Book Report: Hypnotism by Walter Gibson -- How-to c.1970

Hypnotism (c) 1970 by Walter Gibson

Background Information: Before we get into the book, it's worth taking a minute to get to know the author. He is most well known for writing hundreds of stories for the immensely popular crime-fighting character The Shadow in the 1930s and 40s, under the pen-name Maxwell Grant. (The Shadow was a mysterious figure with the power to cloud men's minds! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow). He was also a stage magician credited with creating and popularizing several very famous tricks ("effects," as magicians prefer to call them), and he and his wife wrote a number of books on divination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_B._Gibson 

Gibson's Book on Hypnotism is very much a solid and traditional kind introduction to the art of hypnosis. He opens the book with a discussion of what he calls "mass hypnosis" such as the Islamic whiling dervishes, Native American ghost dancers, and even the Woodstock festival. (Whether or not these examples of ritualistic trance behavior are exactly hypnosis is a matter of interpretation). 

The next few chapters describe the history of hypnosis from Paracelsus to Mesmer to the modern day. He includes a discussion of Emil Coue's Autosuggestion (what we call affirmations these days) and talks about how Houdini and others used autosuggestion to enable them to do superhuman feats, like holding their breath for incredibly long times when doing escape tricks. 

From here on, he presents the usual stock and trade of formal hypnosis. There's a chapter on convincers, then a series of different inductions, and then depth tests, and of course how to formulate post hypnotic suggestions and what undesirable suggestions to avoid. 

His Three Rules for Hypnotists are excellent:
1) Never hypnotize someone without formal consent
2) Always have a third person present
3) Always give suggestions for the client's best interests

As a standard text book for beginners, it's pretty good. I personally think some of his inductions are a bit complicated, but every practitioner has his own style.