Hypnosis can make you fall in and out of love – behavioral scientist

SS: Okay, so I've spoken to so many neuroscientists in the past, and most of them say there is no such thing as hypnosis. I want to hear from you, you obviously think the opposite. Scientifically speaking, what happens in a person's brain or mind? How does hypnosis work? 

PM: Okay, I would expect neuroscientists to say that because of ignorance. If you ask a neuroscientist and a philosopher what love is, they'll give you completely different descriptions and both may be true. But I would say to a neuroscientist who believes in the null-set hypothesis, stick love under a microscope. You can't. Now you can tell what love is by various changes chemically, electrically within the brain, body, right? You can't put love under a microscope, any more than can put hypnosis. I would say everything's hypnosis, every communication. So if I asked you, ‘Could you pass the salt, please?’, I've made a request for you to modify your behaviour in accordance with my suggestion. So if you want the sort of the overview of what hypnosis is, it's synonymous with deep relaxation. So very often hypnotists ask people to close their eyes and relax and go into a nice place, or in a stage performance to forget that they're a bank clerk and become, you know, a ballerina or something like that for entertainment. And some people believe that hypnosis is a special state of mind. And the other people say there's no such thing. Now you could argue it's impossible to say what the waking state of mind is and to scientifically map that. But I'm prepared to believe there is such a thing and it's useful. And there are other people that say, as neuroscientists do, that really hypnosis is a form of social compliance, that people are just going along with the suggestions because they believe they should, because of maybe the social pressure, or, you know, the power of the personality of the hypnotist, and, indeed, all those may be true. 

SS: What do you think? What is hypnosis? 

PM: Well, okay, well, I'm going to say that none of that matters, because all you have to look at is the results, is the output. So, in scientific studies, is hypnosis the most successful way in the world to lose weight? Or to quit smoking? Or to overcome phobias? Yes. So that's what we need to look at. In answer to what is hypnosis, well, I've just said, you know, some people say it's a special state of mind. Some people say it’s social compliance. Some people say it's the loss of the multiplicity of the foci of attention. So in our normal waking consciousness, we might be focusing on all sorts of different things. When we focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else, and we become entrained to that, that is very often used as a description of hypnosis. So what would similarly be is you're watching television, you forget about the carpet, the curtains, the fact that you’re in a living room, and you plug your experience into the TV: something romantic happens – you feel romantic feelings; something scary happens – you feel scared. You suspend belief in reality, and you literally follow the story if you like that’s on the television. And in a sense, hypnosis is similar. So when I hypnotize somebody, I entrain their attention, I hold their attention, and I guide their attention where it is I need to go to. So for example, if it's to overcome, say, the fear of public speaking I get somebody to remember times, they felt confident speaking to, say, friends, and then we take those feelings, and we map them into speaking to a big audience. And they do that in their imagination before they go do it in the real world. 

SS: Okay, so when you're saying hypnosis is a set of techniques that allows going beyond the boundaries of your usual behaviour – 

PM: That’s right. 

SS: – so when you do whatever it is that you do, that you've just described, you get someone's attention redirect it to the desired point, and they map it onto the mind, what are you appealing to? Is it a person's unconsciousness? Is it? 

PM: Well, yes, that's a good question because it's widely accepted that we think with our conscious mind actively all day long. So that's the voice in our head that says, ‘Oh, I should do this’, or ‘What about that?’ The unconscious mind is the larger mind. It's all of our wisdom, creativity, it keeps your heart beating, your blood going through your brains. And in fact, when I go to say a sentence, I've got an idea in my conscious mind about what it is I want to say, the unconscious mind organises all the words into a flow, so it makes sense. Now, how this can be used is, as a child, we learn how to tie our shoelaces or brush our teeth, or indeed open a door. And the first few times we do it, we have to really think about it, and so we're consciously learning it. But when we've consciously learned it, we store the program like you have programs in a computer in the unconscious mind. So the next day, you don't have to think, you just tie shoelaces or just open a door. 

SS: So that’s unconsciousness already? 

PM: That's right. So what you do is you're taking something conscious, you've made unconscious. So when you first learn to drive a car, you really had to concentrate. Now after many years of driving, you get in a car, and you can go anywhere, you don't have to think, ‘Do I do this?’, you just think where you're going to go. So you've made the process of the driving to some degree unconscious. 

SS: Okay, so it is the unconscious that you're appealing to? 

PM: Yes. So for example, let's look at smoking. People aren’t born wanting a cigarette, they have to learn and cough and splutter a few times. And then what happens is they use the crude chemicals in a cigarette to calm themselves down. So what happens is people go ‘Feel stressed – have cigarette’, ‘Feel stress – have cigarette’. So after a while, it becomes an associational link. A hypnotist goes to the unconscious and says ‘Feel stressed – feel calm without cigarettes’, ‘Feel stress – feel calm without cigarettes’, and creates a new pattern in the unconscious mind. 

SS: Our thinking process, like you said, it's such a complicated thing. This is just like a set of patterns that shaped us and our lives ever since we're kids. Is it really possible just to change this firm set system? 

PM: Yes, it is. Now, like anything, it doesn't always work for everyone every single time. However, hypnosis works for most people most of the time, with most behavioural changes. So for example, up until the age of seven, the experiences that you have, that have a lot of emotional intensity around them, will tend to shape you. As Aristotle said, ‘Give me the boy before he’s seven, and I'll give you the man’. So, for example, this is the reason public speaking is the number one phobia in the Western world. You know, as a child, you stand up in the class, you read out loud, someone points out your mistakes and other people laugh. So it's a training course in how to feel judged and nervous. And so some of the experiences are negative that we have in our childhood, and some are positive, you do something and it gets positively reinforced, ‘Hey, well done! That was really good!’ And so you feel good from that, you do it again and again. 

SS: Well, I tried hypnosis a couple of times, and it's never worked on me. I've heard from many people that I'm too much in control of what I do and I need to let it go. And that's probably why it doesn't work. But I want to ask you, why is it that some people are susceptible to hypnosis and others aren't, even though people are willing to do it? 

PM: I think everyone's... not really ‘susceptible’.... Everyone can be hypnotised or do hypnosis. Because hypnosis is a way as I said earlier, of concentrating on one thing to the exclusion of others. Many years ago, there was a doctor who came to see me, he wanted me to help him with something. And he said, ‘I don't think I can be hypnotised, because I'm too in control of things.’ And I said, ‘So when you're in the operating theatre, what's the operation that requires the most concentration?’ It was some ophthalmic procedure to do on the eye. And I said, ‘So if I was standing next to you and I dropped something on the floor, would it make you jolt?’ ‘Of course not, I'm concentrating on that.’ I said, ‘Could you please do me a favour and recall the last operation you did like this as vividly as possible?’ I saw his eyes go into focus. I saw him focus, the rest of the world disappeared. And he went off into what I would call a trance-like state. So it's not really that people can't be hypnotised. It's that hypnosis doesn't necessarily work for every problem every time. And that's down to several variables, the skill of the operator, to some extent, the willingness of the person to participate, but then also the change that you're asking them to make, how it fits in with their mindset, and also what it is they need from the world. So for example, every dysfunctional behaviour that somebody has will have a positive intent at some level. So say, for example, someone's phobic, they've been bitten by one dog, mistreated by one dentist, stuck in one elevator. Then the mind forms a pattern that says ‘We were in danger here’, and creates excessive fear, the fight-or-flight response, every time they find themselves in the presence of a dog, dentist, or elevator. So it's over surviving. So you want to keep all of their ability to protect themselves and yet, at the same time, not to be unnecessarily scared in future. So when you're prepared to be flexible in the way that you think and respond to the other person, you tend to get greater results. 

SS: Do you need special conditions to hypnotise someone? Like, make them relax, lay down? Do the whole pendulum thing? I mean, is it a precondition to a proper hypnosis? Because I've seen you do that, and people just pass out? 

PM: Okay, so it's a good question. So the preconditions would be someone's focus of attention. By the way, they don't have to like you, they don't have to believe you're going to do it. If you can hold someone's attention, you can guide them where you want to. The everyday hypnotists, in a sense, are evangelists, you know, you don't feel like you're in a trance, because you're wide awake, but you're focusing on the preacher, to the exclusion of everything else, and the force of their personality. Salespeople, cult leaders – these people are in the sense everyday hypnotists. And then, of course, and then, of course, there's people like me, I'm a therapist, and so I use it to help people to overcome problems to have a better life. 

SS: So can anyone pretty much be a hypnotist? And is it just a set of skills? Or do you really need to have some sort of other talents? I mean, I don't know, whatever they need. 

PM: It is a skill set. But like anything in life, some people, they naturally feel an affinity with football, or they naturally feel an affinity with chess, or they naturally feel an affinity with computers. I think you've got to be fascinated by people and have a particular mindset to be very good as a hypnotist. But can anyone be a hypnotist? Yes. I mean, in a sense, parents are great hypnotists, you know. The things that they say to you over and over again in those formative years. You know, they are those who've got the power of hypnotic suggestion, so, in a sense, we're all hypnotists. 

SS: Can you hypnotise yourself? 

PM: Yes. I think again, every people do, don't they? All day long. We are in our own trance, you know, thinking, ‘What should I do for dinner tonight?’ or ‘She looks nice, I can imagine maybe going out with her’ etc. And you run a little movie in your head. That's how we fall in love: we meet somebody, and then we think about how we’re getting on with them. And then we imagine spending time with them. And then, inside our minds, we run a whole fantasy of how well things could go. And in a sense, that’s self-hypnosis. The self-hypnosis I find very interesting is, you know, by Einstein, for example, who would relax and go into a reverie, a daydream. And he'd imagine when he was coming up with a theory of relativity, travelling on a beam of light, flashing a torch over another beam of light. Tesla could design a machine inside his mind, with such precision, he could build the same machine, start the two machines at the same time, and then calibrate to see which bits have worn down. Great creative people throughout history, Einstein, Walt Disney, Churchill, Tesla all refer to those daydream states where they got their creativity from.  To me, that's really no different than self-hypnosis. And indeed, in corporations now, they do a thing called strategic planning, where the executives sit down, and they imagine going off into the future and seeing what product or services they're going to offer, and how their competitors are doing as well. 

SS: So basically, you're saying a state of meditation is hypnosis?

PM: It's in the same family. Meditation tends to be generally about stilling the mind, and about feeling good. Hypnosis is, in some respects, more sophisticated because hypnosis is really all about having an outcome. And that doesn’t necessarily need to be just relaxation, feeling good. It can be accelerated learning, learning a particular skill set in a fraction of the time it would normally take you. It can also be – 

SS: So would you say hypnosis includes visualization, it needs to have that element? 

PM: Yeah, very often it does, yes. So for example, in the same way that athletes trained for an event doing what they call mental rehearsal, which is running every step of the race, or, you know, returning the tennis ball, or, you know, fighting their opponent, they do it in their imagination. So by the time they've actually come to do it in real life, they've trained their muscle memory through their imagination in the same way hypnotists do as well. 

SS: You mentioned that anyone can hypnotise themselves, for example, when we fall in love that sort of a hypnosis, but can you have a patient who comes to you and you make them fall out of love? 

PM: Yes. 

SS: Really? You can really adjust emotions? 

PM: Oh, god. Yeah. In fact, I've written a book all about it. Because when I was younger, I had my heart broken. And heartbreak is really to do with your future being canceled with somebody. So if you've imagined you'll be with them, and it's all beautiful and one day they go, ‘I'm leaving you.’ Suddenly your future is canceled. And they usually go: ‘And tell you why.’ Because they don't want to feel bad for breaking your heart. So they make you the villain. And they'll go, ‘Well, I'm leaving you because you did this, this, this. So they, they tell you they're leaving, you're going into shock, they go, ‘These are the reasons why’, at that moment, you're very suggestible. So you then go, ‘It’s because I'm a bad person, and they are so wonderful, and maybe I should change’ rather than they just didn't want to live with the fact they’ve broken your heart, so they demonise you. How I help people get over heartbreak is I get them to remember times – How I get people over heartbreak is because we have a natural mechanism within us to get over things. And so when we've decided we want to move on in a relationship, romantic or not, it's usually because the other person's done several things that we see as ‘It doesn't work for me anymore. I’m through.’ And so what a hypnotist does is artificially creates those, gets you to go remember the times when you thought I'm really over it, I don't want to do that, I don't want to be with this person anymore.・And you do that again and again and again in your imagination till bang - you cross a threshold. It's like the last straw that breaks the camel's back. 

SS: So is it like past-life regression? 

PM: Well, again, that's a very controversial area, and I remain open-minded about these things. But yes, many people have tried past-life regression. And you know, they found that they were a Roman soldier or, you know, Queen Elizabeth or something. And also, some people found very mundane things, which then has checked out as being historically accurate. Is there any use in past life regression? That's a different question. I find future life progression, much more interesting. So that is either going in this lifetime into what you imagine your future will be and seeing if you like having hindsight ahead of time. Many years ago, I went off to near the end of my life, I looked back and I thought what do I wish I'd done more of? And what do I wish I'd done less of? I thought, I wish I'd love more, been loved more, be less competitive, and worry less, you know. And so I brought that insight back. Some people use future life regression to go into future lives. So you know, if you're a Buddhist, for example, you would believe in multiple lives. And so it's a way of getting a snapshot of your karma. So seeing who you might be in another life or multiple lives, and then bringing that insight back to now. And of course, whether this is real or not, it doesn't matter. Really the question should be ‘Is it useful?’ And my experience is that it is. 

SS: Because probably everything that you can imagine in the past or the future is within you. So if it's within you, it's real, right? 

PM: Yes. And indeed, it may not be within you. Some people would say that perhaps you cross into other dimensions and all this stuff, I don't know. I just keep an open mind about these things. Because I used to be very rigid in my thinking about science. And of course, we know that science is only really any good if it's got a date on it. So light is either particle or wave depending upon the century you're born in. You know, the Earth was flat, once upon a time, then it was round, you know, the universe was, was a particular shape. Whilst it's very good to be able to explain things scientifically, the boundaries of what is and isn't science is changing. 

SS: So if you think that you can take care of emotional stuff, during hypnosis, and you can change people's habits, can you also take care of things like depression, or serious diseases, for instance? 

PM: Well, depression is usually an umbrella name for a whole load of unprocessed emotions. Also, depression is characterised with depletion of serotonin and dopamine, two of the happy neurotransmitters. But as far as I'm concerned, even though there are physiological aspects to it, it's a psychological disorder. And so, for example, when people are depressed, the way that they filter the world is in, to put it very simply, a-glass-half-empty way. They will constantly call upon memories of times when things are bad, and they find it difficult to think about an optimistic future. Now, that's partly neurochemical. But it's also partly the psychological perspective that people bring to things and so, as a modern hypnotist and psychologist, we absolutely can treat depression, and very successfully. 

SS: What about diseases like cancer? I was speaking not long ago to this amazing cancerologist, David Agus. And he says, patients who are positive about getting healthy, have 30% more chance to actually get healthy… 

PM: Yes, there was a fantastic study done a few years ago into people who had terminal cancer, and had recovered, were in remission, I’d say. And you know, some of them have done special diets, some of them have done visualization, some of them have used prayer. But what was interesting was that all of these people believed that what they were doing would work for them. And so it does seem as though in remission from incurable diseases, belief and mindset play an important role. 

SS: So that's what I'm saying. If you're saying that you can change people's mindsets, can you change really sick people's mindsets into thinking positively so they have more chance of getting cured? 

PM: I certainly wouldn't make any claims as to, you know, curing cancer. But can you get somebody in a psychologically and then, potentially, physiologically better place to deal with such a disease? Absolutely. 

SS: There's a neurobiologist, Dick Swaab, and he actually said that you can't really fix your psychological vulnerabilities, there is no such way. I mean, you will just have to live with them. When you do hypnosis, what do you do? Do you feel like you fix those vulnerabilities? 

PM: Okay, firstly, he should stick to his field. He's a neurobiologist. So there's brain chemistry. And indeed, he's right inasmuch as you can't beat a good set of genes. However, as we're finding out, our genetics are not fixed. Even Watson and Crick said that. You look at Lifton's work, for example. So you know, I understand from a rigid mindset, from hard scientists like this, he would think it's all fixed. But we know that through simple psychological processes, we can change our serotonin, dopamine levels, our endorphins, we can change our neurobiology. And so I'm going to actually step in his turf and say, look at the research, please. Can I change somebody's mindset? Of course, that's what I do all day long. You know, that's, that's my job. And, again, you can go look at the scientific research on this. Hypnosis as a behavioural changer and your physiological state changer is amongst the best, you know. And we're not just talking a few studies, we're talking tens of thousands of studies. 

SS: Thank you so much.