IS IT POSSIBLE TO HYPNOTISE ANIMALS SUCCESSFULLY?
At Hypnothoughts (http://www.hypnothoughts.com) a question recently came up regarding animal hypnosis and in a therapeutic context for the animal . . .
It seems to me that there is a great untapped resource here, but I have so far been unable to find any concrete examples; I know of a dog still pining for its companion, who died 6 months ago! The owner tells me that nothing she has tried so far seems to work. Any ideas?
I have a dear friend who has a specialty act in which she performs "animal hypnosis" with a wide range of animals . . . she has a veritable menagerie with which she works with.
Different animals appear to be entranced through a wide variety of techniques (Ormond McGill's yellow book and his big blue book both have techniques that oldtime stage hypnotists would use for this).
However, it's not "real" hypnosis, it's a stage gimmick based upon particular animal responses that appear to be hypnotic.
Animals can be guided into a sort of trancelike state – tonic catalepsy or the like – but the difference between this and hypnosis is lack of utility. With hypnosis you can guide a person changes in behavior through suggestion. Animals such as dogs do not respond merely to verbal suggestion, they have to be guided into behavior changes through reinforcement of behaviors – positive or negative – with the verbal commands "suggestions" fired at the same time, in essence creating triggers or anchors.
If you use one of the MANY methods for creating a trancestate within an animal and then only give it verbal suggestions, the animal can't process the complex language into metaphor experience for the mind to understand.
You might be much better off at comforting the animal, playing with it, introducing new environments to pique its curiosity and using positive reinforcement.
Run, don't walk, to the nearest physical or online bookstore and get yourself a copy of DON'T SHOOT THE DOG: The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor. She's one of the top folks on use of positive reinforcement for animal training . . . actually, the book was originally recommended to me by a friend in terms of the application of much of the concepts to human conditioning as well.
Don't think of it as merely conditioning or that this is somehow less valuable than hypnosis . . . what we do in hypnosis is oftentimes training new responses through positive or negative (certainly, that's what confidence anchors or stop smoking suggestions and the like are often about), it's just that we have a powerful shortcut . . . animals that don't share our language complexity are simply conditioned a different way . . . of course, positive and negative reinforcement are used on humans all the time, whether or not we are aware of it.
I assume that the real kernel of your question is not "can this animal be helped with hypnosis" but "what is an effective way to help this animal?" . . . read the book I recommended and do comfort, exercise, and play work with the animal. Enhance it's variety of experience and quality of life and it will spend less time moping about.
All the best,
Brian
(If you are reading this blog post via a stream, go to https://briandavidphillips.net/ to access the full post with any videos or photos included.)
http://www.briandavidphillips.net/store
See http://www.BrianDavidPhillips.com for details
Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com]
Hypnotist, Hypnotherapist, Intuitionist, Trance Wizard
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
1 comment for “Is Animal Hypnosis Real?”