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Women and Hypnosis
When you think about women and hypnosis, what comes to mind? A red-head in a white linen suit? A stereotypical, intellectualized female? A mother figure? A dominatrix? A manipulative way to get a woman to go out with you (or something more towards kinky)? Seriously, think about it.
Now think about the idea of a hypnotist. Do stereotypical visions of a man holding a stop-watch come to mind? How about Freud? A goateed man in a lab jacket? Or is your idea one that is genderless, fitting whatever expectation you need at a given time?
What runs through my mind are images of all the various hypnotists I have met over the past several years. Interestingly enough there is at least one for each of the notions mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. So, I have to dig a little deeper.
I question myself about what comes into my consciousness when I think about bringing together the notion of the words “hypnosis” “woman.” After a few moments of self-indulgent thoughts about myself, my mind tries desperately to go through the throngs of famous personas that I am aware of and come up with a famous woman hypnotist – someone incredibly well-know, if not to the world, then to hypnotists.
A vague image of an Edwardian woman gives a weak knock at the door to my subconscious and then the words Anna Freud appear on her calling card. The daughter of Freud, who also played a large role in advancing psychology, seems a close fit for the terms “woman” and “hypnosis.” Unfortunately, I could not get them to stick together and find any meaningful references that correlate the two.
An afternoon online was also not very helpful in giving me any famous women hypnotist either and I began to think that the idea of writing a post about a historical woman in hypnosis who advanced the cause was not the way to proceed. What I found when searching for historical women and hypnosis were famous hypnosis sessions involving women:
Bridey Murphy, Anna O., Dora, and the hysterical women of Charcot – and none were the actual hypnotists.
So, I approached it another way – famous women hypnotist. What kept coming up were sites about female sexual domination, manipulative measures to increase a persons chances of having sex with a female, feminist sites, and a few woman-based concerns (child-birth, sexual problems, women working with women) sites. Obviously at this point, what I had thought would be a few words about a particular woman hypnotists or two has changed drastically.
Instead of taking a feministic approach (where are the women in our history?) to the message I hope to get through here, I will take another angle. I know there are historic females who were seriously involved with advancing hypnosis (I will find them at some point) and many of the early big players in the profession were men, but time has moved on.
We are beyond the age of needing to separate the gender of those who move hypnosis into into the mainstream. Everyday there are many of each gender who discover and prove the amazing potential of the hypnotic medium. Researchers and practitioners come from every walk of life. There is someone out there that fits every stereotype and that is what makes being a hypnotist in this day and age so interesting.
I am not diminishing women’s’ role in hypnosis – but I am saying that what a woman contributes is just as important as any man’s contribution. And any man’s contribution is just as important as anyone else’s.
Perhaps one day I will write on the historical significance of certain women hypnotists, but not today. Instead, I use this space to celebrate all of us, and bringing our own uniqueness to the hypnotic arts – whether you are an entertainer, a dominatrix, a control freak, a clinical practitioner or a hobbyist. Hypnosis is a tool that deservers to be treated with a reverence to the craft, not sexes.
Ellie Blunt is a practicing, clinical hypnotist. Her background is in transpersonal psychology. She write daily about her adventures in hypnosis at www.transparenthypnotist.com
Sun, Oct 5, 2008
Hypnosis Training, Misc