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Why does the unconscious mind NOT process a negative?
Can some one explain to me exactly why the unconscious mind does not process a negative?
It seems if it doesnt process a negative, then we wouldnt have negatives...maybe?....I'm kind of
confused on this and was asked in a group session. I was baffeled and had no real answer to give.
Thank You, Carol
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Reg Blackwood - The Quicknotist on -
Good question Carol.
I've never really understood this one either.
However most of the examples given here describe "the reverse effect."
As Hypnotists we can often use this to our advantage.
Consider the statement "Fight against the feeling of your eyelids getting heavier"
Reg
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Permalink Reply by John Cleesattel on -
Highly suggestibles? What makes them highly suggestible is simply their willingness to accept suggestion without question of trust (the watchdog is satisfied).
Tell the subject that if the hypnotist tells them to forget the number 6 they will be robbed or raped, (the watchdog is on alert) see how well it goes then.
Permission isn't simply asking for yes or no, it is often implied (it is okay if you hypnotize me..implies they will trust you enough not to feel threatened). It is all about the presence or possibility of perceived threats. We will automatically react to input..as long as there is no reason not to. If there is a reason, it removes the permission.
Those that don't understand what trance really is often claim trance effects without understanding why they happened.
I hope that is understandable the way that I said it.
John
Michael Ellner said:If this permission is not given, the effect doesn't work.
How do you know John?
I ask because according the the research cited below tthe effect worked perfectly with highly suggestibles and
even more amazing the suggestion not to notice the Stroop Effect worked with and without induced trance --
Stroop Effect: Suggestion Reduces the Stroop Effect Raz, Amir1; Kirsch, Irving2; Pollard, Jessica3; Nitkin-Kaner, et al,
John Cleesattel said:Depending on just what you consider the "unconscious" mind to be, I think may hold the answer to your question.
The Judgmental mind (decision/judgment center) is the gateway to the reactive mind (the cause and effect mind). The judgmental mind is what either allows or disallows outside input to be reacted to (which is why it is also referred to as the watchdog). A negative input would be to not remember the number 6, (which is done all the time on stage shows) The suggestion causes the judgmental mind to block the outside input that would cause automatic reaction, and block access to memory as to the existence of the number itself.
A strong indicator that the judgmental mind does this, is that permission is required for it to work. If not specifically, then generically for the session or stage show. If this permission is not given, the effect doesn't work.
The reactive mind has no intellect, it just automatically reacts to the input it is allowed to receive.
I hope this helps your understanding
John
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Permalink Reply by Brian Sheppard on -
1. To process the linguistic meaning of "not [something]" or "don't [something]" we have to process the meaning of "[something]". We usually first do this automatically and unconsciously (though we may later consciously think about it).
2. Experiments have shown that when we experience a word or a sensation, we tend to automatically recognize or respond to related words and sensations more quickly the more strongly we associate them with it [the basis of the Stroop effect---when we see the color red the word "red" gets activated, so if we see the word "blue" written in red ink, it interferes with our recognition that the word actually says "blue" not red], and the brain areas associated with those words and sensations tend to temporarily become more active.
However, the command "don't pay attention to [some category of things]" also inhibits our usual tendency to automatically react to [any example of that category]. So the Stroop effect is _reduced_, but not "eliminated".
3. When we're following the command "don't [some behavior]" we're still doing some sort of behavior.
Inhibition-excitation, approach-avoidance, and incorporation-rejection are fundamental unconscious behaviors of all living things when considered as information processing systems. These are "unconscious judgments" which occur even in plants and bacteria (a plant growing towards the nearest light-source, bacteria approaching certain targets while avoiding others, "swallowing" certain chemicals while "spitting out" others).
In the "negation and the Stroop effect" example, they obviously still have to be optically exposed to the color of the word because they have to look at the word to read it. But when told not to be influenced by the word's physical color, they can inhibit the brain-pathways associated with going from [color sensation] to or from [word for color] and so reduce the Stroop effect.
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Permalink Reply by Neil on -
Here beginneth, and here endeth the lesson!
Let those who have ears, hear; and let those who have eyes, see:
One of the biggest problems in hypnosis, today, is the distance from source to result.
Your question arises originally from "one" who "taught" "somebody" something!
Origin always comes from the source, and the source will always remain.
A trickle of water may become a stream, and a stream may become a torrent, but it remains as water.
Only the perception has has become a word, an anchor, a tool to perform a function in the mind.
Even though there are many who profess the workings of negation, they ALL take their knowledge from the source, the origin. There may be those who are Mormons, Pentecostals or Buddhists; but they all come from the same source: a desire to to achieve a particular function, the installation of a religion.
Go back before your mind, to the place of fantasy and disbelief.
To the place before you didn't know you didn't know what you do not know now.
Before you even know that one day you would be asking the question.
A time is coming. An event!
A situation of change:
Your mind is to explore a realm of fantastical ideas, One of hope and courage. A place where all who enter can partake of the fruits of knowledge. Just so long as you are open minded enough to consider suspend your beliefs, for just a moment.
A place and time where you were learning, for the first time, about the world of hypnosis and powerful change.
Were you wise?
Did you search for your true desire.
Did you fumble, around, in your mind.
For, if you knew the answer before you asked, you would not have uttered.
Or were you foolish?
Did you childishly request the fruits from those who were ripe?
Did you ensure the opening blossom was that of you desire?
Or did you grasp in blinded desperation?
Blinded by the voice of certainty!
Were you so eager, that you refused to accept the truth?
Or was the truth designed by the forming of words from those who were certain?
Did they expound the words and teachings of he who was unaware?
The originator!
Do you think He was the TRICKLE?
Or was he water?
Your thirst for knowledge was satisfied, but was it with alcohol; did you drink from the sea?
The originator sourced the knowledge.
That knowledge was the skill to teach by words alone.
To change a perception through the installation of an ideas!
He drew upon his skill and knowledge, and formed it into a box.
Placing it all within for those who seek earnestly the jewel within.
Creating a place of learning and wisdom within which we all could immerse our soul for the gratification of the thirst.
We could drink to our hearts content.
But, we had to be within, surrounded by the fluidic gift.
Inside the treasure trove of wisdom!
The originator, pleased to have founded the box of enlightenment.
Smiling at his accomplishment!
He has succeeded in placing you all within.
You got that for which you asked!
But be careful for what you ask; you may get it!
There are those who desire to to be surrounded, immersed in the words of the wise.
So close that utterances absorb within them.
Fearful it would be to lose such a prise.
So how to stay within?
The box is comfortable.
Created by the wise one.
But what was his wisdom?
What knowledge and skill did He employ?
You can not tell me he was a hypnotist with the skill of wizard's words.
Nor that He was so great that He could trap a person in happiness just for the sake of fulfilling their wish.
Nor are you able to inform that he had the skill to fulfil your desire to never leave the box.
It would have never been possible for Him to start a perfectly innocent conversation into an induction for trance.
It was impossible that he could confuse you without your knowledge, and use that confusion as a technique to install instructions whilst you are "DISTRACTED"!
Internal LOOPS are but a figment of the imagination!
Don't tell me that stepping outside of the box allows you to see the box for what it is; just a creation.
Neither suggest, the original hypnotic educator, was was a hypnotist!
Surely, asking a question could never be so powerful that its ability to use as a distraction technique for the purposes of clandestine hypnotic installation could be perpetuated beyond the trance!
Could it?
Oh!
My question:
"DID YOU WANT TO BE A HYPNOTIST, OR IN HIS BOX?
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Permalink Reply by Antoine Pruyssers on -
it's not as much not processing the negatives, but the mind can not not think of what it should not be thinking off.
Let me explain: When I have a headache, it will not benefit me, to think"Dont think off the PAIN!", or:"Let the PAIN go away!", because it will focus more thoughts on the issue you want gone.
This however does not mean a negative is not responded to, or even crucial for a certain effect, but id does underline the thing you do NOT want.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Kramer on
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What is of interest to me is how people respond to what I say when I use words like "no," "not."
I want to know how this will effect the listener's subsequent thoughts and behavior.
Unfortunately, in the study of the human mind, we tend not to find universally applicable rules. When I read words like "always" or "never," I am very skeptical. It's usually the case that some people act on negations and others do not.
With that said, we must specify the domains we are discussing.
Daniel Wegner (White Bears And Other Unwanted Thoughts did the following experiment using a fictitious name:
Group 1 read a headline "Bob Talbert Arrives in City."
Group 2: "Bob Talbert Linked to Mafia."
Group 3: "Is Bob Talbert Linked to Mafia?"
Group 4: "Bob Talbert Not Linked to Mafia."
Subjects were then asked what the thought about the fictitious Bob Talbert. Group 2, had the most negative feelings towards Bob. Group 3 was also very negative towards him, though slightly less so than Group 2. Group 4, where the negation "not" was used, was between Group 3 (question), and Group 1, (neutral).
In this case, denial that Bob was bad, led people to believe that Bob was bad. But the psychological impact was quite different from its logical meaning. That is, logically, "not linked to Mafia" is a good thing, but psychological "not linked to Mafia" was a bad thing. It was just less bad than "linked to Mafia."
Wegner believes that the negation dropped out to the extent that it did because the subjects knew absolutely nothing about Bob Talbert. This effect is not very robust, and might not exist at all, if we use it in situations where people have a lot of background, contextual information about the subject we are discussing. If someone tells me "Michael, you do not wear contact lenses," I do not have the belief that I do wear contact lenses. I have a lot of background information about myself, and I know that I do not wear contact lenses. And you can tell me till you're blue in the face that I do not wear contact lenses, and that will not induce in me the belief that I do.
Another area where psychology and logic diverge, with regard to negation, according to Wegner, is when we use multiple negations in a single sentence. "It is not the case that geese don't avoid flying towards objects that are not painted in nonblack colors." We lose track of the multiple negations, so these are clearly effective if our desire is to confuse.
To change the subject, Wegner's experiment about Bob Talbert is of obvious interest to us because it provides some real data on the comparative effects of both negation and interrogatives (which he calls "innuendos"). In the context of his experiment, he got a significantly greater effect from the latter than from the former. Of course, the trick is to get our subjects to accept the proposition that we put inside the question, even though the things we put in there tend to be things that our subjects know a lot about. One way to do that would be to lessen the subjects belief in her conscious will. But that is the topic of a different book by Wegner.
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Permalink Reply by Roy Hunter on
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Many people have debated over the years whether the subconscious processes a negative.
The late Charles Tebbetts believed in the LAW OF REVERSED EFFECT. Stated simply, what does the average person IMAGINE if I say: "Don't think of a dog." Most people will imagine seeing a dog, petting one, or hearing a dog bark, etc...
Since IMAGINATION is the language of the subconscious, we need to consider what our words cause the client to IMAGINE when he/she is in hypnosis. Positive thinking can be neutralized by negative imagination.
A few months back a smoker came to see me. When I asked him about any previous hypnosis experiences, he said: "Well several months ago I saw someone who got me pretty deep...but I remember him saying NOT to blow it by lighting up a cigarette when I got to my car. Upon remembering that suggestion, I immediately found a pack of cigs in my glove box and lit one up. After that, I didn't even try to quit until seeing you today."
What the client imagines during hypnosis is more important than what the logical mind thinks...so I am of the group believing that imagination is the language of the subconscious.
Roy Hunter
www.royhunter.com
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Permalink Reply by Hypnosis Dave on -
If we were unable to process negatives how would we know a positive? They go back to back. One does not exist without the opposite. And remember the old saying; When life gives you a lemon (negative), make lemonade (positive).
The mind is full of negative mud and tilted paradigms. Actually the untrained, primal unconscious or subconscious as it were, mind clings to the negative more than the positive. It believes false unsupported thoughts brought on by a pattern of beliefs and resulting emotions. In hypnosis the mind can be coaxed to acknowledge true evidence that lights the way to change limiting beliefs and transform the mind into accepting new, beliefs and establish positive patterns and habits. In other words the primal mind is that of an animal that is in survival mode. It sees change as a threat. That's why conscious will power alone is not enough to brake a habit. The animal is holding on to the false and often negative information and using it to reject will power out of pure survival. It believes the organism will die if what ever the habit or pattern might be is interfered with. It sees change as a threat and will not allow it to succeed until reprogramed and the limiting fear factor is gone.
Ok, end of ramble. Sorry about going on such.
Dave
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Permalink Reply by John Cleesattel on
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Another negative that works quite well is the word "don't". i.e. "you don't remember".
This is a common skit for stage hypnotists...."what is your name?" (you don't remember)...uhhh...
I believe the real crux of the matter is not that the mind doesn't know how to process negatives, its that it must know how to accomplish what you are suggesting or asking. Like those who don't know what "go deeper" means.
John
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Permalink Reply by Jesus Gonzalez on -
I do not agree, but Im agreeing with something, aint I?
Renember Unconscious is all about asociation: Dont drink that glass of water. You must/may proccess what is drinking the glass of water and all the possibilities when not drinking that glass of water that you could do.
If any of those possibilities when not drinking the glass of water, adapts to the context, it would be OK to do it.
If somebody tells you in a funeral: Dont Laugh! You aren't going to laugh because of the context, and the another possibility (opposite) of laughing is getting serious, or just plain , normal.
Else; If you are in classroom, (this happened to me) and you are laughing because of something with your classmate, if the teacher tells you (Dont Laugh!) You will increase how you are laughing, because makes you renember about laughing and amplifies the experience. They must punch me in my stomach to Interrupt that pattern, else, I wont stop.
If the person is already relaxed.. and in trance you could tell: Dont reeelaaxxx... until I tell you so..
At least this is my Not proccessing philosophy :)
Jesus
PS: Everytime that I'm asked WHY this happen. I almost never tell technical details. I always use a story, a metaphor. This way unconscious learn better.
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Permalink Reply by Brian Green on -
Hi Carol et al.
Background, I have been a full time practicing hypnotherapist for the last 14 years.
I learned all the common myths propounded in the basic hypnosis knowledge, as taught by the recently deceased Gil Boyne, God luv him, and in the "lay" hypnosis field. I saw innumerable clients as the staff therapist at his Hypnosis Institute.
In general, as I have developed, I have found that the conscious and "other than conscious mind" are actually flowing rivers of processes in FIELDS, an ever changing flux of relationships to themselves, each other, and the external physical world, and the internal physical world, the latter themselves similar flowing rivers of processes. So it is necessary to recognize that beyond rather simple levels, the "subconscious mind" is a only a metaphor, not a thing or object. There is a general practice in our culture to reduce fields and processes to labels that appear to be objects. (Called nominalization in NLP.) This makes them appear more real than they are. Though this way of thinking makes them easier to understand and manipulate on a lower order of meaning, it fails on a higher level. Just as Newtonian Physics enabled the development of the industrial world, but can never lead to nuclear power, the result of a higher level of mathmatical understanding of the physics of material reality. The higher level understanding often contradicts that of the lower level, while at the same time including it! Whether this paradox is in the nature of reality or in our information processing systems, I don't know.
Historically, (and I have been reading the hypnosis literature extensively, back to the eighteen nineties, and applying that knowledge), hypnotherapy was primarily in the form of direct suggestion, often command suggestion, and mostly dealt with symptom relief. As the trance relationship and perceived high status of the hypnotist gave huge leverage to suggestion, this was very successful, especially with high responders, and was regarded as a kind of miracle of the age. This lead to an observation that it was far more beneficial to say, "You will enjoy nights of wonderful sleep and rest," being more effective than, "You will stop waking up at night." The first is "swamping out" a negative with a positive attainment, the second an attempt to obtain a positive goal by removing a negative, incidentally a dominant procedure in much of earlier psychotherapy, and usually less effective there too. I prefer my explanation to the essentially unproved idea that, "The subconscious does not process negatives." which contradicts my experience if they are handled creatively, as further on. This kind of over-simplification is very useful in training hypnotists by those with consciousnesses that lack sophistication or education, as they draw on this facet of the field. Also money and status can be aquired by giving lay hypnotists powerful tools. So much is taught extensively, and elevated to the status of general truths, rather than a rule of thumb lower level guide.
But when we come to more advanced forms of hypnotherapy, dealing with conflicting parts, faulty emotional or cognitive processing, deep resistance to ones own good in more extensive psychological difficulties, (often described by hypnotists as the client not being ready to change, rather than "I am not ready to help him/her yet!"), this simplicity breaks down. Now hypnotists developed hypnotherapeutic processes of much greater depth, power and subtlety. One only has to see the sly, wily and mischievous use of negatives, both linguistic and mental/emotional, as a form of therapeutic ju-jitsu by Erickson, to glimpse their enormous potential. Even basic training in hypnotherapy in the lay community now often includes working with cognitive/emotional and mental processes and states via gestalt and parts therapy, regression etc., so knowledge above and beyond the original simplicity of hypnosis may be essential.
On this level, negative processes can play their part, and an expanded understanding has been developing since Erickson's extensive use of them. In NLP alone they identify "Negative Drivers" as moving away processes, and "Positive drivers" as moving towards processes, and Richard Bandler sees the potential benefits of either or both combined. Once one begins exploring them a whole world of potential uses opens up.
I go into all these matters, and many others, in much greater detail in my hypnosis manual, "Mind-bending For Mind-mending, Wizard Ways With Words." which can be found on http://www.mindmagic123.com/id67.html Anything else, just ask! Lol.
Why not try the following on an already fairly relaxed client.
One female hypnotist said she almost tranced out just reading it when I posted it before.
"You may enjoy creating a wonderful feeling of pleasant comfort and relaxed satisfaction - whether you realize - you are entering a deep trance - or not. Should you continue to remain unaware of - how deep into profound trance you are going - you can still continue to - reward yourself - with that wonderful feeling of relaxed comfort and pleasant satisfaction. Later on, will you not become willing to - grow more aware of - how much deeper into trance you may be going than than you think you are right now. Soon you may want to - make a guess about how long it will take for you to realize - how much deeper into trance and how much more comfortable you can become - than you know you have already."
This passage contains upwards of about ten hypno-linguistic processes, including negatives.
"Fight against the feeling of your eyelids getting heavier" as provided by Reg, is an example of what I term a "counter suggestion". Howsabout, "Don't go too deep into trance before - you realize that I am guiding you to do so." Ho Ho. Here a negative suggestion is combined with mild linguistic confusion, time confusion, implication/assumption/presumption, double meaning and seeding. etc. Read the book!
Persons otherwise not so inclined often easily enter true amnesiac somnambulism with these kinds of procedures.
Blessings to you and yours, brian, aka the little b and hypnohotshot.
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Permalink Reply by Mohammed Magsi on -
Hi Carol,
I have been asked this question. One of the point that I mention is that their subconscious mind is their best friend cos their subconscious mind has all the answers to their issues. Conscious mind is capable of manipulating our believes, thinking and negative emotions etc. Our subconscious on the other hand is the one which keeps our sanity together. Subconscious mind in most cases is ignored and you will find conscious subconscious conflict. I want to give up BUT.... etc.
I hope this answers your question.
Mohammed
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