BAG OF SNAKES
Hypnosis and the Sexual Life – Dr Walter P Clayton, with Stephan Gregory
Kev is trolling me with sex-themed hypno books.
This 1968 book turned up mere days after I ploughed through Sexual Joy Through Self Hypnosis, and Kev was much amused at the prospect of me enduring yet more hypno-hanky-panky-therapising.
Firstly, what a cover! A woman in sexual ecstasy superimposed with a ‘frigid’ (in the terminology of the time) bespectacled schoolgirl.
I decided, despite my irritation at Kev’s latest ‘gift’, to dive in, thanks to the intriguing back-cover blurb (pictured farther below): we’re going into the office of “eminent” psychologist and hypnotherapist Dr Walter P Clayton, opening up his casebook and discovering his techniques in the name of sexual enlightenment. Bring. It. On.
There’s an opening page teaser of the clients we’re about to meet (also pictured later).
Blimey! Among the nine cases, we’ve got Herbert, “a twenty-eight-year-old virgin whose over-sized genitals caused an early traumatic experience and resulted in acute shyness in the presence of women”. Phyllis, “a self-styled slut whose latent homosexuality prompted her to leave no less than three men standing at the alter”. And Charles, “a college graduate who experimented with self-hypnosis and was almost destroyed by the women who emerged from his hallucinations”.
The first introduction comes from Stephan Gregory, who describes himself as a novelist, and who has played the role of editor and “documentary collaborator”. I can’t find him in my cursory search – Google is insistent he’s Welsh novelist Stephen Gregory (with an ‘e’).
Stephan introduces us to the work and character of Dr Walter Clayton – “the sexologist with the hypnotic eye”. It’s three paragraphs of heady 60s hypno-grooviness and ‘don’t-try-this-at-home’ danger. “Doctor Clayton’s work is more fascinating and far-out than anything this fiction-writer has ever conjured up from the realms of fantasy.” With which I’d concur!
Clayton’s introduction on “sexual distress”, and short first chapter on hypnosis, and how and why it works, is standard, concise and pretty sober. Though a saucy “look out hubby” aside about solving a marital problem gives the first taste of Clayton’s ‘far-out’ personality.
The first case study is Wilma, who’s eschewing her husband in favour of… her foot: specifically, a cunning half-crossed-legs position she’s invented for discreet, thrice-daily workplace masturbation. (Well, being a secretary taking endless dictation is rather dull.)
Clayton is masterful at weaving the hypnotised Wilma’s groping statements as to what might be awry into a compelling narrative that ensures Wilma remain a dutiful but happy wife. Yes, it’s misogynistic, American Dream bullshit. But the story of Wilma is like being transported to a vivid, intimate, alluring retro-reality that’s perfectly edited. Plus you can’t deny Clayton is a post-hypnotic-suggestion genius.
I love how the cases are written and structured. You leap right into transcribed patient dialogue, then Clayton introduces the case and tells us the presenting problem. There’s a real reverence to building up to hypnosis over multiple sessions, with deeper ‘trance states’ (and prying) induced over time. Meanwhile, Clayton is reviewing session audio recordings, strategising, and researching further with a spouse or disapproving doctor throughout.
He’s inventive, funny, crazy. Each case is like a hypno Scooby-Doo caper. Jeepers!
Take Charles, the aforementioned “college graduate who experimented with self-hypnosis and was almost destroyed by the women who emerged from his hallucinations”.
Charles presents with – brace yourself! – a whole harem of imaginary, beautiful, naked women who cavort and argue around him in a self-created mental hell. These “oversexed bitches” are driving him mad (literally) and almost caused him to crash his car.
An amateur hypnotist, he’d been lonely one night and so created, in his mind’s eye, his perfect woman for a night of fun. Marilyn, as she was called, became Charles’s imaginary girlfriend for a time – they’d walk hand-in-hand and make conversation. Charles also appointed her as his “secretary”; she’d wake him at set times or give him reminders.
Charles got bored of Marilyn. And so he created Liz. He describes Liz as the opposite to Marilyn – “You know those types of broads I’m talking about, don’t you?”. By which I think he means Marilyn is blonde, hippy and homely, and Liz is a slutty brunette you can’t take home to mom and pop.
But Charles didn’t hypnotically remove Marilyn! Doh! She was not best pleased by Liz’s presence – she kept popping up during Charles’s Liz trysts, and the women bickered constantly.
Well, what’s a guy to do?! Charles cheered himself up with a Polynesian “ass-shaker” and a Tahitian “ass-shaker”. Soon all sorts of girls were joining his harem – uninvited – with Marilyn bossing them all about, and Liz at war with Marilyn.
Charles describes it as “the mutiny”.
Clayton is amused by all this. “Yes, he’d built himself a bag of snakes, and the snakes would not stay in the bag.” Clayton concludes that each woman represents some part of Charles’s personality, which is fragmenting and deteriorating. So the women are painstakingly assimilated back into Charles’s personality over a long course of treatment.
Clayton sums up the case: “This job required a total of forty-seven one-hour sessions spanning a period of nearly a year. And it cost good old Charlie nearly a year’s salary.”
Now you get a sense of Clayton’s far-outness, I hope you’re ready for an insight into his methods. As he comments a few times, he’s not always proud of them… but he does get results.
Remember Herbert? The 28-year-old virgin with a hang-up about being so well-hung? Well, after reaching a stage of hypnotherapy where Herb has positively-hallucinated successful sex, Clayton has a trick up his sleeve. He calls up a game lady friend and (you’ve guessed it!) on the third ‘positive hallucination’ sexual rehearsal, Herb is deflowered while Clayton listens in covertly in the next room. (He’s making notes, it’s fine, it’s fine.)
We’re also introduced to his long-suffering secretary, Thelma, whose catchphrase is “you don’t pay me enough for this”.
Clayton regularly ropes Thelma into his madly immoral hypno-hijinks. Summoning her into a darkly lit room with naked, hypnotised, horny women and then leaving them alone is his go-to method for diagnosing latent lesbianism.
At one point she quips if she’ll need to put her rubber gloves on.
IT GETS CRAZIER. Which is probably why Clayton starts referring to himself in the third-person later in the book. There’s a ‘Peeping Tom’, an hysterical lesbian heiress and – in the final case – a split personality.
The split personality case sees prudish Julia coming to Clayton about mysterious blackouts she experiences prior to ‘waking up’ in the final throes of skeezy-stranger-danger-sex. Several sessions in, out pops destructive, sex-mad ‘Julie’ – who delights in handing the reins back to Julia at the max traumatic moment.
Clayton had already mostly handed the case over to a psychiatrist, and Julia/‘Julie’ was attracting expert attention. Only for a hypnotised Julia to report a curious new episode of pleasantly waking up in the bed of a woman – who brought her breakfast and tenderly kissed her goodbye.
Hello, James! The third split in this party of personalities!
This provokes a corker of a Clayton quote: “I won’t pretend that I was cool, calm, and collected. I was not. I’d reached into a bag of snakes and came out with a handful. Too much of a handful for Clayton.”
I finish this book an adoring fan of Clayton! I picture him in his treatment office… It’s thick with his cigarette smoke, the walls are licked with 60s hues of fuchsia, olive green and a biscuity beige, there’s the extra-comfy and robust couch, teak furniture, and his ticking metronome… Clayton is zealously listening to the recording of today’s looong hypno-session on his extensive audio equipment. Thelma is in reception, breezily managing his diary and her impending workplace sexual abuse.
This book is so well and enjoyably written, you of course have to question if it’s all or mostly fiction. We’re assured early on that the transcripts are faithful and, the crazier it gets, you’ve come to dig Clayton so much that, as the final pages turn, you don’t really care.
It’s so whacky I wondered if Clayton is real. I can’t find anything about him via my cursory Google aside from other books he’s authored (which I am definitely buying).
I worry this project is warping my tastes in stories… Gregory is right: “Doctor Clayton’s work is more fascinating and far-out than anything this fiction-writer has ever conjured up from the realms of fantasy.”
