30 Days of Hypnosis: Day 12

What’s your favorite pop culture reference about hypnosis?

Whew! So many possibilities.

The first one that comes to mind is “The Hyp­not­ic Eye”. A movie about a sin­is­ter stage hyp­no­tist who entrances his love­ly sub­jects cer­tain­ly plays to many of the pub­lic mis­con­cep­tions regard­ing hyp­no­sis, plus the pro­duc­ers had a pro­fes­sion­al stage hyp­no­tist instruct the actor how to per­form on cam­era as well as hyp­no­tiz­ing the actress­es to go in to a trance on cue. Regret­tably, it suf­fers from low pub­lic knowl­edge so it bare­ly reg­is­ters as a pop cul­ture icon.

Anoth­er one that comes to mind is the clas­sic spi­ral motif that so rep­re­sents hyp­no­sis in pop­u­lar cul­ture. That and the spooky, swirly music that seems to always accom­pa­ny it in any adver­tise­ment or tele­vi­sion episode scene tran­si­tion. The same also goes for dan­gling crys­tals and star­ing eyes.

But I guess my favorite has to be “Tril­by”. No oth­er work so influ­enced the pop cul­ture regard­ing hyp­no­sis through­out its his­to­ry. It is one of the few cul­ture icons that direct­ly influ­enced the Eng­lish lan­guage, with the addi­tion of “Sven­gali” as a term for a manip­u­la­tive mentor.