Hypnosis!

[Mike11]

Greetings Obectivists and NonObjectivists!

So I thought I would share some fun mind games, trivia and other cool stuff from my future profession, Hypnosis!

The Lie Detecter

Today I'd like to teach you a quick and easy way to tell when someone is lying to you, its simple to learn and usually accurate. Have you noticed that when someone is thinking thier eyes move around? Of course. What you may not have noticed is the direction the eye moves tells you what is happening in their mind. When a right handed person's eyes go up and to your right for example it means they are remembering something visual that happened but when they go up and to the left they're imagining something visual. Each additional direction of the eyes gives you further insight as to which sense they are accessing and whether it is being recalled or imagined.

As someone enters into a particular state, or scene in thier mind they will give off more and more of these cues as they construct (imagine) or reconstruct (remember) it. For example, as someone moves more and more into the memory of thier childhood school days the eye cues signyfying recall become more prominant. Conversely as they get caught up in the details of thier lie the cues for imagination become more prominant. What you want to do is ask a series of questions to force the other person to really enter into the mental state thus allowing you to see the cues they give off. Now with some people this will be quite easy to do with few questions, with others it will take more, not everyone enters into a state or gives off cues at the same rate.

While, with right handers (lefties are reversd) you have visual (up and away) and auditory (looking straight right) recall on the right with visual (up and away) and auditory (straight left) imagnination opposte on the left. So if I asked you to recall the theme from Star Wars in your head with the full force of being in a theater its safe for me to assume you will have looked to the right. Or if asked to see yourself in an art gallery I can bet you went up and left. If not I may need you to do some other things like try to remember just the violin sound in the Star Wars theme or try to imagine a crowd of people looking at a statue in the museum in order to go into a state enough to give off these cues.

Now this is similar to the polygragh test which simply measures stress, this is not a 100% accurate system, its more like a dance and takes alot of practice as many people naturally recall and imagine as they go into a state. A suspicious wife may ask her husband "What was the colour suit your boss wore at the office last night?" and the husband may say "Blue" (the fact being close enough to his mind his eyes did not need to give the cues) while thinking "I wonder if I'll get that report in on time, imagine what would happen if I don't! My wife could divorce me if I lose my job, imagine what that would be like!" (while firing several cues to left because of his imaginings). If the wife simply sees his eyes going up and to the left and thinks it must be a lie than its a bad day for the husband.

Keep the other person in state as much as possible ask to have the sights and sounds described as much as possible untill you get your cues. What I did starting out is trying to get large chunks of information from people. Ask them to describe the look, then the sounds of thier childhood in detail for example and you'll see them firing off these cues. Or try more detailed imagining of a scene with someone like an ideal vacation.

You can get a little practice by playing this online game.

This skill comes from a pseudoscience linked to hypnosis called "neurolinguistic programming" or NLP for short. While this and many other aspects of this discipline hold water it refuses to be subjected to peer review and operates within a very closed commerical structure with a strict hierarhy. Take its other claims with a grain of salt.

From what I heard though Nathaniel Branden uses NLP among other techniques and after starting this thread I found three reviews of his on hypnosis books starting here.

Edited December 14, 2007 by Mike11