Hypnotic Thoughts.

"The Fourth Kind" Alien Abduction Movie Uses Hypnosis

Commercials have begun running for an upcoming movie titled "The Fourth Kind" starring Milla Jovovich.  The movie appears to play the same angle as the Blair Witch movie, presenting itself as if it's a documentary when it's really all just a marketing play.  And no, not evil spirits this time, but... wait for it... aliens!

Jovovich play Dr. Abigail Tyler, who is working with people in Nome, Alaska to study sleep patterns.  As she does this, she learns that Nome has an abnormally high amount of disappearances.  She uses hypnosis to regress people back to their earlier experiences, and discovers that they are the victims of alien abductions. Cue the creepy music and the black and white footage!

Since the movie hasn't come out yet, I don't know how hypnosis is portrayed in the film, but hypnotic regression has been used before when working with people who claim to have been abducted.  The most famous case of this is the Betty and Barney Hill case, in which a couple in New Hampshire were allegedly abducted by aliens and recounted their experience under hypnosis.

There seems to be a common misconception about hypnotic regression that people only tell the truth in the process.  This is not the case.  Under regression a person could tell something that they really want to be true, but really they are sharing a fantasy or a false memory.  It's not the same thing as lying; it's the honest sharing of inaccurate information.  This is why regression must be handled very carefully, using an approach that's pretty much forensic in nature.

Regression is a great tool, and it can help people understand past incidents in their lives that have shaped their behavior.  Hopefully this movie will raise people's interest in how hypnosis can be used to help people.

The Connection Between Star Trek and Hypnosis

The debate is raging around the internet:  is the latest Star Trek movie a positive or negative addition to the line of films? There's an important cultural lesson to be learned from JJ Abrams' latest addition to the iconic series.  Actually, there are a bunch of lessons. 

Lesson #1:  Nothing trumps the power of nostalgia.

I new as soon as I heard that this movie was coming out that it was going to bust open a hornets' nest.  I grew up watching syndicated re-runs of "Star Trek."  I have loved sci-fi my whole life.  I'm also something of a pragmatist.  I knew that this film would draw the legion of faithful fans, but that there was no way it could make them happy.  I would go so far as to say that, deep down, they knew there was no way it could make them happy, as well, but they ignored that instinct, because nothing trumps the power of nostalgia.  The hope that they would get to re-live the Start Trek years of their lives, even for just a little while, was too powerful.

If you're a die-hard "Star Trek" fan, then you still watch the old episodes.  How can you still watch those and go into JJ's vision in 2009 with an open mind?  It just isn't going to happen.  And yet on some level they expected it to, because that's how emotions work.  As much as we like to think of ourselves as rational, civilized people, the reality is that we are driven mostly be emotion.  That's one of the key reasons that we make bad choices.

Lesson #2:  A story doesn't work like it used to.

Hundreds of years ago stories were told orally.  The printing press created a shift toward written storytelling.  Radio revived the oral tradition briefly.  Then came film and television.  Film and television are probably the two most hypnotic forces on the planet.  Their visual nature pulls viewers right in.  Hearing a story is kind of like being part of a dialogue.  Reading a story creates a kind of dialogue as well.  Even though the narrator is doing all the talking, the listener or reader is internalizing the story by creating an inner dialogue to process the language.  Watching a story unfold on TV or film is not so much about listening to a narrator's voice as watching, observing actions as they happen.  It's a more visceral experience than reading.

Because of this, I think stories today are more about feelings than ideas.  Remember, people consume based on emotions more than rational thinking, so they're going to spend money on movies that give them strong emotional responses rather than deep thoughts.  The very nature of storytelling has changed, even though the themes of the stories haven't.  The themes connect the story to our human experience, so those aren't going to change much, but the way the story gets told has because we now have the technology to satisfy our need for emotional fulfillment.

Lesson #3:  We're moving backward, not forward.

This is the saddest part of it all.  We live in the most technologically advanced age in our history.  We're closer than we've ever been to Roddenberry's vision of the future in terms of our technological achievements, but the cultural majority doesn't want to ask the questions he posed through his work.  We consume more and save less.  We are barely more tolerant than we were 40 years ago.  We are destroying our planet.  We are violent.  We are destructive.

The power of film, and of sci-fi films in particular, is that they give us a glimpse of our potential.  At some point we have to choose to snap out of the trance, turn off the movie, and work toward making a really better world.

X-men Origins character uses "touch hypnosis"

I went to see, "X-men Origins: Wolverine" today and was surprised, yet not surprised, to find that hypnosis makes a brief cameo in the movie.  One character in the movie has the unique ability to hypnotize people just by touching them.  Unfortunately, the use of hypnosis is, yet again, completely portrayed as a way to control people like voodoo dolls.  Not that I expected she was going to help them stop smoking or get over the fear of public speaking, but...

Oh, well.  It just goes to show that people really do have a fascination with hypnosis.

Man gets hernia surgery using only hypnosis for anesthesia.

WARNING: This video does include some graphic images of a man undergoing abdominal surgery.

John Butler is a practicing hypnotist who uses his skills on himself when he needs surgery to repair a hernia.  This is a fantastic example of the power of the human mind, and of hypnosis' potential for each of us.

John Malkovich plays mentalist, hypnotist in "The Great Buck Howard"

John Malkovich is starring in an upcoming movie in which he plays a mentalist/hypnotist who is past his prime, but won't let go.  Tom Hanks and his son Colin are both in the film as well.  I'm looking forward to this one.  You can watch the trailer here.

What if you Became a "Yes Man"?

I went to see "Yes Man" starring Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel the other night and I just keep thinking about it.  It was really just a fun movie, not anything deep, but there was a kind of profundity in its simple main theme.  Saying yes brings possibility. 

We're only 8 days into the new year, and I'll bet you that the majority of people may as well be six months into the new year in terms of their outlook.  Most people have probably already abandoned one of the resolutions they made.  Most folks have probably already stopped thinking about new possibilities and reverted to the same old routine.

If you want things to change, if you want to grow, if you want to increase your happiness, you must remind yourself regularly of that vision you created when you were thinking about how you wish the new year would be different.  You have to be consistent in the process of re-programming your brain for different results.  As unrealistic as much of "Yes Man" was in terms of all the things that Carrey's character did, the thing they got right was that he was consistent.  He transformed his character by consistently carrying out a different set of behavior.  He realized that he had become a person that he didn't want to be anymore, and he had a vision of the person he wanted to become when he attended the seminar.  Then he kept pursuing that vision by consistently saying "yes" instead of "no."

What if you did that?  It's kind of fun to think about.  What if you started saying "yes" more often?  What if you brought more possibility into your life?  How would it transform the way you relate to people?  The way you learn?  The way you think?

We're biologically designed to say "no."  The fight-or-flight instinct that's hardwired in our brains is a protective measure.  Anytime we get asked a question that we perceive puts our resources in jeopardy (time, money) or puts us in a risky situation (being around strangers, or people we don't feel super comfortable with) that "no" response fires off so fast!  You don't even think of it; it just happens.  As you do this more and more and more, the conditioning gets stronger, though, so you start saying no to things that really aren't a threat.  That's when it gets out of hand.

The film is based on a book by comic writer Danny Wallace. You can check out his site and his other work by clicking on his name.  Read the book or catch the movie and have some fun imagining what life would be like if you became a "yes man."

The Dark Knight

I watched "The Dark Knight" yesterday, and was thrilled with it as a piece of entertainment.  Something interesting also happened while I was watching it.  Television and film are quite hypnotic, and I had a real hypnotic experience during the film. 

There were a couple of times while I was watching the movie when I found myself empathizing with Christian Bale's character, Bruce Wayne, and since I have nothing remotely in common with that character, I knew that the film was doing a fantastic job of drawing me in and getting me to think that I did.  Billionaire?  Nope.  Dashingly handsome?  Unh-uh.  Trained as a ninja in the deadly fighting arts?  Please.  The empathy was created by playing upon the abstract qualities that many of us aspire to.

Bruce Wayne is a man of ideals.  He wants to make a difference.  He has a sense of purpose.  These are the qualities that any of us can relate to.  As I sat and watched the movie, one subtle action got me started.  There is a scene in which Bruce Wayne throws a fundraiser party for Harvey Dent, the District Attorney.  Wayne is playing up his playboy image, but when he walks out onto the balcony he dumps out his champagne glass.  That one little gesture made me start to take a personal inventory. 'Gosh' I thought to myself, 'he's so disciplined that he won't even drink a small glass of champagne.'  I was actually admiring this character and wanting to be like him.  He isn't even real!

Does it matter where our source of inspiration comes from, so long as we are inspired?  I had another moment during the film, this time inspired by a real person.  Heath Ledger was amazing.  I haven't seen all of Ledger's work, but I've seen enough to know that Heath Ledger was nowhere on that screen.  He truly transformed himself.  In scene after scene he had these facial tics, little movments of the eyes, small nuances in his voice, that just made him a completely different person, and I started thinking about how dedicated you have to be to your craft to be able to take it to that level.  I felt a little guilty as time went on because I knew that I was not pursuing my profession to this level of excellence.  I mean, I love what I do, and I don't want to do anything else, but I haven't taken it to a level that's transformative, and I think anyone, in any profession, can do that.  You can do what you do so well, I believe, that when you're in the thick of it, you are a special version of yourself that's different from you at the grocery store, you at the mall, you at a restaurant.

So I left the movie theater not only feeling entertained, but also challenged and inspired.  Hopefully I'll take this inspiration and turn it into some level of transformation.