The mind is a amazingly powerful and influential thing. It creates everything around us on the basis of space and time. Somehow these masses of chaotic impulses and perceptions assemble into something tangible called "reality." Now, in the process of rendering this reality, the mind makes some assumptions: color, shape, quality, all the different properties of an object and assembles it for you to see, touch, smell, hear, etc. Your mind is always doing this.
Now we get into hypnosis. Let's make a dogmatical presumption that all conceptions of reality are gained by empirical objects as they are originally and by nature. (This has been gone over in many major philosophical works and should not need rehashing here.)
Hypnosis attempts to change your conception of reality on a subconscious level by altering externally the way your mind perceives a certain thing. In effect, this opens a gateway to altering your brain -- anything you choose. Your physiology, political views, dietary habits, relations, emotions, and anything else, are created directly from external objects. You, as you know yourself in a physical sense, are an external object. No one knows anything, truly, in it's natural, pure sense.
For example, watch some of Hitler's speeches to the German people. Watch his power and intensity. Watch how he moves the people into a frenzy with words. He's an excellent orator, and his speeches influenced the opinions of many people. Enough people in fact to put him into power. Look at all the shit he caused. He's with one man with words. Demonstrating the power of mere speech over nature. Nature didn't make Germans believe in Hitler's racist views. Germans are not predisposed to be racist. So it must have been some outside influence.
Let's return to Hitler. Most people think Hitler was a bad person. What do you feel when you see Hitler speak? Is it indignation, fear, anger? Nature doesn't intend for the voice and appearance of Hitler to be felt in this way. It is not his voice or opinion that angers you, but the conceptions you have formed about him in your mind. Someone convinced you, most likely when you took history class, that Hitler was an evil person.
What if someone could do the same with, say, transgendered people. If someone, a hypnotist, could through rigorous conditioning make a male perception into a female one. Take the anger you may feel in a situation, and turn that into a sensation. Turn the perception, the sensation, of one's chest into the sight of breasts. Turn the mirror image of a male body into a female one. In the same way, if a man were color blind and believed that he saw a red object, but that object was not red, his mind would be telling him, albeit incorrectly, that he is seeing a red object. On the other hand, a man who completely, unaware of the nature of things, believed that he was a really a female, would undoubtably perceive himself fully as a female. I think this also explains the "woman stuck in a man's body" and vice versa syndromes.
The most powerful mind altering substance on the planet is human experience. Synthesized directly in the brain. :) If hypnosis hasn't worked for you, it's not because hypnosis is flawed, but because you haven't done it correctly.
(I probably have missed something big. I'm going to review this one and post some details later ... maybe.)