The acting dilemma

On a couple of occasions over the last 9 months or so I have mentioned something that I have come to know as "the acting dilemma". This is a name that I believe Liz first coined, and I think it fits it very well because it is a real dilemma that doesn't seem to ever go away.

I should say if hypnosis is working for you as a subject just fine look away now. To know the acting dilemma is to become part of the acting dilemma!

It seems to me that the dilemma is what holds back an analytical subject from knowing how to be hypnotised, and that overcoming it is the only way to move forward. You see, to a great extent hypnosis works through belief. The "normal" (if there is such a thing!) subject extends their belief to the premise that hypnosis is going to work and as a consequence they find themselves responding, which then supplies the proof. Analytical subjects suffer from a critical outlook that requires proof to be provided before anything can be believed. They have it back to front, and it causes no end of trouble!

If an analytical subject can be persuaded to have a bit of faith and persistence they will soon find a seldom heard part of their mind, an irrational part that wants hypnosis to be real, calling out to them compelling their conscious mind to follow the suggestions being given. This may cause the subject to decide to play along.

It is this which poses the acting dilemma, which is as follows:

"Am I doing this because I'm hypnotised, or am I just pretending that I'm hypnotised? Am I not just acting?"

I wrote about this back in June in a post entitled "How to be hypnotised", in my answer to question 4, and in that post I explained the solution to the acting dilemma. This is not to worry and to follow the suggestions even if it feels as though you are consciously doing so. The idea is that soon enough you will find that responding becomes second nature and in effect the process becomes a subconscious one. "Fake it 'till you make it".

This works; trust me, it does! For example, initially when I was told by the hypnotist to "sleep" I would consciously close my eyes, consciously relax my body, and try to go into a trance, which frankly always felt as though I was just sitting there like a lemon with my eyes closed; nothing special at all. As I mentioned in my last post I have now reached a stage where my response to such a suggestion can feel completely involuntary and I have been in trances recently where my awareness of the world outside has fluctuated whilst a haphazard assortment of irrelevant thoughts have bounced around the inside of my mind like golf balls in a blender. It feels good, and it's definitely worth the months of "pretending".

Using this solution also becomes even easier if you use the rationalisation that telling yourself that you're only acting is in itself a rationalisation, and the real reason you're following the suggestions is hypnosis.

The problem is that using this solution to escape the acting dilemma is a bit like signing a pact with the devil, as I will explain in a minute. There is more to it, and it is news that is probably more depressing for the hypnotist than the subject.

The question is how does an analytical subject go about achieving the twin pinnacles of hypnosis, namely amnesia and hallucination? It's something that's been nagging at me for a while, but something happened recently that brought it to the front of my mind, and a recent conversation I had with Liz confirmed my suspicions.

At the last meet in London Darren hypnotised me and as part of the routine he was doing gave me a direct suggestion that I'd have amnesia for what he'd just told me. Now the fact that I'm writing this now will tell you that I did not forget Darren telling me to choose the five of spades from the deck, but that's not the point. The point is that I felt an incredibly strong urge from deep inside telling me to lie to Darren and to act as though I had forgotten!

I know I've said in the past that hypnosis certainly isn't an outside force, but as time goes by I'm increasingly finding that there are occasions when it seems that way. In this situation it was as though hypnosis was inside my mind, like a cliché demon on my shoulder, imploring me to lie against all common sense. Anyone who has experienced a post hypnotic suggestion that they're consciously aware of will know what I'm talking about, that almost instinctive desire to do something that doesn't make sense. It's a bit like the feeling that tries to make you have a little bit more of something you know you've had enough of, such as sweets, cake, ale, roller coaster rides or Scandinavian symphonic power metal.

The urge to just go along with the suggestion, even though the rational part of me was insistent that of course it could remember Darren telling me which card to pick, was very strong. I muddled through the routine with Darren, my head spinning from the dilemma, sort of saying I could remember but perhaps not, maybe; I did a very good job of confusing both of us.

Now if we go back to the dilemma and apply the same solution we reach the conclusion that to learn how to achieve amnesia it becomes necessary to follow the suggestion sincerely and pretend that it's working, even though it appears not to be. To do that though it becomes necessary to lie to the hypnotist! Likewise with hallucinations.

When I asked Liz about this she said that I was quite right about this, and that her success rate with difficult suggestions like amnesia and hallucinations was far from 100%, and certainly less than it might seem to anyone watching.

A list of all the embarassingly silly weird and wacky hallucinations I've done with her ran through my mind, and I found myself wondering which, if any, she had actually experienced as real.

"You'll never know" she said, with a grin.

I appreciated that she was sabotaging her own battle with the acting dilemma by admitting to me that she didn't forget or hallucinate everything she was told to, let alone admitting to it at the time. It occurred to me that I could use a hypnotic truth compulsion to get her to truthfully answer whether or not she was really pretending, but as I thought Liz's boyfriend wouldn't appreciate it if I destroyed her brain with a logical paradox I restrained myself on that one.

What I also realised, with some horror, was that the only way I have of telling whether someone is hallucinating, as a hypnotist, is what they tell me. It's their subjective reality after all. How do I know they aren't all lying to me! Is that all that hypnotic hallucination really is? Merely an overwhelming urge to insist that it happened when it didn't?

"I don't like to talk too much about this" Liz commented, "because it tends to depress people."

Too right, but even so I cannot conceive of any reason why Liz would persist in pretending her hallucinations exist if none of them ever did. At the end of the day she has a pain-in-the-ass analytical mind, and she'd simply give up and focus on other stuff that does work. I believe her when she says she really can hallucinate, bless her fibbing socks.

My own experience of amnesia suggestions do seem to suggest that it can be more than just an elaborate lie. I know I said I could remember the trance I mentioned earlier, or rather my rational mind was instant that it could remember. What I did find though was that when I tried to access those memories to any significant amount it was much more difficult than it should have been. It was like trying to reach out and grab a handful of smoke. It was a lot fuzzier than it should have been. Hmmm, interesting...

The trouble is that as far as I can see there is only one way in which I can find out for certain whether true amnesia or hallucinations are really possible or not and that's to keep going. I should keep walking down this path, paved with lots and lots of little white lies, getting better as a subject to the point where I can achieve these phenomena.

When I do, dear reader, rest assured that you should not believe a word I say!