A System Affecting Itself (aka, What On Earth Do I Title This Essay)

One of the first things we teach hypnotists -- and subjects who are new to hypnosis -- is that hypnosis is not an external, unnatural force that acts upon someone. But pinning down exactly what it is or how to explain it can be challenging.

Trance is a natural state, but it is one that people often need help to access intentionally. People respond to suggestions outside of trance, but trance seems to also affect the way people respond. Hypnosis operates entirely within a person’s mind, but guided by an outside operator.

My upcoming book is broadly about taking any model of hypnosis and learning how to make it work effectively, including models with a lot of faults/limitations. In my opinion, that means I need to explain the overarching model I am using. One aspect of this model is that we need to understand the “ingredients” or “processes” or “modalities” of human psychology. For example: Humans imagine things, humans recall things, humans associate things, humans may “perform” for outside observers, humans evaluate and judge things according to their beliefs and expectations, etc.

Basically, I think that hypnosis is the utilization of any/all parts of a person’s process for the purpose of affecting any/all parts of a person’s process. If it’s something the mind does, it’s up for grabs to use as a tool to affect itself.

People are very complex; the mind is an abstract complex system that behaves in some broadly predictable ways. It is a holistic system that itself is used to change itself.

This feels very odd and difficult to conceptualize if you think about it too hard or too broadly. But it is not unique -- most disciplines attempt to describe their holistic system for the purpose of using it to change itself or understand changes within it. Hard sciences, for example; physics attempts to explain the behavior of all parts of the natural universe (which can be utilized to change things about the physical world). Computer science and coding is another good example; you are using a computer’s capabilities to program itself (one could say this is also just complex physics [we could say that hypnosis is ALSO just complex physics, on some level]).

I find it funny that I’m leading into this comparison with science, because I tend to be against the idea that hypnosis is “scientific.” I might say that hypnosis is different from hard sciences because we really don’t understand how any of these conscious/unconscious processes work (what exactly is a visualization?). Physics suffers from the same limitations -- on a slightly broader model, the “rules” we’ve found about the world work very well, but we haven’t broken everything down into component parts perfectly yet (gravity, for example). Hypnosis IS less-understood than physics or computer science, and our lack of understanding of component parts (neuroscience, psychology, the nature of consciousness, etc) leads us to be unable to control the sheer number of variables or create truly-predictable outcomes.

But hypnosis is like a science in the sense that we are utilizing a system to affect itself, and we have to think about what is contained within that system and the “rules” it operates by. I vocally detest the “human mind is a computer” metaphors/models, but one way this metaphor can work is that different programming languages have different existing sets of functions and rules. This is similar to how hypnosis models all have different “rules” for how you should do hypnosis. The critical departure is of course that hypnosis models are made up and theoretical, and their “rules” only apply in how much you choose to buy-in to them.

You CAN do a very effective hypnosis scene using a “I am speaking directly to your unconscious mind” model, even though that is not a “real” phenomenon. In this model, a rule of your system is that there is a distinct “unconscious mind” and you are talking to it or utilizing it in order to affect a person’s experience. Obviously, I believe this model has limitations and risks, but it can work fine, especially if you understand its flaws.

I think more so than computer science, hypnosis shares similarities with esoteric or mystical paradigms. These paradigms attempt to describe reality and then based on that description give tools and instructions of how to manipulate it or experience it in a different way. They may be different, but people find “success” in various ways with different models, because they can all be useful if you play by their rules.

At the risk of ruffling feathers on both sides, the smartest hypnotists and the smartest esoterics I’ve met both avoid the trap of getting sucked in to assume there is a singular correct model. (In esotericism/mysticism, this can be tricky because these paradigms are strongly cultural and, without proper respect, this can lead to appropriation.) I’m more willing to throw hypnosis under the bus and say that functionally I think there is little difference between it and esotericism. It is almost entirely based on tenuous theory and faith in those theoretical models and axioms. It is highly experientially informed, which is both positive and negative. It is repeatable and evidence-based only to a certain limited degree, and we really have no idea why it works, fundamentally.

I have a good chunk of history with various forms of esotericism and mysticism, but recently I’ve been studying an older form of Jewish mysticism with a friend. I won’t really get into specifics, but a big part of this text is about defining the “dimensions” or attributes of reality (such as physical dimensions like directions [a fascinating ancient look at people understanding XYZ/3D spatial dimensions], as well as natural elements, and other qualities of the world). The intent is that if you understand the attributes or dimensions of the “system” (reality/creation), you can use them -- which of course felt immediately relevant to what I’ve been thinking about in hypnosis.

The more you understand about all things related to human psychology -- including parts of philosophy, linguistics, etc -- the better you will get at hypnosis. I think people understand this! But I think for the most part we should see psychology as a whole as closer to esotericism than hard science. That’s not a bad thing. But psychology is really a lot of theoretical models in a trenchcoat. Some of it is evidence-based and repeatable, and some of it has reproducibility issues. Treating it more like esotericism means that we need to strive to see the limitations on each model, really view the whole of what is happening in a given interaction including tiny variables like tone and expectation and belief, and rely a lot on the subjective and experiential.

People love the 7+/-2 induction, but this induction is quite far removed from the actual psychological principle that it is based on -- which itself is from a paper from SEVENTY YEARS AGO and has led to much more modern findings about working memory. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_SevenPlusor_Minus_Two) And yet, this induction still has function within its own paradigm. I would argue we could improve it with a better baseline understanding, but what would this style of induction look like even if based off of modern findings? What about findings 70 years from now? Psychology will continue to progress and reinvent itself, and we need to keep that in mind as we read pop-sci articles, studies, or axioms that have been through an immense game of telephone.

I think a large chunk of our capacity to understand the human mind can come from the fact that we are ourselves conscious. I have written before about how introspection can teach us a lot about how to hypnotize others -- not necessarily the details of our subjective experience but simply noticing what the parts of our cognition are in the first place. 

Here is a limited (work in progress) list I made of some “dimensions,” processes, or ingredients of the human mind that are relevant to hypnosis, straight from the draft chapter of my book:

• Creative hallucinations/imaginations

• Recall/memory hallucinations/imaginations

• Expectation, beliefs, and resulting evaluation/judgment

• Confusion vs curiosity vs sureness vs disbelief

• Emotions and desire

• Associations of concepts, memories, conditioned/learned responses

• Perspective changes such as changing frame or role enactment

• Being observed and the need to “perform for the audience”

• Feeling active vs passive

• Feeling present/mindful vs dissociated

• Qualities of focus such as hyperfocus, following or distracted focus, or direction/“aim” of focus (such as internal vs external)

• Awareness/observation of the self and resulting changes that brings

When I go to hypnotize someone, these (and probably more) are all aspects of their psychology that I remain aware of, because they are all relevant at all times. Each aspect both comprises and affects the whole of their experience. They are interrelated and I can affect them directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally.

We don’t really need to understand fundamentally what makes these processes tick -- we can’t, really. But we CAN understand on a higher level that they are happening. For example, if you instruct your partner to look into your eyes, you can think about what they might be experiencing. What kind of associations do they have with you, and with this fairly trope-ish action? Is it making them quasi-hallucinate a memory of doing this before? Are they able to lock their focus externally on you, or are they self-observing more internally? How much are they seeing themselves in the role of the “hypnotic subject” because of this? What are their expectations about what is going to happen, and how are they then judging what their present experience is? Are they anticipating, excited, curious, or coming in with some distrust? Does this instruction make them feel like they need to actively participate?

These questions ARE hypnosis -- this simple instruction changes their holistic experience and allows you to explore the changes in the parts of it. You don’t need to privately guess about the answers. You can wonder aloud and guide the changes with suggestions, and think about what capabilities become available with them; what is the difference between someone who sees themselves as a “hypnotic subject” versus not? A person’s internal world and experience is so incredibly rich, and there is always something to make suggestions about to affect or acknowledge.

As a community, we put a lot of focus on goal-oriented hypnosis -- freeze them, transform them, make them cum. But mostly I am interested in emphasizing something like “experience-oriented” hypnosis: using the system and its parts to affect itself IS the entire experience of hypnosis; we should honor these changes as a powerful kind of mind control, as hypnosis itself. It is so exciting to me when my partner holds up a finger and my eyes lock onto it and I can feel my quality of focus changing, I can feel my “role” changing, I can feel myself imagining things. It is so exciting when I suggest to a partner to focus on their body and look inside and I think about what their brain is doing, how it is shifting directions, how my words are affecting the perception of their own internal bodily sensations.

I feel there is this unspoken question here: how does “trance” play into this? Is this just describing trance as a collection of states? Does trance bring something uniquely different to someone’s experience?

The other day I tweeted: “I'm a non-state theorist in the sense that I think hypnosis functions perfectly well separate from the concept of "trance," but I'm a state theorist in the sense that I think "trance" is real, distinct, and useful.” In my opinion, trance is partially however you define/evoke it for someone blended with their own individual qualities of identity, beliefs, etc. We could call either of the above examples different trances, and each example creates different capabilities. Evoking a “trance” based on a particular model evokes its own particular capabilities; you can do different things with an “unconscious mind” model-based-trance than you can with a “reducing critical faculties” model-based-trance.

I tend towards thinking that trance -- or the various trances that can be evoked -- is a distinct phenomenon. Humans have discovered and utilized trance over and over throughout history. “Hypnosis” is both very western and very young, especially as an academic discipline. You CAN describe it fully with nonstate language -- these changes in a person’s experience and capabilities are a result of the system and its parts changing. But I think state-based language and definitions are useful when you use them broadly and understand their limitations. We may not be able to identify exactly where a given trance begins and ends, but it can be helpful to define “what is happening when you are being hypnotized” as a time that is very different from a person’s norm.

Beyond that, I admit that this is personal bias. When I feel such drastic and holistic changes in my baseline experience, perception, and psychological processes, it is difficult to say “trance isn’t real.” Trance FEELS real, and it FEELS like when I notice my processes shifting so fully, my brain says, “I am altered.” It FEELS like a state.

I think that is OK, and I think the beauty of acknowledging that we make the “rules” for hypnosis -- as we do similar to computer science, or esotericism -- is that we get to create so many different experiences. Hypnosis is very special because we gain access to the entirety of a person and emphasize how the interaction between us is affecting the entirety of their “system,” their self. A person’s cognition is their entire reality -- by utilizing it, we change it. That is amazing to me, and I honor that.