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.

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.

Book Report: Are You Psychic? by Hans Holzer -- Psychic Phenomena and exercizes

Book Report: Are You Psychic? (c) 1997 by Hans Holzer 

Background Information: The author, Hans Holzer, was a passionate paranormal researcher with over 100 books to his credit, and produced a great deal of research material (perhaps more sensational than hard-science, but still very interesting). More information can be found at his wiki entry, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Holzer

This short, edifying book on psychic phenomena is a great introduction to the topic of psychic phenomena. He clarifies and distinguishes a variety of the terms and concepts which often get muddled together, such at telepathy, clairvoyance, extraocular vision, psychometry, trance mediumship, astral projection, bilocation and other exotic powers of the mind. He even distinguishes four different kind of dreams, both psychic and psychological. 

I imagine the biggest attraction of this book are the practice exercises with which you can experiment and possibly develop your own occult powers, and there are a few things you can try for yourself. 

If you want to explore your own potential, or just want to learn more about the variety of psychic phenomena, this book is a great source.

Just for fun, I bought this at the same time as Sanders' You Are Psychic! https://successworkhypnosis.blogspot.com/2021/10/book-report-you-are-psychic.html because they looked good side by side on the shelf! But I think they're both good additions to a mind-science library.

Book report: Parapsychology Today -- Research Methodology c. 1968

Parapsychology Today (C) 1968 by Rhine and Brier

Background Information: If you're looking for more hard science in your ESP research, this is the book for you. This book is a compilation of research papers and discussions performed under the auspices of the Rhine Research center, an independent facility originally part of Duke University (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine_Research_Center). 

The theme that runs through almost all of the experiments is on testing methodology, since psychic powers have some unusual elements to consider. How do you quantify results to tell whether someone is psychically perceiving the unknowable, or just guessing? Guessing, it turns out, produces a random average of about 50%, so you'd imagine subjects with psychic perceptions would score above 50%. They do, but strangely, so do subjects that score consistently below average. So the data has to be screened for variance from the mean, not just percentages. And then there seems to be a change in accuracy to do with the duration of the testing. (If you've taken any college psych courses, you probably suffered through some obtuse discussions of testing methods, so you'll find this applied demonstration of the method very edifying). 

Of course, there are descriptions of the specific experiments including psychokinesis, precognition and so forth, and also the way that an individual's beliefs if the possibility of psychic powers affected their test scores. (It seems "sheep" adamantly believe in psychic power, and score higher than "goats" who are unbelievers). Gender differences were also explored in regard to the type of results. 

The final part of the book includes transcripts and papers presented at panel discussions on the topics of the future of Paranormal Research and advice to students considering going into the field.

Book Report: Dream Telepathy by Ullman, Krippner and Vaughan -- Research Methodology

Dream Telepathy, Scientific Experiments in the Supernatural, (c) 1973 Macmillan Publishing

Despite the enticingly spooky title, this book is based on scientific research form the Dream Research Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center Psychology department. If you're looking for an exploration of this exotic phenomena from researchers firmly grounded in psychological sciences and the scientific method, this is the book for you.

Telepathy may not be something discussed today in many scientific circles, but until the 1980s, no topic was unworthy of being eyed through the lens of science. In fact, in those days ESP and psychic abilities were big both in popular culture and in serious research circles, thanks to research initiated in the Soviet Union, and the possibility of psychic spying was beginning to be considered seriously in political circles, So the time was certainly ripe to explore what could be explored. Moreover, many of the pioneering figures of psychiatry discussed psychic phenomena, including Freud, Jung, Ehrenwald and others. Some therapists even complained about having psychic dream-communications involving their patients!

In the opening of the book, the authors related a number of historical and literary cases of telepathic and prophetic dreams, as well as the type of psychological patients that seem to experience dream telepathy, (emotionally detached patients often do, but schizophrenics never do). 

The central portion of the book describes the experiments (mostly conducted between 1948-1954) in great detail, and analyses their results and the shortcomings, which were often addressed in subsequent experiments. In the course of their research, they also learned about various sleep states (ie: REM sleep was unknown until 1950). A fairly small pool of researchers participated in the experiments, so that the data was able to examine the effect of their character traits on the outcomes, as well as the effect of the relationships between the senders and receivers of the psychic messages. 

The third part of the book, Theoretical Implications, examines the data for conclusions and useful information (science, after all, is about findings that are verifiable and repeatable). The most obvious are that positive rapport between participants and things with strong emotional charges were most likely to be successfully transmitted. They also discovered that men tended to make better psychic receivers ("percipients") than women, despite accepted wisdom. Interestingly, telepathic messages were not necessarily bound by time, and may not be received at the same time they were sent. 

 

 

Book Report: Advanced Techniques of Hypnosis and Self Hypnosis by Melvin Powers

Advanced Techniques of Hypnosis and Self Hypnosis (C) 1953 by Melvin Powers 

Background Information: Melvin Powers probably launched the careers of a generation of hypnotists, especially through his publishing company Wiltshire Books (http://www.mpowers.com/), a company that even today specializes in self-help books and hypnosis books, as well as various business how-to titles. Many of their self-help books are classics in the field (albeit, some a bit kitchy today). 

This book is pretty much what it says it is, a book of hypnotic techniques that are intended for someone who is already grounded in the basics and looking to go further. It's mostly solid, old-school techniques, clearly described by someone who evidently has a great deal of experience. There are an assortment of inductions, depth tests, convincers, etc., as well as some material on suggestion without trance, stage hypnosis and rapid inductions. 

His approach was probably cutting edge in the post-war years, and clearly things he'd practiced and taught extensively. The overall tone is authoritarian, as one would expect from an hypnotist of that time, but they're still workable today.

It's a good addition to a hypnotist's book shelf, even though in most cases there is more sophisticated material available nowadays.

Book Report: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks -- Psychology Case Histories

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales
(c)1970 by Oliver Sacks

This is the must-read classic for all students of psychology, neurology and anyone who is curious to learn about neurological problems. But it;s also very much a book about hope and the human spirit, and this is what has made it a bestseller for so long. 

Oliver Sacks' special genius is in being able to find an narrate the humanity in each person. To him they are not simply case histories, but each is a unique human with passion and history facing great challenges. Some stories are tragic, but many of the are heroic, too. In this book you'll meet Sailor Jimmie who's memories stopped at 1945, Witty Ticky Ray who funneled his Tourette's into jazz drumming, Mrs. O'C, who one day awoke to the sound of music from her childhood that persisted for months, Rebecca, who despite being severely mentally and physically challenged excelled in theater and poetry, and many others.

At the same time, the author has a technical interest as well. He describes how neurology (at least at the time of his writing the book) chose to look almost exclusively at deficits of ability, and also how the focus was almost exclusively on left-brain functions, which are the more mechanical, computer-like functions, rather than the right-brain functions which are the abstract and creative ones, which were also those that piqued his interest.

The book is divided into several sections. The first are deficiencies, losses of ability, awareness or memory due to tumors or other neurological problems. There patients might have lost memories or perceptions or the abilities most of us take for granted. The second part of the book studies excesses where neurological disease has brought on sudden changes in behavior or awarenesses. The third section offers us the transporters, those people who found themselves transported to altered states of consciousness. Finally he explores the world of the simple, those people who were traditionally considered to have compromised intellects with an inability to process abstract thinking, but, to the author, their concreteness of thought gave them strengths to excel in their own particular areas of interest, and there are examples in mathematics, arts and history.

Sacks also ponders how these neurological aspects impact on the patients' soul and what that might be, even whether this science helps define it. 

If you're interested in mind sciences, this a must read. Some stories are heart-breaking, and others are inspiring, but all the tales are told with a deep respect for the humanity of the patients.