, the world, and the future, which is the professed aim of cognitive-behavioral psychology and much easier to accomplish.

A 58 year old retired English teacher and mother of five grown children who recently had been divorced after a marriage of forty years came to me for help with depression. She was spending the greater part of each day in bed, with the blankets drawn up over her head. She was taking antidepressants, but they did not seem to help. She responded well to hypnosis; and early in the course of therapy, she mentioned that when she was about sixteen, she had a spontaneous mystical experience: "I could step beyond the ordinary world of reality, and I felt totally loved." I asked her if she would like to revisit this mystical experience as a way of getting over her depression, and she immediately agreed.

I told her that for best results, it would help if she were to recapture her mystical experience with the same life-changing intensity that she had experienced it the first time. She readily agreed to this also. Pulling out all the stops in order to evoke an experience of life-changing intensity, I hypnotically  guided her to the Multiverse  (Gibbons & Woods, 2016) and suggested suggested that we were reaching down into her vast, untapped potential for feeling happiness and joy. This potential for happiness and joy was flowing out from the innermost depths of her being in many different ways and on many different levels, like water from a hundred secret springs. As these feelings continued to flow without limit, they were healing and cleansing every muscle and fiber and nerve of her body, driving out all of the worry, and all of the stress, and all of the care that she had ever felt, and leaving her glowing from head to toe with such an intensity of happiness that she could not bear it if she were not hypnotized.

She remained outwardly impassive as I continued in this vein, emphasizing that this happiness was greater and more intense than anything she had ever hoped for, dreamed of, longed for, or imagined, I suggested that when she returned from hypnosis, she would not be able to bring all of this intensity back with her, because it would be more than she could bear in the everyday state of consciousness in which we live and move and have our being. But nevertheless, it would transform her life, and turn each new day into a thing of wondrous beauty.

Her depression lifted within two more sessions. Because she was a Buddhist, it was easy to frame her mystical experience as evidence that true happiness comes from within. She no longer remains in bed all day, and frequently goes out to go shopping, play cards or to visit with friends. Her demeanor is pleasant, relaxed, and cheerful. She is continuing to come in for monthly sessions in order to keep her orientation focused on the positive aspects of life, and as a means of continuing her personal and spiritual development.

The client's youngest daughter, who has had a great many personal difficulties of her own, has recently moved in with her. Even though she frequently serves as a lightning rod for her daughter's wrath, the client has remained impassive, and has managed to maintain a generally congenial relationship with her (when the daughter is on speaking terms!)

Reference

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

How to Include "Comprehensive Coverage" in Your Hypnotic Sessions

A 52 year old divorced woman came in for her first hypnosis session to eliminate chronic anxiety stemming from what she referred to as "empty nest syndrome" after her son had left to join the military.

She said that she was a Wiccan, and asked me what I thought about psychic ability. In the long conversation which followed, l told me her that the research often showed dramatic results; but in order to be accepted by the scientific community, these results had to be repeated by others who carried out the same research under the same conditions. So far, this has not been.found to be the case. Then I added that many physicists now believe that there are eleven different dimensions of reality instead of the.three that we are used to, and perhaps psychic abilities operate in these dimensions. This might explain why we could often obtain such dramatic results without being able to replicate them under controlled conditions in the laboratory

She seemed satisfied with this conclusion, but most of our session time had been used up. So, after the hypnotic induction had been completed, I suggested that she would obtain everything she wanted from today's session, regardless of whether or not it had been included in the suggestions she was given and. regardless of whether or not she was completely aware if it herself at the time

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When she returned for the next appointment, she showed me a picture of her son, who had just begun. his first day of training at Marine boot camp and thanked me profusely.  She had been using her newly strengthened beliefs about her psychic abilities to "will" a curtain of protection around him and keep him from harm. Her anxiety attacks and much of her chronic anxiety had completely vanished. 

Since that time, I have always included suggestions for "comprehensive coverage" in all my hypnosis sessions, in. order to allow for the possibility that there might be something that either I or the client may have overlooked or not been able to include.

Was she really psychic, or was she merely deluding herself? Since  noobody can know what "truth" is in these maters, we should help our clients to put together a world view that helps them to make the best of their lives, regardless of our own beliefs. She had made the choice herself. And, in the unlikely event that she should ever find out that she is wrong, we can deal with that problem when it arises.