Question:
“Higher” hypnosis, changing memories of a person I’ve come here with 2 questions: 1. Does higher hypnosis actually exist in the form as explained further soon? 2. Does altering a person’s memories actually have the effects as described further down? So, a friend of mine has told me about this “higher”, more effective form of hypnosis, in which where instead of using your Normal soft and relaxing voice you’d do for the regular form, your voice stays monotone, and that’s supposed to have stronger effects on your or something. The same person has also described to me that if you alter a person’s memories and personality, these changes stay permanent unless reverted, and don’t wear off, even though hypnosis is supposed to always be temporary. It’s like putting a new person in their body and this slowly erases the old memories and if you don’t revert them back to normal quick enough, all of them get replaced completely.
Answer:
I’m assuming by ‘higher’ you mean deeper, i.e. a stronger trance state. Highness, or being high is more related to recreational drug use rather than therapeutic hypnosis. And if that is what you mean, yes, it very much does exist. There is a level known as the Esdaile State, and people in this state can have surgery performed on them without the need for drug based anesthesia for example. It’s worth mentioning that, the Esdaile State isn’t generally needed for therapy, just for pain management or specific medical contexts. It is not that much to do with the hypnotists voice though. Hypnosis is a state of mind, not a state of listening. Tonality is a tool we use, but there isn’t one tonality for one state and a different tone or modulation for another. I think perhaps you friend has been watching the Dune moves and is confusing the Bene Gesserit’s “Voice” with hypnosis.
The idea that hypnosis is temporary is also a misunderstanding of the process. Yes, the trance state itself is short lived and transitory, but the effects can be set to be permanent or to end with the trance. If this were not the case, many of the common uses of hypnotherapy would just not work. If you only stop smoking for the duration of that trance rather than permanently, for example, instead of hypnotherapy being one of the best ways to quit smoking, it would be practically useless.
Does altering people’s memories, alter the person? That’s a far trickier question to answer, as every time we revisit a memory (regardless of being in hypnosis or not) we alter that memory. People often think memories are like files on your computer safely stored away and only changed if we deliberately go in and edit them. This is not how the human brain works though, and why eyewitness testimony is a very poor form of evidence. We are, as people, the sum of our memories and how we relate to them. Neuroscience supports this too: each time we recall a memory, we essentially reconstruct it. That makes memory inherently malleable, which is why even outside hypnosis, our personal narratives can shift subtly over time. If the memory, or our relation to it, is changed, yes, we are also changed. Possibly by a lot, possibly by so little it’s impossible to even notice, but we are what our minds are made up of. Having said that, it seems what your friend is telling you is again coming from a misconception rather than genuine understanding. I would suggest you take what your friend tells you about the topic with a very large pinch of Lott’s wife and talk to an expert if you want to learn about the subject. You are welcome to contact me about this if you want.
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