The Subconscious Is Clickbait

Out in the wild west of hypnosis, I was engaged in polite conversation with a colleague about our favorite shared topic. Things were proceeding swimmingly at the saloon until I bumped into an unexpected show-stopper. While talking about theory at a general level, they inferred the subconscious was responsible for many of our hypnotic responses, and I dropped everything I was doing to rectify a simple misunderstanding. One of the nearby locals overheard, and rudely interrupted us.

Woah there partner. Now, I don’t want no confrontation, but I’d kindly recon that them is fightin’ words ‘round these parts. We don’t just observe in the subconscious, but we respect the subconscious. What’s your subconscious ever done to harm you? Why, it almost sounds like you’re about to ramble on about some scientific mumbo-jumbo. Out here, we believe somethin’ when we see somethin’. And I’ve seen the subconscious at work, many a-time!

- Hypno Hoss “The Dozer”

And indeed I will, Hypno Hoss.

While you’d be correct to doubt the complete factual accuracy or even reality of this conversation, it would also be reasonable for you to say you’d believe it if you saw it happen. There’s nothing wrong with that! However, there’s problematic nuance to that line of logic. In this article, I’ll briefly cover how it led some to believe multiple flavors of magnetism were responsible for hypnotic effects and how it eventually misled many to see the subconscious as not only something happening outside of our awareness, but also as an independent part of ourselves.

Seeing is Believing

Before we start diving into details, I’d like to set the scene with something you’ve likely seen before.

Hypnotist: “That’s right… you can feel your arm, becoming lighter and lighter, as if being strung up by that balloon, adding more and more helium… feeling that arm rise… just like that.”

Hypnotist: (pauses)

Hypnotist: “Open your eyes.”

Subject: (Their eyes open, astonished as they look at their arm that feels like it’s risen all on its own.) “Holy fucking shitsticks, batman! That actually worked!

Hypnotist: “That’s right! That’s the power of your subconscious. Think of how many other amazing things it can do, and this power you’ve unlocked.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Their experience was indeed genuine, and they felt these things happen all on their own. I’m not even going to dock points from the hypnotist for using some common hypnotic language to describe what they went through. However, in this context, I could’ve swapped out “your subconscious” for “the energy waves of eggplants.” While it would’ve raised an eyebrow, the line of logic is exactly the same. The subject’s understanding of the subconscious may not line up with the hypnotists. They could be thinking anything from “wow, my mind does things on its own” to “there’s an entity inside of me I was unaware of.”

Since this is a deep dive, let’s not fuck up the explanation. We’ll be taking a quick detour into 🌈The History of Hypnosis🌈 to see where this brain fart has bent us in the past, then get back to the point.

Mesmer Wasn’t a Moron

You’ve already made it onto this reasonably niche hypnosis website, so I’ll spare you a regurgitation of the folklore behind Anton Mesmer and his application of animal magnetism, even though the way the story is told is often inaccurate. Briefly, because it’s required for the central point of this article, Mesmer was a trained doctor and scientist, fascinated by gravity, and believed that we were dealing with the normal forces of physics. If the moon’s gravitational pull can affect tides from a quarter of a million miles away, what’s to say there couldn’t be a similar invisible force between two human bodies?

Here are two translated propositions from a paper Mesmer published in 1779 detailing his theory.

A responsive influence exists between the heavenly bodies, the earth, and animated bodies.

…

Properties are displayed, analogous to those of the magnet, particularly in the human body, in which diverse and opposite poles are likewise to be distinguished, and these may be communicated, changed, destroyed, and reinforced. Even the phenomenon of declination may be observed.

-Binet, Féré - Animal Magnetism - Page 5

If you studied physics in the late 1700s, didn’t have access to google, your peers had no idea what was going on, but when you repeatedly made weird hand-wavy motions in front of someone for a half hour at a time, and they’d start to move as if magnetized, you’d likely assume their movements were “analogous to those of the magnet.” Mesmer saw evidence of established science in a new area and genuinely wanted to share his discovery. Mesmer believed this was something similar to a magnetic force, not literal magnetism.

Almost 50 years later, we see a reification of this concept in two other researchers who study animal magnetism, discussing the effects of hypnotic sensory hallucinations. Ironically, they dismiss some of the effects of suggestion on sensation in the case of magnets. Their line of logic is that magnets are well researched, are shown to produce changes in sensation, and that this is all simple physics.

We have had frequent occasion to speak of aesthesiogenic [sensation-creating] agents. The term is applied to certain agents which, according to Burq, whose observations have been confirmed and extended by other scientific men, have the property of acting on the sensibility and motor power of a certain category of subjects… There is nothing mysterious about this agent; compared by physics to a solenoid, it acts like a faint electric current on the nervous system, and produces a continuous peripheral excitement.

Binet, Féré - Animal Magnetism - Page 262

They were so confident that they boldly stated they didn’t need to prove it, but tested it anyway.

We need not in this place prove the reality of aesthesiogenic influence, in order to reply to those who only see in these agents the effects of suggestion and of expectant attention, since we have already had occasion to explain this point… 3. The same effect was produced when the magnet was concealed under a cloth. 4. This was also the case when the magnet was made invisible by suggestion. 5. We made use of a wooden magnet, and nothing occurred…

Binet, Féré - Animal Magnetism - Page 262-263

Bernheim, a physician and neurologist, was quick to correct Binet’s and Féré’s error in scientific inquiry in his next book.

I say, ‘I am going to move the magnet, and when I do so there will be a transference from the arm to the leg.’ A minute later, the arm falls and the leg rises… If, without disclosing the fact to the subject, I substitute for the magnet a knife, a pencil, a bottle, a piece of paper, or nothing at all - still the phenomena are witnessed.

-Hippolyte Bernheim - Quoted in Clark Hull’s book Hypnosis and Suggestibility, p16

Whew, we’re done for a bit. That was a lot of dusty, old quotes.

I’m not bringing these up just to poke fun at the spectacle of antiquated ideas of hypnosis. I want to highlight that, while these scholars tried to prove almost opposite things, they followed the same patterns in their line of thought. Mesmer studied physics, looked for evidence of invisible magnet-like forces, indirectly created expectations around those forces, and theory-crafted around the behavioral responses he observed. Similarly, Binet and Féré believed magnets created sensation, contextually created the expectation that the magnets would produce sensation, and crafted a theory to fit their world view, finding evidence of it when testing their hypothesis.

Put another way, they went through these steps:

Logical expectation
Communicated expectation
Unknowingly observing the response of the communicated expectation
Expanding upon their expectation - not the observed result

If you’re up to date on modern perspectives, this might look a hell of a lot like Kirsch’s earlier response expectancy theory of hypnosis in a good way. There’s a delicious irony in that one of the very mechanisms functioning as a backbone of hypnotic response not only creates a response in the subject, but also creates observable evidence to researchers for arbitrarily generated theories.

But - I promised an explanation of the subconscious. This topic is a bit of a hot mess, so we need to make a few more detours before getting to the root of this issue.

Freudian Slips

While I’m a reasonably well read hypnosis research tourist, I am much less familiar with psychoanalysis and its evolved forms in modern day perspectives. With that being said, this section should provide enough context to get the point across.

Since the concept of the subconscious is often unfairly accredited to Freud in hypnosis circles, we’re going to have to start by talking about Freud’s drive theory. In the 19th century, materialism was scientifically in vogue. Much like Mesmer drawing from magnetism, Freud again drew from physics, describing the subjective experience of the mind as “a thing,” and thus its function could be described as a mechanism.

To Freud, the brain functioned like a steam boiler that constantly needs to discharge, through thought or action, the excess energy produced by the sexual (and later) the aggressive drives.

- Psychotherapy after Kohut - A Textbook of Self Psychology - p52

Aside from Freud’s famous drive theory, his earlier work discussed how there were, from his point of view, three distinct levels of awareness, creating a topographic model. His model considered there were conscious thoughts that were in awareness, preconscious thoughts that could easily be brought into awareness, and unconscious thoughts that were repressed.

The search for a way to effect permanent change with hysterics led Freud to publish “The Interpretation of Dreams” (1900). In this major book, Freud worked from a theory of a conscious and an unconscious mind (topographic), a theory formed in treating hysterics as they resisted making their traumatic memories conscious. Importantly, this work indicates Freud’s increasing interest in unconscious wishes and fantasies as well as traumatic incidents and memories.

- Psychotherapy after Kohut - A Textbook of Self Psychology - p28-29

Previous to this work, he would occasionally use the term subconscious. He regretted the term’s ambiguity, preferring unconscious. To Freud, the unconscious was a part of you like a tire is a part of a car. If he had an issue with a client, he would attempt to use his model to try to find some sort of underlying issue. Trying to speak directly with the unconscious would be like trying to talk to your gastrointestinal system to see if it was the Jack in the Box or Taco Bell putting you in distress.

Before closing this section - I need to make one more remark. Your friend who says they understand psychology, offhandedly citing the id, ego, and superego? They don’t know shit.

Not only has Freud’s theory of the mind been discarded by many psychoanalysts, so has drive theory, for the two go together.

- Psychotherapy after Kohut - A Textbook of Self Psychology - p49

On to Erickson

Now that we’ve covered the concept of “the” unconscious from Freud’s frankly antiquated perspective, we now have a stable working definition we can use.

… Right?

Well, a popular figure put their own spin on things.

Originally Erickson had a Freudian view of psychodynamics that is nicely exemplified by his famous experimental production of Freud’s “everyday psychopathology” (Erickson, 1939). But by 1960 and probably earlier, he had shifted to a radical new view of the unconscious as a highly benevolent mental structure and entity possessing some sort of awareness, with which a hypnotherapist can communicate, and whose cooperation can be enlisted in the service of the patient. To some extent, Erickson may have been talking metaphorically here. But this is unlikely in his repeated assertions that the patient’s unconscious can be counted on to protect the former from therapeutic errors committed by the hypnotherapist.

Andre Weitzenhoffer - The Practice of Hypnotism - Second Edition - p249

Unfortunately, this is a bit vague. It would be great if we knew exactly what Erickson thought of the unconscious. Unfortunately, if you want to know exactly what they thought, you’re out of luck. Similar to how he’d deliberately make ambiguous suggestions, he had a habit of leaving definitions open.

Erickson was much better at doing things than at explaining why he did them. One result of this is that much of what has been written regarding his modus operandi by his students is largely based on their interpretation of what they managed to get him to explain (Chapter 9). Quite typically, as I experienced it, Erickson usually would not directly answer queries and when the student would then verbalize what he thought Erickson’s answer had been for his assent or dissent with it, as likely as not Erickson would make a noncommittal comment that would leave the student quite in the dark regarding the correctness or incorrectness of his interpretation. There are relatively few clinical articles written by Erickson, and these antedate the evolution of what has come to be known as the Ericksonian approach. One does find here and there in these early writing (e.g., Erickson, 1948) intimations of his later approach, but just intimations. For a fuller expose of his ideas, one has to turn to the three volumes he co-authored with Rossi. But as I have pointed out elsewhere, the conditions that surrounded their writing makes it unlikely that one is getting just Erickson’s thoughts on the matter. There is a great deal of Rossi’s own views and understandings. So much so that some writers, such as Matthews, Lankton, and Lankton (1993), when quoting from the three books, attribute the material to Rossi alone.

- Andre Weitzenhoffer - The Practice of Hypnotism - Second Edition - p589

Erickson’s approach and his following fame likely popularized the idea that the unconscious was no longer just part of a model, but to a part you could talk to. He would regularly give suggestions like this, as if he was directly talking to an entity.

MHE: I can tell your unconscious mind

that you are an excellent hypnotic subject,

and whenever you need to or want to,

your unconscious mind will allow you to use it.

Erickson, Milton. The Collected Works of Milton H. Erickson, MD: Volume 10: Hypnotic Realities (p. 49). Kindle Edition.

It wasn’t just Erickson doing this. The concept of ‘parts’ of the mind was popular in the 70s, the most notable of which being Hilgard’s neodissociation theory, positing a ‘hidden observer.’

When I place my hand on your shoulder, I shall be able to talk to a hidden part of you that knows things that are going on in your body, things that are unknown to the part of you to which I am now talking. The part of you to which I am now talking will not know what you are telling me or even that you are talking.

Knox VJ, Morgan AH, Hilgard ER. Pain and suffering in ischemia. The paradox of hypnotically suggested anesthesia as contradicted by reports from the “hidden observer”. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1974 Jun;30(6):840-7. doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.1974.01760120090013. PMID: 4832190.

While this was novel back in the 70s, the neodissociation theory has mostly been abandoned, with prominent sociocognitive theorists pointing out the phenomena is almost certainly a byproduct of suggestion, not a mythical gnome taking residence in our mind’s garden.

Kirsch and Lynn (1998) also maintained that expectancies could account for apparent divisions in personality (the so-called hidden observer phenomenon) that inspired Hilgard’s (1977) neodissociation theory. Hilgard demonstrated that participants could experience an apparent “hidden part” of the mind (hidden observer) that can report on experiences, such as experimentally induced pain, of which the “hypnotized part” is reportedly not cognizant. Kirsch and Lynn (1998) reviewed studies on the hidden observer and concluded that hidden observer reports reflect the nature of suggestions used to induce the phenomenon and expectancies regarding the purported divisions in the personality. More specifically, depending on the suggestions, hidden observers report more or less pain than otherwise reported, they either do or do not reverse figures, and they report more or less effort associated with movements, thereby contradicting the neodissociation view that such reports reflect spontaneously occurring dissociated aspects of the personality… In sum, the very instructions/suggestions used to access the hidden observer engendered expectancies that accounted for differences in the reported properties of the hidden observer…

Lynn, S. J., Green, J. P., Zahedi, A., & Apelian, C. (2022). The response set theory of hypnosis reconsidered: toward an integrative model. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 65(3), 186–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/00029157.2022.2117680

These parts are far removed from the modern meaning that unconscious processing describes something that happens in your mind outside of awareness, like the processes you’re using right now to read this document. While I’d love to drop the topic here and resolve this mess, it gets worse.

NLP and other Bullshit

Remember earlier when I mentioned Mesmer convinced himself he was dealing with some magnet-like invisible force? Well, we’re doing it again, and this time in the form of casually gaslighting people into experiencing previously inaccessible parts of themselves. NLP created more problems than solutions, one of which described below.

As already mentioned, in the early 1950s, LeCron and Cheek introduced to therapists and popularized what eventually became known as ideomotor questioning, or ideomotor signaling, a forerunner of Hilgard’s use of the hidden observer and of certain neurolinguisitc programming (NLP) techniques. In the early days it was referred to as “questioning the unconscious.” Getting in touch with various “unconscious parts” of the individual has since then become a favorite method among some therapists. Not only do they use this method in the hope of being able to gather information not available to the patient’s conscious mind, but also in the hope of being able to bring about changes by instructing these unconscious parts to perform various actions. Under the guidance of the therapists, these unconscious parts very quickly acquire status as full-blown personalities, with all the attributes of a co-consciousness… the techniques that are used to access these so-called unconscious parts most likely create them, so that we are essentially dealing with minor suggested secondary personalities.

Andre Weitzenhoffer - The Practice of Hypnotism - Second Edition - p373-374

In “ideomotor questioning,” we’re ascribing meaning to a behavioral response, assuming a theory without having any evidence of it. For example - if I asked you where you were Tuesday night, and your left finger would twitch if it was somewhere uncomfortable, your pinky finger could twitch for any reason. It could be because you’re anxious about your response, the question was ambiguous, you don’t want to answer, you’re holding your hand in an uncomfortable position, you inhaled outside of your awareness causing a slight movement, or you were so focused on how your finger felt in the moment that you stopped holding it still. It means nothing. (Don’t use ideomotor signaling for anything more important than a cheap card trick.)

If it wasn’t clear - there isn’t a distinct, separate entity inside of you that makes a hypnotic response happen.

Finally, A Fucking Definition

The moment I’ve been dragging you along for. It’s bunk to describe the subconscious as anything other than processing happening outside of awareness. There isn’t an unconscious, just unconscious processing.

Adam Eason, the author of The Science Of Self Hypnosis, flagellated himself in the introduction to his book for mentioning the unconscious mind in his previous book’s title. Despite its unfortunate origin, it’s the best quote I can find from a reputable source that puts this into plain language.

We can talk about doing things unconsciously, but as a separate entity, distinct from the brain, distinct from another separate entity known as the conscious mind, it does not exist.

…

If you examine the depths of research in the field of hypnosis over the last century, from major contributors such as Hull and White in the 1930s and 1940s, Hilgard in the 1950s, Barber and Orne in the 1960s, those engaged in the theory wars of the 1970s, such as Barber and Spanos, and other authors up to the 1990s, such as Kirsch, Lynn, McConkey and Sheehan – none of them discussed the unconscious mind.

Eason, Adam. The Science Of Self-Hypnosis: The Evidence Based Way To Hypnotise Yourself (p. 10). Awake Media Productions. Kindle Edition.

I’m still going through the book, but frankly, it seems like the only thing worth reading on self-hypnosis. Everything else has been utter trash.

If you’re read this far, I have some bad news for you. You’re probably a bit of a nerd, but you’re in good company. Adam Eason’s take is great if you’re willing to take it at face value, but there’s respectable research supporting his perspective.

… we discussed some current models of hypnosis and argued that they have maintained the prominence of consciousness and/or dissociation that cognitive science has jettisoned. Sometimes this is stated outright and sometimes it is stated in terms of a disconnect between systems in the mind/brain. In either case, there is no need to posit any sort of disconnect. We further argued that although one of these models did take attribution theory into account, it did not go far enough. We averred that a more parsimonious model would not need to posit disconnecting mental systems when they were never previously joined. An entirely unconscious view of hypnosis eliminates some if its mysterious/mystical nature. The phenomena that are observable in hypnosis are attributable to normative unconscious processes rather than to events and processes unique to hypnosis. Hypnotists can make use of these processes for the benefit of the patient and thereby enhance their focus and decrease their resistance to suggestion.

- Weinberger, J., Brigante, M., & Nissen, K. (2022). Conscious intelligence is overrated: The normative unconscious and hypnosis. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 64(4), 290–305. https://doi.org/10.1080/00029157.2021.2025032

The unconscious as a discrete part of ourselves is a myth and a misunderstanding.

The Attribution Trap

Well, that was damning.

Why not just post Adam Eason’s quote at the top and be done with it? There’s one more point I wanted to make. Meaning-making is a critical component of hypnosis - so effective that it’s fooled subjects, recreational hypnotists, therapists, and researchers alike. I want you to recognize the gravity of wielding tools of persuasion so powerful that they’ll create their own evidence, and even if you primarily identify as a hypnotist, you can easily be persuaded into believing your own model. You are not immune to this. Hell, I’m not immune to this! The techniques you use create the very phenomena they claim to discover - from hand levitation to the subconscious itself.

Theory-crafting and figuring things out is a big part of having fun with hypnosis. It’s also probably the most prominent progenitor of misunderstandings in the community, especially when a celebrity regurgitates them as matter-of-fact or someone else cites their clout, credentials, or experience as reason to believe them. Make an effort to see behavior as behavior and keep your bullshit detector active.

You might have one final burning question: why is the subconscious clickbait?

That’s the clickbait. I just wanted a cool title.