HYPNOTISM THE CURE-ALL

Prof. John D. Quackenbos Would Regenerate the Human Race

HIS SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS

Crime and Disease Succumb to the Treatment – Working of the Cure – Illegitimate Hypnosis

Hypnotism as a means of reforming criminals and of removing crime and moral obliquity from this terraqueous sphere is the latest theory which advanced science has to offer. The originator of this idea for applying hypnotism for the wholesale regeneration of the human race is Prof. John D. Quackenbos of Columbia University, who for the past year has been conducting experiments. Prof. Quackenbos says he has cured by this means stammering, drug and alcoholic addictions, moral perversions, and excessive cigarette smoking.
“My claim in this matter", said Dr Quackenbos yesterday, “is that this cure by hypnosis can be carried into prisons and other such institutions, and even into the slums. For a year I have been experimenting along this line of hypnotic cure at the Newsboys’ Home and elsewhere, and it is a fact that of the fifteen or more cases which I have treated I have found them all to be entirely successful. In fact, I have not once failed.


“My idea now is to get some induction to see how far it can be demonstrated that one can apply hypnotism to the treatment of all crime. In other words I want to ascertain for a certainty whether it is feasible to apply the treatment to inmates of institutions and prisons. Nobody who is at all familiar, with the subject doubts that it can be done in special cases, but my idea is to see how far it is practicable in all cases.
“I first saw a practical application of hypnotism as a cure in the Academy of Medicine about six years ago, but it was only for a limited purpose. Later the matter was further brought to my attention-in fact, certain physicians in this city have for some time used hypnosis, especially in the treatment of nervous diseases. Then I discovered that I possessed the power to hypnotize, and I decided to try it. The most satisfactory results are obtained where the patient is old enough to realize, not only the significance and purpose of the treatment, but also is possessed of the desire to be made better.
“My chief difficulty thus far has been in getting a sufficient number of cases due to all kinds of opposition, including ecclesiastical. In one case I was told by a matron who was in charge of about 100 or 200 patients that my suggested hypnotic cure was not for an instant to be thought of. Yet in the very next breath she admitted that several of the cases were being treated by Christian Scientists.
“Not only is hypnotism, properly used, a great force for moral reform, but it will also elevate the intelligence. When the hypnotist-physician gets a patient under his control the patient is for the time being part of himself. He has, in short, lost his own will, and has to act and think as the hypnotist suggests and the result is that if elevated ideals and thoughts are presented to the subject he will be elevated accordingly; while if low and debased thoughts are suggested the patient will in proportion be lowered and debased.
“Here I want to speak of legitimate and, If I may use the word, illegitimate hypnotic treatment. I actually believe that a great deal of this illegitimate hypnotic treatment is resorted to in this city, with the result that to me, it seems that people so influenced are induced to leave their money and property in fact just as the hypnotist desires and influences. I believe that persons have been hypnotized and made to steal; indeed, one of our Police Captains told me some time ago that he had such a case.
“Then, too, take the case of those who are hypnotized for purposes of exhibition. A person so repeatedly hypnotized is very seriously injured mentally. That, of course, I consider criminal. But no possible harm can come to a mind put under the influence of a reputable physician, say four or five times. I would suggest therefore, in view of this illegitimate hypnotism, that the power to hypnotize be placed only in the hands of reputable physicians.
“Reputable physicians in Europe as well as in America are reporting cases by the thousands in which hypnotism has acted as a palliative or cure. These cases include not only functional nervous diseases, but also diseases in which the pain is a prominent symptom. The nervous symptoms are controlled, cured by the establishment of functional harmony through the power of suggestion.
“Let me explain to you from the medical standpoint, the working of the hypnotic cure. The phenomena of hypnotism are scientifically explicable on the supposition of a double ego, a duplex personality, implying two distinct states of consciousness – one called the primary consciousness, involving the mind’s recognition of its own acts; the other, called the secondary consciousness, holding those mental processes and procedures of which we have no knowledge. (Note: Thomas Troward and others used the term Subjective and Objective minds) That is, each human being is one individual with two distinct phases of existence. Now, it is this secondary consciousness that is amenable to in hypnosis to what is called suggestion or the insinuation of a belief, impulse, or image into the mind of the subject by emphatic declaration.
“Both a Christian Science healer and a hypnotist seek to alleviate pain by arousing in the subject the idea that it does not exist, and each obtains control of the secondary consciousness to effect his purpose. In ordinary hypnosis there are two distinct conditions: lethargy, or the inactive stage, and somnambulism, or the alert stage. The first is a condition of deep sleep, the second one of exalted mind power and increased physical activity, in which the subject lives an unreal live that he remembers nothing after awaking. But his subliminal self unhesitatingly accepts, in either of these stages, every emphatic statement or direction of the hypnotist, no matter how it may conflict with stereotyped convictions and every-day experience. Suggestions for post-hypnotic fulfillment are even carried out to the letter, sometimes for months after the treatment.
“ I keep my patients under hypnotic control for about fifteen or twenty minutes each time, and I have found that if the treatment is repeated three times in most cases, at intervals of four days to week, the required results are produced – certainly after a fourth time. I once cured a thief eighteen years old. When I first put him under my influence I gave him the suggestion that he should steal no more and that he lived in a country where honesty not only prevailed, but was rewarded by promotion. In short, I put a promising future before his mind, basing that future on hos honesty. I not only cured him as a thief, but when he came to see me, saying that he no longer had any temptation to steal, he had an open, frank countenance.
“Another case I cured by hypnotism was that of a confirmed cigarette smoker twenty years old, whose heart was pitching around in an awful way and who was generally a wreck. In a very short time I had him entirely cured, the first week reducing him from twenty cigarettes a day to four a day for the whole week. Another case I cured was that of a young fellow who stammered. I simply put him under my influence, told him that his stammering was hurting him in his business, and that I wanted him to stop.
“I am now trying to make arrangements with the management of the New York Juvenile Asylum to get some boys and girls with whom to experiment. As fear may be expressed by some people that these experiments may do the subject harm, I may say that they certainly will not do them any mental harm, and, as for harm otherwise, you can’t make them any worse than they are. In all my experiments I never try to get my subjects into a somnambulistic state, for the reason that it is not necessary for the accomplishment of my purpose, and is verging on dangerous ground.”

Originally published April 30 1899

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MIND.

The great truth which the science of hypnotism has brought to light is the dual nature of the human mind. The subjective mind is only able to reason deductively and not inductively, while the objective mind can do both. Innumerable experiments on persons in the hypnotic state have shown that the subjective mind is utterly incapable of making the selection and comparison which are necessary to the inductive process, but will accept any suggestion, however false, but having once accepted any suggestion, it is strictly logical in deducing the proper conclusions from it, and works out every suggestion to the minutest fraction of the results which flow from it.
the subjective mind is entirely under the control of the objective mind. With the utmost fidelity it reproduces and works out to its final consequences whatever the objective mind impresses upon it; and the facts of hypnotism show that ideas can be impressed on the subjective mind by the objective mind of another as well as by that of its own individuality. This is a most important point, for it is on this amenability to suggestion by the thought of another that all the phenomena of healing, whether present or absent, of telepathy and the like, depend. Under the control of the practised hypnotist the very personality of the subject becomes changed for the time being; he believes himself to be whatever the operator tells him he is: he is a swimmer breasting the waves, a bird flying in the air, a soldier in the tumult of battle, an Indian stealthily tracking his victim: in short, for the time being, he identifies himself with any personality that is impressed upon him by the will of the operator, and acts the part with inimitable accuracy. But the experiments of hypnotism go further than this, and show the existence in the subjective mind of powers far transcending any exercised by the objective mind through the medium of the physical senses; powers of thought-reading, of thought-transference, of clairvoyance, and the like, all of which are frequently manifested when the patient is brought into the higher mesmeric state; and we have thus experimental proof of the existence in ourselves of transcendental faculties the full development and conscious control of which would place us in a perfectly new sphere of life.
But it should he noted that the control must be our own and not that of any external intelligence whether in the flesh or out of it. But perhaps the most important fact which hypnotic experiments have demonstrated is that the subjective mind is the builder of the body. The subjective entity in the patient is able to diagnose the character of the disease from which he is suffering and to point out suitable remedies, indicating a physiological knowledge exceeding that of the most highly trained physicians, and also a knowledge of the correspondences between diseased conditions of the bodily organs and the material remedies which can afford relief. And from this it is but a step further to those numerous instances in which it entirely dispenses with the use of material remedies and itself works directly on the organism, so that complete restoration to health follows as the result of the suggestions of perfect soundness made by the operator to the patient while in the hypnotic state.
Now these are facts fully established by hundreds of experiments conducted by a variety of investigators in different parts of the world, and from them we may draw two inferences of the highest importance: one, that the subjective mind is in itself absolutely impersonal, and the other that it is the builder of the body, or in other words it is the creative power in the individual. That it is impersonal in itself is shown by its readiness to assume any personality the hypnotist chooses to impress upon it; and the unavoidable inference is that its realization of personality proceeds from its association with the particular objective mind of its own individuality. Whatever personality the objective mind impresses upon it, that personality it assumes and acts up to; and since it is the builder of the body it will build up a body in correspondence with the personality thus impressed upon it. These two laws of the subjective mind form the foundation of the axiom that our body represents the aggregate of our beliefs. If our fixed belief is that the body is subject to all sorts of influences beyond our control, and that this, that, or the other symptom shows that such an uncontrollable influence is at work upon us, then this belief is impressed upon the subjective mind, which by the law of its nature accepts it without question and proceeds to fashion bodily conditions in accordance with this belief. Again, if our fixed belief is that certain material remedies are the only means of cure, then we find in this belief the foundation of all medicine. There is nothing unsound in the theory of medicine; it is the strictly logical correspondence with the measure of knowledge which those who rely on it are as yet able to assimilate, and it acts accurately in accordance with their belief that in a large number of cases medicine will do good, but also in many instances it fails. Therefore, for those who have not yet reached a more interior perception of the law of nature, the healing agency of medicine is a most valuable aid to the alleviation of physical maladies. The error to be combated is not the belief that, in its own way, medicine is capable of doing good, but the belief that there is no higher or better way.
Then, on the same principle, if we realize that the subjective mind is the builder of the body, and that the body is subject to no influences except those which reach it through the subjective mind, then what we have to do is to impress this upon the subjective mind and habitually think of it as a fountain of perpetual Life, which is continually renovating the body by building in strong and healthy material, in the most complete independence of any influences of any sort, save those of our own desire impressed upon our own subjective mind by our own thought. To afford a solid basis for this conviction is the purpose of Mental Science.
AN intelligent consideration of the phenomena of hypnotism will show us that what we call the hypnotic state is the normal state of the subjective mind. It always conceives of itself in accordance with some suggestion conveyed to it, either consciously or unconsciously to the mode of objective mind which governs it, and it gives rise to corresponding external results. The abnormal nature of the conditions induced by experimental hypnotism is in the removal of the normal control held by the individual's own objective mind over his subjective mind and the substitution of some other control for it, and thus we may say that the normal characteristic of the subjective mind is its perpetual action in accordance with some sort of suggestion.

From: THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE
By THOMAS TROWARD[1909]


On May 16, 1916, at the age of 69, Thomas Troward passed on.

Horatio W. Dresser published A History of the New Thought Movement, in 1919 and The Quimby Manuscripts, in 1921.


"The Ego and the Id" is a prominent paper by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. It is an analytical study of the human psyche outlining his theories of the psychodynamics of the id, ego, and super-ego, which is of fundamental importance in the development of psychoanalytic. The study was conducted over years of meticulous research and was first published in 1923.

Signs of hypnosis.

Here are 17 signs of hypnotic trance a subject will demonstrate:
1. Expansion of Eyelids;
2. Fixation of Glance;
3. Tearing of Eyes;
4. Eyes are Closing (but not always);
5. Blinking Movements Slow;
6. Reddening of the Eyes;
7. Color of Face Changes;
8. Swallowing Movements Slow;
9. Pose of the Subject Becomes Fixed;
10. Muscles of the Body Relax Slightly;
11. Breathing Slows Down and Becomes more Rhythmic and Typhoid;
12. Heart Rate Decreases;
13. Facial Muscles Relax, the Face is flattened, especially the Cheeks, Forehead, Lips;
14. Reaction to External Noise Reduces;
15. Delayed Motor Reaction;
16. Appearance of Spontaneous Reactions, such as Vibration of Hands and Eyelids, a Slight Jerk of the Body, the Lips;
17. Body Temperature Changes.

I took a stress test on the street last week. I was curious about the machine. The operator had me hold two paddles and to think of someone who caused me grief (leading or pacing). And followed with a barrage of questions. I didn’t mention I did hypnosis. He mentioned buying a book and talked about their program and used the phrase “auditing” so I looked it up on WIKI.

The procedure of auditing is a two-person activity. One person, the "auditor", guides the other person, the "preclear". The preclear's job is to look at the mind and talk to the auditor. The auditor acknowledges what the preclear says and controls the process so the preclear may put his full attention on his work.
The auditor and preclear sit down in chairs facing each other. The process then follows in eleven distinct steps:
1. The auditor assures the preclear that he will be fully aware of everything that happens during the session.
2. The preclear is instructed to close his eyes for the session, entering a state of "dianetic reverie", signified by "a tremble of the lashes". During the session, the preclear remains in full possession of his will and retains full recall thereafter.
3. The auditor installs a "canceller", an instruction intended to absolutely cancel any form of positive suggestion that could accidentally occur. This is done by saying "In the future, when I utter the word 'cancelled,' everything I have said to you while you are in a therapy session will be cancelled and will have no force with you. Any suggestion I may have made to you will be without force when I say the word 'cancelled.' Do you understand?"
4. The auditor then asks the preclear to locate an exact record of something that happened to the preclear in his past: "Locate an incident that you feel you can comfortably face."
5. The preclear is invited by the auditor to "Go through the incident and say what is happening as you go along."
6a. The auditor instructs the preclear to recall as much as possible of the incident, going over it several times "until the preclear is cheerful about it".
6b. When the preclear is cheerful about an incident, the auditor instructs the preclear to locate another incident: "Let's find another incident that you feel you can comfortably face." The process outlined at steps 5 and 6a then repeats until the auditing session's time limit (usually two hours or so) is reached.
7. The preclear is instructed to "return to present time".
8. The auditor checks to make sure that the preclear feels himself to be in "present time", i.e. not still recalling a past incident.
9. The auditor gives the preclear the canceller word: "Very good. Cancelled."
10. The auditor tells the preclear to feel alert and return to full awareness of his surroundings: "When I count from five to one and snap my fingers you will feel alert. Five, four, three, two, one." (snaps fingers)

Yes, it’s Dianetics. The above is remarkably very similar to a hypnosis session. Notice the “trembling eyelashes” and the various embedded commands. Even the count down and snapping of the fingers to return them to a waking state.

Various New Age authors also use a form of hypnosis or “Power of Suggestion” on various CD’s and tapes I’ve had over the years, especially Past Life regression ones. Use a little discernment over what you buy and who you talk to. It’s always a matter of choice.

The late, great Milton Erickson often used embedded commands or simply metaphors without inducing a hypnotic state. He also said some of the best work is accomplished in a light trance.

Judge Thomas Troward did write of this in the early 1900’s.

The Power of Suggestion

In the early 1900’s Judge Thomas Troward warned of the abuse of hypnosis and the power of suggestion.

What the mind perceives to be true will be true, but not necessarily the Truth.

Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.[1] The "six degrees" claim has been decried as an "academic urban myth". The existence of isolated groups of humans would tend to invalidate the strictest interpretation of the hypothesis. Yet the idea continues.

The hundredth monkey effect is a supposed phenomenon in which a learned behaviour spreads instantaneously from one group of monkeys to all related monkeys once a critical number is reached. By generalization it means the instantaneous, paranormal spreading of an idea or ability to the remainder of a population once a certain portion of that population has heard of the new idea or learned the new ability. The story is popular among New Age authors and personal growth gurus and has become an urban legend and part of New Age mythology. It’s been noted that the skill developed through observational learning, which is widespread in the animal kingdom

The book Rhythms of Vision: The Changing Patterns of Belief (1976) discussed sacred geometry, subtle energy, chakras, spiritual planes of existence and many other topics, the book has been compared to the work of the occultist Corinne Heline and the theosophist Alice Bailey. The book is most well known for first discussing the Hundredth monkey effect.

Lyall Watson is credited with the first published use of the term "hundredth monkey" in his 1979 book, Lifetide. Watson was a member of a UFO channelling cult, known as ‘The Nine’, which has had a huge influence on hundreds of thousands of devotees worldwide.

Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth [1979] was written to convey the exploits of ‘The Nine’.

‘The Nine’ seemed to get messages from “Tom”.

“Atlantis … was a civilisation originated by a migrant group from Aksu. It had flourished for thousands of years and had come to a sudden cataclysmic end about 11000 BC. It had stretched from Greece to the Americas. The name Atlantis was in fact a corruption, and it should be known as the Altean civilisation, for its people 'were of the civilisation of Altea”

“Instead of using the great medical knowledge that they had to improve their minds they used it to improve their sex organs.' Altean surgery, he explained, was capable of effecting transplants of all the vital organs of the body, even of brains, and 'those organs that were transplanted were far superior to those that had existed in the physical body'. The life expectancy of an Altean who had the best medical care could run into thousands of years.”

Who or what was Tom?
1. Tom was a pure invention, a creation of one, two or of the three of them in collusion.
2. Tom was an unconscious invention, a composite created out of information contained in the minds of the sitters by the well-known mediumistic process of 'withdrawal' of such information.
3. Tom was a secondary personality of one of them, endowed with psi abilities, that takes over when she is in a dissociated state of consciousness.
4. Tom was a spirit, a discarnate entity with extraordinary powers of invention and cognition.
5. Tom was what he says he is, an intelligent being from another part of the cosmos.

Curiously enough the book also offers this description of the author of “The Keys Enoch”, another new age phenomena :

”Professor of Oriental Studies at the California Institute-of the Arts at Valencia, was not so much a teacher as an experience, a guru-figure whose teaching was not an explanation of objective reality but a spontaneous creation of ideas and experiences that made his students explore new areas for themselves and in themselves. Dressed always in a crumpled suit and wearing a black beret perched on the back of his head, He held classes which sometimes ran as long as eight hours, during which he would alternate between reading long passages of scripture and delivering rambling commentaries on them. … He sometimes spoke about UFOs and about his personal contacts with extra-terrestrials, who, he said, had often intervened in Earth history since prehistoric times, when they had first established a civilization in the Tarim Basin to the north of Tibet. Many of his students recorded his every word, except on occasions when he made them turn off their machines while he gave them some devastating piece of cosmic news that only he was privy to and which he said he was now allowed to share with them.”

“a man with his own extra-terrestrial contacts who had regaled his students at the California Institute of the Arts with reports of his conversations with contacts with names like Enoch, Maitreya and Metatron”

I gave a talk at Toastmasters this week on the ‘“Famous” Indian Rope Trick’. It was a hoax perpetuated by John Wilkie in 1890, while a reporter at the Chicago Tribune, using the assumed name of Fred S. Ellmore (Fred Sell More). [Historical note: Wilkie became head of the Secret Service in 1898 and remained so until 1912.]

[1]Frigyes Karinthy (1887 –1938) was a Hungarian author, playwright, poet, journalist, and translator. He was the first proponent of the six degrees of separation concept, in his 1929 short story, “Chains”.

Man has two minds

Thomson Jay Hudson (1834 – 1903), Chief Examiner of the US Patent Office and Psychical researcher, known for his three laws of psychic phenomena, which were first published in 1893.



Refusing his father's wish to become a minister of religion, Hudson funded his own study of law at college. He began a law practice in Port Huron, Michigan, but, in 1860, he began a journalistic career instead; and, in 1866, unsuccessfully ran for the US Senate. From 1877 till 1880 he was Washington Correspondent for the Scripps Syndicate. In 1880 he accepted a position in the US Patent Office, and was promoted to Principal Examiner of a Scientific Division, a post he held until the publication of his remarkable book The Law of Psychic Phenomena in 1893.

Thomson Jay Hudson began observing hypnotism shows and noticed similarities between hypnosis subjects and the trances of Spiritualist mediums. His conclusion was that any contact with "spirits" was in fact contact with the medium's or the subject's own subconscious. Anything else could be explained by telepathy, which he defined as contact between two or more subconsciouses. [1]


Hudson postulated that his theory could explain all forms of spiritualism, and had a period of popularity until the carnage of the First World War caused a fresh interest in spiritualism again as psychic mediums emerged to meet the demands of grieving relatives.
Hudson's three laws
1. Man has two minds: the objective mind (conscious) and the subjective mind (subconscious).
2. The subjective mind is constantly amenable to control by suggestion.
3. The subjective mind is incapable of inductive reasoning.
Hudson's books include:
1. The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1892),
2. A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life (1895),
3. Law of Mental Medicine (1903), and
4. Evolution of the Soul and Other Essays (1906).


[1] P.P.Quimby had already concluded all this some 30 years before.


Thomas Troward wrote about hypnosis, the subjective and objective minds in the early 1900's.

Duality of Mind

The conscious and the subconscious.
The objective and the subjective.
The waking and the sleeping.
The voluntary and the involuntary.
The outer and the inner.

The subconscious is subject to the conscious.
Hence the terms subconscious or subjective.
The subjective mind is subject to intuition, emotions, memory and has the capacity for clairvoyance and thought reading.
It is subject to the information you give it.
Your habitual thinking steers your subconscious.

The conscious mind is the objective mind because it deals with external objects.
It uses your five physical senses.
It learns by observation, experience, education and reasoning.

Thomas Troward used the terms objective and subjective.
P.P. Quimby used his own terminology. He also used his own terminology to describe the ego. Freud hadn't invented that term yet.

Significance of Hypnotism

An intelligent consideration of the phenomena of hypnotism will show us that what we call the hypnotic state is the normal state of the subjective mind. It always conceives of itself in accordance with some suggestion conveyed to it, either consciously or unconsciously to the mode of the objective mind which governs it, and it gives rise to corresponding external results.

The abnormal nature of the conditions induced by experimental hypnotism is in the removal of the control held by the individual's own objective mind over his subjective mind and the substitution of some other control for it, and thus we may say that the normal characteristic of the subjective mind is its perpetual action in accordance with some sort of suggestion. It becomes therefore a question of the highest importance to determine in every case what the nature of the suggestion shall be and from what source it shall proceed; but before considering the sources of suggestion we must realise more fully the place taken by subjective mind in the order of Nature.
The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science by Thomas Troward
From a lecture originally given by Judge Troward in 1904 in the Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh.

The philosopher William James (1842 – 1910) characterized Troward’s Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science as "far and away the ablest statement of philosophy I have met, beautiful in its sustained clearness of thought and style, a really classic statement."

Misuse of the Power of Suggestion

The Hidden Power - Thomas Troward - 1921
Troward talks of "shop assitants being trained to decoy or compel unknowing purchasers into buying what they do not want".
And of the unsuspecting purchaser? They will say: "How in the name of fortune did I come to buy this rubbish?"

Still prevalent today. As he wrote then:
"This recognition of the power of suggestion is in many instances taking a most undesirable form, and I commend to your notice, in support of this observation, numerous advertisements in certain classes of magazines--many of you must have seen many specimens of that kind--offering for a certain sum of money to put you in the way of getting personal influence, mental power, power of suggestion, as the advertisements very unblushingly put it, for any purpose that you may desire."

Hypnosis is about creating positive change.

IT IS NOT about influencing other people.

The Hidden Power

There is a very general recognition, which is growing day by day more and more widespread, that there is a sort of hidden power somewhere which it is within our ability, somehow or other, to use. The ideas on this subject are exceedingly vague with the generality of people, but still they are assuming a more and more definite form, and that which they appear to be taking with the generality of the public is the recognition of the power of suggestion. I suppose none of us doubts that there is such a thing as the power of suggestion and that it can produce very great results indeed, and that it is par excellence a hidden power; it works behind the scenes, it works through what we know as the subconscious mind, and consequently its activity is not immediately recognisable, or the source from which it comes.

The Hidden Power, by Thomas Troward
Copyright, 1921