This Guide Sucks

Breaking the fourth wall, while I don’t think my intro guide is necessarily bad, it’s about as organized as Thunder Dome at Burning Man, and not nearly as gentle. There’s plenty of other ways to get started. If you’ve come here from elsewhere, consider this a resource hub, as well as a guide to my writing.

Getting Started

Where you start with hypnosis really depends on what you intend to do with it. I’m going to assume you’re getting in to this for fun and entertainment, rather than for any therapeutic purposes. That being said, some of the best resources have a therapeutic lean. Any of these books or resources would be an excellent start.

• Binaural Histolog - Both a good resource for starting out, as well as a starting point for understanding the psychology and mechanisms behind hypnotic phenomena. The intro guide is solid and will get you going, the theory section is thorough, the suggestions area gives you inspiration on how bring your ideas to fruition without spelling it out, the recommendations section is full of high quality information, and his writing in general is laden with links you can learn more from.
• Hypnosis Without Trance - This book takes a collaborative approach to building phenomena that I use regularly. While I’m not a fan it’s roots in NLP, it’s got the perfect mix of bullshitting artistry to keep you going when things don’t go to plan. The science in the intro isn’t half bad either. Take the parts about manipulation through language with a grain of salt, even if they’re admittedly good tools.
• The Induction of Hypnosis: An Ericksonian Elicitation Approach - If you or your partner is really in to Erickson, but you want a straightforward methodology, this is the way to go. Go for this if you’re curious about trance and spontaneous, automatic responses.
• How To Do Hypnosis: The Practical Introduction to Therapeutic Hypnosis - You can’t go wrong with this book. Graham has healthy and mature perspectives on hypnosis and how to use it, and while he does know his stuff, he avoids getting in to the weeds (unlike me.)
• HOW TO HYPNOTIZE PEOPLE REALLY FAST ON THE INTERNET - No theory, no bullshit, no handholding, just solid advice from a vampire bat. It’s great.

If you’d like a general approach - try any of these pathways:

• If you just want to be lewd with this, read Mind Play, then Wordweaver’s Guide to the Guides. You’ll want to supplement mind play with Mind Play Bonus Bits.
• Hate books but you’ve got the balls to try street hypnosis? Get started with some James Tripp videos. Modify their street hypnosis approach to your liking. You’re doing yourself a disservice by avoiding their book, though.
• Already dabbled a bit with hypnokink and have an experienced partner? Try https://www.learnhypnokink.com/. It’s down to earth and a quick read.

Celebrity Perspectives

In the recreational community, two hypnotist’s names come up more than any others - Milton Erickson and Dave Elman. At the surface level, Erickson is known for popularizing permissive suggestions, and Elman for what’s now known as the Elman induction. While they’re historically interesting, your first instinct shouldn’t be to do a deep dive on their perspectives. Modern views have in large integrated the good parts and forgotten the bad.

Erickson

If you want to delve in to the “weird” side of hypnosis, Hypnotic Realities (my notes here) isn’t a bad pick. Jeffrey Zeig’s The Induction of Hypnosis: An Ericksonian Elicitation Approach (my notes here) is much more useful and approachable, IMO. There’s also their collected works, but I haven’t gone through them. I’m the wrong person to go to for in depth information on Erickson.

If you’re all right with a digest, sleepingirl’s Patreon has some excellent summaries and perspectives on Ericksonian approaches.

Elman

If you want to hear what a stage hypnotist has to say about clinical hypnosis, you can check out Dave Elman’s Hypnotherapy. My book notes are here. It’s definitely a product of it’s time.

Internal Resources

Here’s some other stuff I wrote that I think is decent, in no particular order.

On the academic side of hypnosis, I’ve written a digestible summary of the Cold Control theory, along with a summary of a lecture on cold control, and a summary of the original paper. From Kirsch, I wrote a home gamer’s guide to response expectancy. From Kev Sheldrake and Zoltan Dienes, I’ve written a bit about direct volitional experience modification, which is still being researched. As far as books go, I have notes on Clinical Hypnosis and Self Regulation and Hypnosis and Conscious States respectively.

I’ve taken notes on Hypnotic Realities - it’s just a weird ride of a book.

On street hypnosis, notes on my favorite book Hypnosis Without Trance are here. Also regarding street hypnosis, I’ve taken notes from a presentation given by Kev Sheldrake and their approach. On hypnokink, I’ve written a companion guide to Mind Play, which is fine on it’s own, but with this you can squeeze a bit more mileage out of it.

I also have a collection of links and book reviews.

Psychology

Before I started to do deep dives in to this mess, I just assumed psychology was a unified study, sort of in the same way that I thought math continued from our public education system from Calculus, Advanced Calculus, Super Advanced Calculus, Fuck You Calculus, and then finally you can learn How to Count with Combinatronics. Psychology is both the hardest soft science to study, and the softest hard science to try to extract concrete and clear answers from.

Obviously, you can easily count up to ten on your fingers. Hypnotists are even renowned for their keen ability to count down to ten. But few of us have math degrees. There are diminishing returns for digging deep in to this stuff, but I like doing it anyway. You can learn and apply the principles behind bullshit like NLP, rather than using grammar structures dressed up in a cheap lab coat.

(Internet Tiger, forgive me for the math comparison if you’re reading this..)

Behaviorism

Behaviorist perspectives get an undeserved bad name. It’s a common misunderstanding that the behaviorist view denies anything exists other than observable behavior. A more correct take on it is that it focuses on measuring behavior, and we should avoid studying things or coming up with theories that cannot be directly observable. More modern approaches are examining the combination of cognition and behaviorism. There’s some easily readable from this field though.

• The Wikipedia articles on classical and operant conditioning are pretty solid.
• Don’t Shoot the Dog has a dated, but easy to apply view.
• sleepingirl’s The Brainwashing Book talks about how to apply this to kink.

Social and Cognitive Psychology

Clinical Hypnosis and Self Regulation is my favorite book on the topic. Sometimes, it’s called non-state theory in hypnosis circles. You can read my notes here.

Philosophy of Mind

The philosophy of mind is the intersection of cognition and psychology. It’s pretty abstract. The cold control theory of hypnosis is based in it.

Response Expectancy

Response expectancy, a theory authored by Irving Kirsch, talks about our expectancies shift our experience.

Neuroscience

Man. Neuroscience is fucking hard. Reading Hypnosis and Conscious States probably won’t make you a better hypnotist, but you’ll get a hang of how to approach similar material.