Chapter 15 Extra Story: Subconsciousness and Suggestion

In addition to opening a psychological hypnosis clinic with me, my partner is also a visiting professor of psychology at a certain university. Although the school is not inherently demanding on such an honorary lecturer, and he himself is not that serious, the behavior of this guy on the stage surprised me-I mean seriousness and rigor.It must be admitted that his ability to comprehend and integrate is very unusual.I once teased him about it: You should try to get a real professorship.And his answer to this is extremely non-serious: "Actually, I am an actor." I once recorded about half of his personal explanations on the subconscious mind and hints.To be honest, that used to inspire me a lot.

"...Yes, this classmate is right. But I want to emphasize: the subconscious mind is not fixed, the subconscious mind is a process, and it will be dynamic with all the information we receive every moment, that is, That is to say, subconsciousness itself and consciousness are in an interactive state. Moreover, consciousness may sink down to become subconsciousness, and subconsciousness may also surface to become consciousness. Although subconsciousness itself is not conscious (so we call it 'subconsciousness' ), but this does not mean that we will not be aware of some content that was once included in the subconscious mind - because once that part of the content surfaced and became conscious, then we will get information about that part of the content. Subconscious The state is absolute, but the content is not. My friend, do you understand? OK, good, let's continue.

"Although it is very popular to use the 'iceberg theory' to describe the relationship between consciousness and subconsciousness, I must say that it is not accurate and can only be described as an analogy. The real situation is: our subconsciousness can use consciousness to judge Which part of the content becomes consciousness, and which part is hidden. In fact, consciousness is more like a computer’s cache when processing files-moving commonly used things out of the warehouse and storing them in the middle ground, without having to go to the warehouse every time. In order to speed up the processing speed of the computer. The subconscious mind is that warehouse. The biggest commonality between the conscious mind and the computer cache is: it is cleared when the power is turned off-can someone tell me what it means for the conscious mind to be cleared? Well... very correct, it is amnesia. Therefore, amnesia is not really amnesia, but part of our cache has been emptied or partly cleaned.

"Speaking of which, I believe everyone can easily think of the characteristics of amnesia: 'What's your name?' 'Uh...don't know.' 'So, where do you live?' 'Uh...don't know.' 'You Amnesia?''Uh...don't know, but I really can't remember anything.''No, no, you don't have amnesia, because you can still understand what I said, you remember the language, how to speak, So you don't have amnesia, you just have your cache cleared.''Excuse me, what is a cache?''Look! You are now a cleared cache!' (Laughter)

"And what about the subconscious mind? Will it be emptied? Maybe, but I'm afraid it will be difficult. Because in some cases it can even happen that the subconscious mind empties the conscious mind on purpose. So how can this happen? There are many reasons, such as : When an event impacts us enough that we cannot accept the fact. This is one of the evidences that we cannot control the subconscious mind. It is like we have a huge warehouse full of various Such a novel thing, although we are the owners and users of the warehouse, we do not have the right to make decisions about the entry and exit of the warehouse. So, who is in charge of the decision? I am sorry to tell you that, yes The discussion of this question is not in my course, please go to philosophy class or religion class to find the answer. But if you are in love with someone recently, then you don’t need to take philosophy and religion class, obviously, The answer is in the hands of the other party. (Laughter, applause)

"Next, let's talk about suggestion, which is one of the few ways to directly manipulate the subconscious mind. "Suggestion itself has no distinction between strong and weak. What we usually call strong suggestion refers to the way and method of using suggestion. There are many ways and methods of suggestion, not limited to language, actions, expressions, etc. can all have their suggestiveness .Some are customary in our lives, such as shaking the head and waving hands to mean rejection. As an added note, the daily habits of Indian and New Zealand aboriginals are the opposite - nodding is rejection; and some are specific suggestive actions. Suppose I find a A classmate came to do the experiment and I told him to put his arms outstretched across his chest and act like a zombie in a zombie movie, then I just ignored him and went on with something else. Within a few minutes he would get tired and The arms start to droop. At this moment I look at him, without words, just lift the palm up slightly a few times, he will recognize my cue and continue to maintain the position I asked him to do. My 'palm up The movement of lifting 'slightly is a specific hint between us, and other students here will not respond to it. Of course, this hint is not subtle enough, so I can go further: after he straightened his arms , I threw this very heavy book onto his outstretched arms. Gravity would definitely make his arms sink for a while, but soon he would continue to hold the book with his outstretched arms. But I asked him Did he do that? No, he naturally kept the book resting on his arms while trying not to let it fall. Why? Because the cue I gave him was to stretch his arms out over his chest, and he Not only accepted, but also unconditionally accepted other conditions - although I didn't tell him: hold the book. His behavior of holding the book is the extra effect I achieved through hinting. And this classmate never thought about it : 'Why should I hold the book?'

"Speaking of which, the purpose of this hint is a very subtle one, and it is similar to this hint that we can bypass some people's psychological defense mechanisms and obtain part of the content of the subconscious. Maybe some students will Ask: 'Why not get it all?' The answer is: very difficult. It is likely that we will devote an enormous amount of time and effort to get all the content of our subconscious mind that we need, but in that case who can guarantee that the subconscious mind will not Will there be changes? As I said earlier, the subconscious mind is a process. So, instead of spending a lot of time and energy digging out all the content, we might as well spend a relatively little time peeping into the subconscious mind only part of what we need to know Finally, it is more cost-effective to infer based on experience and precedents. In this way, we don’t need to invest a lot of energy to completely open someone’s subconscious warehouse, as long as we see some content, we can obtain the necessary information according to conventional reasoning. That’s not Represents irresponsibility, actually the opposite. And although the subconscious mind seems to be out of order and regularity, there are actually some regularities. This is like the classification of animals and plants. Maybe you have never seen a cold-blooded animal like a marine iguana. But if you look for it according to the classification it belongs to, you can get a general idea of ​​what kind of structure it is - because classification has given us a lot of help. So whenever you see a certain category of psychopathic traits or psychological characteristics When reviewing the outline, you should thank the predecessors in this field. It is their efforts that save us from exploring in the fog every step of the way, and we don’t have to stumble. What they created will also be called For the 'wealth of all mankind'.

"Let's talk about suggestion again. Suggestion is a very old means of behavior manipulation. Although there is no special statistics on its earliest application, according to my personal understanding, suggestion should be the first to be applied to domination. The domination I mean Including religious rule. In every ancient sect - Druidism, Shamanism, ancient Egyptian mysticism, etc., there are almost hints. Those religious leaders or high priests, without exception, connect natural phenomena with themselves Rise up, and use it to shock those who are ruled. Later, with the evolution of civilization, religion also began to evolve, and the methods of suggestion used also evolved. Natural phenomena no longer have a relationship with a person, but a relationship with God. (laughter)

"Of course, gods also need agents, so we still maintain respect. But it is undeniable that when gods intervene, the suggestion becomes much stronger. It can not only affect people's behavior for a while, but also enough to affect people's behavior for a lifetime. Maybe some students don't understand the twisted psychology of believers in extreme sects such as the Holy Light, the Priory, and the Illuminati Cross. But imagine: a person accepts this kind of suggestion from a very young age-when we It can already be called 'indoctrination', so can this person change his mind when he is middle-aged? Yes, but it is very, very difficult! Why? His thinking has basically been repeated and strengthened over the years. Manipulated, he will believe in his own belief more firmly than anyone else, and he will firmly believe in the supremacy of the doctrine, so he will unswervingly judge crime and punishment based on his own belief. As for the crime and punishment in the doctrine itself, we I won't discuss it here, but what deserves our attention is the power of suggestion. If you master enough techniques and methods, or create a powerful method of suggestion yourself, then you can create miracles and even be worshiped by others. Why? ?Because you affected enough people, long enough, even if you were dead by then.

"Having said the above, I believe that students should be able to easily sort out the relationship between hints and subconsciousness. The invisibility and indirectness of hints relax our defense mechanism, thus opening a window of subconsciousness— —This is not because I am careful with my words, but so far we have not been able to really open the door of the subconscious mind. But it is this window that allows us to peek into the magical psychological process outside the window—yes, I am right, It is outside the window. Through this, we can understand the causes of many behaviors. Even if those behaviors are extremely weird and distorted, they must have their rationality in the subconscious, so we can find the root of many psychological problems. This process is just like The meaning of the English word psychology is as expressed: psy, cho, and logy, when connected together, is Psychology—the theory of knowing the heart.

"This concludes today's class, thank you all."