Everyman His Own Svengali

About one-quarter of mankind can save themselves pain and improve their own health by using hypnotism on themselves.

So said Hypnotist Andrew Salter of Manhattan last week, explaining in the Journal of General Psychology that 20 or 25% of normal adults can be hypnotized and can learn with little trouble to hypnotize themselves to produce the whole range of hypnotic phenomena--insensitivity to pain or noise, steely muscular rigidity, hallucinations, posthypnotic suggestion, etc.

This, says Salter, is "one aspect of hypnosis which, so far, has been untouched by modern experimental techniques." No one can be hypnotized against his will. If he is not cooperative or at least open-minded, the hypnotist's suggestions break like seas on a cliff. The oftener he is hypnotized, the easier the trances return. Soon he can entrance himself, perhaps by reciting a simple patter: I feel very comfortable. My arms are so relaxed. My feet feel very relaxed and heavy. I feel so very comfortable and relaxed. My whole body feels comfortable and relaxed. I just want to sleep. I feel so comfortable. My eyes are getting heavy, so very heavy. . . .

Now I am fast asleep. . . . I can give myself autohypnotic suggestions. . . .

Importance of autohypnotism is the subject's power to give himself while in a trance directions to do something, after he has snapped into normal consciousness.

Possibilities, with training:

P: One person in 'four can sit down in a dentist's chair, hypnotize himself, tell himself he will feel no pain in his jaws, snap out of the trance, then be drilled into at painless length. Such posthypnotic anesthesia can be localized at will, lasts perhaps two hours, can be renewed. Warns Salter: "One must be careful not to misuse his autohypnotic ability to mask physical ailments which need a physician's care." But he recommends the technique for incurable cancer agonies.

P: One person in four can give himself a posthypnotic aversion for tobacco or paunch-making mashed potatoes, a craving for lettuce-with-mineral-oil salads or other gastronomic horrors.

P: One person in four can cure insomnia or stuttering by autohypnotic resolve to go to sleep or talk glibly. And he can produce a "will to study" or a "will to work."

Hypnosis is a profoundly misunderstood phenomenon. In its ten paragraphs on the subject, Salter claims the Encyclopedia Britannica makes ten errors. Hypnotism was used in the early 19th Century to produce anesthesia for childbirth and surgery. Just when hypnotists were developing their techniques, and learning a little about the minds which they influenced, the anesthetic uses of chloroform and ether were discovered. So hypnosis, chloroformed, sank into a deep, troubled sleep.

But recently experimental psychologists, notably Yale's Clark Leonard Hull, have re-examined hypnotism, chipped off its incrustation of mesmerism, Coueism, cinemagic. Says Hull of Salter's autohypnosis: "Quite sound."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.