The dangers of hypnosis and hypnotherapy

[velociraptor]

The main consequence of inducing a dissociative disorder in young children seems to be to affect/diminish/destroy their "Ontological Security".
Having damaged the sense of self/personal-identity, the child can metaphorically be seen as a malleable blank slate.
Lack of inherent Theory of Mind is a "bonus" if done to someone who is autistic, apparently.

You spend a lot of time thinking about unusual things.

 

[Judge]

Not surprising to see how relatively unregulated hypnotism is in the US.

https://www.instituteofhypnotherapy...-Hypnosis-State-Laws-and-Regulations-2022.pdf

 

[FilterFreq]

I have noticed how many people get hypnotized by the TV media. The experiments in the 1990's in the UK (After we joined the EU when the EU over-ruled the past banning of this) where they used brief flashing images were used on certain TV soaps, and we very much noticed how a most impractical product one could ever imagine suddenly became "All the rage" and people who met each other in the streets to talk would be talking about how great the product was!

That's how commercials work, too, they're just longer versions. In fact, the ones hiding in plain sight are even more powerful because most people don't even realize theyre being subjected to a slew of clever marketing and emotional manipulation. And they can do it for much longer -- some youtube ads can be hours long, believe it or not. Heck, even most videos that people watch for fun are just covert advertisements.

The fact that nobody mentions the ads we see everyday in conversations like this just kind of proves how hidden and powerful they really are. Whatever experiments were done in the past are no match for modern day social engineering

 

[Jumpinbare]

Because of the nasty habit commercials have of having a much higher average audio level (by law they can't exceed peak program audio level, but bringing up the average definitely definitely makes us perceive it louder), I more often than not mute the commercials rather than jockey the volume up and down. I am usually on my laptop when watching TV, so commercial time is more computer focus time. I can see the change on the TV screen when the program restarts with peripheral vision, so I know when to unmute and attention-share between TV and laptop again.
As a result, I am oblivious to commercials.

 

[Jonn]

You spend a lot of time thinking about unusual things.

My special interest is in psychology.

 

[Jonn]

In fact, the ones hiding in plain sight are even more powerful because most people don't even realize theyre being subjected to a slew of clever marketing and emotional manipulation.

Sheldon Lee Cooper made the comment/observation that sex appeal may be more powerful than chocolate, when manipulating/conditioning someone psychologically.

 

[Jonn]

Because of the nasty habit commercials have of having a much higher average audio level (by law they can't exceed peak program audio level, but bringing up the average definitely definitely makes us perceive it louder),

I have heard that it isn't actually the volume that is increased, it is the "compression"(?), if I remember correctly?
It was further stated that this was the way they can get around the requirement not to make it louder.

I more often than not mute the commercials rather than jockey the volume up and down.

I do that consistently and with regularity.

 

[velociraptor]

My special interest is in psychology

You do seem to know your stuff.

 

[Jonn]

I can see the change on the TV screen when the program restarts with peripheral vision, so I know when to unmute and attention-share between TV and laptop again.
As a result, I am oblivious to commercials.

I knew a well educated couple (both had university degrees), the parents of my first GF, who refused to have a TV in the house for fear of ultrasound/infrasound emanating from it, influencing their and their child's thinking.
At the time I was oblivious to the possibility of emotional manipulation via that method.

Muting probably eliminates any possibility of that, assuming it might be happening.

 

[Jonn]

You do seem to know your stuff.

It is rare for me to be complimented like that.
Many, if not most people seem to think that if it makes a joke, it must be unintelligent.
Ricky Gervais may have something to say about that.

 

[thejuice]

I have heard that it isn't actually the volume that is increased, it is the "compression"(?), if I remember correctly?
It was further stated that this was the way they can get around the requirement not to make it louder.

I do that consistently and with regularity.

Thats why it annoys me when when i say a piece of music is too loud, they say turn it down then. Its not the loudness, its more the vulgarity. Oh the humanity!

 

[thejuice]

Adverts used to just be a boring bloke in black and white going "use this boring product, its good." Now advertisers think its some kind of artform!

 

[Jonn]

hypnosis, special psychological state with certain physiological attributes, resembling sleep only superficially and marked by a functioning of the individual at a level of awareness other than the ordinary conscious state. This state is characterized by a degree of increased receptiveness and responsiveness in which inner experiential perceptions are given as much significance as is generally given only to external reality.

Hypnosis | Definition, History, Techniques, & Facts | Britannica

 

[Jonn]

The hypnotic state​

The hypnotized individual appears to heed only the communications of the hypnotist and typically responds in an uncritical, automatic fashion while ignoring all aspects of the environment other than those pointed out by the hypnotist. In a hypnotic state an individual tends to see, feel, smell, and otherwise perceive in accordance with the hypnotist’s suggestions, even though these suggestions may be in apparent contradiction to the actual stimuli present in the environment. The effects of hypnosis are not limited to sensory change; even the subject’s memory and awareness of self may be altered by suggestion, and the effects of the suggestions may be extended (posthypnotically) into the subject’s subsequent waking activity.

Hypnosis | Definition, History, Techniques, & Facts | Britannica

"Even the subject's memory and awareness of self".
Hmmm.

I wish I had of mentioned ontological insecurity.

Spoiler

Oh, wait, I did.

 

[Jonn]

History and early research​

The history of hypnosis is as ancient as that of sorcery, magic, and medicine; indeed, hypnosis has been used as a method in all three. Its scientific history began in the latter part of the 18th century with Franz Mesmer, a German physician who used hypnosis in the treatment of patients in Vienna and Paris. Because of his mistaken belief that hypnotism made use of an occult force (which he termed “animal magnetism”) that flowed through the hypnotist into the subject, Mesmer was soon discredited; but Mesmer’s method—named mesmerism after its creator—continued to interest medical practitioners. A number of clinicians made use of it without fully understanding its nature until the middle of the 19th century, when the English physician James Braid studied the phenomenon and coined the terms hypnotism and hypnosis, after the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos.

Hypnosis | Definition, History, Techniques, & Facts | Britannica

Hypnotic abuse is not new, and has been used throughout the ages.
It could, in part, perhaps the major part, explain the phenomenon of "Demon Possession".

 

[Jonn]

The only really contentious point in this description of conscious processes is the claim that
executive processes initiate action. Drawing on research carried out by Benjamin Libet
during 1985, the year that Hilgard revised Divided Consciousness, Robert Ornstein argues
that even when action appears to be initiated by conscious processes it is unconscious ones
that are often the real driving force. Libet’s work was concerned with what he called
‘readiness potential’ brainwaves. These occur only before movements we experience as
being consciously willed whether they be calculated or spontaneous. They begin around a
second before we become conscious of making a decision to act. It seems then, that even
many of the activities which seem to be initiated by our conscious selves would appear to be
generated unconsciously – albeit in response to a consciously thought out plan.18
When the conscious mind is displaced or dissociated unconscious processes are given a free
rein as it were, guided only by the directions of the hypnotist, the social context or some
goal determined prior to or during the induction procedure. Trance experience is thus
significantly different from ordinary experience. Gilligan enumerates and describes its
principal features. These include attentional absorption, involuntariness, immersion in
experiential and symbolic rather than conceptual processing, enhanced suggestibility,
perceptual flexibility, trance logic and a tendency to be amnesic for trance experiences on
return to ordinary consciousness

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/96773564.pdf

In a nutshell:

-The Consciousness can be subverted during a trance state.
-During a dissociated state, conscious decision making is essentially taken offline and can be implanted through external suggestion.
-Amnesia is a side effect of a trance state.

Deeply consider the implications.

 

[Jonn]

This is the "infamous" Greenbaum Speech" about ritual abuse.
I don't expect anyone to listen to it, and the audio quality isn't great.
I will just put it in this thread, and may create points mentioned, at a later time.

 

[Jonn]

 

[Boogs]

While I'm not especially interested in hypnosis so not read up on it extensively, the best tract I read on it was strongly of the opinion that it doesn't exist, or not in the way it's commonly described. Admittedly the book is about 8 years old now (so understandings can change) but the suggestion was there was no actual evidence that hypnosis involves a special trance state or has 'magic' powers or abilities unavailable to the mind otherwise (memories from back before someone has developed memory structures in the brain, for example - memories of birth, and babyhood etc), and many tests have disproven this, even back in the early 60's this disparity was discovered experimentally.

This is not to say that whatever the thing we call hypnosis is, it doesn't work, because it most certainly does (for some at least)!
But so does the placebo effect, which also seems to be strongly connected to suggestibility and belief. It's a fascinating process, but seems more likely to do with suggestibility (The Stanford scale of hypnotisability is based mostly on how suggestable people are before being hypnotised), group behaviours, social conditioning, etc. Some people are far more subconsciously invested in these things, and are far more likely to be susceptible to hypnosis, and I suspect that ND's whom have trouble with these factors - social mores, group behaviours etc are much less likely to be suitable for hypnosis. To suggest these people are somehow faking it isn't an accurate description I think, and the descriptions of their perceptions of the process, while maybe not accurate, are probably genuinely expressed.

To me the most interesting thing about hypnosis is the principals of mind and body, and the connections between them (this doesn't express it well, I think in reality the connections are imagined, mind is body, and body is mind). And hypnosis demonstrates some of those aspects, and how the mind has far more subconscious control over the body than we realise.

 

[Boogs]

I've not the time currently, or the strength of will to cope with that audio for 40-odd minutes, maybe you could summarise the point you want to make?
There's some hugely contentious material from a very quick scan of a transcript, and it's unclear what you mean to say.