I guess the last person you want to meet in your life is Darren Brown.
He can shake your hand and make you fall to the ground and sleep like a dead pig.
He can spend a minute making you forget your name completely, and send kindness for another minute to remind you of it.
He can tell you that "the water is hot" and make you feel comfortable lying in the ice water until you freeze to death.
He can also talk to you and steal the shoes you wear on your feet...
He has no special abilities, no magic, he is just a top hypnotic master.
What exactly is hypnosis? What kind of shocking hypnosis cases are there? How does this work?
When it comes to all about hypnosis, no one is more qualified to tell you than Darren Brown.
Hypnotic assassination: turn ordinary people into killing machines
In June 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by a 24-year-old Palestinian refugee, Sohan. Curiously, Sohan insisted that he had been hypnotized when a woman in a polka-dot skirt tapped him on the shoulder, and then he pulled out a gun and hit the bullseye, Kennedy, and afterwards he didn't remember killing anyone.
Does hypnosis really allow a person to carry out a killing order? To test this, Darren Brown did an amazing experiment.
Darren picks "Assassins" through testing
Through a carefully arranged hypnotic sensitivity test, Darren selected the most sensitive "assassin" from nearly a hundred viewers, Chris. Chris is a marketing manager, and his relatives and friends say he is kind and kind, and even a fly does not want to hurt. Of course, he had no idea what the show was really for. To train him into a killing machine, Darren divides the hypnotic process into two phases:
1. Sharpshooter mode
This step was to give Chris an extraordinary amount of concentration. Chris was taken to the shooting range and, like most newbies, his first shot was a poor shot, completely out of the bullseye.
Chris at the shooting range
Darren then hypnotizes Chris. The hypnotic "key" is a phone ringtone, darren tells him that as soon as he hears this ringtone, he will become a "sharpshooter", which requires him to concentrate highly, and when he feels that his attention has been concentrated, he will touch his forehead with his index finger.
This gesture indicates that Chris is in "sharpshooter mode"
When Darren released the ringtone, Chris did touch his forehead with his index finger, and then performed a second target shot, and two bullets hit the bullseye, which was a very amazing achievement for novices.
In order to verify whether the "sharpshooter mode" is really effective, the third time Darren replaced Chris's gun with another one, this time the results are even more incredible, almost all hit the bullseye!
There is no doubt that Chris, who has never hit a target, under hypnosis, will become a sharpshooter as long as he hears this bell. Next, let's move on to the second step:
2. Spontaneous amnesia
This step is to make Chris forget what he did in the hypnotic state. Chris is brought to a screen, and the hypnotic "key" Darren uses this time is a pattern of white dots on a blue background, and as soon as he sees this pattern, Chris will enter a trance state of amnesia, completely unable to remember what he has done.
In order to test whether it works, Darren and Chris chatted, quietly switched the screen to a white dot pattern on a blue background, and then asked him the bank card password, Chris immediately said 4 numbers, Darren switched the screen to other patterns, and at this time, Chris had no memory of the password he had just said.
By this point, the hypnotic assassination training had been completed. The assassination mission that Chris is about to carry out is to shoot Steven Fry, a public figure who is speaking. Still in the dark, Chris took a box containing a real gun and handed it to Darren after learning of the speech.
Chris sat in the theater listening to Steven speak. After a while, a late lady sat down in front of Chris, her skirt in the color of white dots on a blue background, and then her phone rang, which was also the same ringtone. After triggering two hypnotic "keys," the lady turned around and whispered to Chris, "The target is Steven Frye." ”
Chris did take out the gun in the box and fired three shots at Steven. Stephen fell to the ground, his coat covered in blood. Having done all this, Chris sat dumbfounded in his seat with a gun in his hand, still in a hypnotic trance.
At this time, Darren stepped up to the stage, calmed the surprised audience, explained all this, and waited until Stephen changed into a clean coat, Darren counted down 3 countdowns, waking up the trance-like Chris, and Stephen's speech went on as usual.
Afterwards, Darren asked Chris if anything had happened while watching the speech, and Chris replied that everything was fine and the speech was wonderful. It wasn't until Chris saw the video of himself shooting Steven, prompted by Darren, that he finally remembered what he had done.
Surprised, confused, even frightened, we were in the same mood at this moment as Chris. There is no doubt that Darren Brown succeeded, using hypnosis to train an ordinary man into an assassin who performed his mission perfectly.
What kind of magic did Darren rely on to do this?
Second, the essence of hypnosis: psychological suggestion and obedience
Seeing the words "psychological cues," I think you might be disappointed. Yes, hypnosis does not rely on fancy concepts, nor on mysterious metaphysics, it is "psychological cues". In fact, Darren Brown came up with a book called "Not Mind Reading, Not Psychology, Not Magic", just to unravel the mystery of hypnosis.
In the book, Darren argues that hypnosis is only possible if psychological cues work, that is, the more sensitive a person is to psychological cues, the easier it is to be hypnotized.
On Darren's show, every time he invited viewers on stage to participate in a hypnotic experiment, he would first perform a hypnotic sensitivity test. As mentioned above in the "hypnotic assassination", in order to select the most suitable "assassin", Darren conducted four rounds of selection among the invited audience, the hypnotic content was to forget the name, stick to the chair, splash with sulfuric acid and soak in ice water (the person concerned was strictly monitored by safety, there was no danger), and finally found Chris, hypnotized and perfectly executed the assassination.
For example, in Darren's live show "Night of Miracles", the way he selects the hypnotist is to let the audience hold a rope with an iron ring, and he constantly suggests to the audience that your hand will stay still and the iron circle will start to swing. Some of the audience's hoops really started swinging left and right, while others didn't. Obviously, the more swinging the audience, the more susceptible they are to psychological cues.
On the other hand, the sensitivity of the hypnotized person is also influenced by the style of the hypnotist.
At present, hypnotic guidance is divided into two forms, one is authoritative (patrilineal), representing the imperative style of the squawd, and the other is the permission (matriarchal), which represents the gentle non-imperative style.
Obviously, Darren Brown is an authoritative hypnotist, who speaks a lot of voraciously throughout the show, speaking extremely quickly, with an unquestionable authority in his tone. For example, in one show, Darren sorted the audience according to hypnotic sensitivity, and this order was crucial to the success of the show, so Darren said unceremoniously: "The person who changes the position without permission dies!" ”
Whether obedience and psychological cues are positively correlated was demonstrated as early as the 1961 Milgram Experiment. Interestingly, Darren recreated the experiment in its entirety on the show to test the subjects' hypnotic sensitivity.
In a show about "robbery," Darren selects four people from a group of white-collar workers and hypnotizes them to grab a cash truck. The method of selection was precisely the "Milgram Experiment", which was designed to test how resistant the human conscience was under the command of the authorities, and the content of the experiment was as follows:
The subject is the "teacher", the next room is his "student", he will ask the student questions through the microphone, if the answer is wrong, the teacher will press the switch to punish the student with an electric shock. As the number of incorrect answers increases, so does the intensity with which students are subjected to electric shocks, and in the worst cases, even life-threatening situations.
Milgram experiment
Of course, the students were disguised by the staff, and no one was actually shocked. But the teacher will be truly tested by his conscience through the screams and pleas for forgiveness coming from the microphone, so as to decide whether to continue to ask questions and shock the students.
This feeling was so uncomfortable that many people had to terminate the experiment and choose to disobey the authority's orders in order not to get the "student" electrocuted. So Darren selected four people from this group of white-collar workers to carry out the test to the end, and they asked the last question despite the pleas of the "students". Apparently, these four people have the highest degree of obedience to authority.
The hypnosis that went smoothly later also benefited from this, and three of the four extremely obedient people went to rob the cash truck after receiving the hint. Although one failed, it is still quite amazing in terms of the nature of this matter.
Is hypnosis safe and harmless?
In his very long-named book, Darren, in addition to describing the steps and principles of hypnosis, also emphasizes some hypnotic precautions, one of which is as follows:
"Before the show is over, make sure the hypnotic subjects are clear that they have come out of the hypnotic state."
Of course, Darren is also implemented in this way, in many programs, you can see him de-hypnotic state of participants, that is, to eliminate the "key" that can trigger hypnosis, and later see or hear, will not automatically enter the hypnotic trance state.
The Chris who carried out the "assassination" we mentioned above is no exception. The hypnosis lifted, and he opened his eyes, never reacting again to the blue-background dot pattern and the ringing of the bell, as if everything had returned to its original state.
Is this really the case? I doubt it.
Even if the hypnotic state can be lifted, the bottom line of human nature explored in the hypnotic state has changed. Chris went from being an ordinary marketing manager to a marketing manager who was "able to kill after hypnosis." The killer is cool in the movie, but not in reality. Just knowing exactly that "you can kill people" is terrible.
As Nietzsche said, when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes at you.