HYPNOSIS WITH FRIENDS & LOVERS

Morris, author of Self-Hypnosis in Two Days and a practicing psychologist, is one of the few professional hypnotists who favor disseminating among the masses the ability to alter consciousness in their own living rooms. Friends are often preferable to professionals, she contends, because they're cheaper, more convenient, and easier to trust; and they're more exciting than self-hypnosis via tape recorder. There follows a series of minutely planned dialogues to focus the prospective hypnotee's inner awareness on developing physical or intellectual skills, recalling and working through past emotional conflicts, locating inner ideals, etc. (Hypnotist friend: ""OK. Now I'd like you to check your arousal level, and tell me where you are."" You: ""I'm at Level 4."") The commentary offers comfort to low achievers in areas mistakenly deemed essential to the hypnosis experience: ""About 80 percent of people can readily experience hypnotic hand levitation. Don't worry if you are among the other 20 percent."" But the overall effect is far too calculated for a process that supposedly addresses ""the core of being""--and no danger signs are posted at all.