That's how I design a technique to accomplish any phenomenon. There is no trance phenomenon that people don't already do anyway. Age–regression is not something that only hypnotists do. It's something that people do to themselves. They open a box of memorabilia; they pick up each object and they return to the age they were when they had the object. They discover that the box is really a time machine. "So you can cut a small hole in the side, and pick up something from your childhood and make it very small and you see the door … the opening in the box before you … and slowly you begin to walk into the box of time … and as you step through that door you have strange and confusing feelings. As you step through you look around and there are big objects lying all around you and each object has a door …. And you know, although you arc slightly frightened, that if you walk through any of those doors … you will become the age … at which that object appeared in your life… ."
You see, it's utter nonsense that I'm saying. However, I'm designing a context in which it is possible and logical for people to experience an alternative reality. Of course, you always use feedback to notice if the person is responding or not. You use all the usual behavioral cues to let you know if the person is actually regressing.
Once you get age–regression, you can do something with it. You have a six–year–old sitting in front of you. What do six–year–olds do to become somebody else?
Man: They play dress–up.
Exactly. They go up to the attic and play dress–up; they play "pretend." So you have them put on a set of clothes, only they don't know whose clothes these are, 'This is a funny set of clothes. It's not like mama's clothes. It's not daddy's clothes. It's not army clothes. I have no idea whose clothes these are. It doesn't make any sense … but suddenly, unconsciously … you begin to forget that you are the child … and you begin to become a person whom you don't know at six years old … but your unconscious knows who it is … and can take that person's tone of voice … that person's responses … only that person's movement … and only that person's behavior such that for the next ten minutes you will sit there … and develop unconsciously … a personality which is based on only what–you know … about that particular human being … so that in ten minutes your eyes will spontaneously flutter open … and you will be completely that particular human being."
Does that make sense to you as a way of doing it? You see, we could give you many specific strategies for using hypnosis to get different results. What we are trying to do now instead, is to give you an idea about how we conceive of using hypnosis to do anything. I build any particular hypnotic phenomenon by figuring out how I can get to it as naturally and easily as possible. If you can't get age–regression and identification this way, you can always use refraining to get it.
Man: Isn't there a lot of variation in how fast you can go when you do deep trance identification? And don't clients have to have some flexibility before they can do it?
Yes. Typically I don't attempt to do deep trance identification until I have somebody who is an exquisite subject, and who is trained to respond to me quickly. I would try to get many other trance phenomena before I would try deep trance identification. It seems foolish to me to attempt it with somebody who does not already know how to do amnesia and negative and positive hallucination, because those are minimum requirements. So I would do many other things first.
If I were a teacher in elementary school, deep trance identification would be one of the things I would teach. I would get videotapes of Albert Einstein and Irving Berlin and other great geniuses of our culture. I would have videotapes of them doing different things: talking and interacting with people—and especially talking about and doing whatever they are famous for. Then I would have the kids use those samples of behavior as the basis for becoming these people and accessing their abilities.
Man: It seems to me that this is what other cultures have called spirit possession.
Yes. What people experience as demonic possession, as far as I can tell, is nothing more than deep trance identification. I know a man who is famous for working with multiple personalities. He always has about twenty clients who are MP's. He's also a good Catholic, so of course a lot of his clients are possessed. He does exorcisms out on the helicopter pad behind a hospital. He gets national awards for being a straight psychiatrist, but I'm considered weird!
I went to see him because I was curious about his multiple personality clients. I met one of his clients in an altered state and met four or five of her personalities and the demon that possessed her. As far as I can tell. I can induce that in anybody. In fact, the way he went about introducing me to these personalities is exactly the way I would go about inducing them as a hypnotist.
The woman was sitting there in a chair, talking to us about how she has a lot of amnesia in her life. Nobody else does, right? Yet this psychiatrists convincer for knowing that you are a multiple personality is if there is any period of your life that you can't remember! He makes up a name for whatever period you have amnesia for. According to this psychiatrist, the period that you don't remember wasn't you; that was another personality. He would give it some name like "Fred." Then he ignores your ongoing behavior, hits you on the head unexpectedly and calls this name "Fred! Fred! Come out! Come out!" If you say "What do you mean 'Fred, come out?'" he ignores you until suddenly some other personality emerges. That's a great way to make multiple personalities. I'm convinced that MP's are manufactured by parents and well–meaning therapists; they are not spontaneously derived.
Man: When you do deep trance identification, you don't want to have the person become someone else at six years of age. How do you get him to grow up again?
You just tell him to be someone else. Children don't pretend to be somebody else who is only six years of age. They pretend to be someone else at whatever age they know the person at. You can tell children anything, and as long as you do so meaningfully, they'll obey you. Once you have age–regressed the person, you say "Now, while you continue to play and have a good time, your unconscious mind is going to learn about… . " Then you just give him direct suggestions: "Sort through everything you know unconsciously about so–and–so—the way he looks, the way he sounds, the way he moves, the way he responds—and make that a single unit so that you will emerge spontaneously in fifteen minutes being totally that adult."
Let me caution you again. Deep trance identification is fairly complicated and difficult. It's useful as a learning strategy, but there are much easier ways to accomplish most of the things you want to do. For most changes, the new behavior generator or some other technique will work equally well and be a lot easier to do.
Pain Control
Pain is a fascinating thing in that it's very useful up to a point, and then it's no longer useful. This is true for a lot of other things as well. A little adrenalin in an emergency can be useful, but too much can be incapacitating, depending on the task. For something really simple ami strenuous, like lifting a car off someone, the more adrenalin the better. But for any task that requires fine coordination, like fixing a watch or putting a key into a keyhole, too much adrenalin is disastrous.
One thing I do to deal with pain is provide a context in which the natural response is to miss pain. This is an overall strategy for hypnosis: to create a context in which the natural response is the one I want.