JUDGED BY ITS COVER
Hypnotic Power: Its Cultivation, Use, and Application to Psychotherapy – Colin Bennett
What’s not to relish about the prospect of reading a book about hypnosis penned by the author of Practical Time Travel?!
I assumed this would be a *hilarious* read and, thus, a *hilarious* blog post, based on those author credentials. But no. This is a surprisingly sober book, much of which, despite being published in 1946, still stands up today.
My standard cursory Google brings up book listings for the author, Colin Bennett. But I can’t find biographical information, and nor does the book contain such.
What we can glean is that Bennett is, first and foremost, a psychotherapist (probably). He states, humbly, in the preface that perhaps the book might find its way into the medical “fraternity” – it becomes clear later on that he believes psychotherapists and hypnotists are better placed to treat certain people and conditions. But his plan in writing the book is to educate novice hypnotists as well as laymen.
Chapter I is entitled ‘What is Hypnotism?’ and I immediately braced for *hilarity* because, come page two, we’re onto… hypnotising chickens. There’s even a handy how-to.
This precedes the stock mention of Mesmer and ancient civilisations practising hypnosis – quite the ‘hypnotic-definition-soup’ for starters... Hmm.
Obviously this book is filled with outdated and disproven concepts and beliefs: state; depth; giving subjects a good dose of potassium bromide to get them ‘under’ if needs must.
But I couldn’t help but respect – and somewhat relate to – Bennett’s central position on hypnosis as the book builds. As he writes on page 60:
“If you accept the general opinion of scientific men concerning the hypnotic state and its phenomena, you may already be beginning to sum up the secret of a hypnotist’s success as largely a matter of self-confidence. Make your suggestion of ‘sleep’ in a manner at once sufficiently plausible and impressive and it will, almost always, take effect. Though – like Mesmer, Elliotson, and more recently Hollander – I hold the belief that suggestion does not fully explain the subject, there is no doubt one can get a long way in successful hypnotism by working this suggestion idea to its logical limit.” [Emphasis mine.]
So. Phenomena from the animal world, chickens included, as well as psychic phenomena he’s curious about as covered in Chapter XVII, are the reason he can’t quite bring himself to chalk it all up to suggestion. Fair play. And his position is consistently clear and credible.
In fact, swathes of this book feel quite contemporary. His instructions on susceptibility tests chime with what many hypnotists do today. And advice on avoiding or abandoning poor subjects is spot on in an age of ‘power’ and ‘challenge’ hypnosis.
Page 61 includes views on rebranding ‘hypnosis’ as ‘curative sleep’ or ‘curative suggestion’ due to negative associations (for which he blames Trilby and Svengali) – a discussion that continues today with hypnotists branding as ‘mindfulness coaches’ and such.
That said, there are plenty of bonkers retro-hypno bits. There’s the standard sprinkling of sexism, racism and classism in selecting ideal subjects. For instance, “Neurotic males with unconscious negative father complexes” are known to be “exceptionally difficult” – the answer is for the hypnotist to excite “the positive mother complex”, apparently.
Plus there’s guidance on administering electric shocks and sharp jabs with needles to check whether a subject is shamming.
Not to mention a carotid artery move he warns against that can cause the subject to bite off their tongue.
On the subject of the good ‘ole carotid artery trick, my favourite chapter is on stage hypnosis, Chapter X. This is surprisingly detailed and colourful, though the purpose of this chapter is to distance stage hypnosis from his applications.
We get a real sense of a raucous, sadomasochistic show that few of us today would recognise as entertaining.
In a passage on the archetypal music-hall mesmerist, and the social contract between them and the typical music-hall attendee, we’re introduced to the ideal volunteer: “It should not be lost sight of that the type of youth which had come on the stage from the music-hall pit presented himself in no very critical spirit, but came keyed up for wonders.”
He describes “volunteers ladling dry flour into their mouths under the suggestion that it was delicious ice-cream, or seeing them greedily licking candles for sticks of barley sugar.”
From sociopathic mesmerists threatening volunteers to ‘sleep’, to people stripping off their clothes because they have “rats in their pants”, I don’t think I’ve come across such an evocative description of the music-hall mesmeric show.
Despite his disapproval of stage hypnosis, Bennett confesses he’s “happy” to “admit that to this day the memory of the music-hall mesmerist amuses [him].”
To top it off, the book ends with more questions than answers. So many hypnosis books are filled with bombast, but this is a charming and relatable read. Someday I shall hypnotise a chicken in Bennett’s honour.
