Formulas? Numbers? Stage hypnosis?

I find Michael Yapko's book very interesting in some respects, but I quite disagree with him on others.

For one thing, he considers a bad procedure using formulas for obtaining hypnosis (as if they avoided real communication or rapport with the client). Hypnosis is subjective, and therefor, ritualized inductions should not be used, he states.

There's no denying that, because of many circumstances, we are all individuals, different from each other in our minds. But we also are humans. And as many differences may be between us, we also have a lot in common (i.e. the capability to accept suggestions, if we are properly conditioned for it: we do this through life all the time).

So, why should using formulas be bad? Why thinking "what worked for one person might work for another one" is not adequate? For instance, the Elman induction works (meaning that the level of response it obtains is good) with most of the subjects I use it with, everytime there is no fear present.

What's more, I think it's obvious that the induction is not really important by itself: it's success is usually more dependent on what came before ("Pre-Talk", rapport, trust). So, why shouldn't be used existant ones? Is there an obligation to use a different one each time? For many months I've been using only the Elman induction (I recently changed, only because I felt like it), and the success for obtaining hypnotic phenomena was for me very high.

He also states that it is authoritarian and disrespectful with a person giving him/her suggestions whose effect develops as the operator counts or snaps his fingers. Why? Is there anything offensive in numbers or in snapping fingers? I would say these are all simply ways of communicating. I've been hypnotized and I've never felt offended or treated in a bad way because the operator counted. Instead, it was a good way to increase the effect of a suggestion little by little: numbers made it easier for me to imagine it growing, because they are present in my everyday life (as in everyone's). In addition, when I agree with someone for him/her to hypnotize me, I follow their orders because I want to: they do not oblige me when they tell me what to do. It is a collaboration, and they seek for feedback constantly (as I do, when I'm the operator).

I also don't understand his judgement on stage hypnotists: Yapko describes a malicious proccess in which the entertainer takes advantage on people's weaknesses. I started doing stage hypnosis, in private instead of in front of an audience and the response I obtained was very similar to the one obtained by the stage hypnotist I learned from. So, all the social pressures described by Yapko were absent in my experiments yet the result did not change significantly: I obtained the same success rate in the same kind of "games".

Also, even if from my actual perspective I am not very interested on stage hypnosis, I don't recognize in the stage show I learned from initially, many actions he associated with the hypnotist. For instance, Yapko says that people who are not hypnotized in the show might be hurt in their self-steem. I've never seen that as the case. Generally they are clearly indifferent to it and happy to laugh with the show, watching the people who did go into trance. There always are people in the show who, like them, does not go into hypnosis.

What I actually have seen is the opposite effect: sometimes they feel hypnosis didn't work with them because their mind is very strong. And, also in my experience, they simply don't worry about it people asume that they are in an entertainment activity, so they do not usually take it seriously or relate it to they everyday life. As the show ends, their interest in hypnosis dissolves. Mine did not, but I am not the typical spectator in that: I started to investigate about hypnosis because I felt it was fascinating. I went to the show many times and, although the hypnotist was never successful with me, I enjoyed it more and more each time, simply out of curiosity.

Today, I don't go to hypnosis shows and I don't usually perform the act I learned in front of friends as I used to. But I find it hard to morally disapprove stage hypnotists. If we respond hypnotically in many ways through our lives, why shouldn't our own nature be used for fun? Should everything we do be serious? Isn't it healthier to make fun of ourselves? We are all suggestible.

And, about the fear the shows might generate in the people about hypnosis, I have found many cases, but, generally, I was able to change their view on the subject explaining about what suggestions are, how they work and giving some everydaylife examples. When you explain that to people and what you say is undestandable to them, the fear (providing they trust you) disappears most of the times (always, in my experience).

And not all stage hypnotists generate fear about hypnosis. They do not all pretend to control the mind of the subjects. I remember one which started by explaining "Nobody will do anything against his/her will. We are going to expose some suggestion effects".

Yapko's book sometimes makes a great effort to be openminded and not giving anything for granted, exploring different theories on a particular subject. And yet, at other times his writing is frustratingly dogmatic, as if answering to some kind of phobia.

(Pardon my English, it is not my mother tongue). Thank you for reading and best wishes to everyone.