Hypnosis in Media

How do you feel about stage hypnosis?

I am not one of these peo­ple who con­sid­er stage hyp­no­sis to be in some way a degra­da­tion of the use of hyp­no­sis. I feel it is a valid form of enter­tain­ment when per­formed by peo­ple who know what they are doing and are cog­nizant of the poten­tial safe­ty fac­tors involved in any live performance.

That said, I must add that I know more than a cou­ple pro­fes­sion­al stage hyp­no­tists, some of whom are per­son­al friends. I would nev­er want to neg­a­tive­ly impact their pro­fes­sion­al stand­ing and rep­u­ta­tion, not their livelihoods.

Would you ever consent to trancing someone / being tranced in front of an audience?

I am by nature a rather qui­et and reserved per­son, not very com­fort­able being in the spot­light, so I would not in most cir­cum­stances want to do any­thing before an audi­ence by myself. That includes being the hyp­no­tist as well as the sub­ject. If there was some way of get­ting accli­mat­ed to that, through expe­ri­ence, I may reconsider.

That said, I could be per­suad­ed to par­tic­i­pate in a stage hyp­no­sis show as a sub­ject, espe­cial­ly for a female stage hypnotist.

Favorite hypnotic experience as a hypnotist?

If my expe­ri­ence as a sub­ject is lim­it­ed, my expe­ri­ence as a hyp­no­tist is almost non-exis­tent. I have some train­ing and a lot of obser­va­tion and rumi­na­tion, but out­side of a few class­room sit­u­a­tions, I have not hyp­no­tized any­one. (The one instance at a con­ven­tion par­ty where a small group of us were so frac­tion­at­ed that all it took was a sim­ple com­mand or even just wav­ing a fin­ger before some­one’s eyes to drop any and all of us does­n’t count. If I had to make a choice, that prob­a­bly would be it.)