by cardigan » July 4th, 2007, 12:18 pm
Basically yes. That's what we are saying.
You can't hypnotize a person to do anything that would be contrary to that person's ethics. However it is possible to ever so slightly change the ethics of that person. NLP would be excellent for that. But it's just not ethical to do that, and should you get caught trying to do it, you'd never be friends with your victim again.
Hypnosis is the extra little nudge that will make it easier for a smoker to quit smoking and to persevere. And hypnosis can be a great play-thing for consenting adults. Hypnosis really does work. But you need to understand what hypnosis is.
I think that people who state that they were never gay before, but that after they listened to this or that file, they suddenly became interested in thier own sex, and after a while they find that they have switched and are now gay - unable to switch back - have always had this in them. It was just waiting to come out. They didn't know it was there consciously, but somehow they managed to pick a file from this great big collection of free files, that encouraged them to for instance become gay. I mean - what are the odds that you'd pick exactly a file like that, if you could choose any file you liked, and if you were against the idea of being gay in the first place? The probablilty of that is very small.
No. Their subconscious picked the right file for them. Their conscious tried its best to explain logically why that was. "I never thought it would work. I wanted to prove to myself, that hypnosis doesn't work" and so on and so forth. In reality they picked the outcome that their subconscious was interested in - for some reason. And then later they can always refuse to take responsibility for their actions - saying "I was hypnotized". So many people who volunteer for stage hypnosis are not really in trance to begin with! They just play along, and then gradually they do go into a trance. And later they can deny responsibility for having clucked like a chicken or having regressed to being a 5-year old by saying: "It wasn't my fault. I was hypnotized! The hypnotist is responsible." So you see - it's a carte blanche to play along - with no cost.
So - forget Cold War brainwashing and other kinds of fun mindcontrol. But hypnosis is a first class tool to aid in personality development and improvement. Hypnosis rocks!
Cardigan