TICK, TOCK! YOU’RE A CLOCK
Fate Magazine – Robert N Webster (editor)
Because I spend so much of my time researching the history of hypnotism, psychology and psychiatry, I’ve become something of a mentalist-connoisseur... I imagine myself in the key female roles: as a privileged French hysteric who piques the sympathies of Dr Mesmer; as a bossy booted shut-eye at the forefront of psychical ‘research’; as the ‘ideal’ modern stage hypnosis show lady-volunteer who won’t fuck up your trick; as the smartest lunatic in the asylum.
Whatever the role, I’ve become a sucker for internally ‘method acting’ authentic concepts of consciousness to fit the age and circumstances. For instance, I imaginatively ‘consulted’ with all the best fin de siècle mesmerists on my recent gynaecological woes and – hey presto! – I manifested a ‘wandering womb’ (?!), thus meeting the demand characteristics that Victorian Gentleman Scientists wafting their magnetic palms across my midriff would have sought. Plus I’ve learned so much about exorcisms that I can now psychoanalyse my vomit by its colour and consistency versus which demons I’ve been fraternising with.
Yep, you know your mind is truly twisted when you start applying non-literal psychological Darwinism to yourself for fun. But there’s been a particularly perverse pleasure in playing the role of a 1950s American suburban housewife amidst the enduring influence of Milton Erickson on hypnotism as a field. While so many hypnotists, especially NLPers, focus on the granular details of his silver tongue and flair for metaphorical and nested stories, I see Erickson as simply the ‘granddaddy’ of hypnosis as a US cultural meme. Erickson (1901-1980) was a psychiatrist and psychologist specialising in hypnosis and family therapy, and his home practice in Phoenix, Arizona, is where I imagine the kinds of women reflected in his – and similar contemporary – ‘teaching tales’ revealing their unvarnished truths.
His legendary stories include inspiring chubby girls to diet and grouchy spinsters to garden. Hypnotically persuading the desperate housewives of 1950s USA to be content... or to comply... with the ‘apple pie and white picket fences’ American Dream is a common theme in his work and in books by contemporary hypnotists. But the point at which a woman is carted off to The Hypnotist – ie, when someone close to her greenlights an intervention, thereby infecting her with the suggestion that a white male authority figure is The Answer – has already muddied the waters of my investigations! So, when the July 1954 edition of Fate Magazine’s special hypnotism issue arrived on our doorstep, I decide to borrow the soul of a young Taylor Swift type to see how else a woman’s mind might be corrupted by hypnosis...
I fix myself a cocktail and sit outside on a sun-lounger pretending I’m a 23-year-old OG tradwife of some go-getting company man whose reading material I’ve snatched from his mail as part of an emerging pattern of ‘erratic’ (rebellious) moments. I’ve been 18 months married now, so I’m past the lavender haze of making love and of making a home and of making his pot roasts, etc. I convince myself a boozy iced tea is a swell cure for my latest migraine. And, oh, Fred is indeed finding these Lady Problems I keep manifesting oh-so tiresome. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the ceaseless pressure to produce babies and girlish small-talk. What, pray tell, might I learn about this mysterious hypnotism business to maintain my existence as The Perfect Wife?
Well, firstly – who is this dazzling goddess on the cover?! She must be using the ‘power of hypnosis’ to get shiny bejewelled rings out of men! And I do like shiny things... Hmm. Inside, there’s an ad for a woman called Miss Carter with the power of prophesy – she’ll write you your fortune for $1, or sugarcoat it for $2 (but she doesn’t wish to be bothered in person, thank you kindly, seekers-not-stalkers). My borrowed young soul sings briefly at the prospect of a woman’s opinion being worth even a dime, but Mother taught me it is bad for girls to – ooff these Lady Problem migraines! Mustn’t worry my pretty little head...
I press on with a swig of my cocktail. Perhaps this will give me and Fred something new to chat about at dinner tonight..? I flick through the obscurities of Rosicrucians and occult library books to buy, and read through some short entries concerning men called Mesmer and Houdini, and some strange-but-true snippets. “TICK, TOCK! YOU’RE A CLOCK,” a headline screams at me. I am a biological clock, it reminds me. I am my biology... I am...
“HOUSTON’S POLTERGEIST” – now this is more like it! There’s been strange knockings going on at a Mrs W E Murray’s Kernel Street home. The cops investigated, with Detectives Chapman and Rogers completely flummoxed by the case. The magazine editor, however, points the finger of suspicion at Mrs Murray’s 12-year-old daughter, Murzie. Houston’s also been losing TV signals, apparently. KLEE-TV signals have been travelling through space and time, and are being picked up by “Britishers” in London...
“Have they been re-broadcast by beings on another world? Or could Time, so little understood, have folded back and through some trick the signals were received in England a fractional second after they were broadcast on one plane, while three to four years elapsed on another?”
Things that go ‘bump’ in Houston give me the heebie-jeebies, but it gets worse: the next article is about a 36-year-old housewife from, like 50s-Taylor-type ‘me’, a small southern town, but who gets sent to a shrink to be hypnotised. So I skip it; I’ve got enough problems being a young Southern Belle. Back to my self-help search... Pages flash past on ghosts, murder, madness, and fossil collecting. FINALLY, I reach the section on sex! Perhaps this Ormond McGill fella can elucidate me... Oh, I did not need to read the words “fear of pregnancy” and all this medical truthiness. Wait, what? I am... neurotic?!
No, I am NOT neurotic. I am tipsy. And no longer making Fred’s dinner. Ooh, “Visiting Another Life... through hypnosis” – now, this is more like it! I imagine my life lived as Marylin Monroe and then as the fallen soldier of 1794 who the subject of this article hypnotically recalled as a ‘past life’. It is like a dream to read it and I lose my train of thought as I read a guide on how to hypnotise someone. I realise that the woman in the green dress on the cover, now rendered in black and white, is the one being hypnotised by the man. Any man can hypnotise. I wonder if Fred bought this magazine because he wants to hypnotise me..?
Yes, that must be it. Here is a picture of a newborn baby – apparently hypnosis can remove all fear and pain from childbirth..? I suppose I did read this magazine wanting to know my fate. And Mother is right that I’m not getting any younger. Still, another year would be something... Short titbits about psychics and demons catch my eyes. A Velma Jorgensen from Houston, Texas, has written in with a question about the operation of a Ouija board. “My cat stared as an invisible person walked into the room and stopped behind my chair.” A woman called Frances is receiving messages from the ghost of Mike. Does hypnosis only benefit the dead? I wonder if I could persuade Fred to buy me a Ouija board from the product adverts at the back, but he’d never approve of such a silly frivolity. Perhaps I’ll dye my hair red. No, strawberry blonde. No, don’t be silly. Push it all back down inside. No more iced tea. Pot roast. Smile. My pretty little head hurts…
“Has someone else been sneaking in a telecast of KLEE-TV? Such equipment costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and practical jokers haven’t access to it. How could such signals reach as far as London anyway?”
