Hypnotizable

Watching an Experiment

October 2011

Seven years earlier

It was a weird party. There were people of all different ages, and hardly anyone we knew. I'd come with my friends Yvette and Olivia. It was Olivia's brother Gabriel who'd driven us here, but he'd already disappeared from view. He must have been pretty quick finding someone to hit on.

The three of us didn't drink. Sometimes we called ourselves the Sober Partiers, like we belonged to an exclusive club. We'd had a lot of fun the last two years. But right now it was awkward to be surrounded by a bunch of total strangers, some of them twice our age. Fortunately, only a few people were getting drunk and so far none of the guys were being creeps. We managed to make some small talk.

After we'd said "nice talking to you" to a married couple who must have been at least fifty, a guy drifted closer to us who looked like he was thirty or thirty-five. He was on the tall and thin side, with curly hair and a short beard--not my usual type. But there was something about him that caught my eye.

"College students?" He asked the question like the answer was obvious.

I nodded. "I'm Cynthia. This is Olivia and this is Yvette."

"In case you're wondering," said Olivia, "we're juniors. I'm marketing, Yvette is psychology, and Cynthia there is history."

"How about you?" said Yvette. "What do you do?"

"Dr. David Lawson. I'm a hypnotherapist."

As soon as he said the word, my heart skipped a beat. I'd always had, well, sort of a thing about hypnosis. Whenever I saw it in a movie or on TV, or even when I read about it, the tingly feelings were hard to ignore. But I'd never been sure how real it was. YouTube hadn't started its conquest of the world back then, so you couldn't pull up hypnosis videos whenever you wanted, much less get reliable information out of them.

"A hypnotherapist?" said Yvette. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. I work with all sorts of issues--smoking cessation, chronic pain, anxiety, phobias, helping people remember things."

There was definitely something hypnotic about him, something in the way he carried himself, and something in his eyes. It was like there was more to him than you could figure out, and you couldn't help but look closer to see what it might be.

"Could you hypnotize us right now, if you wanted to?" Olivia was being a little flirtatious, but she sounded at least partly serious. My own heart was pounding, and I wasn't sure how seriously I wanted to hear the subject get talked about.

"Well," he said, "I don't normally hypnotize people in social settings. For several reasons."

"Is there a rule against it?" said Yvette.

"Well, no, there's no specific ethical rule. It's just that..."

"Then how about just a little bit?" said Olivia. "Enough so we can see what it's like."

"Hey," said Yvette, "you volunteer if you want. Don't volunteer Cynthia and me."

Hearing her say that was a relief. Why did just hearing people talk about being hypnotized have such an effect on me? My skin felt warm and flushed, my body was getting weak and shaky, and if anyone had paid attention they'd surely have noticed I was breathing harder.

Losing control, that's what it was about. It was incredible you could lose control that deeply, in a way far beyond what chains or handcuffs could ever do to you. However heavy the chains, however tight the handcuffs, you could always struggle against them. But getting hypnotized meant losing any ability to struggle, losing any desire to struggle. All without so much as being touched.