Hypnosis

"When a person is told:" Your ear is long, "he will feel it without fail."
Arabic proverb

Until the 20th century, there were several hypotheses that attempted to explain the presence of hypnosis (some of them were quite funny); here we will pay attention to the most conspicuous hypotheses, since the full story about “fluids” and “magnetism” would be too long.
The first pseudo-scientific hypothesis, which tried to explain the phenomenon of suggestibility, non-critical execution by a person of other people's orders, instructions, orders, was F. A. Mesmer's hypothesis. This hypothesis was very simple: Mesmer declared that he possesses a special “animal magnetism”, through which he can influence other people, as well as charge water and objects, making them “magnetic”.
French psychiatrist Charcot considered hypnosis manifestations of hysteria, that is, a type of disease.
The Englishman Brad considered hypnosis a kind of sleep, or a special dreaming state of consciousness. In the twentieth century, IP Pavlov followed the same path, who brought a great deal to the understanding of hypnosis as a state like a dream.
According to the theory of IP Pavlov, hypnosis is a kind of alternation of the processes of excitation and inhibition in the cerebral cortex. If the process of inhibition prevails in the cortex, the person sleeps. If excitement prevails, the person is awake. And if the entire cerebral cortex is inhibited (the brain is asleep), but there is a hot spot in the cortex (one part of the cortex is awake), then this is hypnosis.
Due to the fact that one of the areas of the cerebral cortex is awake, the hypnotist can maintain contact with this person. But since the rest of the brain is asleep, the orders of the hypnotist are not subjected to logical (or critical) evaluation. And then the hypnotic blindly, like a machine, carries out the orders of the hypnotist, without doubting their expediency.
Model I. P. Pavlova explains a lot, but not all. If a gypsy woman came up to you on the street in broad daylight, spoke to you, and you gave her all your money and valuable things: what is hypnosis? From the point of view of the theory of IP Pavlov, no, because you did not sleep. However, you have executed the order without any criticism. (Speaking of gypsies, we do not profess any nationalistic ideas. It is just in the performance of gypsies that we can observe the most verified, perfected, effective methods of hypnosis in reality).
In the thirties of the 20th century, many authors began to explain hypnotic phenomena from the perspective of the “theory of super-wakefulness”. According to this theory, hypnosis is a state of the cerebral cortex in which the entire cortex is awake, but one part of it is over-awake. Due to such a focus of overstimulation, the hypnotic executes the command of the hypnotist, because he believes that he is fulfilling his own desires and intentions.
And therefore, in order for a person to be under the influence of hypnosis, it is enough to create in his cerebral cortex the very center of overstimulation, about which the theory speaks. Well, there are a lot of techniques and techniques for creating such a focus (in this book, some of these techniques are described in Part IV).
From the standpoint of the theory of super-wakefulness, one can explain the phenomenon of Ericksonian hypnosis - “not in a dream” hypnosis. (In 1975, Erickson hypnosis became one of the constituent parts of neuro-linguistic programming, but so far has not lost its independent value). Erickson hypnosis techniques are quite noise-resistant, when used correctly, they act very reliably. In this book we will touch only on certain techniques of Ericksonian hypnosis in relation to a rather narrow topic. We think this is justified.