"I just don't want to be made to cluck like a chicken!" This is usually said as a joke, but there is a very real fear behind it: that a hypnotist might make them do something humiliating without their consent. This is one of the reasons I think the existence of stage hypnotism is incredibly harmful to hypnokink people like myself. It lets people know that it's real, and maybe even sexy, but there is also a widespread acceptance of stage hypnotists giving people types of suggestions that they haven't negotiated, and that many people would find humiliating. This gives people an understandable fear of hypnosis.
I haven't actually been to a stage show, but my friend gave me a typical example, from when a stage hypnotist came to provide entertainment at his middle school. After this grown man selected the most suggestible of the 13 year olds (already creepy), he proceeded to give them suggestions to act out in various ways, like impersonating celebrities or having different sensations, provoking laughter from their classmates. (by the way, this gave me some insight into how real hypnotism could be possible under such high pressure, low trust conditions: he conducted tests to find the most responsive 5 out of a room of 500) At the end, he told the people on stage that they wouldn't remember much, except that they did some silly, fun things in front of their friends, and should feel good about it.
I realize that I'm painting this in the worst possible way, and there are things that might make it not quite so gross: maybe the people onstage wanted an excuse to act out of the ordinary and be the center of attention, and probably the hypnotist had some patter to make them feel special for having volunteered and getting laughs. Nevertheless, there was probably a huge portion of that audience who laughed and thought to themselves that day, "I will never try hypnotism." I won't even get into the problems with using amnesia that way, or the way social pressure and authority are wielded to get compliance.
A lot of standard hypnosis tricks and demonstrations are based around making someone look foolish. I really started to realize that thanks to one of my first trance partners, who specified that she does not want to be humiliated in any way. I give her so much credit for, first, having the self awareneness to know that about herself, and second, having the courage to insist on that. So many people would just have felt very uncomfortable with certain suggestions in their first trance session, but not known why, and just avoided it ever after.
So it's a challenge, but I want to rewrite the standards of hypnosis to involve no humiliation without consent. Of course some people really dig a little humiliation, and that can be a fun and erotic part of hypnosis play. But many people don't, and there are still plenty of pleasurable and fascinating effects that can be achieved that don't have that element to it - always keeping in mind that different people find different things humiliating, even things such as forgetting numbers or uncontrollably falling into a trance in front of others (although it seems like even humiliation fans draw a hard line before clucking like a chicken, further demonstrating how it's terrible PR). I pledge to always include that as part of my negotiation before a trance.
As for the car crash, this same friend that I was talking to last weekend told me that his other exposure to hypnosis had been in high school, when a hypnotist had taken a group of students into a trance onstage and led them through a scenario where they were driving drunk and killed one of their friends. This produced realistic reactions of shock and grief onstage. It was part of a travelling presentation to fight drunk driving among teens. I have no words for how horrifyingly unethical this is - it's stunning that it happened in the early 1990s, and not the early 1960s. Can you imagine getting permission from a research ethics committee to do this to people? And I am positive they did not agree to have such a traumatic experience. I suppose this is another example of how young people's rights and autonomy are not taken seriously. There's not a problem with hypnosis here: there's a problem with lack of consent culture.
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