Back when I was running my Mind Dynamics Institute in Los Angeles, we used to try to separate all the different aspects of hypnosis into individual studies. We tried not to mix Amnesia with Time Distortion experiments and Dissociation was studied separately from Hallucinations. In fact, we came up with separate books that charted results in each separate category. As we started to pigeonhole our results a very strange thing happened. We soon discovered that most, if not all of the categories we considered 'hypnotic' had direct counterparts in the daily thinking processes of many of our clients.

The simplest, almost anecdotal example of this phenomenon is what happens when a person loses their keys. The keys may be laying on the table, directly in front of them, but for some reason they can't see them. In fact, the person might even be fixated on the spot where the keys are and still not realize they are there. On stage (and in studies) we would call this a negative hallucination. They have decided something isn't there, so they don't see it.

On the flip side of that same coin, you might find a positive hallucination. I know more than once I've 'seen' someone I was thinking of walk by in a crowd, only to find it was someone else. As a magician, I make a decent living leaving people believing they witnessed things they never really saw. I remember a lecture I used to do about suggestion, and how easily the mind fills in gaps. I would take off my glasses about 20 minutes into the lecture and start cleaning the lenses. As I continued to talk, I'd hold the glasses up in front of me, at arms length, and check to see how clean the lenses were. Just as I went to put them on, I'd poke my index and middle fingers of my right hand through the lenses. All this time the entire room would have sworn I was wearing legitimate glasses, when in reality all I had on was a pair of empty frames.

On stage I regularly have people believe they are famous movie stars or celebrities. In 'waking' life, Schizophrenia allows 'normal' people to believe they are someone other than who they really are. In much the same way a person believing they are Dolly Parton on stage would become more secure and bubbly, a Schizophrenic can easily make one personality outgoing while the other one is very inhibited.

How about Time Distortion? Don't we all, on a regular basis, do Time Compression and Time Expansion? Why does "time fly when you're having fun" while we end up having to 'wait forever' for an egg to boil? Is it not our mind doing, while fully awake, exactly the same things we have all played around with when studying hypnosis?

Of course, the most powerful weapon in a Hypnotherapists repertoire, Post Hypnotic Suggestion, has a very apparent and often quite destructive counterpart in the waking world. Most mental problems we would diagnose as 'neurotic' could easily be interpreted as a form of Post Hypnotic Suggestion. A little boy who accepts the suggestion that 'real men' beat their wives, would find that it makes no difference how much the man loves his wife and family or that there is no logical justification for the action. The fact is, somewhere buried amidst the billions of tiny neuron links, the man has a connection that somehow yells out "now's the time to beat her" when he experiences certain preconditioned stimuli. 

In hypnosis we call these anchors. Psychologists usually describe them as 'Triggers'. It's this same phenomenon that allows any of us to accept faulty conclusions that justify doing things we know we shouldn't. We hide our behaviors under various 'labels' that make them sound more politically correct, like 'justification', 'rationalization', 'cop outs', etc.. But after all is said and done, the real 'culprit' boils down to a behavior being played out while on 'automatic pilot' based on a suggestion we accepted some time in the past. Granted, "it feels good" or "it's so much easier" does play a very active role in the justification, but ultimately, the reason we don't go through life feeling shame and guilt, is because once we decide to do the things we do, we usually do them without thinking. We're basically following suggested scripts in much the same mental 'state' a post hypnotic suggestion would be carried out.

How about Age Regression? Isn't that what all the 'inner child' therapy is about? What can be more like 'going back in time' than doing the fetal position bit that was so popular not that many years ago? Which of us hasn't found ourselves back in Jr. High School the second we smelled a baseball glove, or regressed to those beloved childhood moments when we were cuddled and stroked by our parents when we found ourselves lying on the lap or our lover as he or she ran fingers through our hair?

Anesthesia is another very vivid example of a phenomenon found both in hypnotic states and elsewhere. Why can the guides in the Andes survive incredibly cold temperatures in simple T-shirts while the very fit explorers they lead are freezing to death while dressed in the worlds best thermal gear? How can a fire walker make it across 50 feet of coals burning at 1200 degrees f when most of us find our flesh burns at 300? And we've all experienced 'talking ourselves' into believing it wasn't as cold as we thought outside, haven't we?

If you take the time to think through most of the phenomenon possible while in a hypnotic state, it's very easy to find it's counterpart in daily life.
If we can begin with the premise that all hypnotic activity is merely a reflection of patterns already established in the subjects mind, we then open up an incredibly fascinating realm of possibilities. 

First of all, it would be very interesting to have a team of hypnotists kind of 'back into' the issues here. Imagine if we took the time to look at everything you can have a subject do under hypnosis, and you dug for its non hypnotic counterpart? Traditionally, therapists have waited for problems to become prevalent enough to be eventually 'classified' as 'mental disorders'. The hypnotic reflection model should allow us, instead, to know what patterns exist inside human minds, and eventually chart out all the possibilities that might be triggered. I can imagine a large wall chart with the '50 discovered mental processes' all neatly charted out and cross-referenced. It's almost like charting the periodic table of the elements. Once the basic layout was developed, chemists started predicting elements that would some day be discovered. I can almost see a think tank somewhere staying up till the wee hours of the morning trying to predict possible aberrations in 'normal' thinking.

Any of us that have played around with hypnosis know that not all subjects are capable of experiencing hypnotic suggestions equally. Some patients can quickly experience sensory control but aren't able to forget something that's happened. Others find themselves very capable of 'seeing' things (positive hallucinations), but never fully grasp time distortion experiments. Suppose we took the time to develop a series of uniform hypnotic tests that could somehow chart a subjects ability to experience each phenomenon. It would almost be like determining what kind of exercise a person has done all their lives by the muscles they've developed. We might start discovering behavior patterns. We might find, for example, that people who rated high in negative hallucinations and memory distortion might have spent a lot of their life in denial. Of course, if we could compare them to previous case studies with similar scores, we should be able to, at the very least, understand how they might react in certain given situations.

Another step in this direction might include training subjects to use new techniques. If we found a person who was haunted by past memories or current pressures, maybe a little work on being able to forget memories, and remember them on command might be called for. Criminals with a need to 'feel important' by doing high visibility crimes may benefit from work on their abilities to create positive hallucinations and vivid dreaming states. Giving them the ability to see themselves as important or in praise worthy situations may take away some of the pressures. This may be rubbing up against common hypnotherapy, but if we gave clients new tools to cope with and closed doors that were hurting them, we may be able to establish new patterns that might offer effective, rapid solutions to age old problems.

Most of us know that a lot of hypnotherapy depends on our ability to help clients change the associations they create to certain given stimuli. Anesthesia is about telling the mind to take those pulsing 'pain' signals and interpret them as warm, tingling thoughts instead. Smokers are taught to take the 'urge to smoke that happens right after dinner' and reinterpret it to mean they need a breath mint or use it to stimulate an adrenaline flow that reminds them of just how good it feels to be 'the master of their life'. If we agree that these interpretations are actually being made by various hypnotic patterns in the mind, then it wouldn't be that hard to force the mind to take situations and deal with them differently. A person used to hiding behind their anger (as a post hypnotic coping mechanism) can be taught instead to take the same situations and convert them into time compression scenarios. Instead of 'savoring the moment and seeing red', the person can learn to take the 1/2 hour of 'stuff that bugs me' and trick the mind into believing it was only 5 minutes of 'tuff stuff'. It wouldn't take much to see some pretty incredible possibilities here.

A technique I've been using successfully for years, that might fit into this category is the ability to track down triggers and redirect them. It's kind of a causal effect form of therapy, but it's very effective. Basically, if you can figure out what makes a person do something, it doesn't take much to create another pattern in their mind for that stimulus. In the past, whenever I dealt with child or spouse abusers, I found my most effective therapy models had very little to do with 'talking them out of it'. They've heard all the arguments, and they have strong post hypnotic suggestions in place to fight them off. Instead, I aim at the core. I hypnotize them, have them see themselves just before the first strike, and then I ask them why they want to hit whoever. Most of the answers I've gotten usually involve something to the effect of "they don't respect my authority", or "I feel they're not living up to my standards". I then figure out why this is an issue for them. I usually find answers like "nobody ever does", or "My parents used to treat me that way", or whatever. I then, basically, refocus the aggressive behavior. I have them see themselves getting to that boiling point again and I have them look at the person and feel sorry for them, or maybe feel incredible understanding of why and how they are trying to deal with a situation that feels overwhelming to them. Either way, I take away all need for the various post hypnotic suggestions the person has been hiding behind, and empty out a very large 'junk storeroom' in their minds. It's amazing how quickly a person begins 'starting over' establishing new patterns and developing new habits once the foundation to the old life patterns is broken.

If we carefully studied the "Hypnotic Reflection" model, it might not be too long before we can help patients break the script patterns, in much the same way we rechannel metaphors or scripts in hypnotized patients. It's not too big a jump in logic here to imagine being able to take a person who has delusions of grandeur or an inferiority complex and help them to see themselves for who they really are, making sure we install security blankets to cover for any fears or inhibitions they might have while trying to live out these scripts. 

Just writing about it runs chills up my spine. I can almost see myself on stage, taking a shy, highly self conscious person and telling them they have nothing to worry about, they are now free to be themselves and are able to act without inhibitions. That simple line has helped thousands over the years go from wall flower to superman (or woman). Why is it so hard to believe we can tap into the same patterns and redirect them in daily living the way I do nightly in my show?
Of course, the ultimate benefit of this model might be something I've always called the "Schizophrenic" response on stage. As long as you tell Susan that she's still Susan, you're left with a series of preconceived behavior patterns and/or limitations she's grown to believe 'Susan' has. If you tell 'Susan' she's someone else, you can then give her permission to do things, believe things and experience thing that are far out of 'Susans' mental scope. 

Basically, one of my little 'secrets' in doing a successful show is that as I'm doing one of my first inductions, I somehow sneak in a suggestion that "you are no longer the person you used to be. Instead you are a new, dynamic person, free of inhibitions, free to let it all out, unworried about reactions or consequences, you're here to have fun, to let go, and you know it's okay to let it happen". Very few people realize it when they hear it or see it being done, but in reality, the real reason my people are willing to do so much so quickly during my show is because they accept an alternate personality, almost a schizophrenic reality that allows them to be different. At the end of my show I obviously tell people they will not take home with them any of the suggestions they experienced during the show. I then explain that the only suggestions they'll leave with is that they have somehow tapped into their inner mind and are now capable of setting standards and establishing the goals they want in their lives. I tell them they now know they are capable of doing whatever it takes to accomplish what they want in life. It's truly amazing how many people really do change. I find people all over the country who regularly come up to me after a show or public appearance to tell me about all the exciting things that have started happening in their lives ever since my show. Is my one "yes you can do it" line making that much of a difference? I don't think so. I truly believe the real change happens because they've just spent 90 minutes being a different person, experiencing what if feels like to be free, uninhibited and ready to "let it all hang out". Then, when I empower them to continue to "reach for the stars" with my final statement, many walk out with the assurance that if it was safe to do it on stage, why can't they take risks and go for the gold in life?

In a practical, therapeutic model, we might be able to create schizophrenic realities in our clients and allow them to experiment with new coping mechanisms and/or building tools. Then if we leave them believing they have now mastered the ability to 'slow down time when you feel yourself under pressure' or 'control the temperature and adrenaline flow when you're kids start getting out of hand' our results may turn out to be very directed and powerful.

Obviously, all of this is just "thinking out loud". I may be way off base here, but I thought I'd toss it out for your consideration. Of course, I've been warned that concepts like these are the ones that earn shortened life spans, and clandestine visits by FBI, CIA and NSA types.
I'm not worried, though. I happen to know that those guys all depend on computers to do their 'dirty work' and the only way this article would get flagged would be if I were foolish enough to include their names somewhere in the copy.