[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)]So I found this theory in psychology called Bicameralism and it's a really long but interesting read.[/url]
It basically supposes that prior to some time around the writing of Illiad and the Odyssey, humans thought processes worked completely differently. Rather than having a conscious mind with an inner monologue and an unconscious mind doing the other things, humans had a listening mind and a speaking mind. So you wouldn't think "I should go pick up that stick" you would instead hear a voice tell you "Pick up that stick" and then unquestionably obey it.
The theory posits that the reason all early societies developed some form of god or ancestor worship was as a reaction to these voices that everyone heard. Nobody questioned the concepts because they experienced it. They never thought, they only obeyed. Humans back then were incapable of introspection. Some of the evidence for the theory is that in older pieces of literature characters don't come upon self-realizations, but are rather told by gods what to do to save the day. And why old poets claimed to just be copying poems sung to them by poets, because they couldn't think of the poem themselves, they just heard a voice saying it to them.
The theory also suggests that while bicameralism is no longer how anyone thinks, that there are still artifacts of the system buried in the mind. Possible evidence of this is schizophrenia, which the theory suggests is someone living with bicameralism either instead of or at the same time as introspective narrative.
But the part of the theory that's most relevant to us at WMM is that it also suggests that hypnosis is a remnant of bicameralism. The idea being that when someone is hypnotized, you have somehow regressed them to at least a partially bicameral state. So the hypnotist's voice is perceived as the "speaking mind" which the subjects "listening mind" then hears and obeys.
You aren't necessarily speaking to the unconscious mind, but rather the unconscious mind's ancestor which is even more susceptible to suggestions.
Of course this theory is not entirely accepted by the scientific community yet, it is still in the process of being researched and tested, but it has enough weight right now to not dismiss it and at least have fun considering the implications.[/url]