I sincerely hope so. Hypnosis has so much potential as an art and it's disappointing that half of the shows out there are devastatingly tawdry and passé.

Personally I think it is a good thing. Not everyone can do it much less do it well.

This happens every so often. The market is saturated then a purge occurs. It never affects those who have been at it for long enough and enough of the new will survive. It is a good thing.

"All hypnosis is self hypnosis" is one of those well used phrases that isn't really true.

I agree with that. I believe that if that phrase was true, the world wouldn't have any hypnotists and hypnosis would be much more widely practiced. The hypnotist plays a very important part that just can't be replaced within self-hypnosis.

That being said, the participant does play just as big a part in everything as the hypnotist does and I think that's what that old saying is hinting at. Yes, it is belief that facilitates hypnosis but the hypnotist is what facilitates that belief. In placebo experiments everyone is lead to believe that the results were achieved by the power of the mind alone but they forget that there was an extremely convincing sugar pill involved which lead to this great power. Hypnosis is a dance.

No it isn't. Hypnotists who don't know this are delusional.

It is 100% true.

How do you make that out Danny? Beyond the stage you are hardly well educated or experienced with hypnosis. In fact your knowledge is very limited. Saying all hypnosis is self hypnosis is like giving someone all the answers to an exam telling them to write it down then declaring they passed the exam on their own. If that silly statement was true then you could just sit in the bar and your volunteers could hypnotize themselves.

Marketers, politicians and religeous leaders have been hypnotizing their targets for centuries without them even knowing.

Another lie is that you can't make some one do something they don't really want to. These lies most likely came adout to minimize the fears of the public and make hypnosis more acceptable.

Can you elaborate on that because that belief is shared by Milton Erickson and John Kappas and many other legends of hypnosis.

What do they know? Some brilliant anonymous guy on an Internet forum says so that is enough.

You CAN NOT hypnotize anyone against their will. This is a fact and not in dispute by reasonable EDUCATED people.

And just out of curiosity what is my educational background? Do tell.

Manipulating them with lies. Call it hypnosis if you wish. But fools who want to frame everything as "hypnosis" I have no patience for.

I know you will blather and bluster as if what you are saying is relevant. But we have all learned it is not mindpunisher.

This statement makes me question your hypnosis knowledge. If hypnosis was really that effective then we would all be buying products we don't want, voting for the same presidential candidate every year, and believing undoubtedly in the same diety. This is why so many hypnotists have begun using the word suggestion instead. You can only influence, persuade, or suggest. Not command. Half of the misconceptions involved with hypnosis are due to our improper labeling of things and not making an effort to change it.

Do enough shows and you will discover there is a percentage of people that will do just about anything and will end up on stage even when they don't want to be. Some people can be manipulated into believing they are doing something they want to do when in fact they are doing something else. The process known as hypnosis can be carried out through rituals attributed to religeous beliefs take faith healing for example. There was a famous case in the US where false memories were implanted into a suspect of him murdering a female friend. It happened when an "expert"counsellor used a series of sessions that helped the suspect "uncover repressed memories". He was totally convinced that he had committed the murder. It later transpired that the memories had been put there using hypnosis without her even knowing that she was using it. She had another name for it. But expert hypnotists were called in who identified that it was hypnosis. The guy was proven innocent. l don't think the guy really wanted to have those false memories do you? And he didn't even know he had been hypnotized.

I've heard many people claim that hypnosis can make you do anything with the justification that Derren Brown made a special named "Assassin" in which he hypnotized someone into committing a fake murder. This argument completely neglects the fact that it was an edited TV show. We don't know what was said or done off camera on top of the fact that the subject knew it was a TV show and therefore fake. You can't believe everything you hear or see about hypnosis.

Yes, you will see people do things they wouldn't normally do at hypnosis shows because they normally act consciously but during hypnosis they are acting subconsciously. This doesn't mean that they have a secret fantasy to dance like a chicken in front of their friends. All it means is that they trust you and see nothing wrong with following your commands. The second you tell them to do something against their moral code, though, they will snap right out of trance and walk out the door.

Your knowledge of hypnosis seems to come from urban legend MP.

The simple act of putting someone under to find false memories already starts the suggestion that there are some here n the first place.

Link to this famous case for us please.

Do enough shows? You don't do ANY so of what value is that? If hypnosis works like you say then certainly you would just hypjotise people to buy the tickets and love the show right? But you can't sell tickets because of the market being bad.

Being manipulated is not being hypnotized. Your lack of knowledge is showing. But please continue. I am sure all the literature is completely wrong.

For what it is worth, there are many on here who disagree with you both. Some of us think all hypnosis - definitely on a stage - is delusion.

Also - for the benefit of less regular visitors to this godforsaken portion of the internet - it should be acknowledged that even though we don't often agree, many on here do actually know quite a lot about what they are talking about. Discussions might be more fruitful if we didn't question each others credentials so much.

Danny I earned a living full time for nearly 10 years on stage I've done more than enough shows to know there are people who DO NOT WANT TO BE ON STAGE but end up there anyway. Often someone would approach me half way through a show because one of their friends had "slipped into trance" and was carrying out the actions in the audience at the back of the room. They would never volunteer but ended up on stage anyway. Occasionally someone would walk off stage and not want to take part but ended up back on stage. I'm not going to go into details but I can't believe you have never experienced this. Also ALL of my shows were attended by people who came to see the show and paid tickets after long hard marketing campaigns. Perhaps the limitations of a captured audience on a holiday resort will give you a false or different experience. I mean you don't really have to be good as you have a new crowd every week who have never heard of you good or bad? Maybe you should leave the comfort of your evergreen bubble and get into the real market. Go hire a venue away from a holiday venue and sell some real tickets. Lets see how good you really are. Lets see you start in a new market now in the current climate. Your living in a bubble. And your knowledge of hypnosis is very limited. You've had one years experience over and over.


Manipulation is part of every hypnotists bag of tools - from marketing to the lies they tell to make it more acceptable. It may not be hypnosis per say but it used by many. " All hypnosis is self hypnosis" just because it appears in certain literature doesn't make it true. Its an implied suggestion that attempts to alleviate the fear of being controlled by another as is " you can't make someone do something they don't really want to do". Which is really another implied suggestion to remove that fear because you cannot in most cases hypnotize anyone if that fear is present. That's why its important to deal with it in pre-talk. Politicians do it all the time literature and public presentations are full of their principles while they have another agenda they need fulfilled.

Once you get certain types of people conditioned to a certain level you can do almost what you want with them. If you ever spent time doing the more outrageous types of shows you would know that.

No I don't do shows these days I found a much better way to make money I will most likely never do another one. I don't miss the hassle of traveling across the country and hustling to book shows or sell tickets.

Tony - your logic still baffles me hypnosis can't happen on a stage but it can off stage? But I expectnothimg is ever going to change on here.

Yea your experience as usual is the only valid experience. Pathetic as usual. I guess working 12 shows a week at comedy clubs doesn't count LOL.

Why is Tonys point of view not valid? He makes a logical point.

Yes for almost 10 years, while you rode the tide of others work you earned a full time living. Things got tougher and you couldn't manage. Go figure. Guys YOU were not that good obviously.

You make judgements of others work and the whole time you can't even manage to find work. Give up the charade already.

Tony is right. Stop questioning everything about each other this works better.

Like MP I have seen people participate in shows who did not want to volunteer. And people in the audience go under. It adds to the fun.

I have seen it a hundred times a year. What does that have to do with it being self hypnosis and with them not being able to be mad3 to do something they don't want to?

I misread you, Danny. I thought you were saying you hadn't seen it, which would have surprised me. I guess it doesn't prove much either way, aside from the fact that I might be wrong about there being no such thing as hypnosis in a stage context. But of course I will never admit that.

I know the show works. That is as far as I am going to go with if there is or isn't such a thing as hypnosis in a stage context.

As far as I am concerned that is really all that matters.

This thread is raising some serious moral and ethical concerns in my mind.

Let me rephrase what's been said here - Audience members do not consent to being part of the show. During the show, they happen to go into trance. Performer then brings them on stage to (most likely) do ridiculous things.

How can any of you think it's OK to have a person on stage who never consented to be there?

That is some shady, seedy, creepy stuff right there. The only reason I can think to do this is ego stroking pure and simple.

Now, to address the other aspect of the thread -

Even people who are 'highly hypnotizable' can refuse trance. If they do not follow your instructions, it will not happen. Yes, some people will follow those instructions in the audience. So? I have worked with folks who are basically hypnotized 24/7 and even they can refuse it if they so choose. It is an internal process.

And since I fully expect this post to disappear - let me also say, people who refuse to expand their ideas of what something is or is not, will always wither away in obscurity when the new information rolls right over them.