Hypnosis in Media

Archive for January, 2011

The sec­ond install­ment about the mes­mer­ic char­ac­ter Vampirella

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “Vam­pirella — Part II”

A true sur­vivor: cre­at­ed in 1969 as mere­ly the host of a War­ren Pub­lish­ing B&W hor­ror mag­a­zine, Vam­pirella evolved past her coun­ter­parts Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie into becom­ing a real char­ac­ter in her own right, one being pub­lished to this day.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “Vam­pirella — Part I”

What can you do when you have the pow­er of life and death, espe­cial­ly trace­less, unstop­pable death, over any­one you can name? In “Death Note”, Light Yaga­mi dis­cov­ers that despite his best (and worst) inten­tions, no real good can come of it.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““Death Note””

From the “Geeks Are Sexy” web­site: cos­met­ics from MAC Cos­met­ics inspired by the comics char­ac­ter Won­der Woman.

And just what would that have to do with hyp­no­sis? Well, remem­ber­ing Won­der Wom­an’s mag­ic las­so, which had the pow­er to force any­one caught in it to obey her will (or any one else who was hold­ing it, as she was often the one caught in its coils) and I just had to think that just about any prod­uct relat­ed to the char­ac­ter could be hyp­no­sis-relat­ed. And sure enough, one part of the line is: “Obey Me” nail pol­ish. I’m sure the name can be explained by the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Won­der Woman as a strong female char­ac­ter with a pow­er­ful charis­ma but the hyp­not­ic (and bondage-relat­ed) his­to­ry of the char­ac­ter is just too strong to deny.

The line is set to be released on Feb­ru­ary 10^th. 

Com­men­tary: Please, can some­one dri­ve a stake through the heart of the 60’s era “Bang! Pow! Wham!” comics imagery and ref­er­ences? They were an embar­rass­ment even back then, a by-prod­uct of the over-the-top camp­ish­ness of the “Bat­man” TV series that became seem­ing­ly irre­triev­ably con­nect­ed with comics as a whole and embed­ded in the media when­ev­er comics are dis­cussed even to this day.

Ref­er­ences:

• MAC Won­der Woman announce­ment at StyleList

I real­ly should check out Hyde Broth­ers more reg­u­lar­ly. That’s a local used book store of the old school type which has been the source for a good per­cent­age of my non-fic­tion hyp­no­sis (and some fic­tion, as well) col­lec­tion, includ­ing some rar­i­ties like an 1871 com­pi­la­tion vol­ume enti­tled “Library of Mes­merism” which includes such works as “Fas­ci­na­tion or the Phi­los­o­phy of Charm­ing (Illus­trat­ing the Prin­ci­ples of Life)” and “The Phi­los­o­phy of Elec­tri­cal Psy­chol­o­gy in Twelve Lec­tures” or the six vol­umes of the Shaftes­bury Ral­ston Pub­lish­ing ‘Home Study’ col­lec­tion in very fine bind­ings. I’ve bought a lot from them over the years and they deserve every acco­lade I can bestow upon them.

Every so often they get a num­ber of hyp­no­sis-relat­ed books and some­times I’m there to get them. That has­n’t hap­pened for a while, main­ly for finan­cial rea­sons, but I was on my way between two stops and the store hap­pened to be on the way, so yes­ter­day, I stopped by, and came away with four new addi­tions to my collection.

“Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Dummies”

Ever since the con­cept was dis­tilled from Erick­son, NLP has been treat­ed as some­thing of a bas­tard child to hyp­no­sis, from what I’ve seen. Its also been some­thing I’ve want­ed to learn more about.

“Hindu Psychology: Its Meaning For the West” by Swami Akhilananda (1946)

While the gen­er­al sub­ject mat­ter has lit­tle to do with hyp­no­sis, there is a long chap­ter enti­tled ‘Will and Per­son­al­i­ty’ which includes sub-chap­ters ‘Will’, ‘Sug­ges­tion’ and ‘Hyp­no­sis’. Added for completeness.

“Wide Awake, Clear-Headed and Refreshed” by Ryan Elliot (1991)

“Med­ical Hyp­no­analy­sis in Action” reads the sub-title, and that’s exact­ly what it is: a chat­ty cross between a con­ve­nient guide for hyp­nother­a­pists and a expla­na­tion for the lay patient.

“Hypnotism A Correct Guide to the Science and How Subjects are Influenced” by Carl Sexton (ⅯⅮⅭⅭⅭⅭⅩⅤⅠ)

I was pret­ty sure I already had a copy in my col­lec­tion, in prob­a­bly bet­ter shape, but I could­n’t resist giv­ing this poor­ly treat­ed copy a good home. The inte­ri­or is unfor­tu­nate­ly even more mis­treat­ed than the cov­er, alas.