Hypnosis in Media

Archive for December, 2010

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Noth­ing that has any­thing to do with hyp­no­sis (although the sto­ry­line does involve a par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty form of mind con­trol) but just a good read by some peo­ple I hap­pen to know and rec­om­mend. Phil Foglio and Kaja Foglio. Their artis­tic cre­den­tials are impec­ca­ble and their art­work has appeared in such diverse places as “Drag­on Mag­a­zine” and on “Mag­ic: the Gath­er­ing” cards, adap­ta­tions of Robert Asprin’s “Mythad­ven­ture” books, some very NSFW and very well done erot­i­ca, and even sou­venir con­ven­tion plates: Phil is one of the few peo­ple I know who have won the Hugo Award both as a fan and a pro­fes­sion­al artist and Kaja is equal­ly as good.

“Girl Genius” is their love and joy. If you haven’t been read­ing “Girl Genius” online, you should. As one review­er put it: its what Jules Verne would write if he wrote comics, and he’d be jeal­ous. Its the sto­ry of Agatha Het­ero­dyne, heir to the famous Het­ero­dyne Boys Bill and Bar­ry, who cham­pi­oned Good and Right against the mad sci­en­tist “Sparks” of the day, until the day they lost every­thing in a vicious attack and lost them­selves try­ing to deter­mine the cause. Its Steam­punk™ at its finest, and “Girl Genius” is one of the rea­sons for the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the genre.

Agatha knew noth­ing of this. She was pro­tect­ed (in more ways than one) from the harsh life that a Spark encoun­ters, until that life came look­ing for her. Through her adven­tures she has matured from the help­less, bum­bling girl assis­tant to some­one who could become the Het­ero­dyne Heir of leg­end. All she has to do is sur­vive pos­ses­sion (by the mind of her moth­er), the ire of Baron Wulfen­bach (the past ally of the Het­ero­dyne Boys and ex-offi­io ruler of Europa), a cabal deter­mined to seize pow­er by pro­mot­ing a fake Het­ero­dyne Heir, and the roman­tic entan­gle­ments of two strong Sparks, one the son of the Baron and the oth­er the proph­e­sied ruler of Europa. Quite a chal­lenge but Agatha is up to it. (And if you think Agatha looks remark­ably like Kaja, join the club.)

But what is spe­cial is that they are mov­ing away from comics direct­ly to writ­ten fic­tion with the first Agatha Het­ero­dyne nov­el, “Agatha H. and the Air­ship City”. It will be pub­lished in a cou­ple of weeks, and Phil is ask­ing peo­ple to hold off order­ing it until Jan­u­ary 12^th as that not only will cause a spike in the sales count, but its also Kaja’s birth­day. I know I will.

You can get the col­lect­ed vol­umes, too: they’re well worth the effort.

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His­to­ry: In 2005 I won a copy of the online game Guild­Wars with­out real­ly want­i­ng it. There­fore, I didn’t exam­ine the game for a month or so, fig­ur­ing I didn’t have time for an online game, but the box art­work and some of the things I saw about it online con­vinced me to take a fur­ther look. Lit­tle did I real­ize what I was going to get myself in to.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““Guild­Wars””

An arti­cle in the Huff­in­g­ton Post was brought to my atten­tion to Bri­an David Phillips.

Very few psy­cho­log­i­cal terms have quite the emo­tion­al impact that “hyp­no­sis” does. All sorts of beliefs sur­round the con­cept, most of which have lit­tle to do with what hyp­no­sis actu­al­ly is.

I won’t add any­thing else, except to say to go there and read it.

The ven­er­a­ble “Fate Mag­a­zine”, first pub­lished in 1948, has been in almost con­stant pub­li­ca­tion ever since. Self-described as “the world’s lead­ing mag­a­zine of the para­nor­mal” it com­bines non­fic­tion vary­ing from per­son­al anec­dotes on the para­nor­mal to stud­ies and research on the var­i­ous sub­jects under the col­lec­tive descrip­tion of “para­nor­mal” to fic­tion, let­ters, reg­u­lar columns and advertisements.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““Fate Mag­a­zine” — ‘Spe­cial Hyp­no­tism Issue’ — July, 1954”

The British news­pa­per The Guardian has an inter­est­ing arti­cle on hyp­nother­a­pist Antho­ny Jacquin.

The win­dow sill in the wait­ing room of Antho­ny Jacquin’s hyp­nother­a­py prac­tice is piled high with emp­ty cig­a­rette pack­ets. Unlike most of his clien­tele I am not here for help with quit­ting a debil­i­tat­ing habit of one sort or anoth­er, so I’m momen­tar­i­ly con­fused by this cue. Then the pen­ny drops.

“There’s a few scalps there,” he says proud­ly. “I cleared the office out and found a few pack­ets peo­ple had left so I put them there. That evening there were two more. I don’t ask peo­ple to leave them, but if they do, then good.”

The author Gra­ham Snow­don deserves cred­it for not giv­ing in to the media stereo­types and espe­cial­ly for writ­ing a respect­ful arti­cle that is very informative. 

Dis­cov­ered through Der­ren Brown’s blog.