What images come to mind when you think of hypnosis? Perhaps you imagine a sinister figure in a cloak and a top hat or someone using a pocket watch to subject unsuspecting bystanders to terrifying mind control.
While images like these pervade popular culture, Dr Nicholas Long, Department of Anthropology at LSE, sought to challenge some of the stereotypes surrounding hypnosis through his recent Faces of Hypnosis exhibition, on display in LSE’s Atrium Gallery in November and December 2024.
Dr Long’s exhibition examined ‘‘the regimes of visuality’’ that shape understandings of hypnosis. He invited visitors to immerse themselves in images and stories drawn from his fieldwork in Indonesia to inspire a different view of hypnosis and its possibilities.
Speaking at a recent Research Showcase talk, Dr Long reflected on his hypnosis journey, giving insight into ‘‘things that we can learn from studying hypnosis anthropologically – by immersing ourselves in the lifeworlds of hypnotists, hypnotherapists and their clients – and how that kind of exploration might be relevant for the bigger questions we have about understanding the world that we ask here at LSE’’.
Journeying into hypnosis
Dr Long was first introduced to hypnosis in 2012 when researching local elections in the Riau Islands in Indonesia. As part of his research, he met a journalist, Yoan, who was running an election monitoring blog and was intrigued when Yoan revealed that he was also a certified hypnotherapist.
When Dr Long investigated further, he found that this was something of a national trend, with over 50,000 Indonesians taking hypnosis certification. He acknowledges, ‘‘Although that’s not a huge number in a country that has 284 million people, it’s still a very large number compared to the number of clinical psychologists, which is only 4,000, or the number of psychiatrists, which is under 1,000.’’
Dr Long’s interest as an anthropologist was piqued when he discovered how people in Indonesia were using hypnosis in a variety of ways – to support mental and emotional health, to deal with various personal problems, and even for mass motivation sessions to help students with exam revision. ‘‘It made me think, firstly, what is hypnosis? As an anthropologist, an expert in the human, I ought to have had a good answer to that. But actually, anthropological theory hasn’t paid very much attention to hypnosis or the realm of suggestion historically.’’ Questions about how cultural difference or postcolonialism might affect hypnotic dynamics were not addressed in the existing literature.
To explore what growing awareness of hypnosis was doing to social life in Indonesia, Dr Long decided to train as a hypnotist. He describes this as ‘‘a life-changing experience … opening up new horizons of what it is to be a human being’’. Through this, three key questions about hypnosis crystallised for Dr Long.
Is hypnosis real?
Intriguingly, the question of whether hypnosis is real is one that Dr Long encounters frequently in the UK, but not in Indonesia. He stresses that hypnosis can certainly work: ‘‘I have experienced hypnotic experiences, ways of being embodied that I’d never experienced before’’.
This is not just a personal experience; Dr Long points to evidence that hypnosis occurs cross-culturally: ‘‘there seems to be some kind of patterning to these experiences. These are potentials that exist within all of us … but different ways of life – different ways of being socialised into the world – give us differential access to them.’’
Of course, that doesn’t mean hypnosis always works for everyone, acknowledges Dr Long. Despite numerous theories attempting to explain why some people are better at hypnosis and being hypnotised, there are no conclusive answers.
But he argues that this, in itself, has anthropological significance: ‘‘how we grapple with the fact that we can be permeable, but we’re not always permeable to other people’s suggestions, has really profound consequences for how we make sense of the world, for how we relate to each other’’. It is this ‘‘really important and underappreciated axis of social and cultural difference’’ that Dr Long is seeking to address in proposing a new anthropology of hypnosis and suggestion.
Hypnosis and the global mental health crisis
The use of hypnosis also raises practical questions about whether it could be the solution to national and global mental health crises today.
Dr Long argues that hypnosis could never be the panacea – it can’t solve structural issues like access to the living wage, the horrors of conflict, or longstanding and deep-rooted psychological ill health. Nonetheless, ‘‘the hypnotists that I met in Indonesia did take very seriously the idea that maybe hypnosis was part of the solution to the mental health crisis that the country is facing.’’
At the core of hypnosis is communication: ‘‘it’s about heightening the consciousness of how you communicate to other people’’. The dynamic between the hypnotist and the hypnotised mirrors the ever-shifting relations we have with one another and how we can affect and be affected in our daily interactions, including through the language we use to and about other people.
Dr Long argues that this view of hypnosis invites us ‘‘to think carefully about how we live in a world of suggestions that we’re all responsible for constructing for each other. It forces us to be more mindful about what we say … and to take responsibility for each other. And that, I think, is a very important aspect of how we can live together.’’
Given that high-quality social relationships can be key to both mental and physical health, he suggests that hypnosis can therefore teach us lessons about how we can better support one another through everyday practices of care.
Hypnosis: the inside story | Coffee break research at LSE
Taking hypnosis seriously
Given the possibilities of hypnosis, Dr Long asks: why isn’t hypnosis taken more seriously? He believes a key factor is the images of hypnosis that circulate in popular culture.
Dr Long cites numerous examples – from Lars Kepler’s bestselling novel, The Hypnotist, with a blurb promising readers that ‘‘he will trap you in a world of terror’’, to horror films like Jordan Peele’s Get Out – where hypnosis is a scary form of mind control that people are powerless to resist. These may have entertainment value but it’s a distortion of the hypnotic interactions that Dr Long and others have experienced. There is a risk that these misconceptions could obscure the potential of hypnosis.
Negative representations also affect how Indonesian practitioners promote hypnosis. Dr Long explains that the fear in Indonesia tends more to be a concern that a hypnotist might be a traditional shamanic healer, or dukun, using spirits or the supernatural in ways that may have negative consequences in the afterlife or that will provide a remedy that is haram in Islam.
This shapes how hypnotists in Indonesia market themselves, with many choosing to wear a business suit to present a conventionally modern, ‘‘professional’’ image. Others deliberately align with the visual stereotype of a supernatural healer to suggest a different kind of authority. Dr Long gives one example of a hypnotist from rural Java who wears a suit when marketing himself in the cities of Jakarta and Batam, but a traditional healer outfit when promoting his work in his local area. Dr Long explains, ‘‘people have to draw on these problematic tropes even though they might not really believe in them. And in the process, there is a risk that they besmirch the name of hypnosis and hypnotherapy as a whole.’’
For Dr Long, this is where the value of forging an anthropological approach to hypnosis and suggestion lies: ‘‘one of the ways that anthropology can contribute is by encouraging a critical engagement with these regimes of visuality to allow a more educated and informed viewing and learning so we can break through these stereotypes’’. Images and stories of Dr Long’s research participants are shared in the Faces of Hypnosis exhibition precisely to foster this kind of critical reflection.
Dr Long concludes, ‘‘given that hypnosis does work, and it does have something to offer in terms of thinking about the mental health and wellbeing challenges that so many people are facing in the contemporary world, my exhibition asks you to think about how to see hypnosis anew in ways that allow you to recognise its full potential.’’
This Research Showcase was written up by Rosemary Deller, Knowledge Exchange Support Manager at LSE.
LSE Research Showcase is a series of 20-minute talks from LSE researchers to enjoy on your coffee break. Catch up on YouTube.
