Back in 1938 Orson Welles caused a bit of a stir with his realistic radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” which was dramatised and adapted to depict a Martian invasion of Earth.
Updating H.G. Wells’ 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds for national radio, Orson Welles probably did not
suspect the ensuing havoc.
Sunday evening in the 1930s was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. Many missed the introduction of the play due to a very popular ventriloquist being on another channel. Many of those tuning in late heard the announcer take listeners to “the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.” The music played, and then
the frightening stuff began. An announcer broke in to report that “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. This was followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey. The History Channel report stated:
Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. “Good heavens,” he
declared, “something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here’s another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me … I can see the thing’s body now. It’s large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that
seem to quiver and pulsate.”
The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired “heat-ray” weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They annihilated a force of 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon “Martian cylinders” landed in Chicago and St. Louis.
The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his
actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee. In fact, that was not far from the truth.
Thousands and thousands of radio listeners believed that a real Martian invasion was underway. Panic broke out across the country. In New Jersey, terrified civilians jammed highways seeking to escape the alien marauders. People
begged police for gas masks to save them from the toxic gas and asked electric companies to turn off the power so that the Martians wouldn’t see their lights. One woman ran into an Indianapolis church where evening services were being held and yelled, “New York has been destroyed! It’s the end of the world! Go home and prepare to die!”
It is a major contender for use of the expression “well that escalated quickly.” You can google it and explore the story and read about the
accounts of people whose neighbours were banging on their doors telling them to flee for their lives. These people had their reality created for them by radio. Some might even draw some parallels to the way in which hypnotic suggestions work. Many believe that the masses were primed for such as the current political climate was created by being in between two world wars, and there are other contributing factors for sure, yet people’s reality was created by radio and then further constructed by
the response of the masses around them reacting with panic.
There are many similar examples of this type of event. Whereby the absolute reality (to the extent of mass panic, and real physiological responses) of people has been created by media, expectations, attitudes, and whereby the consciousness of individuals has been dominated to the point that people are not really thinking or feeling for themselves.
What I want to illustrate here is just how much your
own stream of awareness, your own levels of consciousness are dictated and created by others, and how capable we all are at having our consciousness consumed by certain authorities (such as authors or trainers),popular media, the opinions of peers and so on. For many, it is not a major problem, but how many of us can claim to be having genuinely individual thoughts and claim to be directing our consciousness independently, orchestrating our own direction in life each day? And what about us
hypnotherapists, when it comes to our thoughts about hypnosis and hypnotherapy?
When I first took over the running of the UK Hypnosis Convention, I was determined that the convention should not simply be an echo chamber for the field of hypnotherapy. That it should encourage hypnosis professionals to question their own positions, to scrutinise their existing understanding. I spoke about how I wanted our attendees to think critically, to embrace change and to seek to advance
what they do, not just attend a convention with the aim of confirming what they already knew and believed.
Each year, I continue to envision what I’ll say during my few words when I introduce the keynote speaker at the gala dinner night. I still feel rather nervous and stricken with some existential dread because I want to share things that I know some people in this field don’t always like to hear.
In the Autumn of 2019, pre pandemic, I competed at the Bournemouth
marathon festival, raising money for my children’s school sports facilities, aiming to make a healthy impact for generations to come. I ran the 5km race, the 10km race, the half marathon and then full marathon one after the other.
I’m not a natural build for a runner and I also do weightlifting; weightlifting and endurance sports don’t typically marry up that well.
Earlier this year, a man at the gym who was primarily a cyclist, but also a sports psychologist offered me
some advice having seen me running. He told me that I needed to run in a less muscular fashion, he got technical about lifting and engaging my hamstrings more instead of my quads, leaning into my running movement, using my arms more effectively would make it easier to carry my ample frame around long distances. He referred to some impressive science to support his point too.
Upon receiving this advice and checking out the research supporting it, I said to him…..
“Don’t
you know who I am? I’m Adam Eason. I wrote the book Hypnosis for Running. I’ve run numerous marathons and ultra marathons for the past 20 years clocking some impressive times. I already know all that I need to know to get this done. I don’t need to hear from you. I just need to keep running until the end, I know how to run, who are you to tell me how to run? You’ve not even run a marathon like I have. I’ve received training already, I’ve read books and research papers on the
topics.”
Ok, so I didn’t actually say that. But such types of responses I do see in the hypnotherapy field often.
One of the things I repeatedly saw in the aftermath to some of the major hypnosis conventions around the world, was lots of hypnotherapists talking about how accepting the events were. Initially, of course we love that. We love a smooth ride, we love to feel comfort and to be comfortable and to have acceptance.
I want to
flavour that acceptance a little bit though. That is, true acceptance is whereby we can accept and appreciate criticism of what we do. Where people are allowed to ask questions of what we do, and we don’t take it personally. I must be able to ask questions about how hypnotherapy is taught, about how protocols are developed - it is not a slight on the person involved. Rather than seeking blind acceptance, we need to engage with the people who will ask us the challenging questions as we seek to
improve and develop what we do.
We run the risk of being left behind as a field. Hypnotherapy is not developing at the pace it should in my opinion. We have honed a real sense of fellowship at the UK Hypnosis Convention, a level of appreciation, respect and support for one another. We can all be friends, we can all accept each other, and recognise it is not a personal insult to have healthy questions asked of what you do as a means of striving to improve.
My vision for
the convention is to create a warm and welcoming environment where we are supported in being able to ask questions and people are emboldened to ask the questions of those who are seeking to educate the public and inform our field. I want us all to hold ourselves to account. I want to be a bit of a thorn in your side from time to time, and I want to be able to share jokes and drink gin with you at the bar afterwards.
I want to be friends with members of the hypnotherapy field -
but understand that friends who agree with you on everything add no value to your growth. Good friends feel comfortable disagreeing with each other.
This year we have the most prolific and perhaps one of the most important academics, researchers and clinicians in the history of the hypnosis field; flying in from the University of Binghamton in the US, Professor Steven Jay Lynn will be our keynote speaker. We have the brilliant Professor Amanda Barnier, specialist in research
on hypnosis and delusion flying in from the University of Macquerie in Australia, we have Dr Elvira Lang the specialist pain researcher from the US and Professor Zoltan Dienes, the co-creator of the cold control theory of hypnosis from the University of West Sussex – all giving brand new lectures and presentations at the convention.
It has been a tough task getting academics and researchers to come and lecture to frontline hypnotherapists and many are reticent to do so due to
much of the anti-intellectualism and scorn that so many of the hypnotherapy field seem to have towards them. For me, I massively appreciate and thank them for sharing their work, their research, for helping to educate our field and to give an insight into the incredibly exciting world of science, research and academia that can help us grow as a field. It has been hard to make academia and front line hypnotherapists aware of each other in my experience. I’m going to do my best to keep closing the
chasm that exists between the two with this convention.
This year, I’m thrilled to say that we also have the world famous entertainer Derren Brown being interviewed live on stage discussing hypnosis, sharing his thoughts on hypnosis and how he presents it in his shows and TV specials, something you’ll not get to witness anywhere else in the world. We have the first TV Hypnotist and longest resident stage hypnotist Andrew Newton joining us to offer a rather controversial
lecture, according to him. We then have a further 55 lectures, presentations spread over 3 days offering a broad range of topics all aimed at educating and stimulating hypnotherapists, clinicians and hypnosis professionals. There are 3 presentations at a time, so there’s always something that you can enjoy and learn a great deal from.
This combination of flavours and approaches serve to makes this event quite unlike anything else that the frontline hypnotherapy field
can attend in terms of conventions and conferences. I believe we serve the hypnotherapy field by ensuring there is far less tribalism and those who dig their heels in, defending one position and then running off into the horizon, knocking on their neighbours doors screaming to run away when a dissenting perspective or critique is offered to the position that we hold dear and are invested in.
You may be interested to know that I took the advice of the cyclist in the gym and it helped me
greatly. When I ran, I felt like I was a young runner again, my body enjoyed the running experience more than it had for years. I made great progress, even with all the running experience and knowledge I had.
The hypnotherapy field is a tough one to navigate through and traverse at times, certainly I find it to be so. Yet it can be richly rewarding to attempt to do so with an open mind among people who give you the respect and courtesy to do so in a safe
space.
