Love and Passion Under Hypnosis

Are Help­less Girls Betrayed by Hypnotists?

Play­girl Presents — A Shock­ing Spe­cial Edition

Stranger Than Bridey Murphy

Bar­ing Fan­tas­tic Facts About Sex Under Hyp­not­ic Suggestion

Pro­fuse­ly Illus­trat­ed with Uncen­sorsed Can­did Photos

Descrip­tion: After that come-on, espe­cial­ly with the lurid image on the cov­er, it real­ly should be no sur­prise that this pub­li­ca­tion falls very short of its goals.

The mag­a­zine com­posed of sev­er­al arti­cles, all appar­ent­ly writ­ten by Wal­ter Hale (the copy­right notice states it was copy­right by him but after the first are all with­out cred­it or attri­bu­tion, so I have to assume they are also writ­ten by Hale although it is pos­si­ble they were writ­ten by staff or sim­ply appopri­at­ed from oth­er sources) and pub­lished by Play­girl Pub­lish­ing in 1956.

The mag­a­zine starts with this:

Joe Doakes is one of the most unfor­tu­nate hus­bands with a frigid wife to con­tend with. … But, what is poor Joe to do? He has the nat­ur­al desires of an entire­ly nor­mal man. He desires and requires a nor­mal sex life but he is tied to a dame who would freeze the inte­ri­or of an igloo. … Obvi­ous­ly, in the trag­ic sit­u­a­tion, Joe’s only hope for a nat­ur­al and sat­is­fy­ing home life lies in the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some­thing can be done to increase Mrs. Joe’s inter­est in basic love mak­ing. Can any­thing be done to cre­ate that cer­tain itch, that mama loves papa feeling?

There is hope — hope in hypnotism!

If Joe can find an accred­it­ed Oper­a­tor … said prac­ti­tion­er might very pos­si­bly instill in his Mrs. that long­ing which is both the root of all evil and the only way to increase the pop­u­la­tion.¹

What can the hyp­no­tist do about it? Well, with the co-oper­a­tion of Mrs. Doakes, he can turn her into a ver­i­ta­ble Cleopa­tra with desires rem­i­nis­cent of Venus or even a glam­orous movie Queen with burn­ing britch­es! In the event Mrs. Doakes wish­es to remain aloof and a bed­room bore, then a shrewd Oper­a­tor can “switch” Mrs. Doakes into the desired state by clever mis-direc­tion which is explained as you read on.

Its pret­ty obvi­ous that is being sold here, the pur­port­ed pow­er of hyp­no­sis to get sex. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for any­one think­ing that, the mag­a­zine does not deliver.

The first half of the mag­a­zine, includ­ing the part quot­ed above, begins with the arti­cle by Wal­ter Hale enti­tled ‘Love and Pas­sion Under Hyp­no­sis’ which is most­ly a retelling of the sex­u­al stereo­types of hyp­no­sis, told in a rather breath­less man­ner. It also includes the following:

Today, every prac­ti­tion­er tells his sub­ject or sub­jects “You will be unable to per­form any act, under hyp­no­sis, which is against your moral prin­ci­ples, regard­less of what I tell you. It will be impos­si­ble for you to com­mit any act that is con­trary to your bet­ter nature.”

This is unadul­ter­at­ed BUNK!

Nailed down, a promi­nent San Fran­cis­co hyp­no­tist and con­sul­tant admit­ted a sub­ject could be pre­pared or “con­di­tioned” to the point where said sub­ject would do any­thing sug­gest­ed by the oper­a­tor up to and includ­ing MURDER.

This sec­tion is prob­a­bly refer­ring to George Estabrook’s famous state­ment, which he nev­er did prove, and which Mil­ton Erick­son debunked sev­er­al years later.

The next arti­cle is enti­tled ‘Dar­ing to Expose Mod­ern Sven­galis’ is not so much an exposé as it is a come-on about the ‘dirty’ things a read­er is told can be done using hyp­no­sis, with the impli­ca­tion that they, too, could do them. (Inter­est­ing­ly enough, this arti­cle has the only men­tion of Morey Bern­stein and Bridey Mur­phy, and only in ref­er­ence to the fact that he used a can­dle as an induc­tion focus.)

The fol­low­ing arti­cle, ‘You Can Become a Hyp­no­tist’ is a short, step-by-step expla­na­tion of how to set up an induc­tion with­out actu­al­ly explain­ing how to per­form an induc­tion. Instead, it leads back to the over­all theme of hyp­no­tiz­ing women into sex bu segue­ing to pseu­do­ny­mous hyp­no­tist Dun­can (“frankly a rogue and a lech­er”) explain­ing how he is able to get women to undress under hyp­no­sis. Its the same song in a first per­son key. Then is goes on to how to

The last arti­cle of this sec­tion is enti­tled ”Will Hyp­no­tism Cure Homo­sex­u­als?’ which is a one-page arti­cle more about the pow­er of hyp­no­sis and post-hyp­not­ic sug­ges­tion than any sub­stan­tial infor­ma­tion about actu­al­ly ‘cur­ing’ homosexuality.

Fol­low­ing that is a three-page reprint­ed news­pa­per sto­ry about stage hyp­no­tist Fran­quin and a show he per­formed in Syd­ney com­plete with sev­er­al pic­tures: in fact, aside from a cou­ple of para­graphs, all three pages are pho­tographs from the show. The arti­cle does not include any attri­bu­tion but it is pret­ty obvi­ous that it was lift­ed, prob­a­bly from an Aus­tralian news­pa­per, which would have made any legal action dif­fi­cult to pursue.

The sec­ond half of the mag­a­zine starts off with a total­ly unre­lat­ed 3‑page piece by “a fear­less sopho­more” enti­tled ‘I Was a Hot Pantie Snatch­er’, try­ing to tie it back to the over­all theme with the sub­ti­tle ‘Mass Hyp­no­sis in Dar­ing Raid’ with­out any kind of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the con­nec­tion. This was fol­lowed by a 6‑page arti­cle enti­tled ‘Secrets of Star­ing Men’ (with the sub­ti­tle ‘Hyp­no­sis Craze: How Much Hum­bug?’) which is actu­al­ly a sim­ple descrip­tion of hyp­no­sis: the arti­cle is illus­trat­ed with sev­er­al clip-part pho­tographs of wom­en’s faces or art­work of naked women, includ­ing one of a wom­an’s face, lit from below, that invokes a stereo­typ­i­cal image of some­one entranced.

After that, there are 3 ½ pages of nude or semi-nude pho­tographs or art, fol­lowed by 8 ½ pages of adver­tise­ments typ­i­cal for the back of men’s mag­a­zines of the day, includ­ing many, many ads for racy 8 mm movies, books on sex knowl­edge and pho­to sets. The back cov­er shows a full-page pic­ture of a brunette in a biki­ni on a zebra-skin back­ground, with the phrase “Pro­fuse­ly Illus­trat­ed with Uncen­sored Photos”.

Com­men­tary: Over­all, there is a lot of tit­il­la­tion and very lit­tle prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion to be found here. At no time is any kind of induc­tion actu­al­ly shown or described, or any oth­er infor­ma­tion about hyp­no­sis. There isn’t even a list of ref­er­ence books for fur­ther infor­ma­tion. How­ev­er, the sex­ism (almost req­ui­site giv­en the soci­ety at that time) through­out the mag­a­zine is pret­ty open, which should come as no sur­prise at all. Also, the hyp­no­tist is always referred to as “he” which also rein­forces the sexism.

As for the art­work, it is ques­tion­able whether the mod­el on the cov­er or any­where else is actu­al­ly hyp­no­tized: there are no images of the induc­tion itself, nor any infor­ma­tion about who did the induc­tion. The only pos­si­bly rec­og­niz­able image of some­one hyp­no­tized shows the mod­el pas­sive­ly stand­ing erect, eyes closed and her arm out­stretched as if per­form­ing an arm-rigid­i­ty test. Much of the oth­er accom­pa­ny­ing art­work is sim­ply gener­ic pho­tog­ra­phy or clip art.

I was just sur­prised at how ama­teur the lay­out was and how shod­dy the pho­tos and art­work accom­pa­ny­ing it were. The mag­a­zine is print­ed on three dif­fer­ent types of paper, one of which is a pale blue in col­or. The whole mag­a­zine looks like it was pieced togeth­er from mate­r­i­al from oth­er sources com­bined with at least one unat­trib­uted news­pa­per arti­cle. The biggest give­away is the copy­right state­ment. That was def­i­nite­ly and clum­si­ly typed on a type­writer, with cap­i­tal­iza­tion and spac­ing errors, sub­sti­tut­ing a cap­i­tal “I” for a “1”, etc. The most amus­ing part is the final line: “The motion pic­ture of the same titme is now in prepa­ra­tion.” And this from the author, who I must assume is Wal­ter Hale, say­ing they are the pub­lish­er of two mag­a­zines, “Hol­ly­wood Con­fi­den­tial” and “Play­girl”.

And I should note that the writer uses the term “Oper­a­tor” (cap­i­tal­ized) instead of “hyp­no­tist” in var­i­ous places, which sug­gests that Hale was the author of the arti­cles in ques­tion. The term “Oper­a­tor” here has cer­tain shady con­no­ta­tions and is obvi­ous­ly used to engen­der the idea of sub­tle or covert hyp­no­sis to bypass any expect­ed resistance.

Rec­om­men­da­tion: Only for the seri­ous col­lec­tor of hyp­no­sis ephemera, right along with “How to Pick Up Girls With Hyp­no­sis”.

Triv­ia: This pub­li­ca­tion con­tains over eight pages of ads in the back, the same as would be found in any men’s mag­a­zine of the time peri­od (1956). How­ev­er, what is inter­est­ing is that ads for books on hyp­no­sis were rare but still includ­ed in these mag­a­zines, no such ads were in this pub­li­ca­tion. And also, judg­ing from that lack and the cor­re­spond­ing lack of any sub­stan­tial men­tion of Bridey Mur­phy in the text is that this was writ­ten before the Bridey Mur­phy phe­nom­e­non gained promi­nence but rushed into pub­li­ca­tion at that time.

Appar­ent­ly, the mag­a­zine (even though it is quite tame by even most stan­dards) was found obscene although it appears from the list­ing here that deci­sion was reversed upon appeal.

Cal­i­for­nia v. Stein­berg. (Los Ange­les Co., App. Dept., Cr. A 3793.) Facts and issues sim­i­lar to Smith, 52.15, relat­ing to mag­a­zine “Love and Pas­sion under Hyp­no­sis”. Tri­al Ct. held mag­a­zine obscene. App. Dept. reversed, held tri­al ct. used prop­er stan­dard re “obscen­i­ty”, but reached wrong result, fol­low­ing Har­lan, J. think­ing that each obscen­i­ty case involves del­i­cate ques­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al judgment.

Stan­ley Fleish­man, Esq., 1741 Ivar Ave., Hollywood.

1: And I thought mon­ey (or, more accu­rate­ly, the love of mon­ey) was the root of all evil?