CSI Hypnosis Episode

I am a big fan of CSI (the original show based in Vegas).  This week's episode featured hypnosis in one of its storylines.  One of the victims in this episode is a bride-to-be who uses hypnosis to lose weight before her wedding.  She also worked at a bank, but lost her job when she gave $10,000 away to someone when making change.  Eventually we learn that the "customer" is the hypnotist, who had implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion with the woman.  The woman jumped off the balcony of her apartment and landed on the roof of a bus driving by.  Something doesn't add up, and the CSIs investigate.

They discover which hypnotist the victim was seeing for her weight loss, and decide to track her down.  The same woman who does hypnotherapy works as a stage hypnotist, and the CSIs drop by her show to interview her.  And, as only stereotyping would have it, they arrive to a stage full of people clucking like chickens.  After the clucking, she hands an onion to one of her volunteers and tells him it's an apple.  He happily takes a bite.  That's a little better than the clucking, I guess.

Now, in fairness to the writers, when the hypnotist is interviewed by the CSIs she dispels some of these very same stereotypes and misperceptions.  She states, "all hypnosis is self-hypnosis" and discusses the different sets of brainwave activity: beta, alpha, theta, and delta.  When asked if she could make people do something they wouldn't normally do, she explains that she can't make anyone do anything that's not already in their nature.

Later in the episode the CSIs discover that there is a second woman who worked at a bank who was hypnotized and manipulated to give money to the hypnotist.  It turns out that this woman also went to that same hypnotist to stop smoking.  They bring in a forensic hypnotist who uses regression to bring the woman back to the day she gave the money away.  She cannot remember giving the thief/hypnotist the money, meaning that the hypnotist/thief gave her a post-hypnotic for amnesia.  In discussing this with the forensic hypnotist the question again arises: Could a post-hypnotic be given that would make someone do something that normally they would find morally objectionable?  The forensic hypnotist explains that with proper manipulation of language and circumstance, perhaps.  So now we're in conflict, right?

Ultimately this turns into a big battle of semantics and philosophy, in my opinion.  I get asked about these issues all the time by folks, and I really have a hard time explaining it to them.  I mean, on the one hand I really do believe, and I explain to people, that you cannot be made to do anything against your will.  But how do you define the parameters of your own will?  Aren't there things that you think about doing, or fantasize about doing, that are inappropriate, and therefore you keep yourself from doing them?  But what if your circumstances changed?  What if there was more "motivation?"  People get manipulated all the time.  It doesn't take hypnotism to do that.  So if a hypnotist is manipulative, do we blame the hypnotist or the hypnosis? 

One simplified argument that I tend to use often is this:  if you're clumsy and you fall down, do you blame gravity for falling?  Of course not.  Yet if people are manipulated they don't want to take responsibility for being gullible; they want to blame something else, and hypnotism is an easy target.

All in all, I think the writers of this episode of CSI did a better job of portraying hypnotism than I thought they would.  I do wish they had been less stereotypical about it, but I did find the overall angle interesting.  I still worry that the end result will be that it will leave viewers with an uneasy feeling about being hypnotized, and that's unfortunate.  There are many wonderful, caring hypnotists out there who want to use the skill of hypnotism to help people improve their lives and their wellness.  Hopefully we can continue to promote our profession in a way that overcomes these fears.