When I was an intern, we had a lecture about methods of smoking cessation. One of the interns was an ex-smoker and tried hypnotism to quit. She started talking about hypnotism and she said that it doesn't work for everybody. The way you determine who it won't work for is something called the "Eye Rolling Test".
I swear to god, I thought the test was going to be that if you rolled your eyes at the idea of hypnosis, you couldn't be hypnotized. Which let me out.
Apparently, the test is that you have the person look skyward and record how much of their iris and cornea are visible. The more of the whites of their eyes you can see, the easier they are to hypnotize. She tried it on me and said that I was a 3, which is the cut-off for someone who might be hypnotizable.
I laughed when I read your second paragraph because the same thought went through my mind!
ReplyDeleteI find hypnosis to be about as legitimate as astrology.
ReplyDeleteMy dad had hypnosis done for inexorable skin peeling on his hands, after nothing else would work. Finally he quit his job, and never had to see his boss (who threatened to beat him up with a baseball bat) again. The skin problem went away for good. Not sure it was the hypnosis that did it though.....
ReplyDeleteI've yet to be convinced by anyone who's been hypnotized that they've actually be changed, as opposed to either just needing attention (those 'party' hypnotists) or those needing some external authority figure to tell them what to do (the 'medical' hypnotists)
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