Imponderables Read online

  1. The volunteers should be made to feel that the success of the act weighs on their shoulders. Unlike magicians, who use volunteers as comic foils, the hypnotist makes sure the subjects know how important they are. This places tremendous pressure on subjects, since they tend to be nervous to begin with and have now been told that the hypnotist is dependent upon them.

  2. The alien world of the stage, especially with lights, cameras, microphones, etc., places the subjects in a vulnerable position. And more likely to feel dependent upon the hypnotist.

  3. The audience, unwittingly, acts as a major source of pressure on the subject, and a good hypnotist will intensify this phenomenon. Much of the time while onstage, subjects have their eyes closed. Their only sources of information are the voices of the hypnotist and the studio audience. With their laughs and applause, the audience rewards “good” behavior and punishes, if only with silence, “bad” behavior. Usually, “good” is defined as outlandish behavior, and subjects, who are by no means incapable of sensing audience reaction, want to please the audience as well as the hypnotist (and many hypnotists get laughs from the audience by making sarcastic comments about reticent subjects, making it even harder for subjects not to conform to the wishes of the hypnotist). Of course, exhibitionists love to perform in front of an audience and feel the same performance pressure that professional actors would. Hypnotists love “hams,”since any bizarre behavior they exhibit will be credited to the hypnotist rather than the subject. One ham can nullify the harmful effects of a stage full of duds.

  4. The hypnotist's opening remarks subtly indoctrinate the audience into believing the idea that hypnotizable people are superior types. During the hypnotist's introductory lecture, much stress will be placed on the fact that hypnosis is a learned activity, one that requires some practice and concentration. The hypnotist will usually add that creative, imaginative, and intelligent people make particularly good subjects, and that not everyone can be hypnotized. Even skeptics in the audience will probably be misdirected by this spiel. They would assume that the hypnotist is merely trying to entice recalcitrant volunteers by flattering potential prospects “smart enough to take advantage of this opportunity”—a classic sales technique—or merely attempting to justify what seems like a superficial undertaking. If this part of the lecture increases the number of audience volunteers, it's fine and dandy. But the main purpose of the hypnotist's stress on the wonderfulness of highly susceptible people is to put the ego of everyone who walks onto the stage on the line. If a person fails to “go under” and “perform” it will reflect badly on them—they are “uncreative” and “rigid” compared to the good subjects. The hypnotist's lecture is also designed to stifle skeptics and would-be hecklers, who are planning on volunteering expressly to prove to their buddies that hypnos is all fake. If the hypnotist can convince an otherwise cynical person that he or she is inferior if unable to be hypnotized and thus might be looked down upon by the audience, the hypnotist is put back in control.

  5. The hypnotist makes asides to the subjects while onstage, conversations to which the audience are not privy. O. McGill, whose 1947 Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnotism and subsequent Professional Stage Hypnosis are classics in the field, recommended that the hypnotist misdirect by turning his or her back to the audience, pretending to do some technical work in inducing hypnosis, and then rather aggressively ask the subjects, out of hearing range of the audience, to help him fool the audience. According to McGill,

  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred—if the performer has any ability whatsoever, he can “stage whisper” his instructions to the subject, and receive full cooperation. With his back to the audience, the hypnotist is in a perfect position to whisper instructions and requests to the subject in a low voice.

  This type of blatant tampering with subjects is rare today, and McGill eventually modified his stance slightly. But he remained insistent that a skilled performer could get a subject to act on instructions even if the subject was not actually in a trance. If a hypnotic trick is misfiring, McGill suggests whispering to the subject and asking the subject to follow the instruction even if he or she doesn't “feel it.” If done properly, the audience never knows what is transpiring:

  These intimate asides spoken quietly and personally to the subject are important to your stage handling of the hypnotism entertainment. The audience hears only the major portions of your comments which describe and explain each experiment, but the subject receives full benefit of your confidence which makes him feel responsible to concentrate well and respond successfully to each test. Further, such handling increases the direct influence of your suggestions.

  …This principle of basically conducting two shows at the same time, one for the audience and the other for the subject or subjects is an important factor…in your successful staging of the hypnosis show.

  All of these pressures upon subjects, some of which are self-inflicted, combine to produce the behavior that the hypnotist desires and can even lead to what hypnotists call simulation. When subjects are simulating, they are not in a hypnotic trance but act as if they were. Several scientific experiments have indicated that responsive subjects will do what they think the hypnotist wants them to do, not necessarily what they are feeling or imagining at that particular point in time.

  A friend, let's call him Dave, told us the story of his first brush with hypnosis. The hypnotist, when first inducing hypnosis, told him, “You feel your arm rising from the armrests of the chair.” Dave did not feel his hand rising. He wondered whether the hypnotist's instructions meant that he should try to raise his arm or whether it meant that he would feel his arm move involuntarily. Dave still did not feel his arm rising. Finally, he told the hypnotist he didn't feel his arm rising. “Lift your hand off the armrest, and then you'll feel your arm rising,” instructed the hypnotist. Dave willfully lifted his hand and did feel his arm rising.

  Was Dave hypnotized? The hypnotist said he was. The phobia for which he sought treatment was eliminated through hypnosis. Yet he couldn't perform a simple task like lifting his arm involuntarily. But what if Dave's first hypnotic session had taken place onstage, with hundreds of people in the audience? Would Dave have felt confident enough to say, “I don't feel my arm rising”? Probably not. He most likely would have simulated a hypnotic state, lifted his arm, and succumbed to the pressures of the hypnotist.

  So What's This Hypnosis Stuff All About?

  Hypnosis has been mystified to the point of ridiculousness. Most reputable hypnotists will admit that it is a form of concentration. Many psychologists see hypnosis as a form of unconscious role-playing, with the hypnotist supplying the scenario. Some experts see hypnosis as little else but the expansion of a subject's ego to include the hypnotist's consciousness. Stage hypnotists understand all of these principles and always see to it that subjects are deprived of any extraneous sensory input. The hypnotist wants subjects attuned only to the hypnotist.

  One researcher compared the hypnotist-subject relationship to that of a mother and baby. Just as a baby sees the mother's breast as a part of his or her own body, so subjects see their hypnotic experiences as coming from within themselves rather than through the instructions of the hypnotist. Hypnosis melts the ego, according to Lawrence S. Kubic and Sydney Margolin:

  It is this dissolution of ego boundaries that gives the hypnotist his apparent “power”; because his “commands” do not operate as something reaching the subject from the outside, demanding submissiveness. To the subject they are his own thoughts and goals, a part of himself.

  This view of hypnotist as Machiavellian manipulator, written in 1944, would be disputed by many today. The current thinking is that otherwise healthy individuals cannot be persuaded to do anything against their will while under hypnosis, including acting like a fool in front of an audience.

  But these scary implications of hypnosis are virtually irrelevant to the stage hypnotist, who cares much more about a smash show than whether subjects were in a deep trance.
As Theodore X. Barber, a tireless demystifier of hypnosis, states, “The successful hypnotic entertainer is actually not interested whether or not the subjects are really hypnotized. He is interested in his ability to con his subjects into a pseudo performance that appears as hypnotism—to get laughs and to entertain his audience.”

  For the dirtiest little secret of stage hypnotists is their most potent weapon: It is not necessary to hypnotize subjects in order to get them to act as if they were hypnotized. Barber and various other partners have devoted a great deal of time to experimenting with this subject. Barber, for example, will tell subjects, while fully awake, that a brief period of time will seem like a long time. When later asked to approximate that period of time, those subjects planted with the suggestion reported that the time period was much longer than a control group. Barber was able to induce extremely strong hypnoticlike reactions in fully awake subjects. Eight percent of his subjects would immediately respond to at least seven out of eight maneuvers involving physical reactions (e.g., “You can't stand up—try it,” or “You are very thirsty… dry and thirsty”). Significantly more subjects would respond to one or two commands.

  Kenneth Bowers, in his book Hypnosis for the Seriously Curious, corroborates that many people “under hypnosis” will respond to similar simple commands, particularly the old favorite “your arm is getting heavy.” He claims that 20 percent “can respond satisfactorily to a suggestion that they are unable to smell a bottle of household ammonia.” In a random group, someone will always be responsive to almost all suggestions, no matter how difficult, while others will be unresponsive to all suggestions, regardless how simple. The stage hypnotist, of course, must find those responsive subjects.

  Barber and collaborator William Meeker theorize in their excellent article “Toward an Explanation of Stage Hypnosis” that the very fact that stage hypnotists define their act as hypnotic rather than as mere suggestion increases their chances of success. Barber and Calverley ran an experiment in which they told one group they would be part of a hypnotic experiment and the other that they were being tested for the ability to imagine. After that point, the two groups were treated identically. They were then tested on a scale of suggestibility that Barber had developed. The subjects in the “hypnosis experiment” proved to be “significantly more responsive to the test suggestions than those told they were participating in an imagination experiment.” Why were they more responsive?

  Postexperimental interviews with subjects suggest the following tentative answer: When subjects are told that they are participating in a hypnosis experiment, they typically construe this as implying that (a) they are in an unusual situation in which high response to suggestions and commands is desired and expected, and (b) if they actively resist or try not to carry out those things suggested they will be considered as poor or uncooperative subjects, the hypnotist will be disappointed, and the purpose of the experiment will be negated….

  Since the introduction of one word, hypnosis, into the experimental situation raises subject's responsiveness to suggestions, we can expect a high level of suggestibility in the stage situation which is inevitably defined as hypnosis and which includes a performer who has been widely advertised as a highly effective hypnotist.

  Precisely. There is such a thing as hypnosis. It has been used effectively as an anesthetic for patients allergic to medicinal alternatives. It has helped countless people regain concentration, dissolve phobias, lose weight, and delve into their past.

  But because it is “only” a form of meditation and concentration, the canny stage hypnotist has an advantage over other magicians. Hypnotists have two chances to execute their tricks. If hypnosis fails, then the entertainer's knowledge of human nature, which we have sketched only in bare outline, can be used to induce subjects to act identically to those who are put in a trance. The audience doesn't know the difference. And most of the time, the subject doesn't know the difference either.

  What causes the holes in Swiss cheese?

  The cheese industry prefers to call these openings eyes rather than holes. The eyes are created by expanding gases that are emitted by a bacterium known as the eye former. The eye former is introduced during the early stages of Swiss cheese production. The bacterium forms the holes, helps ripen the cheese, and lends Swiss cheese its distinctive flavor.

  The eyes, then, are not there for cosmetic reasons. Still, some domestic “Swiss” cheesemakers mechanically “add” holes to already formed cheese produced without the eye-former bacterium. This shortcut is what robs some domestic varieties of the mature flavor of genuine Swiss cheese.

  How do they decide which category to put the “Mystery 7” under on The $25,000 Pyramid?

  Randomly.

  How was the order of our alphabet determined? Is there any particular reason

  why A comes before B or that Z is the last letter of the alphabet?

  This is another Imponderable without a tidy answer, and it is necessary to delve into some pretty unpleasant subjects, like ancient history, in order to give it a good crack. We must also admit that this is the condensed, Classics Comics version of this story—we aren't even going to bother examining the note-worthy Etruscans, for example. But in order to explain why our alphabet is in the order it is, we have to explore at least five different cultures.

  The Egyptians

  The Egyptians were writing thousands of years before the birth of Christ. This was the civilization that figured out it might be easier to write on papyrus, with a reed pen, than to carve on stone. Although the Egyptians never created a proper alphabet, their hieroglyphics evolved considerably during the height of their ancient civilization. At one point, they used over 400 different hieroglyphs, but their written language became more and more streamlined as it went through five distinct stages.

  1. Hieroglyphs as pictures of things: A hieroglyph of a horse meant horse. This necessitated a separate hieroglyph for every word and promulgated a written language based on things rather than abstract concepts.

  2. Idea pictures: A picture of a leg not only could mean leg, but also ideas associated with legs, such as run or fast.

  3. Sound pictures: One symbol was now used to describe a sound that existed in words of the spoken language rather than as a graphic depiction of the word signified.

  4. Syllable pictures: One symbol represented a syllable of a word. One hieroglyph was now able to appear in many unrelated words that happened to have one syllable in common.

  5. Letter sounds: One symbol now took the place of one letter in a word. With the use of letter sounds, syllable and sound pictures were rendered obsolete, since letter sounds were so much more flexible, even if they necessitated more hieroglyphs to create a word. At first there were hundreds of letter sounds, but as the Egyptians learned how to combine letter sounds, they eliminated many redundancies. Eventually, they reduced the number of letter sounds to twenty-five.

  An alphabet is a fixed system of written signs, each of which, in theory, stands for one spoken sound. In an efficient alphabet, all the spoken words of a language should be able to be expressed by rearranging these letters. At the point when the Egyptians developed letter sounds, they were close to inventing an alphabet as we know it. Even though their letter sounds gave them the means to write horse by sounding out the phonics of the word rather than illustrating its meaning, the Egyptians clung to the first three types of hieroglyphs, never able to figure out why the best way to express horse wasn't to draw a picture of a horse.

  The Ugarits

  Although the Phoenicians are widely hailed as the inventors of the alphabet, it is now conceded that the first ABC's were in the city of Ugarit, in northwest Syria. A German scholar, Hans Bauer, found tablets that have Ugaritic letters displayed opposite a column of known Babylonian syllabic signs, proving that the Ugarits consciously ordered their alphabet. It is unclear whether this tablet was used as an instructional primer. Although the phonetics of the Ugaritic alphabet were identical to the Phoenician sym
bols, the actual script was different from the later Phoenician alphabet and from the earlier Egyptian and Semitic languages.

  The Phoenicians

  The Phoenician alphabet was probably developed around the same time as the Ugarits', but the Phoenicians were much more important in the history of language, for they spread their alphabet throughout much of the world. The Phoenicians weren't aesthetic types. They were traders and needed an alphabet not for literature or history (they didn't leave behind any books) but for business—to track inventories, to standardize accounting procedures, and other such mercenary tasks. By 1000 B.C., the Phoenicians were carrying their alphabet with them to most of the major ports of the Mediterranean.

  The Phoenicians totally dropped the picture signs of hieroglyphics and kept only the symbols that signified sound. The Phoenician's word aleph meant “ox,” and the letter a was made to look like an ox's head. The ox, the most important farm animal of the time, was the basis for the first letter of most European and Semitic languages, including, later, English.