Hypnosis without trance

Hypnosis without trance, waking Hypnosis, phenomena without formal induction.

Whatever you choose to call it, it all comes down to suggestion. I have gone on record several times as saying that the whole closed eyes/sleep/deepener elements of Hypnosis are all about management: Setting a frame complete with appropriate cues for the Hypnotic session.

It just so happens that this frame is in keeping with most people’s deeply held beliefs or perceptions about Hypnosis and so it really happens for them. Ask anybody over the age of about seven what they think Hypnosis is and you’ll see I’m right. (In a later post to this blog, I’ll be speculating about where these beliefs come from.)

Now, an English Hypnotist named James Rolph seems to be making this whole “Hypnosis without Trance” his “thing” and I have to say he’s doing a good job of it. He has a blog, a newsletter and now, it seems, a live workshop.

Well, I don’t know whether James and his followers are aware, but another guy known as The Amazing Kreskin already made it HIS thing in the mid 70s. In the 90s, Kreskin offered $50,000 to anyone who could prove the existence of a trance state and even defended this in court in Burlington County 1996. But in spite of this, Kreskin still does a form of Hypnosis too.

See James in action in this video here:

Now see Kreskin in action in this video (especially from about 3 minutes onwards:)

Suggestion. No formal induction, no deepeners, no trance state.

There is however, one big difference between the approaches they each use:

 James’ approach is the more permissive of the two. He requires some kind of buy-in on the part of the subject and this, in my opinion, is where his set-up, the clever language and techniques become important. James, I believe is from an NLP background, so no real surprises there. But the subject has to believe that phenomena without formal induction is plausible (to use James’ expression.)

Kreskin’s approach, on the other hand is authoritative and domineering and so he gets the job done much quicker. He doesn’t appear to give a damn about the deeply held beliefs of the subject or whether they find it plausible. He even uses an argumentative approach at one point to better bombard the subject with suggestions.

Overall, an extreme example of Indirect versus Direct approaches.

Kreskin is very vocal about his own beliefs about suggestion and Hypnosis but ironically, what James doesn’t seem to be factoring in here is his OWN belief. He firmly believes he can achieve all kinds of phenomena without trance. He even has a documented approach and the analysis of all kinds of experiments to support this belief (sounds like an anatomy of belief to me) so when he does his set-up and delivers his suggestions, he subconsciously communicates this (sometimes directly) to the subjects and it’s partly BECAUSE of this, his suggestions work. This is almost exactly the same “plausibility” he discusses in relation to the subject’s belief in one of his videos.

If it’s plausible to the Hypnotist, it stands to reason it has more chance of working.

So in conclusion, do I believe there can be Hypnosis Without Trance? Absolutely yes.

However, James Rolph’s approach isn’t the only way of achieving this. I have shown the polar opposite of his approach which means there must be plenty of room for approaches in between.

There’s more than one way to Kreskin a cat!

Personally, the whole eyes closed/sleep/deepener approach is what works best and what is easiest for me in the context I usually perform. But that’s only because it doesn’t require changing/influencing the majority of people’s beliefs like James’ approach does and while it is as simple and as quick as Kreskin’s approach, it doesn’t require an overly authoritarian/domineering approach like that displayed by the truly amazing Kreskin.