You are getting sleepy ... very sleepy ... your eyelids are getting heavy ... when I snap my fingers, you will be completely asleep.
Snap!
Guess it didn't work. I should have known--the only Cardinal articles that put readers to sleep are columnist Amos Posner's.
But professional hypnotists claim to put willing subjects into hypnotic trances in a matter of seconds, as hypnotist Jim Wand did Jan. 21 at the Wisconsin Union Theater. Though the students obeyed Wand's commands, becoming ducks flying in formation or men giving birth, skeptics might have wondered whether the subjects were truly hypnotized or whether it was all part of the show.
\Oh, it's real,"" said UW-Madison senior Luke Piwoni, one of the volunteers on stage that day. ""He'll tell you to do something, and you don't know why, but you do it.""
""For sure,"" agreed UW-Madison freshman and fellow participant Eric Phillippi. ""You can watch people on stage being idiots, but when you're actually in the seat up there, you're doing everything that voice tells you because that's all you think of.""
""That voice"" belongs to Wand, a doctor of psychology who has toured the college circuit with his hypnotism show for 17 years. It seems scary that Wand can have students so completely in his control that he can make them do whatever he wants.
""No, no, that's a common misconception-if a hypnotist suggests you do something against your morals or ethics, even if you're hypnotized, you won't do it,"" Wand said.
Hypnosis can free one's inhibitions and cause one to act more outlandishly than usual, but the subject is always in control.
Janice Singles, a doctor of psychiatry at the UW-Madison medical school, agreed.
""Yes, the subject is always in control. Still, the hypnosis sessions are more valuable if they're done by someone you trust, someone whose goals are the same as yours,"" she said. Singles uses hypnotism for therapeutic uses ranging from helping someone quit smoking to helping a student improve his study habits.
First she puts the subject in a trance, helping him relax and encouraging him to focus on the sound of her voice. We have all been in trances, she said, such as when we get so caught up in a task that we forget to eat lunch, or when we miss our familiar freeway exit because our minds are elsewhere. A trance is not a state of sleep-it's a state of altered consciousness.
When she gets her subject into that state, she encourages him to visualize times when his study habits were particularly good, or to focus on eliminating distractions. Afterwards if the subject engages in the improved behavior, he may or may not consciously realize why he's doing it.
Scientists theorize hypnosis appeals to your subconscious mind, the part of your brain that handles all the day-to-day tasks. For example, when you walk to class along a familiar path, you don't notice all the little details you noticed the first time you took that route. Your subconscious has taken over, freeing your conscious mind to notice new things.
Researchers hypothesize when people are hypnotized, they are so relaxed and hyper-focused that the suggestions they receive go straight to their subconscious, unfiltered by the conscious mind that might ordinarily protest the suggestion. Hence we end up with students on stage thinking they're Beyonce Knowles or Randy ""Macho Man"" Savage.
Wand said his volunteers may or may not remember their exploits on stage after they have come out of the trance. For example, if you're falling asleep and someone talks to you, you might remember the whole conversation the next day, or you might not even remember the person was in your room, depending on how close you were to deep sleep. So too for hypnotized subjects, some of whom are vaguely aware of what they're doing, and others who are stunned later to see photographs of themselves doing bizarre things.
Luke Piwoni remembered bits and pieces of his hypnosis.
""When we were ducks flying, I was lead duck, and I remember seeing this cornfield I dove into,"" he said.
Eric Phillippi also recalled snippets, especially that he was repeatedly getting up off the ground and back into his chair.
""[Wand] told me every time he said 'hypnosis,' I wouldn't have a butt, nothing holding me in my chair, so I'd slide off,"" he said. ""I remember thinking each time I was on the floor, 'What am I doing here? I hope no one saw me.'""
Wand discounted the ""Twilight Zone"" notion that a hypnotist could leave someone hypnotized forever.
""Once I fell off the stage and got knocked out for five minutes,"" he said. ""In three minutes, all the students woke up. Once my direction is gone, the hypnotic effect is gone.""
Dinesh Ramde is a second-year graduate student in journalism. You can complain about (or agree with) his Amos Posner comment at dramde@wisc.edu.
