#021: Hypothesis 

You need to have an understanding of the way hypnosis works if you are going to believe the rest of this story.

I doubt that anyone knows for sure precisely how or why it works, but those of us who have worked with it do not doubt that it does work, and sometimes in awesome ways.

So please bear with me a moment, while I refresh your understanding whether it needs it or not—and as only I, in my noncredentialed way, may approach the subject.

The human mind appears to be a duality of form, fit, and function (an old engineering term that works very well here) that manifests consciousness as the conscious and the subconscious minds, or the objective and subjective (psychology terminology), but which I prefer to consider a single force exhibiting various aspects at specific levels of activity (pure physics) to provide a totality of individual experience that we humans quantify as a living soul (metaphysical stuff).

This is not an auspicious beginning, is it?—but, remember, I asked you to bear.

One aspect of the duality has to do with reasoning power: How do we understand with the intellect what we perceive through the senses?

Psychologists and logicians alike recognize two basic modes of reasoning, the inductive and the deductive methods. Hypnosis theory tells us that the conscious mind is capable of both modes, but that the subconscious mind is capable only of deductive reasoning.

Let us examine that idea, since it is crucial.

Inductive reasoning is when you notice that little Johnny has bleary eyes, a runny nose, fever, and little red blotches about the skin, and you pick up the phone and tell Dr. Jones that Johnny has the measles.

You have taken various noted particulars and put them together into a general assumption: Johnny has the measles.

Dr. Jones receives this information, but is aware that you do not have a medical diploma and do not therefore belong to the AMA, so he asks you if Johnny has a fever, are his eyes bleary, and does he have little red blotches upon the body. He is exercising the deductive mode.

He has taken your general assumption and broken it back down into particulars.

In a well-organized human mind, both modes are operating pretty much all the time. If someone comes up to you and tells you that Johnny has the measles, and you look at Johnny, and he is exhibiting none of the symptoms of measles, you are probably going to disagree with that someone—at least until you take Johnny's temperature and look closely for spots.

Thus, between the two modes, you exhibit a certain ability to discriminate reality—what is true and what is false; you can exercise judgment.

In hypnosis theory, the subconscious is purely subjective and deductive. It cannot discriminate or judge sensation or even thought: in fact, it does not think, was not designed to do so except in a most elemental sense, is merely a plastic web, so to speak, on which is impressed instructions to the motor nerves and in which is stored the living memory.

In trance, so the theory goes, the conscious mind is shoved aside and the subconscious brought to the fore, under the direct influence of an outside mind, which imparts information directly onto the receptive, nondiscriminating subconscious web—which is always there and ready to serve, even in sleep—in effect bypassing the judgmental functions of the conscious, or thinking, mind.

So if you are in trance and I tell you it is very hot in here, you will sweat; if I say it is cold, you will turn blue and shiver; if I say you have the measles, and the trance is deep enough, you will break out in spots imitating the measles rash and you will probably run a fever and develop bleary eyes and all the other symptoms.

Your subconscious is thus responding dutifully to the stimuli placed in it and reasoning deductively to harmonize your body and your being with the truth it has been told, and it accepts every stimulus as "truth" without question or even the power to question, because this is what it is designed to do.

Form, fit, and function; conscious and subconscious designed to work as a team; aspecting all levels of human activity; a human soul growing into its own individual potential for what reason only God knows.

Curious thing about hypnosis, though. A subject in even the deepest trance does seem to exercise some sort of threshold judgment in matters very dear to the soul, suggesting that the duality of functions may not run as deep as may appear; the mind is still the mind, a cosmic entity, and it may be pushed just so far.

For example, a person who will not kill in the waking state cannot be forced to kill in trance. A truly chaste person awake is a chaste person in trance. The moral imperatives sometimes take a quirky twist, though: a hypnotized woman who disrobes entirely without a qualm under hypnotic demand balks at removing her wedding ring; a man with holes in his socks refuses to remove his shoes but picks up a dagger and attacks a dummy upon command; a minister of the gospel will tell ribald stories and agrees to sexual seduction but will not take the Lord's name in vain.

Most experimental hypnotists have discovered, though, that wiles succeed where strong-arms fail.

All sorts of bizarre effects may be produced by simple suggestion placed into the subconscious receptive. Through positive hallucination, an oak tree may appear beside the couch and the subject will describe the birds in it and even try to catch them if you ask him to.

Through negative hallucination, all the furniture in the office may disappear and the subject will wander around for hours seeking a place to sit down.

These effects may even be triggered or "operated" weeks or months following the registration of a posthypnotic suggestion, with the hypnotist nowhere about.

But I was speaking of wiles.

The woman who will not disrobe may be tricked into doing so through simple negative hallucination, by which she believes herself to be alone in the room and preparing for her bath.

The man who would abruptly awaken if ordered to kill may be tricked into picking up a knife and attacking the first person to enter the room if he had been told to expect a maniac who meant to murder his children and rape his wife.

Is your hypothesis already formed?

Are you ready to leap ahead of me, again, now?

Please wait. You ain't seen nothin' yet.