RESTING BITCH FACE
The Key To Hypnotism Simplified – James T McBrayer
I’ve often explained on here that we don’t really write about modern, non-academic hypnosis books because, well, they’re so often terrible. And if they don’t have an interesting cover or title, then there really isn’t much to say about them. Especially when most of what is written in them is available in much older books, such as this one by McBrayer. The weird thing was just how similar modern books are to this gem from 1956.
You see, McBrayer – an American, who yields no google results beyond his book – isn’t a hypnotist by trade; he’s a lawyer. But that doesn’t stop him writing about a) the “science” of hypnotism; b) how to do hypnosis; c) “trance” states and depths; d) performance hypnotism; e) hypnotherapy – yep, in the same book… what a professional he must be!; f) his own “theory” of how hypnosis works; g) rules to follow when hypnotising; h) how psychologists are basically wrong; and, finally, i) self-hypnosis – yep all in the same book.
I appreciate that some of you are thinking, “Wait! That’s a perfectly standard approach to writing a hypnosis book! Almost every hypnosis book I’ve read has followed that format!”. And, yes, you’d be correct; it seems that the tried-and-tested formula for writing a shitty book about hypnosis really does date back at least 80 years. It makes me wonder why so many new books about hypnosis are written, when so little is added by each one.
But, of course, the reason is obvious, and it’s the same reason that McBrayer wrote this book. It’s because these authors are so EXCITED about hypnosis that they just need to shout it from the roof tops. They’ve gone and learned how to do it (quite probably from a better book, like Reality Is Plastic), and then they’ve slept on it, their mind has organised their thoughts in their sleep, and they’ve woken up with the exact same thought as hundreds of other authors, which is (paraphrased):
“By jove, do you know what? I really think I understand how this whole hypnosis thing works now that I’ve hypnotised at least one person. I should write a book about it – a better book than the one I read. I need to tell the world. My way of understanding it is so much clearer and more precise than anything I’ve read before. My book will be the key to hypnotism, and it will also be so much simpler than everything else. It will be: The Key To Hypnotism Simplified!”
It doesn’t seem to matter which decade you’re in; this seems to be how these books are written. By believing they’ve understood hypnosis, they want to write about performance, therapy, and self-hypnosis all in the same book, ignoring the fact that entire books have been written about each of these things separately, and still barely scratch the surfaces. They explain how to do hypnotism in pretty much the same way – do this, say that, APPEAR CONFIDENT (even though you’re not), believe it will work and it will… with no instructions on what to do when it doesn’t seem to go as planned. And they all explain hypnosis in terms of “trance”, and introduce their own “theory” to explain it.
So let me tell you what is so wrong with these explanations and theories. Firstly, they’re wrong, of course. Of course they are! Why bother reading a range of quality books by academic experts when you could read one shitty book? Who needs multiple angles and understandings, or considerations that have been tested and argued over for decades, when you could absorb the same old, same old, from another hypnotist who’s only read one book?
But secondly, and most importantly, the reason they’re wrong – and this applies to McBrayer as much as any modern faux-hypnosis-theorist – is that the theories aren’t falsifiable. It seems like such a small point, but it represents the chasm between academia and nonsense. McBrayer exclaims this point clearly, with no sense of irony: “I cannot prove that I am right, but no one can prove that I am wrong. I know that it works out as stated. That is sufficient proof for me.” And: “If anyone has a better theory, let him advance it and prove it.” Or: “Neither one of us can disprove the other’s theory.”
What’s so wrong about an unfalsifiable theory? Well (obviously, duh), it can’t be falsified. And if it can’t be falsified then there is no way to prove that it is wrong. And given that science is all about falsifying theories (we have no mechanism for proving theories correct), this means it has as much utility as any random opinion by any random person. We could find evidence to support said theory, perhaps (although that is debatable), but we could never find evidence that shows it to be wrong. And therefore it is wrong by definition, by its structure, in a meta way. If it can’t be falsified then it can’t be correct.
Theories of hypnosis aside, another thing that jumped out at me were the pictures of women being “hypnotised” by McBrayer. His captions would regularly draw your attention to their “expressionless” faces and their “blank” eyes. Now, given that the hypnotic state is just the result of suggestion, and therefore likely to be entirely imagined, and people ‘in hypnosis’ are just in a regular state of consciousness, what do these expressions represent?
Well maybe, just maybe, given societal norms in the 1950s, perhaps the hypnotic state gave the women of the day the permission to not have to smile and be pleasant to the men who were around them? Maybe they did indeed relax. Maybe they just got their resting bitch faces on! Someone needs to tell McBrayer (and all the modern-day McBrayers) that these women aren’t hypnotised; they’re just bored and minimally meeting the social expectations of them! Hypnosis? Oh, yaass!
And finally, to get a full appreciation of McBrayer and his attitude to his participants – whom I might add that he refers to as ‘subjects’ throughout, which is a dehumanising and outdated term for people participating in psychology experiments, that somehow ended up in the lexicon of lay-hypnotists – here’s a skit from his own performances: “[A participant] may be regressed to the age of two years and told that his mother has just spanked him real hard and that it hurt and he is crying loudly. Make him actually cry. This is really funny if it happens to be a fat man or women.”
So yeah, not that much different to modern-day books.
