Speaker 1: An inquiry into certain phenomena, and now for our public
hypnotic performance. Take your seats, please the hypnotic performance. The
audience is seated, and the hypnotist appears. He makes a
nice little introductory speech in which he gives the history
of hypnotism and mesmerism. He avoids the scientific side of
the subject, accept such parts of it as serve to
arouse the interest of the audience. He points out to
the audience that the commonly accepted opinion of the subjects
being weak, willed, et cetera, is erroneous, and that so
far from this being the fact, no one accepts persons
having will power and the ability to concentrate may be hypnotized.
He mentions the time worn tale that idiots and insane
people and very young children are not amenable to hypnotic influence,
and from these things he draws the moral that the
ability to be hypnotized is an honor and a proof
of one's strong mentality, rather than otherwise. This, of course,
flatters the hyper impressionables, who always flock to a public
hypnotic performance, being drawn there by their love of the
curious and the fascination that such exhibitions seem to have
for these people the call for subjects. The hypnotist then
calls for volunteer subjects. The audience does not seem to
be in a hurry to respond, although some are found
to be fidgeting in their chairs and a few almost
rise from their seats as if to go forward. The
hypnotist encourages and commands come on, come on, now, write
up this way, come right up, et cetera, and the
inclination to come forward grows stronger. Then a young man
starts forward with a rush, and then another from the
other side of the house. Then may be a third
or a fourth, and then comes the grand rush. These
first people to move forward are usually the paid performers
who travel with the hypnotist, and their coming to the
front starts up the impressionables and hyper impressionables among the audience,
and perhaps a few curiosity seekers. These paid performers act
as bellwethers for the flock of human sheep, testing and
selecting subjects. The volunteer subjects, including the paid ones, are
now grouped around the back of the stage in a
large semicircle, and then the hypnotist proceeds to test them.
He usually starts off by bidding the semicircle gaze at
their hands or upon some bright object placed in their fingers.
After they have quieted down and have been rendered passive
and attentive, he calls them one by one to the
front and gives them a test for impressionability. He usually
begins with the paid subjects, for he knows just what
they will do and to their actions have a powerful
impression on the others. Along the lines of imitative suggestion,
he usually tries the falling backward and forward test, and
perhaps the fastening of the hands or some other simple
muscular test. Those who respond readily to these tests are
accepted and instructed to sit down again, while those who
fail to respond are told that they are not needed
and resumed their places in the audience. The hypnotist must
have reasonably sure things to work upon for his success
upon producing a quick result, and he cannot afford to
devote the time to developing subjects that the experimenter in
the laboratory does. Finally, he has weeded the goats from
the sheep, the former being retired to the audience and
the latter exalted to places of honor on the stage.
Having successfully passed their initiation and now being accepted subjects.
The story of the paid subjects now just a moment here.
About the paid subjects, Some of them are genuine hyper
impressionables who are fascinated by the mysterious nature of the
business and flattered by the position of prominence given them
in the performance, and to travel around with the hypnotist
on a small salary and board paid. The horses are
different kinds of people. They are out for the money
alone and are generally fakirs all the way through. They
have trained themselves to stand pain and to allow needles
to be thrust through their cheeks and similar rough treatment
to be accorded them. They learn to act out their
parts with a surprising degree of ability in some cases,
and many of them in time graduate into the cheaper
grades of variety actors, and a few mount even higher
up and develop genuine talent as actors. The majority of them, however,
belonged to the cigarette type of youth who is out
for a good time and who is glad to play
his part in the performance for his board, traveling expenses,
cigarette money, a little loose change, and the cheap notoriety
of public performance. Some of The more expert of them
demand and receive larger salaries as they advance in the scale,
and the few star performers in the business receive quite
good salaries and earn it too. These horses often display
considerable ability in the line of suggestion and really lead
the volunteer subjects through their acts, the latter obeying the
line of least resistance along the general lines of imitative suggestion.
These star performers among the horses are often just as
expert hypnotists as their employers, and consequently much of the
success of the entertainment is due to their efforts producing sleep.
The next stage of the performance is to induce sleep
in the subjects. This is done by first inducing fixation
of the eyelids along the lines of muscular control of
which I have spoken. Then suggestions of sleep are given
by the hypnotists, such as, you are getting drowsy, drowsy, drowsy,
your eyelids are heavy, heavy, heavy as lead, you are
falling as sleep, falling asleep, et cetera. And soon the
heads of the horses and the hyper impressionables are nodding.
The impressionables, who are not affected by the sleep suggestions
are sorted out and sent back to the audience, until
there is left only the horses and hyper impressionables, including
the paid performers among the latter, as well as those
who have volunteered. Then the hypnotist has obtained that what
he has tried for, he has a circle of hyper
impressionables and horses who will accept every suggestion that he
may give them, and be responsive to every demand upon
their negative imagination that he may induce in them the
day dream condition. But are they not really asleep, you
may ask, No, they are not asleep. Their condition is
one of a drowsy day dreamy state, such as many
of us have felt when lost in revere or absent mindedness.
They have had the feeling of drowsiness induced in them
by the suggestions and influence of the hypnotist, and have
had their negative imagination acted upon by him until they
are in a state of day's day dream. They know
what is going on about them and realize the illusion
which they are acting out, but are so passive that
their imagination is partially beyond their own control and is
induced and managed by the hypnotist through his positive imagination
and his suggestions. It is a queer state. I have
talked with many of these people, and I think I
have measured the mental state existing in them. They are
living in two worlds. Their wills are passive, and the
negative imagination or fancy is most active and under the
control of the hypnotist. The playing bear explanation, an illustration
that I have used in some of my lectures on
this subject, may give you a clearer idea of the matter.
It is as follows. A party of children are playing bear.
One of them is the bear and goes growling, wagging
his head and showing his teeth in a ferocious manner.
The other children pretend to be frightened, but after a
bit they induced in themselves a feeling of real terror.
The assumed becomes almost real to them. Children have very
vivid negative imaginations and often suffer great torture by foolish
suggestions of Boogeyman, big bear, catch you, something will grab
you when you go upstairs, et cetera. An understanding of
suggestion which show the folly and criminality of such things.
The terror among the children grows more acute, and tears
mingle with laughter as they run from the bear. At last,
one of the youngest runs with a shriek to its
mother and buries its little face in her lap, crying out,
make him go away. Why that isn't a bear, Mary,
That's only Johnny dressed up like one, says the mother,
endeavoring to quite the little one. Yes, I know it is,
sobs little Mary, venturing a frightened glance behind her. But
I'm scared anyhow. Well, that is the condition of the
hyper impressionable who is hypnotized. He knows it's only Johnny,
but he is scared anyhow. It is not all a
make believe, as some radical iconoclastic investigators have affirmed, it's
half real and half unreal. The hypnotized hyper impressionable is
not a fakir or a wilful deceiver. He is a
make believe whose illusion seems half real or even more so,
although less than half in some cases, the degree of
reality varying with the degree of impressionability on the one hand,
and the vividness of the negative imagination on the other,
opposing views reconciled. I have gone into this matter of
the mental state of the genuine hypnotic subject rather fully
for the reason that the statements of the two schools
of investigators are diametrically opposed to each other on the subject.
The old school of mesmerists and hypnotists insists that the
subjects are in a true sleep condition and are absolutely
oblivious to all that goes around them outside of their
allusions that they are acting out dreams suggested to them.
The new school of suggestion, on the other hand, claims
that the subjects are wide awake as usual and merely
acquiesce in the suggestions made them, just as they would
in any other and are fully conscious of what they
are doing and are make believe all the way through,
from beginning to end. I think that my theory or
explanation will supply the reconciliation or missing link between these
two opposing views, and I believe that it will meet
with the approval of many, who, like myself, have had
the opportunity of examining these people and getting close to
the heart of the matter. It is true that many
of these subjects will tell you that they were totally
unconscious of what they were doing, but that is because
in so doing they are carrying out the suggestions expressed
or implied of the hypnotist who tells them that they
are hypnotized and know nothing else. A funny thing about
these subjects is that each one of them thinks that
he is the only one who was half awake, and
that all of his companions were completely under the influence.
Remember now, I am now talking of transconditions which belong
lung to another phase on the subject. Nor am I
talking about the horses on the stage, who are fakirs
all the way through. Although contributing much to the interest
and action of the show, My description of the mental
state of the subject applies only to the genuine cases
of hyper impressionability in the day dream state the hypnotic show.
I shall not take up your time and space by
describing the many features of the public hypnotic performance, the
barbershop scene, the balloon trip, the baseball game, the hive
of bees, the school session, as the thousands of variations
shown by the many hypnotic exhibitors and performers, some of
whom are artists in their line and show a wonderful
ability in the direction of making their performances interesting and
akin to a Vaudeva. Nearly everyone who reads these lines
has seen a performance of this sort and will know
to what I refer Their principle is the same in
all of these acts or performances. The horses and the
hyper impressionables, except the suggestions and the latter are also
impressed by the hypnotist's positive imagination acting upon their negative
imagination through mental currents by induction. But even the most
startling and complicated experiments are but combinations of the experiments
in induced sensation mentioned in Chapter nine of this book,
raised to a superlative degree by means of induced imagination.
The experiments I have given you, and others of the
same kind, are the building blocks by which the mismatic
structures are built. The style, variety, decoration, and stability depending
upon the art of the operator or manager. There are
many books on stage hypnotism that instruct the performer in
constructing effective scenes. It is a matter of stage art
rather than of scientific knowledge. The successful hypnotist must be
a man of strong suggestive ability when able to focus
his force in his tones, and also of strong active
positive imagination, and thus able to form a clear, vivid
mental picture of the seme he wishes to be enacted
on the stage before him. By forming this mental picture,
and by using his will to project and focus his
menative energy upon the subjects, he is able to induce
in them the feelings and daydreams desired. His success as
an entertainer, of course, requires ability as an originator of scenes,
et cetera, which have nothing whatever to do with his
ability as a hypnotist. When both qualities are combined, the
man comes to the front as a financial success. Whith
the above has dealt solely with public performances of hypnotism,
still the principles called into play in the private psychological
experimental work are the same. In the latter, there is
no audience to be entertained, and much more time may
be devoted to developing a subject and producing interesting phenomena,
and the horses are eliminated.