Note: A quick way to get a feeling for the book and its contents for free is to go through
the slides from Gordon and Doll's 2019 Charmed class.
Mastering Erotic Hypnosis by James Gordon and Rebecca Doll (2019)
Tone: Opinionated clinical handbook
Valuable for:
- A framework for approaching hypnotizing first time subjects. They
explicitly set out to let the reader "design your own inductions, tools,
and presentation, tailored to your situation and needs", in fact to
"make your own recipes". Along the way, they throw interesting shade on
hypnotists in the community, "Often they work with only partners who
are already highly suggestible and do not understand themselves what
they are doing." One big component is dividing people up into "direct
suggestibles" and "inferential suggestibles", who need different
techniques for getting into trance and receiving suggestions. They also
talk a lot about creating a "hypnotic modality", meaning something like a
readiness to accept suggestions due to strong rapport and expectation.
Whether you agree with individual bits of theory, it could be a useful
starting point, and rather than scripts the book is packed with building
blocks like signs of trance, lists of vocabulary, etc.
- Grounding in history and scientific research of hypnosis. There is a
large amount of useful history - often in the form of side bars on
different figures, but also integrated into discussions of consent and
technique. And scientific studies are discussed at appropriate moments.
This is the only erotic hypnosis book that's remotely scholarly - the
only one with end notes.
- A lot of content on hypnotic orgasms (26 pages!) and edgy topics
such as ageplay, death play, and drug play that I either can't find in
any other books, or at much less depth. If you're on the fence about
committing to the book, I would at least recommend paging through these
juicy sections in the last third.
- Nuanced and thoughtful discussion on consent in hypnosis. The book
begins with 30 pages of discussion of this, including some forceful
statements I agree with such as "if you feel like you have to invoke the
'you must have really wanted to,' card, you're definitely violating
consent, and depending on what things happened, you may be, both
ethically and legally, a rapist." There's a long chapter about the
difference between doing therapy and doing BDSM that ends up with
therapeutic benefits. There is more than one negotiation checklist, with
blank spaces.
Things I didn't like so much:
They often wear a rhetorical cloak of authority, very much borrowed
from the doorstop tomes of clinical psychology. The authors have as much
of a claim to knowledge as anyone, having many hours of clinical
training and practice, and convincing exposure to the history and
science of hypnosis. Or as they put it, "These techniques are not ours.
They come from more than two hundred years of scientific study, and
include techniques and principles ranging from those developed by James
Braid, Jean-Martin Charcot, Gilles de la Tourette, Pierre Janet, Milton
Erickson, Virginia Satir, and John Kappas." The latter is a
hypnotherapist known for, among other things, treating and then marrying
Florence Henderson from the Brady Bunch, and the founder of the
Hypnosis Motivational Institute, now run by his son. It's an actual
office on the outskirts of Los Angeles, offering $3000 online courses in
hypnotherapy as well as in-person classes and treatment. That is
Gordon's training, which explains why Kappas is lavishly referenced in
the book.
So there is a halo of authority, but I found many strong assertions
that were not strongly backed up: "We feel talk inductions are weak."
"We very seriously doubt that hypnosis can cause car crashes" "Based on
observation we strongly suspect that orgasm induced by hypnosis may
involve greater prolactin release than masturbation, but far less than
intercourse." "The typical physical component is a light touch to the
forehead" "The typical deepening technique at this point is a slow
countdown." There's a type of rhetoric here that tries to dress up "I
tried this and it worked!" or "This is how we usually do it" as
something more.
@khatsha wrote about "competence posing" in hypnosis
and how it has the potential to stifle innovation and participation by
traditionally underrepresented groups. The book is pompously subtitled
"A Comprehensive Manual for Erotic Play, Fetish, and Kink" (vol 1 of the
"Comprehensive Mastery" series!), and this also strikes me as wildly
premature - I think it's like writing a "Comprehensive History of
Digital Computers" in 1960. They have advice about "establishing
authority" with your partner: "[you should say] you have had training in
that art because you have read a book which explained hypnosis in a
scientific way. Eventually, you may wish to add other classes and
certifications to increase both your authority and your perceived
understanding of the paradigm." Later they say, "You won't succeed at
hypnosis without carrying an attitude of infallibility into each
session." I feel like they took this advice too often in writing this
book itself.
That said, sometimes a human, playful voice pokes through that made
me feel that they really do this and enjoy it ("Eventually Hot Pockets,
too, are eroticized"). And in many places they express appropriate
uncertainty or skepticism.
The musty mid-century psychiatrist tone comes out in some troubling
sections about problem subjects, including one literally called "Working
with hysterical subjects", advising tops to ask themselves is this
person "prone to creating drama and disaster?" with an "attitude of
martyrdom", warning they may find "an element of opposition and defiance
towards the hypnotist". They also speculate intrusively on why people
are the way they are: inferentials "were often raised in an inconsistent
environment", intellectual suggestibles have "extremely robust
ego-defenses", maybe masochists like pain because the first time they
had sex it hurt. To their credit, though, they avoid "hero psychiatrist"
stories.
The biggest obstacle for the average hypnokinkster reader would be
the pages of cautions, side notes and nuances that become exhausting -
maybe it's appropriate to touch on the unlikelihood of dying from
hypnosis, but does it need 11 paragraphs? But a persistent annoyance for
people in the community will be the clashing specialized jargon. They
use "in state" to mean "in trance", "conversion" to mean falling into
trance (and then later define "conversion" in a distinct technical
sense), "challenge" for "convincer" and "reaction" for "fractionation".
Who knows why we've settled on the words we actually use in hypnokink,
and one set of pseudoscientific jargon is no better than the other, but I
found it tiring.
Hypnotic language example: "I want you to think about the weight of your head on your shoulders."
The bottom line: Absolutely a sufficient introduction to
erotic hypnosis from a kinky perspective, with unique coverage of hard
core play, and it should be on every erotic hypnotist's shelf, if not
with all its 400 pages read.
If you found that useful, here are
five more hypnosis book reviews.
