This has been making its rounds on the Web - An Examination of Obama's Use of Hidden Hypnosis Techniques in His Speeches

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Permalink Reply by Scott Sandland on October 20, 2008 at 7:34pm

In the spirit of balanced reporting, I think most of us would agree that "both sides" have been using language patterns for quite some time now.

I haven't had a chance to read the pdf you provided yet, but I think we can be clear that Obama isn't alone on this one. Speech writers know effective languaging and are great at evoking imagery, fractionating, anchoring, etc. etc.

I'm looking forward to reading this and see what they point out.

Thanks for sharing,
Scott

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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on October 20, 2008 at 7:47pm

Thanks Scott-

Yes, Yes -- "Everybody does it!"

The breakdown and analysis is what I thought would be of interest....

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Permalink Reply by Ken Dubner, C.Ht. on October 20, 2008 at 10:20pm

Interesting read.
Most interesting to me is the evil intent assigned to being an effective and charismatic figure.

I especially loved this part:


" Mr. Obama,
Your attempt to gain the Presidency of the United States by hypnotizing Americans has failed.
You shall not pass! You have been stopped, because you nether deserve the Presidency, nor
does America deserve your fraud and deception. It is quite clear that, after Americans find out
who you really are, including your use of hypnosis, you will never have even a remote chance at the Presidency again. You have been stopped because your deception has been found out. You were a master of influence, able to influence millions. You were impervious to scrutiny that could easily eliminate any other candidate. However, exposing your use of hypnosis is what shatters all of your other deceptions. You have been stopped by one anonymous patriot with a pure heart who is able to see you for who you really are. There are those more powerful than you, Obama,looking out for truth, justice, and the American way. As the words of my favorite song go,“Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?”"

WOW!!

A number of the actual hypnosis and nlp premises are good- the viewing of them through the eyes of paranoia is even better. A little knowledge can be stretched a loooong way off course under those conditions.
And I agree with Scott. Everybody is doing it - whether its conscious or not is a different question.
Any good speaker is a good hypnotist

From an nlp perspective I specifically recall a moment in the first debate where Obama missed the repeated opportunity to spacially anchor McCain whenever he spoke about the failed republican policies of the last 8 years.
He was speaking of Mccain being more of the same, but missed what would be a bush league technique to link the two for any decent nlper. It was so noticeable to me especially because, at this point in history, I expect both these guys to have been prepped on these techniques.

If you'd like to know how well versed the GOP is on the topic of language google Frank Luntz, he helped coin phrases like "the death tax" also on the Democrats side google "Framing the issues" George Lakoff "
Lakoff is a linguist and deals with symbolic meaning amongst other things Luntz is a pollster.
Both these men are brilliant at teaching how to set frames and use language to persuade.
And regardless of your politics you gotta respect that.

Ken

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Permalink Reply by Ken Dubner, C.Ht. on October 20, 2008 at 10:49pm

Both these men are brilliant at teaching how to set frames and use language to persuade.
And regardless of your politics you gotta respect that.


What I meant to add was
"
Both these men are brilliant at teaching how to set frames and use language to persuade.
If you are interested in understanding how the mind assigns unconscious levels of meaning to, and symbolically represents reality through, language - you could learn a lot by studying them.
And regardless of your politics you gotta respect that."

"He's great with the mind...
with computers, not so much."

Ken

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Permalink Reply by James Hammett on October 20, 2008 at 11:38pm

The last debate was during my NLP Practitioner class. A bunch of us were watching the debates and trying to identify the distortions/assumption/presupisitions of BOTH candidates. And yelling things at the screen: Nominalization, Complex Equivelence!, etc. (Fortunately there weren't any other hotel guests around).

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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on October 21, 2008 at 4:40am

Hi Ken,

Some of the best and brightest hypnos in the world are the social marketers who symbolically manipulate the public mind to ignore anything that has to do with self-reliance and self-regulation and consume...


"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."-Edward Bernays, Propaganda

Thanks for your insights!

PS- I was a huge Superman fan --
Question does the catch phrase: "Truth, justice, and the American way" suggest that truth and justice are not the American Way? (Just asking....As we say in my hood -- Please don't hate the player - Hate the game....)

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Permalink Reply by Susan French on October 21, 2008 at 7:15am

Wasn't the exact same thing demonstrated in the way Reagan communicated? Isn't it exactly what all effective communicators do naturally? Is it not what Sarah Palin is doing so very successfully? She certainly isn't doing much with facts or substance.

Just a thought.

Susan

www.hypno4success.com

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Permalink Reply by Susan French on October 21, 2008 at 7:16am

Thank you Scott. That needed to be said.

Susan

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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on October 21, 2008 at 7:28am

Correction-
I wrote:
Some of the best and brightest hypnos in the world are the social marketers who symbolically manipulate the public mind to ignore anything that has to do with self-reliance and self-regulation and consume...

I meant to write:
Some of the best and brightest hypnos in the world are the social marketers who symbolically manipulate the public mind to ignore anything that has to do with self-reliance and self-regulation and promote a simple message"Consume, consume, consume...


"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."-Edward Bernays, Propaganda

Thanks for your insights!

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Permalink Reply by janadra on October 21, 2008 at 7:32am

And another thought. That this has been making the rounds is to me frightening. Of course the techniques used are the same as those used by all effective speakers. I would hope I would be "accused" of being able to successfully use many of these techniques by folks who understand them. But, we, on this forum, are not who this article is aimed at. It is a scare tactic.
And because so many people right now are feeling stressed and fearful, it could be one of the many negative tools that could convince people not to vote for Obama.
It also might heighten the public's fear and distrust of hypnosis.

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Permalink Reply by Ben White on October 21, 2008 at 9:01am

Haha, what a great document! Has anybody read the bible code? In the same way that if you randomly pick letters off a page in a book to create a sentence, I'm sure that if you subjected months of anyone's speaches and discussions to scrutiny specifically looking for "illegal hypnotic suggestions", you would inevitably find examples of these sorts of things.

Besides, commercial organisations have been using these for years! What do we think taglines are?

"I'm lovin' it" McDonalds
"Do More, Feel Better, Live Longer" GlaxoSmithKlein

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