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More dramatically you could spend the time imagining that there is in fact some strange and alien insect
in the phone, and that at some time in the future it will suddenly emerge making a noise remarkably like
that of the phone ringing, and will make a beeline for your nose, into which it will try to burrow! You
will naturally want to get rid of it!
Working with sound/sensations. You might spend the time imagining the sound of the phone ringing,
and of an itch on your nose.
After having done whichever of these you choose, go on and do something else, reading or working or
whatever. When the phone rings you will almost certainly recall that it is a cue and you will be able to
sense how strong the impulse is to carry out the action. It migh well be that like Feynman you just feel
uncomfortable if you do NOT follow up on your own suggestion.
If many people try this then we can predict the Standard Finding: that it will usually require that some
time has been spent on the preparation stage, that there will be very many who are forced to act in the
suggested way, or feel a very strong urge to do so, but that there will be considerable personal variations.
You can try out the same thing on various friends to discover for yourself more about these things. Here
you have more control over the cue.
This could be something like a click of the fingers or a repeated tapping of a pen on the table. The
response could be something like clearing the throat, scratching the nose or standing up or saying
something like "I need a drink".
Working with words. Here you would simply try saying, "Later on you will find that when I tap my pen
like this (demonstrate), you will clear your throat. You don't have to believe me or please me, but later on
when I tap my pen like this you will clear your throat." (Repeat this about three times, slowly and
clearly.)
Working with pictures. Here we still have to use some words but they are being used to activate
pictures. You might like to get your friend to close his or her eyes. Then say, "I would like you to picture
this room and us in it. Tell me if you can." (Pause)
Friend. "OK."
You. "Now just picture the situation as it is going to be some time in the future. I am just tapping
repeatedly my pen on the table. You are finding it irritating and you are clearing your throat in an
irritated way. Can you picture all that?"
F. "Yes."
Y. "Can you picture the whole thing again in slow motion?"
F. (After a bit) "Done it."
Y. "Well done. Now can you fast forward it and see it all at twice natural speed?"
F. "Done it."
Y. "OK, that's fine, you can open your eyes again now."
You can also try whatever combinations of such techniques you choose. But in any case wait at least five
minutes until the conversation has drifted quite a way away from that particular association and then try
the experiment of tapping your pen repeatedly. Very occasionally you will find someone who
immediately clears their throat. More common is the reaction of the friend who pays a great deal of
attention to the tapping of the pen, but who says, "I know you want me to clear my throat. But I am not
going to." In that case you keep on tapping your pen, knowing that the seeds of the idea have been sown,
and that, as you have found in Chapter 1, it is mostly now a matter of waiting. Within a few minutes you
can expect the throat to be cleared, sometimes with some such disclaimer as "Well that had nothing to do
with your stupid pen. I was going to clear my throat anyway."
The third class of responses is that the tapping of your pen has NO effect whatsoever: it is as if the friend
simply was not listening in the slightest to what you had said, or as if he was totally asleep.
Finally there is a small class of people who will respond but will be unaware of having done so and will
deny it if challenged. "What? Of course I did not clear my throat. I should know" This is not very likely
to happen when we are making the suggestion in the simple direct ways suggested so far, but it could
happen. I was once trying to get a client to stop smoking. He seemed to respond well to most things in
the session and so I was very disappointed when he reported the next week that there had been no
reduction in his smoking. However I learned later from his wife that in fact he had cut down
dramatically! So although I had had a strong effect it seems that a part of his brain was denying it
steadfastly.
In summary then you can expect our usual Standard Finding: people DO respond to such suggestions,
that it will generally take some time for them to do so and there will be a considerable range of
responses, with some failing to do so at all.
Once you have spent some time trying out things like this on a variety of friends and discover the extent
to which their responses vary as you keep your approach the same you might like to start to explore the
effect of changing your approach.
The idea I am going to ask you to work with is a simple one:
The more of their attention you have the greater the effect.
I am going to motivate this by observing that the true name for what you or your friend are doing is
learning. The process of creating a cause and effect association between two patterns of activation of the
brain is called learning. When a child links a picture of an apple with the word "apple" she is learning: a
certain pattern of activity in the visual cortex associated with an image of an apple leads to the activation
of another pattern of activity in the verbal cortex which is connected with the sound "apple"; this may in
turn activate a pattern of activity in yet another part of the cortex which regulates the production of
sounds and she may say "apple".
When a dog is being trained to respond to a whistle we have a similar situation: a cause and effect
relationship is being established between the activation of a particular pattern of activity in the auditory
system (which recognises a whistle) and another in the motor system (which responds to it). We call this
learning.
When you learn that the moon is a quarter of a million miles from the earth then you are linking a certain
pattern of activity in the mind which corresponds to "quarter of a million miles" and another which
corresponds to "the distance of the moon from the earth". Normally the activation of the second pattern
will subsequently readily activate the first, but the reverse is not true.
In short, if you think about it, you should find that an enormous part of learning consists of creating just
such links. (Can you think of some aspect of learning that is not simply forging such links?)
The result of this line of thought is that the implanting of a posthypnotic suggestion or of a
"non-hypnotic" suggestion which also links some cue to some response are simply matters of learning. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]