NO NOSTRADAMUS
Hypnosis in Everyday Life – Francis J Avison (“Jayson – The Hypnotist”)
This is a slim, simple hypnosis book aimed at the layperson and published back in 1965.
It’s author Francis J Avison – aka “Jayson – The Hypnotist” – is something of a mystery… Given he has a nom de plume that suggests he’s a stage hypnotist, Avison says little about himself in the book. The opening “brief resume” simply states he became interested in hypnosis 15 years ago; while the preface reveals that he’s writing from Auckland, New Zealand. And yet the book was published in London, UK, with the few references to, eg, case studies or bureaucracy skipping between New Zealand and the UK.
My cursory google mostly just brings up this book. I did find this link to a ‘Francis Aaron Avison’, who has a couple of hypnosis creds on a rather mixed bag of a biography. That person’s year of birth would place our author at 31 years of age at the time of writing. Whether that’s our author or not, perhaps a foray into stage hypnosis, or attempt to brand as an impressive-sounding hypnotherapist was short-lived..? And/or maybe this book was published as part of a tour to the UK..? Who knows?! It would be interesting to find out.
There’s a fun anecdote in Avison’s preface about consulting with three different religious ministers about whether it was morally and legally right for him to pursue his interest in hypnosis when he first began, with one railing that it was “[t]he work of the Devil!”. This didn’t put Avison off, it seems, and he ascribes this attitude to ignorance – something he hopes to remedy via this book.
Does he succeed? Well, no. After a brief history of hypnosis – which he ends on the fallacious rumour that hypnosis was used to great and common success during World War II* – we learn that Avison subscribes to the conscious/unconscious mind model and cares not for science. Obviously Kev would have a lot to say about Avison’s assertions that the human mind cannot be subject to “test-tube analysis”, and that scientific data is only relevant and accurate to the people involved in the study! But, since the book descends solely into Avison’s subjective and vicarious views, we shan’t take him to task on this!
The main issue I have is that this isn’t really a book about hypnosis. Any contemporary reader hoping to harness and wield these mysterious powers must have been pretty disappointed – getting a mate to fall backwards into your arms (or vice-versa, or try it yourself against a wall) is about as hypno as this gets. It’s otherwise a conflation of suggestion (advertising, salesmanship, sport, public speaking, etc) and self-hypnosis.
There are self-hypnosis scripts galore and lots of self-help-y pleas about the powers of positive affirmations. Part of the reason I’m curious about Avison’s occupation as a stage hypnotist is he’s wrong about firewalking – he thinks it’s mind over matter, rather than physics. Plus his scripts are dull and riddled with negative suggestions – eg, “you won’t wet the bed” rather than “you’ll wake up dry”; I guess these are just small language nuances I’ve come to expect from hypnotists who have studied and mulled their art a bit more, and take pride in divulging such insights, irrespective of the science/facts of it.
The entries on advertising and salesmanship, etc, are short and include such invaluable insights as ‘they make advertising jingles super catchy’ and ‘salesmen have a lot of self-confidence’. The kookiest entry on mass hypnosis [suggestion] is on music, with a detailed analysis of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music, and its psychological and physical effects, that brought fears about the Beatles and nerve-jamming to my mind.
The book ends with Avison proposing “a ban on all films, television, radio features, books, etc. which present a way of life that is socially unacceptable” to combat juvenile delinquency. He also predicts our education systems will soon be replaced with learn-as-you-sleep hypnotic-education. So, “Jayson – The Hypnotist” was no Nostradamus – no wonder he seems to have faded into obscurity.
* I highly recommend Andrew Scull’s harrowing but incredible Desperate Remedies, a history of psychiatry that, in one single sentence, blows up myths about the favourable role hypnosis played during the war. Traumatised soldiers were not to be humoured or removed far from the battle lines, or else they likely became permanent invalids. Instead, they were treated to a night of “tea and (not too much) sympathy”. “Other elements were sometimes added to the mix – barbiturate narcosis, hypnosis, chemically induced recall of traumatic events, subcoma doses of insulin, and group therapy – seemingly to reassure the professionals that something medical was taking place.” (Page 222.) Ouch.
