Negative Hallucination

Or, a cyclist's anecdote about how the psychological phenomenon of negative hallucination is ever present in our lives.

I'm not going to the Last Thursday meetup this month for several reasons, but I thought I would share a short story about something that happened to me yesterday.

First though, watch this video.


My story starts as I was cycling home from the training course I had been on for a couple of days. The course was at a place only a few miles from my house so I decided that I would make the trip on my folding bike. It was an easy ride and I was glad of the fresh air and the exercise.

About a mile from home my route required me to cycle straight on at a roundabout. I should explain to my American readers that a roundabout, sometimes called a traffic island, is a popular kind of road junction in Europe. The principle is very simple in that traffic already on the roundabout has priority over approaching vehicles, which give way to their right (left on the continent). This constantly flowing arrangement can have many advantages over the alternative of, say, a traffic light controlled intersection.



The statistics show however that roundabouts can be very dangerous for cyclists and I think my misadventure illustrates this very well.

My ride home required that I cycle straight on and, being an experienced and confident cyclist, I proceeded to negotiate the junction in textbook fashion. I moved out to a position in the centre of my lane, waited for a gap in the traffic coming from my right, accelerated quickly out keeping well toward the centre of the roundabout, signaled my intention to turn left into my exit... and nearly got wiped out by a car.

I should make clear that the majority of bicycle accidents are what cyclists call SMIDSYs - "Sorry Mate I Didn't See You" - caused by the driver of a motor vehicle being in complete ignorance of the cyclist's existence, for whatever reason. This, and the fact that bicycles can negotiate junctions at much the same speed as other traffic, is why good cyclists take the centre of their lane when they have to manoeuvre. They need to be visible and act like the other traffic because being seen by motorists and lorry drivers is absolutely crucial to not being hit by them.

Unfortunately given the small number of bicycles on the road in the UK, and the even smaller number who actually display any understanding at all of good roadcraft, the bike awareness of motorists is often not especially high. Hence, when a motorist comes to a junction and gives way to traffic, in their mind what traffic means cars, lorries and buses. Did you spot the moonwalking bear the first time? Chances are you didn't, and that's because you weren't looking for one.

The motorist who pulled out from my left as I passed and nearly knocked me off my bike had been waiting in that spot for several seconds and just prior to pulling out had been looking right at me. I had, after all, very deliberately positioned in the place where I would be most visible. Cyclists often talk about the importance of getting eye contact with other road users for the very reason that knowing they've been seen is important, but as this case shows one can never be absolutely certain. As it turned out in this driver's field of view I wasn't a car, a lorry or a bus, I was the invisible moonwalking bear.

My point here is that all of us are capable of the phenomenon of negative hallucination, that it's happening all the time and that we simply aren't aware of it. If the brain doesn't believe that something is there we don't see it, it's that simple.

I could go on to talk about how, but for my taking evasive action, I would have easily been knocked off my bike. I could also go on to talk about the driver's response, which was to come alongside me a few seconds later and declare "I never hit you!" through an open window. I think human beings behind the wheel of an automobile can turn into such horrible individuals, and in this case it was his mission to prove to himself and others that he'd done nothing wrong. I could even recount exactly what I said in reply, although I'm not proud of my choice of language.

I will finish on a positive note however. I have cycled thousands of miles in the last few years and in my experience encounters like this are incredibly rare. This is in fact the first time that I have ever really felt in danger of being physically hurt by another vehicle. The vast majority of the time I find cycling to be a very enjoyable and rewarding activity, and I can't recommend it enough.

As an aside, if anyone is interested in learning about good cycling practice I can recommend the book cyclecraft by Jon Franklin.

Inside knowledge

I've just realised that this is my 100th post! Wahey, go me!

Recently I did some hypnosis with a friend who had never been hypnotised before. This was quite a special session for me because it made me realise just how what I've learned during my own efforts at improving my own abilities as a subject is transferrable to taking the role of the hypnotist, and so I will share some of the highlights with you here.

My friend, whose name isn't Sarah, had expressed quite a strong interest in hypnosis ever since she heard about the time about a year or so ago when I hypnotised the guy who is now her boyfriend. It was clear to me, from the particular way in which she insisted that I simply had to hypnotise him again in front of her, that she really wanted to experience it herself at the next opportunity.

As we live quite a distance apart the opportunity was several months in coming, but recently on a holiday with a group of mutual friends I got the chance. You'd think that the chance to see some real hypnosis first hand would be a popular party trick but amongst our friends, a group of pilots, it turned out that this simply wasn't the case. Sarah, her boyfriend and I went back to our cottage, sat quietly by the roaring open wood fire and I took things from there.

I have found that pilots, by the way, are just about the worst bunch of people to try to pedal hypnosis to. There's an aura of egotistical control-freakery that seems to come hand in hand with the skills required to fly an aeroplane and this is added to the analytical mindset of the usual type of individual who decides to learn. This is not an ideal peer group of a hypnotist, much as I like my friends, but there is perhaps at least some consolation, which is their lack of desire to spontaneously close their eyes, go completely limp, and fly into the side of the nearest hill.

So anyway, I opened the session with my usual introductory routines of magnetic fingers and magnetic hands. Sarah did what quite a few people tend to do with magnetic fingers, which was to try to physically hold her fingers apart and I did what seems to work best in such cases, which was to tell her not to force it, but relax and go with it.

"Relax and just go with it, trust your instincts" is a good phrase I think.

You can always tell when someone is forcing their fingers apart simply by virtue of the fact that their fingers aren't moving together. When they relax simple physiology causes the fingers to move together on their own; hypnosis has nothing to do with it. Indeed, when a subject has done magnetic fingers I usually explain this, that it's not hypnosis, but what it has just done is show me that they are able to follow instructions and concentrate.

Next I moved on to magnetic hands. I like this because it follows on nicely from magnetic fingers, but it does rely on suggestion to work. Sarah responded well, always a good sign, and I made sure I continued to encourage her and pre-empted her hands touching. Pace and lead.

It's been a while since I hypnotised a new subject and so I decided that in light of this, since I wasn't feeling amazingly confident, I'd use the rehearsal induction next. I'm not such a fan of the term "induction" because from my own experiences I'm more inclined to see hypnosis not as something that one is in or not, but as a continuous scale from fully aware to deep trance. Sarah was a subject who was enthused about hypnosis, her hands had come together pretty quickly so she was clearly already in the foothills of hypnosis and I thought the rehearsal induction would be the best way to intensify the state.

I find it amazing how naturally the patter comes to me in the moment, and it's a good feeling when the words simply roll off my tongue with little effort. I explained to Sarah that as I raised her arm she would let herself relax and go into trance, and as I brought it back down she would come back to the room, and went through this process several times. I like this induction because it is a nice progressive progress which allows for plenty of feedback, and I was able to judge that Sarah was responding well and went into deepening the trance. Her facial muscles loosened and her breathing became slower and steadier, then she laughed.

Novice hypnotists take note here; a laughing subject is a good thing. This is a point worth mentioning because I've heard hypnotists say that they've had to re-start their inductions because their subject was laughing.

When, as a hypnotist, you are hypnotising someone what you are trying to do is get them into a state where their conscious mind is giving way to their subconscious mind. Assuming this, how can it be a bad thing if they are unable to hold back their own instinct to laugh? When a subject is amused, or if they start laughing, it means that the right part of their mind is calling the shots; they are letting their subconscious dictate their behaviour. This is exactly what you want to see from your subject! Commend them, and utilise it!

"You're laughing, that's excellent! Your instinct was to laugh and you went with it, you couldn't stop yourself doing it. That's exactly what we're looking for!"

One could even go further and tell the subject that they can't stop laughing, and challenge them to try to stop laughing. It is a good convincer, especially if you follow that by saying "okay, now become calm, let all your muscles relax, and go deeper" and the forced grin simply melts from their face.

With Sarah I actually tried to get hand levitation from her instead. Frustratingly, whilst I felt her hand getting lighter, I never really managed to get it to levitate. This was quite unusual because otherwise all the signs were good. I decided to switch to making her arm too heavy to lift instead, and this was where my inside knowledge as a subject proved to be quite invaluable.

I told sarah she could not lift up her hand, that it was stuck to her, and sure enough when I challenged her to lift her hand up she did not. Excellent, I thought, and so I told her that any time I told her to sleep she would go straight back into trance, reiterated that her hand would remain stuck to her leg and then brought her back up.

Her hand was indeed still stuck. "But," she said, "I can still do this."

And then lifted her hand up.

Now, back when I started out as a hypnotist and such phenomena were just things that happened to other people I would have become upset and demoralised by this response. I would have felt that the magic clearly wasn't working with this subject and given up. This time, however, having been through that experience, I knew I could hazard a pretty good guess at what she was thinking and carry things on.

"Ah!" I said, "but it took you a while to move your hand didn't it!"

She smiled.

I said, "A lot of people expect hypnosis to be very unlike what it actually is. You found it difficult to move your hand then, you had to resolve to do it, and what you're going to find from now on is that it becomes increasingly more difficult."

Then I told her to sleep.

As with a lot of new subjects she closed her eyes as though instinctively, but quickly opened them again. This is another of those situations where I know, as a subject myself, that what is usually going on in the subject's head when they do this is simply that they are looking for confirmation from the hypnotist. Of course the hypnotist who knows this, has confidence and keeps going will win through.

"See how your eyes closed then?" I said, "You're good at this, now let this happen, I can see you want to close your eyes."

Am I a mind reader? No, but I've had these experiences myself. I appreciate that the mind has to recognise, and to learn, how each phenomenon works in order to do it. Sarah's brain was actually very quick on the uptake especially, as she told me later, once she realised what it was I was trying to do as I deepened her. As soon as she made the link between states of mind she'd experienced in the past and hypnosis she was able to embrace the process and go into a deeper trance much more easily.

Something I may have said before is that I don't think it is ever necessary to feel that one should have to "trick" or otherwise deceive ones subjects into hypnosis. All you need to do is be honest, understand what they are experiencing, and use feedback to give them suggestions that work for them. In Sarah's case she even commented that in the past she'd visualised things to help her relax, like walking down some steps into water, so I immediately took notice of that and used it to deepen her.

We returned to the hand sticking suggestion a few times and, whilst on a couple of occasions she was able to lift up her hand again, it became a more and more difficult process each time to the point where she genuinely couldn't do it. Likewise the instruction to sleep became more effective each time. I also did a few fun suggestions such as getting her to laugh uncontrollably when I clicked my fingers, and took her to quite a deep level of trance.

If anything this episode revived my enthusiasm and confidence as a hypnotist, and I am very grateful to Sarah for letting me borrow her mind for an hour or so. Most of all though, it has strengthened my belief that the best thing hypnotists can do to understand the hypnosis their subjects are experiencing is to go there themselves and experience it first hand. It's the inside knowledge every hypnotist should have.