EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
Hypnosis – Michael Karoly
I write this while still reeling from my obligatory cursory Google of this 1961 book and its author, Michael Karoly…
After I’d regaled Kev with the weird and wonderful tale that awaits you, he suggested I still write up my reflections on this book as-was. So, here goes!
The cover of this book is precisely why Cosmic Pancakes! was born. What we presume is our author’s face stares out, with striking blued-up eyes, from an Austin Powers colour palette and beneath an aesthetically spot-on title-font choice. It’s intense, trippy, weird.
From the back cover, we learn that Karoly is a (London-based) consultant psychologist of “long experience”. The promise is to put hypnosis “in its true perspective”, and to show its uses to “the intelligent and open-minded reader”.
I’ve wrongly judged a hypnosis book by its cover before. But when I find a hypno-themed poem to the author on an opening page (pictured farther below, and penned by the woman who helped edit the book), I buckle up for hypno-fun that matches the cover.
Though dated in places, what follows, however, is one of the best books I’ve read about hypnosis so far.
The introduction is credibly – and beautifully – written. I particularly relate to how Karoly thinks about hypnosis in terms of examining its past, present and future.
He believes too many books begin with the past and end with its future, with the pages in between dealing “with the nature, theory and practice of the phenomenon”. He believes something is missing when the subject is treated this way: namely, “the time element”.
I’ve never read a book so conscious of hypnosis as a meme, forever subject to the ebbs and flows of social and cultural influences, of time and space.
This shines through in the first chapter on ‘Hypnotism Today’.
Here, Karoly first considers whether the best way to examine the subject of hypnosis is to “walk round it, or climb inside it”, concluding that authors of hypnosis books are “inclined to write from inside outwards”.
He decides to do the opposite. And so this is a thoroughly refreshing introduction to (1960s, British-focused) hypnosis, examining views and usage among the British medical establishment, the impacts of the 1952 British Hypnotism Act, and a summary of how (little) hypnotism features in key medical text books.
He lays much of the blame for hypnosis’s lack of standing in medical circles with Freud, who “shook the world with his sensational theories” around the time many of these medical books were being compiled.
“When Dr Freud expressed his disapproval of hypnotism, it became a word tinged with contempt in scientific and medical circles. The memories of this period will, alas, persist until a new generation of scientists replace the old one.”
There is also a recurring weariness for the damage wrought by Mr Confirmation Bias, Charcot. His theories are described here in the introduction as “utterly erroneous”. Later, Karoly describes his “grave errors” and, later still, his “great blunders”.
He covers hypnosis and the occult – in writing this book, he’s considered only books written since 1945, but finds some of them “quite amusing” in mixing up all kinds of phenomena for which the authors had no other reasonable explanation. Hence spiritualism, water-divining and the occult making their way into books on hypnotism.
He also touches upon “other psychological disciplines, such as Christian Science and Scientology”, which “make use of hypnotic principles, while disclaiming all connection with it”. I suspect Karoly and I have similar tastes in hypno-literature!
Chapter two covers ‘Hypnosis Yesterday’. This is the strongest and most credible explanation of pre-Mesmer hypnotists I’ve read vs the usual mess of religious, mythological, and ancient Greek references hypnotists chuck about.
There’s a particularly neat and concise thread between Paracelsus, Gassner and Mesmer that I’ll be mulling for some time.
I felt Karoly is overly sympathetic towards Mesmer, Elliotson and Esdaile, but – now I know more of the mysteries of this author – I can see why they look kindly upon mavericks!
I’m getting carried away with how much I got from these opening chapters, but I’ll leave you with two more titbits!
He states that '“Dr Liébault Nancy” (his name is actually Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault) – of the Nancy School, famed more for Charcot and Hippolyte Bernheim – “was very successful in effecting cures, but not in securing recognition for his work”. Apparently, ‘Dr Nancy’s’ “milestone” book only sold one copy!
He also claims that public confidence in hypnosis as a treatment for nervous disorders waned between the two world wars. (Which he attributes to Freud.)
The book then moves into the nature, theory and practice of hypnosis, followed by the structure and mechanisms of the mind, and then into hypnoanalysis (divided into neuroses, psychosexual difficulties, and other conditions).
I found the information and case studies in the hypnoanalysis sections credible, nuanced and emotionally intelligent. Karoly generally prefers to let patients find the answers to their problems from within. I appreciated his reflections on the influences, and pros and cons of psychoanalysis, Freud and Jung.
What struck me was how liberal and rich his views and treatment of “psychosexual difficulties” (his considered term) were for the time. The account of treating transvestism particularly so. He also chooses not to include a case study on homosexuality because it “is so very complicated that none would be genuinely illustrative”.
Karoly made such an impression on me that, on completing this book, I was keen to find out more… And that’s when I stumbled across this article on a book entitled Who Was Dr Charlotte Bach? (which I’ve duly purchased!).
Michael Karoly is a personae of Baron Carl Hajdu, who was born Karoly Hajdu in 1920 in Budapest. Most intriguingly ‘Karoly’ died as Dr Charlotte Bach, a woman who part-published a 3,000-page magnus opus on sexual deviation being the mainspring of evolution.
But that, hypno-fans, is a story for another day…
UPDATE: You can read my reflections on Who Was Dr Charlotte Bach? here.
