The question is pervasive through hypnosis circles, and hopefully among hypnosis clients as well. Can the hypnotist get people to do things under hypnosis that they would never do when "awake"?
The simple answer is: Yes and No.
To get a grip on the question, you need to grasp what hypnosis is, and what it isn't. Let us just say for the sake of this article that hypnosis is extreme focus. Hypnosis pundits are not entirely sure how to define hypnosis because most, including me, are of the opinion that we are always in some form of hypnotic trance.
A common example to illustrate this point is the situation where you are driving down the Interstate, daydreaming, and you drive past your exit. Your daydream, in this case, was your point of extreme focus, to the exclusion of your conscious agenda.
In that sense, your own internal mechanisms brought you to the place of focus so intense that you essentially violated your conscious intention and agenda. In other words, you never intended to drive past your exit, but you did anyway.
Usually, though, when people are asking the question seriously, they are wanting to know about situations much more serious than driving past your exit on the highway.
They want to know if you can create a Manchurian Candidate, so to speak. Can you get someone to commit murder? Can you get someone to agree to some otherwise undesirable sexual contact? Can you hypnotize someone out of their money?
For most hypnotists, fortunately, the answer is no. Most hypnotists don't possess the skills necessary to accomplish something like that. A skilled hypnotist is another question entirely.
It boils down to a scenario where the hypnotist can create imaginary situations that the subject believes to be true. This process can be very therapeutic when used for good. It can be devastating if used for bad.
Let me give an example of each.
On the plus side, imagine a situation where the subject has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Can hypnosis be used to rectify an incurable ailment? Maybe.
Let's call the ailment liver cancer. Under hypnosis, by by-passing the critical factor, the hypnotist can place commands not that the subject will be healed, but that the subject is healed already. Make sure you understand the difference there. It is the difference between success and failure.
The savvy hypnotist will also include suggestions to the unconscious that any and every thought, inclination, and evidence be considered as proof positive of their full remission. That way, you can utilize the massive power of the unconscious instead of trying to fight against it -- an extremely important distinction.
The change in beliefs then facilitates a change in the baseline vibrational frequency of the subject. The body is then free to heal itself. If you can facilitate this change in a person, cancer is no match for the body's incredible healing power.
And now, toward the negative, can you get people to do things against their conscious agenda? If you know how, yes. The general scenario is one where you alter the person's understanding and perception of the world around them.
As a word of caution, if the hypnotist creates a situation where a crime is committed, the hypnotist is very possibly going to jail. It's a situation where the hypnotist is the responsible party. This is not only true in the legal sense, but also in the spiritual or cosmic sense (depending upon your beliefs). These negative efforts seem to bounce back to the perpetrator, and do so with a vengeance. I highly recommend avoiding this situation, and this article is for educational purposes only.
But, for an extreme case, let's assume your goal is to get a woman to kill her newborn child. I choose this to illustrate perhaps the most extreme contrast, because for most women, this is a concept they would fiercely, even violently oppose.
However, if the hypnotist were able to create the imaginary situation that this baby were not really a baby at all, but a watermelon, and the woman in this case was not the "mother" of a watermelon, but rather she was actually the comedian, Gallagher, who made his living smashing watermelons in his stage act, and her job was to smash the watermelon with a massive sledge hammer, well, I think you can imagine the rest.
There are many factors that contribute to the results here, including, and not limited to: The hypnotist's rapport with the subject (trust level), the skill of the hypnotist, the manner of induction, the specific verbiage of the hypnotic instruction, the receptivity of the subject (are they a good hypnosis candidate in the first place), the depth of the trance, the necessary triggers to fire the illusion and create action, etc.
I don't believe the above list is exhaustive.
Also, determining the viability of these factors for the subject, how to use the induction most effective for this subject, knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to say it, and a host of other pieces of information are all needed to secure the efficacy of the process.
This information is beyond the scope of this article.
And the wind up here, is that if you are that savvy hypnotist, you can more than likely find people that this can work on.
If you get good enough to be able to cause cancer to go into remission, people will line up to see you. You would definitely have the edge over competitors in the marketplace. This isn't to say that weight loss and cessation of smoking are petty or useless endeavors, no, not at all. And there is a lot of satisfaction to experience when you know that you were able to bring a lasting benefit to the client.
