Ranking the Erotic Hypnosis Books

So far I've found only three substantial books specifically about erotic hypnosis, that ring of real knowledge. I want to find more, but to be honest I haven't waded into the pool of shady Amazon e-books to see if there are some hidden hypnosis treasures - maybe when I've completely exhausted these will I start investing in the riskier ones, and reviewing them here. But here is my buyer's guide based on reading these three cover to cover!

1 MIND PLAY by Mark Wiseman

This is it. This is The Book. If you are interested in learning to do erotic hypnosis, you should buy it right now. It only came out four months ago, but I have bought it three times (one e-book and two paper, because I know I'm going to lend one and not get it back). I feel strongly that this will be the start of erotic hypnosis being a thing, in the way that there are a couple of books that can be found on the shelves of every person I know who's into rope.

A few things are special about it. First, it is clearly from a kink community perspective. This is someone who's done a ton of erotic hypnosis play, at events such as Fetfest, and it's refined his practice and given him a good idea of how to make things actually work (Mark Wiseman is not his real name, but his mcstories handle is Wiseguy, or Wiseguy35 on FL). And you can feel the pleasure he takes in sharing fun tricks and games he and the hypnosis community have developed. Many of which have a BDSM slant, which is so much more represented than in the other two books. You can also see the influence of presenting a lot on the clarity and accessibility of the presentation.

Second, there is an emphasis on explaining why things work, and giving you the building blocks to innovate and customize techniques yourself. Excellent chapters on such topics as fractionation, safety precautions, modalities, and indirect suggestions make this a pretty comprehensive first handbook for understanding what's going on. There's a particularly eye-opening discussion of the concept of depth, which directly contradicts the traditional view.

I've read this book so many times, and had so much success with his techniques, often practically word for word  from memory, that it will take me quite a while to develop my style that isn't just a clone of Wiseguy's. Apart from an unfortunate passage saying you have an obligation to disclose "your true biological sex" to your hypnotist, which was removed in the 2nd edition (so make sure to buy that one), my only complaint is that I wish the Kinky Human Tricks portion of the book was three times as long. But I guess that's what I will have fun filling it in myself.

2 LOOK INTO MY EYES by Peter Masters

This was the first erotic hypnosis book I bought, and I will be forever grateful that it facilitated my first ever time hypnotizing someone. It is a gentle and friendly introduction to hypnosis in an erotic context, and quite thorough and sensible, although all the basic information is also available in Wiseguy's book. This book is so 101 that it does not even assume that you have heard of BDSM, and takes some time to explain what the appeal might be, and why it's ok. That's kind of nice, but you can probably guess also means that it doesn't get so deep into the kinky possibilities.

What it does offer that the Wiseguy book doesn't is a couple of detailed sections on very simple, high-hit-rate erotic hypnosis activities, such as enhancing the feeling of touch, and creating a feeling of being too relaxed to move (hypnotic paralysis). Then a lot of the book is long writeups of sexual fantasies to guide a partner through while in trance. These read as amusingly square (sex on the beach, sex in a doctor's office), but something simple and sensual like that might feel great from a first person perspective, and it's nice to see it written out in full to get an idea for the pacing and the basic, literal language that would work for a hypnotized mind.

The book also has long scripts consisting of instructions intended to have long-term impacts, such as to help your partner feel less inhibited. While the examples here seem pretty harmless, I'm skeptical of whether hypnosis is effective in this way (just telling people they don't have to be inhibited) and it also sails close to therapy.

The real weakness of the book is the inductions. It has essentially one induction, which is a sort of combination of fixation and progressive relaxation. If you have only one, this wouldn't be a bad choice in terms of success rate, but there's nothing about confusion or rapid inductions, or any of the other methods Wiseguy discusses and prefers for giving the hypnotee more mobility (since their body isn't over-relaxed). And the induction material is curiously spread out around two chapters, rather than reading like a script. Another quirk of the book is that it connects going into a trance with the head sinking down and remaining there. And I can confirm Wiseguy's claim that this gets uncomfortable for the hypnotee after a while. Wiseguy adds suggestions to keep the head stable on the neck while the neck still remains relaxed.

3 HYPNOTIZE YOUR LOVER by Wendi Friesen

Of the three I'm talking about, this is the only one with a high "ick" factor, since it's written as an old-school pickup manual, complete with gender assumptions that wouldn't be out of place in Mad Men. The whole first third of the book is about men seducing women via hypnosis, in general without their consent, and I probably would have put it down and never picked it up again if it didn't have a woman's name on its cover (its extremely sleazy cover).

But reading it carefully from the beginning, I found myself developing a fondness for Wendi Friesen, who describes herself as "the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister, (yup, I’m the preacher’s daughter)", who now makes a full-time living doing sexy hypnotherapy (and shilling her CDs and DVDs, which she does throughout the book). You can see her in action in this clip from the Penn & Teller Bullshit episode about hypnosis at the 9:30 mark. That's her, speculating that hypnosis could cure cancer, or increase the size of your penis.

Yes, the flakiness is off the charts in this book, whether she's claiming that in retail stores, "what seems like the pulsing hum of an air conditioner, may actually be a well planned recording cycling at a beat that will place you into a more suggestible mindset" or devoting a chapter to something called "Remote Seduction" which appears to be shooting sexy thoughts at another person across the room without talking to them or interacting with them in any way (and of course, "without their knowledge or permission"), in hopes that they will come over. I would take every factual claim in this book with an enormous grain of salt.

So why do I still recommend it? First of all, it's only $5 as an e-book, and even if you don't trust them, the many scripts in the middle can spark fun ideas. But I really do believe Friesen has done a ton of hypnosis, both from the video clip and from what I know about hypnosis. And hypnosis is something where you do get immediate and reliable feedback - not about whether someone's T cell count is going up, but how deep of a trance and how good the person feels afterwards. Furthermore, while the 70s new agey approach is not so good for establishing facts (or boundaries), it can be strong on the intuitive "right brain" stuff, which is where the hypnotized mind lives. And strong on the mysterious sex magics.

I do feel a sexy power and rich imagination in many of the scripts she prints in the middle section (which is something of a disorganized dump, written by different authors with quite different styles). And I can confirm that two of her things, Hand Breathing (which she reprints from Terrence Watts) and the hand stroke (which she invented but is actually not described here but in Mind Play, and you can see it in the video), are dynamite. If even one of the additional wild things she describes, like five-minute-long orgasms, or mutual trance, actually works for me, it will be worth plenty more than the cover price.

Just stop before you get to the super irresponsible third section, that prescribes easy hypnotic cures for everything from impotence to vaginal pain (yikes). But this book is a good lesson that you can learn tidbits even from materials where the quality control and ethics are largely out of whack.

(for the record, not all of the seduction advice is terrible - for example, the idea that you should wait a beat after the other person has finished talking before you start to say something. If some poor schmo has to believe he's using "hypnosis", to learn not to interrupt people, then that's a good thing she's done)

In conclusion, buy them all! In this order!