JOHN F KIHLSTROM INTERVIEW (PART 3)
In the first two parts of this epic interview, John recounted tales of historical hypnosis luminaries, and shared his thoughts on hypnosis theory. In this final part, we asked him about popular culture and John shared a story about the Hilgards attending a stage hypnosis show, plus he provided a list of books, fact and fiction, that he enjoys.
Professor John F Kihlstrom. Credit: John F Kihlstrom.
While theoretical positions are rightfully at the centre of conversations about hypnosis, it is only when these come into contact with the ‘real’ world outside of academia that they have ‘real world’ impact. In this final part of the interview, we asked John about stage hypnosis and hypnosis fiction. He ended it with a comprehensive list of academic books that he would recommend reading. (And you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here, ICYMI.)
What is your view of stage hypnosis? We have a performer in the UK, Derren Brown, who often tricks people (including psychology students) into thinking he is demonstrating psychological principles when he is actually performing magic. Are you aware of his work (he sold out a Broadway run in recent years), and what do you think of him or performers who might enthuse people into psychology, albeit through trickery?
I don’t know of Derren Brown, and the closest I’ve ever come to stage hypnosis is a reprint request from The Amazing Kreskin – who, it turns out, really follows psychology. Nor have I ever done public demonstrations of hypnosis – despite numerous invitations from fraternities and sororities to do so. For me, hypnosis is serious business, not entertainment. The only exception was one classroom demonstration, in a “freshman seminar” specifically on the topic of hypnosis. Instead, I’ve shown students two videos made by Martin Orne in the late 50s and 60s for American and Canadian public television. They’re old, and they’ve been digitized from 35mm film transferred from kinescopes, so their quality isn’t the greatest, but they contain beautiful demonstrations of the kinds of phenomena that have kept psychologists interested in hypnosis for more than 100 years. They’re now posted to YouTube here and here.
I’ve just always figured that “stage hypnosis” was more “stage” than “hypnosis”. Here’s a story: Jack and Josephine Hilgard were vacationing; the night club at their hotel was featuring a stage hypnotist, and they decided to go. At one point the performer invited members of the audience to come up onto the stage, and Josie, who had an impish sense of humor, joined the group. Somehow the performer recognized them, because as she came up on the stage, he whispered, “We’re all professionals here”. She didn’t spoil the show. And speaking of professionals, frankly, I’m less concerned about stage hypnosis than I am about professionals using hypnosis inappropriately. The “recovered memory” fiasco is a good example. Martin Orne always reminded his students: nobody should treat something with hypnosis that they’re not qualified to treat without hypnosis.
Martin T Orne, right, demonstrating hypnosis on ‘The Nature of Things’ on Canadian public television in 1963. Credit: John F Kihlstrom.
The Orne sentiment in your last sentence is interesting and one that I often ask academics and lay hypnotists about. In your view, what does it mean to be ‘qualified’ to treat, for example, phobias? This seems to be a common offering of hypnotherapists, many of whom (in the UK at least) have no formal qualifications in clinical psychology.
Although I identify as an experimental cognitive social psychologist, I do have clinical training and interests. I’ve written a lot on “hysteria” and the dissociative disorders, for example (e.g., Kihlstrom, 1994, 2001, 2005); and with my wife Lucy, who has a PhD in health policy research, I’ve written about issues in clinical training and various aspects of health cognition and behavior (Kihlstrom & Kihlstrom, 1998, 1999). My own clinical training emphasized research, and was the forerunner to today’s “clinical science” model. My internship was organized according to the traditional team model: everybody did psychotherapy, but the psychiatrists were in charge of the patient’s overall treatment program, and prescribed medication; the psychologists did the psychological testing (and were cautioned never, never to reveal to the medical interns and psychiatric residents how to score the Rorschach!); and the social worker dealt with the patient’s family, workplace, aftercare, and outplacement.
One of the attitudes that I took out of that experience was that everybody should stay in their lane. Unless you’re talking about stage hypnotists, for example, I don’t know what you mean by “lay hypnotists”. Medicine, psychotherapy, and other health professions should be practiced by professionals who are qualified, by virtue of their training, experience, and licensure to practice them. The gold standard for the treatment of phobias is some form of cognitive behavior therapy, such as systematic desensitization, and people who aren’t trained in the technique shouldn’t be doing it – whether they’re psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, or marriage and family therapists; if you do it wrong, the patient is going to be worse off than they were before. I’ve been on the hypnosis listserv sponsored by SCEH and ASCH since the beginning, and I can’t count the number of times someone has written in asking for advice about how to work with a patient with such-and-such a disorder. My first question always is: “What makes you (or the patient) think hypnosis can help?”. Hypnosis isn’t a panacea, and it’s not the right treatment for every disorder – or every patient. And the second one is: “What makes you think you are competent to treat this?”. This isn’t some status thing about doctors versus CSWs or MFTs. It’s a matter of training. I’m opposed to prescription privileges for clinical psychologists, for example, but I’m quite happy for nurse practitioners to have them. Just because you can induce hypnosis – which, after all, anyone can do, because all the action is in the subject – doesn’t mean you’re competent to use hypnosis to treat every medical, dental, or psychological problem.
Marian Marsh as Trilby, Bramwell Fletcher as Billie, and John Barrymore in the titular role in the 1931 movie, Svengali. Credit: WikiCommons.
Talking of books, we would like to ask if you have favourite academic hypnosis books (obviously excluding any of your own), and favourite fictional hypnosis books and films?
Well, let’s do the fictional portrayals first, because that’s easy (and short): my hands down favorite is Trilby – both the George du Maurier 1895 novel and Svengali, the 1931 movie adaptation directed by Archie Mayo starring John Barrymore and Marian Marsh. Nothing else comes close. I emceed a showing of the movie at the SCEH meetings in the 1980s, and later expanded my remarks for publication (Kihlstrom, 1987). Svengali captured the myth of hypnosis and gave hypnosis its popular image: the special power of the hypnotist, male dominance and female submissiveness, transcendence of normal voluntary capacity, the harmfulness of repeated use, spontaneous amnesia – the whole schmear.
Second is The Manchurian Candidate, both the Richard Condon novel and the John Frankenheimer movie starring Frank Sinatra, Angel Lansbury, and a host of other great stars. Sinatra’s greatest performance, among many great ones. Lansbury even more evil than in Gaslight (or Sweeney Todd). Along these lines, and bringing us back to Estabrooks, I should mention The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, by John Marks (1979), an investigative reporter (and brother of UCLA psychologist Patricia Marks Greenfield) who exposed the CIA’s secret program testing various ostensible mind-control techniques, including hypnosis.
Svengali and The Manchurian Candidate get hypnosis all wrong, of course, but nobody reads fiction, or goes to the movies, to get an accurate picture of hypnosis. Hypnosis is a plot device, nothing more. Regardless of the accuracy with which they portray hypnosis, we enjoy these cultural products because of the artistry that went into them.
Actually, I keep a little list of books and movies in which hypnosis plays a role, which you can find here, and I welcome people writing in with new contributions. In this respect, I should also mention the two-volume collection of "Hypnotism in Victorian and Edwardian Era Fiction", edited by Donald K. Hartman. [Ed: we have written about Hartman’s books here and here.]
As far as academic books go, like Estabrooks’s two books, most of my hypnosis collection fell to downsizing when I retired (you can probably find many of them on AbeBooks.com or Alibris.com). But some items stayed on my shelves: the two anthologies edited by Fromm and Shor (1972, 1979), which contain Ron’s last theoretical statements; the third edition in that series, edited by Fromm and Nash (1992); and, of course, the Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis edited by Nash and Barnier (2008). Hilgard’s books, of course, especially Hypnotic Susceptibility (1965) and Divided Consciousness (1977). An earlier anthology of articles on hypnosis edited by Shor and Orne (1965). Tinterow’s (1970) collection of documents relating to mesmerism and early hypnotism, and Gauld’s (1992) magisterial history of hypnosis. Lynn and Rhue’s (1991) edited book on Theories of Hypnosis, as well as Sheehan and Perry’s (1976) early treatise on Methodologies of Hypnosis, which is as much about theories as it is about methods. Laurence and Perry’s (1988) Hypnosis, Will, and Memory, which provides the deep historical background for debates about the hypnotic coercion of antisocial behavior and the recovery of memory. Finally, Sheehan and McConkey’s (1982) Hypnosis and Experience, which reminds us that what’s really interesting about hypnosis is not the subjects’ overt behavioral responses, but rather their inner subjective experiences.
But my real hands-down, all-time favorite is Hypnosis for the Seriously Curious by Ken Bowers (1976). The title says it all, and it’s beautifully done. Bowers had a knack for getting thorny theoretical and methodological issues across, and for presenting experiments faithfully without getting bogged down in detail. It’s out of print, but well worth finding on the used-book market, just for its example of how an updated book for “the seriously curious” would look like today.
References
Bowers, K. S. (1976). Hypnosis for the seriously curious. New York: Norton.
Fromm, E., & Nash, M. R. (Eds.). (1992). Contemporary hypnosis research. New York: Guilford.
Fromm, E., & Shor, R. E. (Eds.). (1972). Hypnosis: Research developments and perspectives. Chicago: Aldine/Atherton.
Fromm, E., & Shor, R. E. (Eds.). (1979). Hypnosis: Developments in research and new perspectives (2nd ed.). New York: Aldine/Atherton.
Gauld, A. (1992). A history of hypnotism. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Hilgard, E. R. (1965). Hypnotic susceptibility. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World.
Hilgard, E. R. (1977). Divided consciousness: Multiple controls in human thought and action. New York: Wiley-Interscience.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (1987). The two Svengalis: Making the myth of hypnosis. Australian Journal of Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis, 15(2), 69-81.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (1994). One hundred years of hysteria. In S. J. Lynn & J. W. Rhue (Eds.), Dissociation: Clinical and theoretical perspectives. (pp. 365-394). New York, NY, USA: The Guilford Press.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (2001). Dissociative disorders. In P. B. Sutker & H. E. Adams (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of psychopathology (3rd ed., pp. 259-276). New York: Plenum.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (2005). Dissociative disorders. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 227-253. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.1.102803.143925
Kihlstrom, J. F., & Kihlstrom, L. C. (1998). Integrating science and practice in an environment of managed care The science of clinical psychology: Accomplishments and future directions. (pp. 281-293). Washington, DC, USA: American Psychological Association.
Kihlstrom, J. F., & Kihlstrom, L. C. (1999). Self, sickness, somatization, and systems of care. In R. J. Contrada & R. D. Ashmore (Eds.), Self, social identity, and physical health: interdisciplinary explorations (Vol. 2). New York: Oxford University Press.
Laurence, J.-R., & Perry, C. (1988). Hypnosis, will, and memory: A psycho-legal history. New York: Guilford Press.
Lynn, S. J., & Rhue, J. W. (Eds.). (1991). Theories of hypnosis: Current models and perspectives. New York: Guilford.
Marks, J. D. (1979). The search for the "Manchurian candidate" : The CIA and mind control. New York: Times Books.
Nash, M. R., & Barnier, A. J. (Eds.). (2008). Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis: Theory, Research and Practice. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Sheehan, P. W., & McConkey, K. M. (1982). Hypnosis and experience: The exploration of phenomena and process. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Sheehan, P. W., & Perry, C. (1976). Methodologies of hypnosis: A critical appraisal of contemporary paradigms of hypnosis. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Shor, R. E., & Orne, M. T. (Eds.). (1965). The nature of hypnosis: Selected basic readings. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Tinterow, M. M. (Ed.). (1970). Foundations of hypnosis: From Mesmer to Freud. Springfield, Il.: Charles C. Thomas.