Book Report: 25 Lessons in Hypnotism by L.E. Young -- How-to, c.1935

25 Lessons in Hypnotism by L.E. Young -- How-to (c) 1935

How can you not want this little pamphlet? even before we open it, the cover is giving us everything a hypnotist could want! Lightning bolts from the eyes, sinister hand gestures, dominion over beautiful women! 

From what I've found on the internet, this booklet was sold for years, probably from the backs of comic books, for decades, and it went through various publishers, including the Johnson Smith Company, which was famous for novelties of every sort. 

The author, L.E. Young (Lou Ella Young), is also the author of the much more voluminous "The Science of Hypnotism". That book was first published in 1899, but has been reprinted for nearly a century by various publishers. I think much of this material is taken form that book, but some of it seems to be different, perhaps newer. I have not been able to find any biographical information for the author.

In a series of brief lessons, the author will give you direction for experiments in hypnotic induction, mesmerism, increasing trance depth, post hypnotic suggestions to cure problems, psychic influence, and how to protect from it, self-hypnosis, and more! That's a lot of stuff for a little book!

 For a beginner, the instruction isn't very thorough, but it's clear enough that if someone really found enough volunteers to work with, might become a competent hypnotist. It's fun to look at the techniques offered, which include both Mesmerism and James Braid-style hypnosis. and even offers suggestions form putting on a stage show and finding other ways to make money with hypnosis. It's a very earnestly written little booklet that offered it's buyers a lit for the money, and you may find some pearls of inspiration in it as well.

 

Book Report: You Are Psychic! -- Psychic Ability Exercises

 

You Are Psychic! The Free Soul Method (c) 1989 by Pete A. Sanders

To be perfectly honest, I bought this at the same time as Holzer's Are You Psychic? just so I could put them side by side on my shelf. (https://successworkhypnosis.blogspot.com/2021/10/book-report-are-you-psychic-by-hans.html)

While a lot of these books on psychic abilities are a mixture of academic discussion, theory, anecdote and experiments, Sanders' book puts forth a very clear, workable, kind of course outline for developing one's mystical abilities. And no surprise, really, since this appears to be something he taught for many years (and still does, in Sedona https://freesoul.net/), so it's very easy to read and follow, having been presented many times before. 

What's interesting about Sanders is that he claims to have begun to develop his methods while doing research on the topic while a student at MIT. Sadly, there's no direct quotes of the research material he produced while at MIT, which I would have been interested to see. 

What distinguishes Sanders' Free Soul method is that he categorizes nine human senses--the usual five physical ones, and then four additional psychic ones: Psychic Feeling, Psychic Knowing (intuition), Psychic Vision (clairvoyance) and Psychic Hearing (clairaudience). He feels most people have a natural proclivity towards one of two of these, and that is reflected in the person's character traits, much the way NLP draws associations between a person's preferred sensory modality and some of their behavioral traits (not all NLP folks support that, BTW). 

He also feels his research has discovered specific areas in the body where these psychic senses are located. Interestingly, these are similar to some of the colorfully named places in Frank Rudolph Young's work from several decades before. For example, Sanders locates clairaudience in the temporal lobes of the brain above the ears, as does Young, who names this area the "brain horns."

Sanders book is a easy to understand and to follow and clearly a labor of both love and experience. I can't say I've really applied myself to the exercises, but if I were looking for a book to learn Psychic abilities from, I'd guess that this would be a good one.