NO SH*T, SHERLOCK
A Hypnotist’s Case Book – Alex Erskine
When Kev presented me with his latest hypno purchase, my heart sank.
There comes a point where one man’s hypnotic observations and experiments boomingly presented as SCIENTIFIC FACT become much of a muchness. But I decided to give this book a go because, back in the 1930s, a respectable gentleman’s capers and notes did indeed still pass for Science.
I’d never heard of the author, Alex Erskine, and didn’t look him up until after I’d read the book. The preface is predictably strident for ‘an unknown’, so I buckled up for the usual merry-go-round of ‘cures’ and wild speculations. But this book was full of surprises.
Chapter I is interesting in terms of Erskine sitting between the epochs of Mesmer and Braid; he sees clear distinctions between the two, but you get a sense of what it must have been like to be caught in the middle of the old and new memes.
He also mentions – as a British practitioner – having to train in hypnosis in America, where the field was (he believed) better respected and understood. I adore these rare glimpses into the mesmerism/hypnosis ‘training industry’ over individual claims of unique and mysterious inherent talents.
Chapter II covers his theory of the subconscious mind, as well as what I’m sure at the time was a compelling physiological explanation of the eye and mesmeric/hypnotic transference. (It’s all in your ganglion cells, apparently.)
He then drops that none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – ghost-botherer and Sherlock Holmes creator – is his hypnotic-investigator-pal! Now, I’ve come across quite a bit about Sir Arthur’s spiritualism and relationship with Houdini, but what a treat to see if Sir A can bring his characteristic rigour and scepticism (lol) to the slippery subject of hypnosis..!
Come Chapter III, and page 44, Erskine is making incredibly forward-thinking statements about hypnosis being just suggestion.
He relates a story from his boyhood, where no amount of caustic treatments could keep warts on his hands at bay. His nanny performs a solemn ritual, taking a piece of cotton thread and counting his warts – 11 – whilst touching the thread against them. She then solemnly ties 11 knots in the thread and, to young Erskine’s increasing alarm, pops the thread in her mouth. She tells him she will bury the cotton and, by the time it rots in the ground, his warts will be gone – and gone for good. Ten days later: no warts – forever.
“To my young untutored mind,” writes Erskine, “it was magic; to-day I know that it was just an application of suggestion; and suggestion – hypnosis, call it what you will – is not magic. It is an accepted scientific truth.”
Given many hypnotists and laymen today still don’t accept that hypnosis is suggestion, I’m impressed. But sentences later, on the opposite page, in sharing his personal history, his friend’s been hypnotised by a snake – and he’s been inspired to his hypnotic calling. This is quite a ride!
Erskine is passionate about curing ‘functional illness’ with hypnosis. The book is packed with accounts of curing shell-shocked World War I soldiers and other (in his opinion) functional issues such as paralysis, deafness, blindness and stutters.
I was surprised I hadn’t heard Erskine’s name given the press snippets and medical testimonials, as well as his own accounts of his influence upon the British medical establishment concerning hypnosis.
But this is all interspersed with – wait for it! – astral projection, mind-reading, stray thoughts about religion and Christian Science, and the usual Sir Arthur Conan Doyle capers in credulity and intelligent guesswork. All presented as ‘hypnosis’.
Suffice to say, I LOVED IT!
A cursory Google yields little information about Erskine, aside from that he was Scottish, cousin to the Earl of Mar and Kellie (a Scottish Peerage title), and has the title of ‘professor’ for other works.
I’m left wondering whether Erskine faded from hypno-history because of his association with the pesky Sir Arthur… Though somewhat agnostic, Erskine believed spiritualism was the literal work of spirits. Therefore, experiments that he led – as a hypnotist, and within the frame of hypnosis – were attributed to hypnosis and science.
For example, in one experiment Erskine’s subject is asked to divine who Sir A has a photo of in his locket, and the correct divination is chalked up as a hypnosis success. A spiritualist would attribute the divination to a spirit guide or similar – an entirely separate phenomenon as far as Erskine is concerned.
I can forgive Erskine for confirming his own biases. But my mind will forever boggle at how pathetically impressed Conan Doyle was by someone, anyone – hypnotised-sensitive, medium or Harry Houdini – guessing it’s his missus.
