MEASURING UP
Master Course in Hypnotism – Harry Arons
I was excited to read this book solely because of the inclusion of a snazzy free ruler of trance depths. I mean, a ruler to measure depth of trance makes zero sense whatsoever, right?! What am I supposed to do with it – hold it up against my subject’s head and..? It’s a fantastic piece of marketing gimmickry: the world’s most confusing bookmark.
This 1961 revision of author Harry Arons’s 1948 original is published by a ‘Power Publishing’ in New Jersey in the USA. My mind immediately leapt to our favourite hypno-self-publicist Melvin Powers, who was prolific in his self-publishing and pops up across hypnosis-related publishing. I wondered whether Powers published this book – the ruler-bookmark, not to mention an array of impressive photos and illustrations in the back, seem so Melvin. But my cursory google before penning this blog has drawn a blank on that.
I did, however, discover from my googling that Arons (1914-1997) learned hypnosis from his grandfather in Lithuania, who was a friend of Rasputin.
RASPUTIN, people! By now, you must be pretty stoked about this book, too, hey?! We’re about to learn all about hypnosis from someone who learned from someone who learned from RAS-FUCKING-PUTIN…
But no. This is a (for its time) professional, sensible, sober, and therefore – by Cosmic Pancakes!’s tastes – largely boring book. Even Arons’s opening dedication to ‘the laymen’ of hypnosis, as well as profuse apologies about the transcribed nature of some content resulting in this not being “a literary masterpiece” – both of which would normally smack of badly written nonsense – are simply testament to the high standards Arons seems to hold himself to.
Indeed, Arons comes across as a credible teacher; he began teaching in 1934, and so this book constitutes 27 years of experience. He claims to have come to hypnosis only three years prior; however, the source I found states he came to the US from his native Lithuania in his teens in the late-1920s, after which he started to perform stage hypnosis. Arons recalls having heard of only four hypnotists active in the US around this time; three stage hypnotists and one a doctor exposed as a fraud. Perhaps Arons omits any involvement in stage hypnosis (if, at all, he did perform) so as to better appeal to the serious layman, and gravitate into the emerging opportunities in hypnosis ethics, psychology, and journalism that impressively feature in his biography come the 1950s.
The book deftly dismisses “bugaboos” such as animal magnetism, magnetic healing, hokum and mysticism in one paragraph, while the history of hypnotism receives a mere two pages. The ‘master course’ is as you might expect from this rare not-mad writer, from tests and subject types (authoritarian and permissive – yawn), to inductions and phenomena.
Arons also provides guidance on hypnotising people according to their mental illnesses, and based on “climate and nationality” stereotypes. Then there’s advice to have a chaperone present when hypnotising a woman because she’ll ‘transfer’ onto sexy-yet-innocent Mr Hypnotherapist… and then accuse or sue him of ‘impropriety’ just for the cash.
It’s always uncomfortable reading this crap, but it’s mercifully short and standard fare for the time. I feel that wading through the racism, sexism, ableism, all the ‘ism’s… is worthwhile in better understanding hypnosis as a cultural meme. For instance, from Charcot and Co’s hotbeds of hysteria, to modern seduction and ‘pick-up-artistry’, hypnosis has rarely not been misogynistic and predatory – and yet a power disparity (abuse of it aside; and whether we’re talking misogyny or something else) is still seen as intrinsic to the power of hypnosis.
Won’t it be nice when we fully exorcise that stuff from hypnosis’s past to make for an equitable and empowering present?!
