I had some awesome feedback on the first call about the automatic reaction model. People have been telling me how it has made learning hypnosis much clearer, and has allowed them to put everything they have learned over the years into a nice and tidy box.
And so I think it’s time to confuse ya’ll once again.
I’ll be presenting my “Reality Is A Scam” model in a free webinar March 24th at 3PM EST.
It’s the second full functional hypnosis model (the automatic reaction model being the first).
The implications of this hypnosis model are massive.
It will lift the veil and give you a simple and clear view of what you’re actually doing when you hypnotize a subject.
It will utterly change the way you work and how you learn hypnosis.
I won’t be using skype this time, and so getting on the call ought to be a pain free experience.
Get involved people!
—-UPDATE—-
The recording of the webinar is now live and available free!
http://www.anymeeting.com/wikihyp/EE51D88282
Enjoy, Share, and Comment!
Joe
Hi Joe,
thanks for the nice conference call.
great as usual.
One question:
Right at the beginning you mentioned that what we’re doing
with those new model is really cutting edge.
I believe so as well and I wonder – has hypnosis really evolved,
compared to say the way it was a 100 years ago?
Is there anything hypnotists can today do better/ different /more consistent than their grandfathers in those times?
-Ben
It’s a great question. One that tickled me as well 🙂
I think that compared to Bernheim and company from 100 years ago we are way way ahead.
At the same time, I think that were Dave Elman alive today using what he used 50 years ago, he would be the greatest hypnotist in the world.
What we have today that Dave didn’t have in my opinion, is an explicit understanding of what we are doing. I think Dave had a clear understanding within himself of what he was doing, but his ability to clearly explain the concepts even to himself was limited. This gives us a certain advantage in designing tools that work using the concepts but aren’t that simple to intuit.
I also think that therapy wise we are far far ahead of where they were back then. Even the great Dave Elman didn’t have some of the powerful concepts and tools we have today (clean language).
Another reason I think this is the cutting edge is that at the end of the day 99.99% of hypnotists can’t do what Dave did (I certainly can’t!). And so long as this ‘edge’ is a place where most of us aren’t hanging out, it remains the edge. And so to a certain degree the sad fact is that the cutting edge hasn’t really moved in the last 50 years in certain areas of hypnosis (much like flying cars and jetpacks).
All in all a darn good question. Thanks for provoking my thinking. 🙂
Thanks for your insightful reply, Joe. 🙂
It seems with Elman we have a role model to live up to.
Hmm, hypnotic jetpacks? Sounds pretty cool, let’s go for it!
(this is what I would call hypnotic engineering ^^)
A question that came to my mind during the seminar, is that about the relationship of imagination and automatic response.
We all know that imagination can lead to our (neuro-)physiology to react in certain ways. (Most figurative example of this is the notorious Carpenter effect.) When building expectation in a subject we basically engage her imagination, leading to greater responsiveness as well.
On the other hand, imagination itself can possess automatic properties.
E.g. most language processing isn’t possible without a gedree of imagination involved.
I’m interested in your take on that relationship.
And doesn’t this give us some hints for a unified understanding of both
phenomena?
My intuition tells me that the tension field between both AR and I is a fruitful one, deserving more attention and possible some idea harvesting as well.
-Ben
Once again good points Ben.
The way I see it is that we can break a human down into 2 simple parts.
Input and output.
Now obviously there is input and output on many levels. You can have an input on one level thats processed, passed as output, and then that output is fed back into the system as input and so on.
For example. 1 Hypnotist says sleep—->2 person imagines feeling tired——>3 feels tired—–>4 thinks “oh this is working” and wraps mind around the idea—–>5 feels even more tired and eyes close.
Now obviously, each step is both output from the last step and input to the next step. Yet some are more on the input end (imagination and thoughts) and some are more on the output end (feeling tired).
I think Elman saw hypnosis as managing the persons input at any step. The reality we have at any given moment is what he wanted. That is something the person could consciously control as well. And so in this case, Elman would go after 2 and 4. He would call that selective thinking and those thoughts “hypnosis”.
Erickson wanted to get the auto responses. And so he would focus on 3 and 5.
Now obviously they each were able to get what the other had. The question is only where the focus is, if it’s on the input of the output.
For any suggestion we give there are multiple feedback loops and layers of processing. Humans are very very complex. Tons and tons of input and output. It’s simple a question of which end we focus on.
Makes sense? Or is there something that’s still missing for you here?
It makes sense to me what you’ve written, Joe.
-Ben
Hi Joe
I missed your first conference but listened to the mp3s but was pleased to catch the reality is a scam webinar. I found them both interesting so thank you.
I hadn’t thought about the different approaches of Erickon and Elman in the way you had, ie automatic response vs reality is a scam but what I had noticed about Elman was that he didn’t really seem to care much about hypnotic grammar, not phrasing things in the negative, binds and so on, but most of all just how quick he was, so I found yours an intersting way of looking at it.
Now let me ask you a question…
How do instant/shock/confusion inductions fit into you automatic response and reality is a scam models?
Cheers
Paul
Thanks for the kind words.
Instant inductions fit well into both models. In the AR model it triggers the auto response of ‘hypnosis’ (whatever that means to the hypnotee… on of the reasons pretalk is key…). Once they have the auto response of “I am hypnotized” it’s all over.
In the Elman model it’s a shade different. We aren’t trying to get an auto response of “I am hypnotized”, rather we want to convince the subject deeply and fully that something happened. Once they are convinced and lock their mind around the idea that “I am hypnotized” we’re in good shape as above.
And so Erickson sees beliefs as an auto response. Elman sees it as something that we have wrapped our minds around and made our reality (sometimes because we got very convinced). In this case as well it seems to me that Elman gives more power to the subject, as they get to ‘consciously’ choose their beliefs instead of being at the mercy of the ‘unconscious’.
Makes sense?
Commenting running as I listen….
On Foot Stick ok I am glad you snap your fingers…lol Stuck first time and more on subsequent rounds. powerful stuff.
Analgesia… 1st time No analgesia… second time slight tingle. :s Should have been right in there.
Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing.