On Hypnosis (Part 9/20)

In a piece published a few years ago in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis,[1] Edwin describes an experience of his own which reflects the way unmet childhood need affects adult functioning and generates its own ongoing repression:

I came home from an exhausting day and asked my first wife to fix me a cup of coffee (or a drink).  She had had a bad day too, and retorted something like "fix it yourself."  I experienced an unbridled rage that was so out of proportion to the provocation, and so unlike me that I felt I had to analyze it.

He then used self-hypnosis to "home in on" a distant, repressed memory, a memory which "came in as clearly as if I were there."  On the 12th day of his life, the day he was taken off breast feeding, he "was in a similar childlike rage at being denied what I felt entitled to."  From this revisiting of his past, Edwin had an insight:  "The allegory of the woman in my life denying me liquid refreshment is obvious."  He later consulted medical records in order to confirm the memory; his mother had had to stop breastfeeding him due to a breast abscess.

         Edwin uses this case report as evidence of the accuracy of memories retrieved under hypnosis, even memories of events going all the way back to birth.  He adds that, through connecting his "out of proportion" rage in a current circumstance to a repressed childhood deprivation, he was able to change his behavior in similar situations.  Rather than flying off the handle, he might say, "Oh, you had a bad day too?  Let's talk about it."

         In subsequent chapters I will discuss whether hypnotherapy really can lift repression and eliminate neurosis.  Suffice it to say for now that clearly remembering a forgotten event in the distant past is not the same as truly reliving it; nor will remembering it cure decades of neurosis.  Neurosis is a way of life.  By virtue of dissociation from prepotent inner realities, all neurotics are to some degree in a trance.  This is why so many people seem to be "out of it," "not all there," or "spaced out."  The neurotic's brain seldom works optimally on matters at hand because so much of her mind is preoccupied.  She does not react or respond  spontaneously to what is around her, or else she does so in a manner "out of proportion to the provocation."   Neurosis divorces one from proper perception and narrows it to a more and more reduced field. Here is the confluence of hypnosis and neurosis.  The pre-hypnotic neurotic is already in a hypnotic state.  She doesn't have far to go.        
If the hypnotic trance is only a specialized demonstration of the neurotic state, then its depth corresponds to the degree of neurosis.  Rather than descending into a trance, as the word "depth" implies, hypnosis makes plain just how far down the levels of consciousness neurosis exists.

         The illusion is that the trance is "achieved" by hypnosis, when in fact it is only illustrated by it.  We will see this more clearly as we examine the nature of suggestion and suggestibility, on which hypnosis inevitably depends, and which utilize the neurotic split in consciousness rather than dialectically integrate it.   Here again, there is no dialectic process, as it must be whenever a symptom is take for THE problem instead of a manifestation of a problem.  There is of course here no mention of pain or motivation for the addiction of smoking.  It is simply a given to  be stamped out.  It is purely a mechanical approach.

         I explore hypnosis in some detail because it has a lot to do with our understanding of the nature of reality.    For if a hypnotist puts a cold coin on your hand and suggests that it is hot, and you then develop a blister, where is reality?  In your head, your hand, or in the mind of the hypnotist?   Is reality what we think?   Can you change reality by what we think?  Can we therefore think our way to health.  Is sickness all in our head? (as my friend says, “Where else would it be?”)


[1]Edwin, Many Memories Retrieved with Hypnosis are Accurate, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 36:3, January 1994, pp. 174-176.