Hyperempiria: Experience as an Art Form

(An earlier version of this posting was presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association,San Francisco, CA: August, 1999).

We have all the mastery we need right now to knock the socks off of Hollywood! We can not only guide our participants through an experience of being Harry Potter jousting on his broom, or Indiana Jones in pursuit of hidden treasure, or Juliet on her balcony, or anything else the participant would care to experience, we can also tell them how it will feel, how it will be remembered, and how much they will enjoy (and want to repeat) this kind of experience. And, just as a little child needs to be cautioned, as I was at that age, “It’s only a movie,” so that they don’t become too frightened or otherwise emotionally involved, we can caution our participants in the same way so that the experience does not affect their personality in the same way that a therapeutically-motivated one might.

I would like to propose an alternative paradigm for hypnosis and related phenomena, moving from primary reliance upon a medical/counseling model to a concurrent view of suggestion as a tool for the creative artist, and experience itself as an artistic medium.

Many writers and investigators have envisioned the types of innovation which those who choose to adopt such an alternative paradigm will almost immediately be able to provide. Aldous Huxley, in his book, Brave New World (1958, p. 23), predicted that motion picture technology would develop to a point where it would involve not only the sense of vision, but all of the other senses as well, in a totally absorbing entertainment medium which he referred to as the "Feelies." Followers of the Star Trek series are familiar with the use of "Holodeck" programs -- three-dimensional holographic images, with which the participants are able to interact as if the computer-generated images were actual people and events (Okuda, Okuda, & Mirek, 1994, p. 128). Currently, research and development of computer programs based on the concept of "virtual reality," or three-dimensional computer-generated imaging, is well underway; and several such programs, have already been developed, both for use in industry and as an entertainment medium.

Those who are familiar with the phenomena of hypnosis will immediately recognize that all of the aforementioned experiences can be undergone by sufficiently willing and able hypnotic subjects with relative ease -- in most cases, if the subject is experientially gifted, merely by suggesting that they are to take place. But the degree of involvement which is possible by means of hypnosis is much greater than it might be with the fictional Holodeck, because the focus in hypnosis is upon the experiential dimensions of the person, "inside and out," rather than upon the external physical dimensions of the environment.