#kayfabe

There's a lot of bullshit in hypnosis. We need a lot of bullshit in hypnosis. (I define bullshit as "that which, when you stick it in a lab and have bored grad students perform it, does not appear to produce statistically significant results.")

I'm not comfortable with this. It goes against my instincts to say that bullshit is necessary. But hypnosis is not a science, even though it can be studied and analyzed scientifically. At its core, hypnosis is a framework for bullshitting people, and and you can't bullshit people without bullshit.

I mean, you can. A hypnotist who didn't use bullshit -- no fancy induction, indirect suggestions, double binds or reflective language could still hypnotize someone and have them following suggestions. It just doesn't make for great entertainment.

For performative (street/stage/kink) hypnosis, you need the audience to be entertained -- not just the onlookers in stage and street hypnosis, but also your hypnotee. You need a performance. You must assume the mantle of the Hypnotist, and use all the trappings that people associate with hypnosis. At the same time, playing the role of the hypnotist enables you to perform and act in ways that you would not feel comfortable behaving in your daily life. For new hypnotists, using the language and the techniques can act like Dumbo's magic feather as they transition from using scripts but are not confident in their own voice. The performance of a hypnotist and a hypnotee is kayfabe, a shared fiction that everyone makes real.

The law of kayfabe means that regardless of how scientifically valid or transparently meaningless any particular hypnotic technique is, it all has to be treated as real. The flourishes and extra steps involved are all performance first, and trying to break them down individually and determine which bits are meaningful is like trying to break down what turns Dwayne Johnson into The Rock. And whenever hypnotists analyze a stage performance and try to provide commentary on a particular hypnotic technique, it's about as realistic as Jim Ross doing a play by play.

This doesn't stand out so much in a first meet scenario, where neither hypnotist nor hypnotee really know each other. But when you have a well established relationship with a long term hypnotee who is a "high hypnotizable" or even a virtuoso, the nature and value of hypnotic bullshit becomes apparent. Because anything and everything will work. Anything and Everything.

There's a moment in time when you realize that your partner can just do stuff when you tell them to. You can tell them to drop into a trance and they'll drop. You can stick their arm to a wall and it'll stick. You feel like a god. And then you realize that every single hypnotic technique you've learned, every carefully rehearsed abracadabra is as meaningless as a cosmopolitan sex tip. You don't need any of the techniques to get things to work -- and if you can throw it out and everything still works, then it was bullshit. And again, anything and everything will work, no matter how stripped down you get. You could order a full body orgasm like you were ordering a subway sandwich and it would happen.

This breaks kayfabe, of course, and is also deeply unsatisfying to most people expecting a good old-fashioned mindfuck. A climax on its own is empty and loveless, like meat without salt. The hypnotist gave nothing, and the hypnotee feels cheated. This shows the underling scaffolding of hypnosis, and why hypnotic techniques exist even though they don't do anything that a straight-up suggestion wouldn't do -- they are part of the performance.

There's a game called Mornington Crescent. The rules are simple. You can pick them up from listening to people play on Radio 4. You can ask players for the ruleset and they'll happily tell you about the different variations, the Tudor Court Rules or how to put other players in Nidd. There's even videos on how Mornington Crescent has evolved and the new techniques and innovations that the masters are coming up with.

It is all complete bullshit. The way to win at Mornington Crescent is to say "Mornington Crescent." In a game with multiple people, everyone takes turns and the person who says "Mornington Crescent" first is the winner.

Everything that anyone has told you about the rules of Mornington Crescent is both bullshit and part of the game. The bullshit is absolutely vital to making a good game of Mornington Crescent. Kayfabe says that you must act as if the rules exist and they matter because everyone knows that kayfabe is the only thing holding the bullshit together.

It's very easy to win at Mornington Crescent, but the underlying point of Mornington Crescent is to win with style -- playing in such a way that the win is satisfying and feels earned. The guide on how to win at Mornington Crescent says that a win is attached to a payoff function F which depends on the number of moves, and a win on the first move.

So a revised ruleset:

Each player in turn says the name of a London Underground station, chosen freely from the list of all possible stations (without repeating earlier choices, but as there are 270 such stations this is not usually an issue).

The first player to say "Mornington Crescent" is the winner. If this happens on the nth move, then the pay off to the player is F(n).

The payoff isn't in the execution of the suggestion, but in the staging and execution of the scene. There's anticipation and a build up of tension as the game progresses. Every move is an opening and increases the risk of something going wrong. In Mornington Crescent, the risk is that another player may immediately end the game, or claim a rule that would make your win look inelegant, by putting you in Nidd or suggesting that you have to traverse different stations. As in improv, you're not allowed to simply deny or ignore the rule, but must make your own claims to muddy the waters and put them on the defensive. The performance matters.

Hypnosis is like Mornington Crescent. Giving a direct suggestion without build up is like winning the game without performing for it. The hypnotist has to make it a deserved reward, and that means taking some risks.

In a hypnosis scene, the risk is that a phrase or suggestion may not land right and destabilize the scene. Your partner, as the hypnotee, is both judge and co-player. Your performance has to feel real, and the more real it feels, the more they'll respond. Hypnotic suggestions build on each other not just to establish compliance and plausibility, but to increase the payoff function. Hypnosis is a story.

The end result of this is that hypnotic techniques are like the rules of Mornington Crescent. It's all fake, and it's all real, and trying to master a particular technique is a waste of time -- the confidence and style of the performance is what makes it work. Find what plays to your strengths, and focus on what feels right.

Punk Planet - Issue 02, July/August 1994

rhiyo is so back. whyd she put her tounge like that after iyo smiled??🤨🏳️‍🌈 also the other segment where iyo was like "how do u say your last name again?" why do u want to know? to change it to your last name😹

Some of them are here too and they are @arigretta @ypsilenna @fihyn-art