Hypnosis and Consent
There was an above comment from someone who has done hypnotism for several decades, that if hypnosis could accomplish someone performing something against one's will, it would be outlawed, and a comment on AMA opinion.
First, the easy part: It doesn't matter what the AMA believes. They don't control hypnotism, and have, for decades, denounced it. (Though most modernly will tell you there is validity in it.) The AMA simply has no authority over ANYTHING, anymore than you and three of your friends. They do, however, have influence and money, and many of their suggestions do become law.
Now for the hard part: This is part of a legal concept called consent, and volumes have been written about it. Here is an area of law that of course has not a lot of commentary by judges, because there are no real incidents. And outlawing it would be VERY DIFFICULT to do so, ikf even constitutional.
Let's say I'm a man who wants to bed a woman, and read a book on hypnotism, and, using no drugs or other obvious means, use the techniques in the book, and she goes to bed with me. Did I succeed in using hypnotism?
What if I plant a woman to sit at a bar next to me and comment, to another plant, "Hey, that's X (referring to me). Do you know the last three women to sleep with him all got promotions or the jobs they wanted. And another won $50,000 on a slot machine?" All I did was perfectly legal (though perhaps underhanded) conduct to plant in the mind of a mark an idea. I then exploited the idea. Was any of it legal? Illegal?
Hypnosis is based on the concept of suggestion, which itself can be overt or subliminal. Since males will use ANYTHING to try and bed a girl, it is nearly impossible to prevent them from using subliminal suggestion.
Not to put lkn2myis (who says he's a hypnotist) on the spot, but I'd like to see him write a law that would be constitutional and successful at preventing Johnny-Read-A-Book from using hypnotism. Or, Johnny-Take-A-Course for the matter of that. It just can't be done. I'm more inclinded to agree with him that people cannot be hypnotized into stripping, almost all people anyway. If we take his comment at face value, it means that no one could be hypnotized into doing anything embarrassing, like flap like a chicken, etc. But it doens't work that way. It's not like we all have an anti-stripping device built in our brains: Yes, humiliate ourselves by hopping on one foot: No, taking our top off is just wrong.
Suffice to say that, based on several hundred years of playing with this sort of thing, 99.9% of the public is simply not suggestible to nudity through suggestion, without drugs or other inducements. But there is probably that .01%, and people who will exploit them, and, Like P.T. Barnum said about a sucker and their money might also be said about a gulible woman and her bra.
Jes
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