Chapter 8 Extra Story: About Dreams and Hypnosis

Interviewer: "...So, your choice of hypnotist as a career was purely by chance?" I smiled: "That's what happened." Visitor: "So do you regret it?" The partner next to him couldn't help laughing. The visitor turns to the partner: "What's wrong?" Partner: "Your question is only asked by some boring media." Client: "I really do." The partner held back a smile: "Okay..." He turned to me as he spoke. Me: "Uh... I must admit that I also find this question very strange, but if you really want to know, I don't think I have regretted it. As for why... well... I can't tell, it's just interesting."

Visitor: "Because you can peek into other people's hearts?" Me: "My job requires me to do this." Visitor: "So, I kind of envy you guys." Partner: "About spying on privacy?" Visitor: "No, it's about reading other people's dreams and deep inside itself." Partner: "This isn't as fun as you might think, and I mean it." The visitor thought for a while: "Well, it's possible if you think about it carefully... well, let's turn the topic back and talk about dreams. I think what the dreams show is amazing."

Partner: "Which part?" Visitor: "All!" Partner: "That's because when you don't understand dreams, you are influenced by film and television and literary works that exaggerate dreams." Visitor: "I don't read many novels about dreams, so I don't know much about them. As for movies and TV... It is true that I don't like the description of dreams in some movies..." Partner: "Well, I also don't like the dreams described in film and television works. Those screenwriters wantonly make dreams extremely magical without knowing anything about dreams."

Visitor: "That's it,...although I don't like those exaggerated descriptions, but you must admit that dreams are amazing, don't you? For example, dreams ignore time." The partner looked confused: "I don't understand what you mean." Visitor: "That's right, you see, sometimes you obviously slept for a few minutes, but why did you have a very long dream? Dreams completely ignore the length of time. Isn't this the magic of dreams?" My partner sighed and turned to me: "You should tell him." I nodded: "The scenes in the dream come from your memory. In other words, the scenes and things you experience in the dream are just the extraction and reprocessing of real memories-of course, memories can span thousands of miles in an instant. Time and space - those scenes and events are actually composed of scenes and fragments extracted from memory by the subconscious mind, so dreams do not need time flow at all. Let's use an inappropriate analogy: this is like opening a video stored in your computer and not Need a long buffer..."

The partner took over the conversation: "So I said, I don't like the dreams described in film and television works. Especially the point you just said 'dreams ignore time', every time I see a movie that makes a fuss about it, I will endure it." I can't stop laughing." Visitor: "Although it doesn't take time to open the videos stored on the computer, it takes time to watch those videos. How do you explain this?" Me: "You're in the wrong place—the computer I'm referring to is you." Client: "Oh...so that's the case...but I still have questions."

Me: "For example?" Visitor: "You just said that the scenes in the dream come from the memory of the real scene. I admit that I haven't thought about it, and you are right, but what happened in the dream? Are they all from the memory? Some things I haven’t experienced? For example, the horror movie-like dream? Although you can say that it comes from a movie or novel I have seen, but in the dream I will have my own judgment, right? ?I'll have my own thoughts, right? That's not from memory, is it? It takes time, right? How does that explain?" Me: "Let's use an analogy. If you are driving a car, when you encounter a red light or a road condition, do you think for a long time? Don't you? You make a quick judgment, right?"

Visitor: "You're talking about instinct." Partner: "That's not instinct, it's the conditioned reflex formed by your acquired training. In fact, all your behaviors and thoughts in dreams are like driving on the road: events and scenes are presented to you in a flowing form, and you The reaction in the dream is just a conditioned reflex to make judgments and choices directly based on experience, and it doesn’t take long, 1 second? Or even shorter.” The visitor thought about it for a while: "Oh... I understand what you said... That's why hypnotists use hypnosis to enter other people's dreams to intercept those memories, right?"

Me: "Not exactly, hypnosis and sleep are two different things, but hypnosis is indeed imitating the state of dreaming." Visitor: "Huh? Doesn't hypnosis make you fall asleep?" Me: "Uh...not..." Visitor: "Then why is it called hypnosis?" Partner: "Hippos are not horses, and crocodiles are not fish." Visitor: "...Well, I always thought that hypnosis is to make people dream, and then ask some questions that I want to know while the other person is dreaming..." My partner smiled and looked at me. Me: "Hypnosis is to use some means to make the hypnotized person surrender part of his consciousness, so that some ideas or certain memories in the hypnotized person's subconscious can be obtained."

Visitor: "Surrender part of consciousness? What's going on here?" Partner: "He refers to master control. After the hypnotized person enters the hypnotic state, he will accept the guidance of the hypnotist-in fact, this is to hand over the control of consciousness." Visitor: "When you are hypnotized, don't you have the ability to think?" Me: "No, what is lost is not the ability to think, but part of the ability to prevent." Visitor: "It means answering what others say, right?" Me: "That's about it." Visitor: "Is this answer thoughtful?"

Me: "Well... It's not so much an answer, it's more like a conditioned reflex. Then you can understand, right?" Visitor: "I understand, conditioned reflex is the most direct, without any precautions... Then you just said that hypnosis is to imitate dreaming, do you mean the one you mentioned just now? The direct reaction to memory flow?" Partner: "Actually, it's a bit deeper. What you face through hypnosis is actually the subconscious part of the hypnotized person." Client: "I'll go back and look into the question about the subconscious. I have two questions. One is: Can the subconscious not be realized? The other is: I want to know why this is done?"

Partner: "Yes, of course we will not be aware of it, so it is called 'subconscious mind'. As for why we do this... because although we cannot be aware of the subconscious mind, our words and deeds are basically influenced by the subconscious mind." Visitor: "What about instinct? Can't instinct control our behavior?" Partner: "Instinct is the original starting point. For example, if you are hungry, you will go to find food, but your subconscious will add some characteristics to the type of food you are looking for. If you subconsciously have a tendency to diet, then you are looking for food. When you are young, you will be more inclined to low-calorie and low-fat. If you have a special experience with a certain animal or plant that can be used as food, for example, you were chased by a pig when you were a child. In choosing food, you may prefer pork because of the psychology of revenge, or you may reject pork because of the general association of avoiding danger. Therefore, your behavior motives become extremely complicated, but the form of expression is very simple : When you’re hungry prefer pork first or no pork at all.” The visitor smiled: "You were only chased by pigs when you were a child! However, I understand what you mean, and it is true if you think about it." Me: "So, the hypnotist uses various means to obtain information in the subconscious of the hypnotized person, but the purpose is to explain the behavior. As he said just now, the simplification of the appearance of the behavior conceals too many motivations for the behavior. " Visitor: "It's really interesting! These are questions that I hadn't thought about at all... By the way, and you just said that hypnosis is imitating dreams, which means that dreams are actually a form of expression of the subconscious mind?" Me: "Well, according to current observation and cognition, this is the case." Visitor: "Let's put it this way, in fact, the subconscious mind dominates dreams when consciousness stagnates during sleep, right? But sometimes I realize that I am dreaming. How can this be explained?" Me: "Consciousness during sleep is not stagnant, but light, low-frequency, low-range activities, so sometimes you will have the experience of 'knowing that you are dreaming'." Visitor: "What about during hypnosis? Is there such a possibility? The consciousness of the hypnotized person competes with the hypnotist for control?" Me: "Yes, it's very common." Interviewer: "Then under what circumstances would this happen?" Me: "In the case of distrust. In fact, psychoanalysis, psychological induction, psychological suggestion, and hypnosis are basically based on trust, otherwise it is easy to fail." Visitor: "Are there any exceptions?" I have got." The visitor seemed a little surprised: "Is there really someone who can easily hypnotize people?" Partner: "It's not easy. The kind of quick hypnosis also needs to carefully select the hypnotized object, such as a weak-willed person or when someone is weak-willed." I added: "There is also group hypnosis." Visitor: "Is it easier to hypnotize many people at the same time?" Me: "It's relatively easy. You may have heard of a saying: It's easier to fool 100,000 people than one person." Visitor: "Why is this happening?" Me: "When people are in a group, their defense will be much lower. Group hypnosis does not seem to be individualized, but in fact it is still there. Coupled with the mutual infection of emotions between people, those who are not easy to be hypnotized usually Instead, you will be hypnotized by those around you who are easily hypnotized." Client: "Sounds like brainwashing..." Me: "That's the way it is, because the contagion and diffusion of emotions plays a big role." Client: "I'll have to keep an eye out for this kind of activity in the future." Me: "Observation?" Visitor: "Well... I want to observe... By the way, since dreaming itself is a kind of subconscious release, you also said that hypnosis imitates dreaming to a certain extent. How about asking questions like hypnosis?" Me: "It is possible, but since the other party's hypnotic state is not guided by you, your question is likely to awaken the other party's consciousness." Visitor: "Oh, that's right... I thought I could ask casually while the other person was sleeping." Partner: "Sometimes yes, but the success rate is low." Visitor: "Speaking of now, it seems that all the problems are concentrated on the subconscious mind, right? If dreaming itself is the release of the subconscious mind, can I say this: in fact, only when dreaming will it touch your own... . . . the heart? The soul? The ego? Do you understand what I mean?" The partner nodded: "I understand what you mean, so to speak." Client: "That means dreams are extremely important, right?" Me: "Let's quote a point of view from Lacan: Lacan believes that the subconscious mind is the source of all human behavior, and all our feelings, judgments, analyzes and choices originate from the subconscious mind. Therefore, since dreams are the release of the subconscious mind, then what we The reality is just an illusion, and the dream is real. The question now is: How can we use illusion to analyze reality?" Visitor: "My God... that's exactly what happened!" Partner: "You scared her." The visitor looked at his partner with a half-smile: "Fortunately... When I heard that you were engaged in this job, I thought it was a boring job. I didn't expect your job to be so interesting. I'm still very interested... " Partner: "We don't recruit people." The visitor sighed: "It's still so watertight." After speaking, he turned to me, "Thank you, I really learned a lot today." I return a smile: "You're welcome." Visitor: "It's almost time, shall we have dinner together? I'll pay the bill." Partner: "Finally we're getting to the point." He turned to me, "Let's go." I nodded and got up to get my coat.