You don’t have to chase leprechauns to find something good in hypnosis

PAUL GOLDIN, the hypnotist who died this week, was greatly mourned by many people. I saw him perform in the early 1960s when I was still in secondary school. It was probably the funniest live show I ever attended.

I knew most of the people on stage and it seemed there was no way they would do such stupid things unless he was in control of their minds.

People in the know often insisted somebody can’t be hypnotised to do something he or she does not wish to do, but it seemed inconceivable that those people would wish to go around after the show telling people they were looking for leprechauns.

A doctor friend told me that as a medical student he went on stage with Paul Goldin, and he concluded the whole thing was phoney. He said he was always in control, but he went along and did the stupid things he was told to do. He could have stopped at any time. That is the essence of hypnosis, but he did not realise it. The hypnotist is not in total control, as it may appear.

In effect, the hypnotist helps people to gain better control of their own minds. Goldin was a brilliant hypnotist. But he was also an entertainer and, like a great illusionist, he did not explain his stage act.

Because of ignorance and Hollywood’s treatment of hypnosis, most people developed a kind of voodoo image of the process.

The Catholic Church actually proscribed hypnosis in the 1880s and the ban was not lifted until 1955. On stage it seemed the hypnotist had essentially taken control of the person’s mind. Some people under hypnosis have amazing recall of incidents that may have happened even when they were infants.

I witnessed a person remembering in detail his father’s funeral when he was only a toddler. The mind has enormous capabilities if we could discover the means of unlocking them.

Doctors in Toronto recently made an amazing discovery while trying to stimulate the brain of an obese man with electrodes. They were hoping to reduce his appetite, but he suddenly recalled an incident of 30 years earlier in vivid detail. When the current was switched off, the memory stopped, but when the stimulation was increased the memory became even more vivid.

The Toronto doctors are currently performing deep brain stimulation on patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and reports so far have been encouraging. Much research remains to be done, but the discovery has opened up ways of boosting the degenerating memory circuits of those afflicted with the dreaded disease. Some of medicine’s greatest discoveries were made by accident. Researchers looking for one thing stumbled across something unrelated that was found to be extraordinarily useful in dealing with other problems.

While at university I studied hypnosis because of its potential to enhance people’s recall. It can indeed be very useful, but not until people understand it better. Probably the surest way to have anybody clam up during an interview would be to suggest hypnosis to recall events. Too many think of it as something akin to voodoo, which is a pity because it can be very useful.

The late John Dilger of Shannon Development used to tell the story of how he wished to give up smoking, but had been unable to summon up enough willpower.

He was in New York where he went to a hypnotist in desperation. He was flying home that evening, so he only had time for one session. He left thinking the whole thing had been a waste of money.

Suddenly, he found himself throwing a full packet of cigarettes into a street litterbin.

He could not understand why he did it but figured it must have had something to do with the hypnosis. When he was telling the story years later, he still had not smoked since that day in New York.

After finishing university and returning home I went to watch Paul Goldin again, this time with a little inside knowledge. First he called on the audience to put their hands together and told them they could not open them without forcing them apart, and he suggested they come up on stage for him to open them. What he was doing was selecting the most hypnotically suggestible people in the audience.

Hypnosis works better with some people than others. With the use of hypnosis some people can easily be helped to stop smoking, stammering, or overeating. It may even be used instead of an anaesthetic, but it is of little use with other people.

If a hypnotist makes a suggestion that is contrary to a subject’s conscious morality, the person promptly leaves the hypnotic state. People being hypnotised cannot be controlled against their will, but they can be tricked.

Those who came on stage with Goldin were likely to be among the better subjects for experimentation. He would then use his experience to further select the best subjects among them, but he would not take children. As the show progressed he repeatedly stressed that his suggestions worked better on more intelligent people. He was, in fact, tricking people at this point. What he was actually suggesting was that they should wish to do the foolish things he was proposing because it would make them look more intelligent in the eyes of the audience.

In short, while the audience thought those on stage would never do such foolish things if the hypnotist was not in control of their minds, those who were hypnotised thought that by acting the fool they appeared more intelligent.

CHILDREN can be great hypnotic subjects, but with a child on stage there would be a danger that in the middle of everything, he or she might just get up and walk off, and the illusion of the hypnotist in control of the subject’s mind would be destroyed. Others might then do the same thing.

It would be like Hans Christian Andersen’s famous 1837 tale of the emperor with the magic suit of clothes.

In that legend two conmen persuaded an emperor they could make him the finest suit ever with a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid. The emperor thought he could use those clothes to identify those unfit for their positions. Fearing they would be considered stupid, the emperor and his aides pretended to see magnificent clothes until a child in the crowd just blurted out that the emperor was naked. That was what everybody else saw, but they were afraid to admit it for fear of looking foolish.

This was basically the same phenomenon with the people on stage with Paul Goldin. They could have rejected his suggestions, but they were tricked into wishing to go along for fear they would otherwise look foolish. There was no child there to speak up.

People are afraid of hypnosis because of the voodoo image portrayed in movies or the apparent mind control in live shows. This has been an unfortunate distortion because hypnotherapy can be very valuable in pain management, building confidence, or achieving a desired change in a highly effective, natural and safe way.