Hypnosis in an Italian Horror Comic

It's been over two months since I last hypnotized someone. But it hasn't bothered me so much, since I have a new country to learn about and enjoy, with all its new ways, including a new language. I'm getting into Italian comics, partly as a way to learn the language, and partly because they're very cool. Where 90% of mainstream American comics are superhero comics, or Archie, Italian comics or "fumetti" have current, popular titles in mystery, old west, adventure, science fiction, and horror. And comics are more popular: Italian, Japanese, French, and the occasional American comic are found in every newstand and convenience store.

My favourite right now is a stylish Italian horror comic called Dylan Dog, about an investigator of supernatural terrors living in London. It's making me realize I've barely even seen horror comics, growing up in North America, and I can't help but be impressed by disturbing/awesome pre-Comics Code Authority imagery such as:

And not just monsters either, but incredibly brutal human violence:

These are all from an issue that fell into my hands, called La Meta Oscura, and just by chance it has hypnosis content!

At the beginning of the story, which is about 96 pages long, several people have been caught at the scenes of grisly murders, still holding the murder weapons, with no memory of what happened. This boy, for example, murdered his whole family with a straight razor. The book took several pages to depict this. (paging Dr. Wertham)

But when these people are hypnotized and regressed back to the time of the murders, they remember standing to the side, helpless, while a horrifying beast committed those same violent acts! Each one has their own particular monster, e.g. the gorilla, the skinless ghoul and so on.

The hypnosis is absolutely classical, performed by a paternalistic, pipe-smoking psychologist

using a pocketwatch and language that was easy for me to recognize.

For me, the most eerie and upsetting story turn was when the suspects start killing themselves in custody - which is, from their perspective, their beast avatars mournfully euthanizing them. Like this super creepy space alien:

(by the way, back in reality he is injecting himself with a syringe full of air. Ugh!)

It turns out the hypnotist was behind it all along! Did you guess?

Dylan Dog realized that the boy used the doctor's name under hypnosis, when the two had supposedly never met before. All the murderers were experimental subjects of the psychiatrist, who didn't remember his hypnotic experiments. His goal was to cure the "monster that is in all of us, the dark half, the disproportionate aggressiveness that the human carries inside despite millions of years of evolution". But to do that, he first had to "liberate it". And when he started getting great results with his patients:

he took a slight turn for the insane. He even hypnotized Dylan Dog without his knowledge or consent!

I found it to be a creepy, satisfying tale, even the way it was resolved, blaming it all on hypnosis. What's interesting to me is that this comic came out in the mid 90s, and is pitched towards teenagers and adults (at least I hope so). In North America these days, you would only see hypnosis - of the watch-swinging variety, not mind control by magic or technology - used as a device in stories for young children, and even then they would have a slightly retro feel. There have been periods where there was a lot of interest in hypnosis in America, like the 1950s. But I'll bet the average person, if they ever think of hypnosis, thinks it's boring bullshit. So they're not afraid of it.

My Italian friend on Fetlife told me it's different here. There is a fear of hypnosis in the culture, such that people have been kicked out of kink events just for being into it, since it's assumed they want to use it for sexual assault. If an educated person had even a 10% belief that what happens in this comic is possible, then it makes sense. 

In fact, my friend pointed out that hypnosis is even mentioned in the Italian criminal code, or codice penale, as written in 1930, which you can verify for yourself on the Italian wikipedia page for hypnosis. From Google Translate:

Hypnosis as health intervention (both as a psychological intervention-clinical and / or psychotherapy , or as therapy for diseases with organic component or as a pain therapy) should be practiced only by those who are entitled to pursue a health care profession .
...
Article. 613 of the Penal Code punishes anyone who by suggestion in the waking or hypnotic, narcotic or alcoholic substances poses a person, without the consent of you, in a state of ' inability to understand or want .
...
 Anyone who puts anybody, with his consent, in a state of narcosis or hypnotism or run on the same treatment that suppresses the consciousness or will be punished, if the act results in danger to the safety of the person...

Without reading the original code, this actually seems reasonable. I feel strongly that hypnotherapy should be left to people with extensive training in therapy, and that no one should be hypnotized without their informed consent.

But I still feel like it may be reflective of some misplaced fears about hypnosis. Although I do think there are ways that it can be abused, and this is something the hypnokink community is always debating, people who I've hypnotized all report the feeling that it's really a collaboration between us, and that they felt completely able to reject suggestions, and bring themselves out of  trance, any time they like. Most remembered everything that happened during the session, unless amnesia was something we specifically worked on (and negotiated a much higher level of consent for). And other hypnotists I've talked to report much the same thing. Hypnosis isn't mind control, and it just doesn't work at all like it does in Dylan Dog. Any more than it contains accurate information for dealing with vampires (that's a good way to get killed by a vampire).

I might have a chance to do some study groups here in Italy soon. Basically the message I want to tell people, is that although hypnosis isn't risk free, it can be managed between trusting adults within the framework of Risk Aware Consensual Kink. I doubt I could turn you, mentally, into a 12 foot tall dragon, but if I did, it would be only with your clear-eyed and enthusiastic consent and cooperation - and it would probably be a friendly dragon!