Google Ngrams — A Hypnotic Resource

One of the more con­tro­ver­sial things that Google has done (at least to authors such as myself) was to dig­i­tize and con­vert a wide vari­ety of writ­ten mate­r­i­al and present it to the pub­lic. (Writ­ers were con­cerned about copy­right issues, some­thing that direct­ly affects their profession.)

How­ev­er, with that dig­i­tized mate­r­i­al now avail­able, it is pos­si­ble to process it is many dif­fer­ent and inter­est­ing ways. One of them is Google Ngrams, which is a search engine designed to track the appear­ance of cer­tain words in the col­lec­tion and relate them to spe­cif­ic eras when that word was used. In oth­er words, this is a search tool to reveal the times in which a spe­cif­ic word became part of the lit­er­a­ture and to track its pop­u­lar­i­ty. The data­base only can pro­vide infor­ma­tion for the peri­od 1800 to the present, however.

But since the word “hyp­no­sis” and the relat­ed terms were cre­at­ed by James Braid in the 1820’s, they def­i­nite­ly fall with­in the time range. So, just as an exper­i­ment, I entered the terms “hyp­no­sis”, “hyp­no­tism” and “hyp­no­tize” into the data­base and got this result. As I expect­ed, the three terms start­ed appear­ing in the 1820s, but what mild­ly sur­prised me was the jump in appear­ances in the ear­ly 1880’s, prob­a­bly coin­cid­ing with the increased inter­est in the sub­ject in Vic­to­ri­an Britain and America.

In con­trast, a com­par­i­son between “hyp­no­tism” and  “mes­merism” here shows a rel­a­tive­ly sim­i­lar rate of appear­ance since before the start of the data set, with a spike in the ear­ly 1840’s and 1850’s, then set­tles down to a rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble appear­ance rate up to the 1920’s and slow­ly declin­ing to present.

Anoth­er part of the search engine, one that has been around for a while, allows for search­es inside the var­i­ous books, mag­a­zines and arti­cles in the data­base, This includes not only a num­ber seri­ous books on the sub­ject but also a num­ber of pieces of fic­tion as well. They’re well worth inves­ti­gat­ing: one exam­ple here searched for any­thing in the 1800–1850 time frame that includes the word “mes­merism” and returns sev­er­al items, includ­ing works by such ear­ly fig­ures as James Esdaile and Thomas Buckland.

I plan on inves­ti­gat­ing this resource much more deeply in the future, but for now its an inter­est­ing tool in itself.

December 20th, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: Fiction, Hypnosis News and Information, Nonfiction | Comments are closed

“Birdland” by Gilbert Hernandez

[amtap amazon:asin=1560972009]

A three-issue series and a soft-cov­er col­lec­tion with addi­tion­al mate­r­i­al, pro­duced by Gilbert Her­nan­dez, “Bird­land” is the sto­ry of the trou­bled mar­riage between Mark and Fritz Her­rera and the lives of the peo­ple (espe­cial­ly Mark’s girl­friend Bang-Bang, Mark’s broth­er Simon with a fix­a­tion on Fritz and Fritz’ sis­ter Petra with a fix­a­tion on Mark) sur­round­ing them, espe­cial­ly their sex­u­al lives. What is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant is that Dr. Fritz main­tains a psy­chi­atric prac­tice using hyp­no­sis (and using her gold­en heart-shaped pen­dant as a hyp­not­ic focus) in which she (and even­tu­al­ly her sis­ter) has sex with her hyp­no­tized male clients.

Then there’s the alien abduc­tion (Greys, it appears) ele­ments and the added era-span­ning mate­r­i­al which leads to Mark and Fritz’ pos­si­ble rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, all of which draws the sto­ry into ‘mag­i­cal real­ism’ . Its all quite a con­glom­er­a­tion with very lit­tle over­all plot or char­ac­ter devel­op­ment but that’s not real­ly the point: the whole sto­ry is more of a snap­shot of the rela­tion­ships between the char­ac­ters with plen­ty of sex included.

Note: The entire book is total­ly NSFW or view­ing by any­one under legal age. It is also very much out of print (the pub­lish­er is out of busi­ness) and hard to find.

Adden­da: Gilbert Her­nan­dez is broth­er to Jaime Her­nan­dez. Togeth­er they pro­duced the award-win­ning and crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed “Love and Rock­ets” comics. Los Her­manos Her­nan­dez are two of the best artists and sto­ry­tellers in the comics busi­ness, indi­vid­u­al­ly and coop­er­a­tive­ly: their work has con­sis­tent­ly shown a strong B&W art style with strong depic­tions of the female char­ac­ters and a con­cen­tra­tion on His­pan­ic life and char­ac­ters. Gilbert’s tale here is not as wide­ly known as his oth­er works and is cor­re­spond­ing­ly just as dif­fi­cult to find. And although “Bird­land” does share some char­ac­ters with “Love and Rock­ets” they are tech­ni­cal­ly not the same people.

Rec­om­men­da­tion: The book is still worth check­ing out, if you can ignore the ram­pant sex through­out There are a num­ber of lev­els that require sev­er­al read­ings to explore.

Ref­er­ences:

December 19th, 2010 | Tags: | Category: Comics, Comic Books, Comic Strips or Manga | One comment - (Comments are closed)

“Girl Genius: Agatha H. and the Airship City” by Phil and Kaja Foglio

[amtap book:isbn=1597802115]

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 12th 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.

[amtap book:isbn=1890856509]

[amtap book:isbn=1890856304]

[amtap book:isbn=1890856320]

[amtap book:isbn=1890856223]

[amtap book:isbn=1890856398]

[amtap book:isbn=1890856231]

[amtap book:isbn=1890856452]

[amtap book:isbn=1890856479]

[amtap book:isbn=1890856525]

 

December 18th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Comics, Comic Books, Comic Strips or Manga | Comments are closed

“GuildWars”

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””

December 12th, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: Games | Comments are closed

“Trance-formation: The Therapeutic Value of Hypnosis” by Lloyd Glauberman, Ph D

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.

December 6th, 2010 | Category: Hypnosis News and Information | Comments are closed
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