Hidden Depths
Robin Waterfied
Macmillan £20, pp475
Hidden Depths is a highly readable, wide-ranging and informative account of a fascinating topic - 'hypnosis in fact and fiction' - but I wouldn't call it mesmerising.
Even after 400 pages, I still don't know exactly what hypnosis is. But it's also not clear that Robin Waterfield is to blame, as apparently no one else knows either. He does offer a working definition: hypnosis is the deliberate inducement or facilitation by one person of a state of trance in another, or a number of people. A trance state is (briefly) one in which a person's usual means of orienting him or herself in reality have faded, so that the boundaries between the external world and the inner world begin to dissolve.
The trance state only superficially resembles sleep, but it does seem to involve a partial suspension of the conscious mind and an arousal of the unconscious. It is characterised by 'absorption' - a narrowed mental focus; by 'dissociation' - the sense of watching oneself perform, or focusing on actions or perceptions that are normally unconscious; and by heightened suggestibility. Suggestibility seems the key, but Waterfield continually reiterates that hypnosis is consensual: 'You cannot hypnotise someone if they have not at some level agreed to be hypnotised.'
He also insists that hypnotised subjects cannot be forced to act entirely against their will, but rather that inhibitions have been lowered and compliance heightened. Many of the feelings and states Waterfield ascribes to hypnosis can also be produced by alcohol or drugs (or psychosis, for that matter), but the remarkable thing about hypnosis is that it happens through acquiescence. In that sense, it seems a highly sociable reaction: hypnosis as hyper-amenability.
Hidden Depths has several clearly articulated goals, among them simply persuading the reader that hypnosis is a genuine phenomenon. Waterfield exhaustively traces its history in the West. He rejects ancient Egyptian artists, the Cumaean Sybil and Jesus before moving on to a lively account of the father of hypnosis, arrogant, cantankerous, fanatical Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815).
We are indebted to Mesmer not only for the idea of mesmerism per se, but also for the phrase 'animal magnetism' which denoted not sex appeal but rather Mesmer's theory that hypnosis occurred because he was literally magnetising - with a magnet - the bodily fluids of his patients. (He also thought you could magnetise - ie mesmerise - trees, though presumably this would be difficult to confirm.)
Between Mesmer, modern medicine and psychiatry, hypnosis came in and out of fashion. Waterfield blames Freud, who dismissed hypnosis as useless, for its current marginalisation (he accuses Freud of simply not being very good at it). Besides providing a whistle-stop tour of altered states (multiple personality disorder, recovered memories, channelling, brainwashing, gurus and shamans, tyrants and demagogues, and even subliminal advertising), the latter portions of the book are dedicated to Waterfield's foremost goals: rescuing hypnosis from its strong cultural association with either malevolent influence or vaudevillian chicanery, and reclaiming its medical and psychological utility.
Our most familiar version of hypnosis is almost certainly still from George Du Maurier's Trilby (1894) which gave the world the evil Svengali, who hypnotises young, beautiful Trilby into becoming his slave. His malignant control of Trilby is so total that she can't survive his death, and tragically expires when he does. It's a silly book, but there is no denying its influence upon subsequent representations of hypnosis, including the catchphrase 'You are getting sleepy...'
Waterfield tells some incredible stories about the anaesthetic power of hypnosis, including that of Scottish surgeon James Esdaile, who discovered in the mid-nineteenth century that hypnotised patients felt no pain, even when he removed severely enlarged testicular tumours, one of which weighed a whopping 103lb. Likewise, women who self-hypnotise before going into labour report feeling only mild tightening in the abdomen.
Waterfield also describes countless examples of hypnosis actually healing both chronic and acute illnesses, including cancer. He even claims (hearteningly) that some women have enlarged their breast size by 1½ inches through hypnosis.
In his enthusiasm for the beneficial potential of hypnosis, however, Waterfield seriously underplays its risks. Although he urges caution with stage hypnosis, for example, he also defends it as 'a good living' and 'a lot of fun' - but if it's as powerful as he claims, this seems remarkably flippant.
Waterfield takes a fairly jaunty view of human nature in general, repeatedly insisting that hypnosis is safe because no one can be forced to act against his or her moral code. That's all well and good, but he never addresses what happens if one encounters a subject whose moral code is, shall we say, flexible. There are many people I would strongly encourage to maintain what little inhibition they have.
In persuading me of the power of hypnosis, Waterfield has also convinced me of its hazards: the unconscious is, by definition, composed of all that we choose not to face, and we may have good reasons for doing so. Terra incognita can be dangerous ground.
