Snippets
I have a question for the list. Do members agree that a child at play is "dissociated". If so, then does it make any sense to talk of "dissociation" rather than Play? Can anything useful ever be achieved by the use of this word as an explanation of events? It sounds like an explanation but in fact explains nothing.
Subject: Hypnosis Religion and Play
Bill's response to my paper demands a riposte. He writes;
"To suggest a parallel between the concept of the hidden observer and guardian angels is stunning. The first concept (hidden observer) exists or (does not) on the basis of being an experimentally falsifiable hypothesis. The notion of guardian angels exists, for those who choose to believe, within the domain of religion. The existence of guardian angels is not a falsifiable hypothesis."
Reply:
These matters have been discussed fully elsewhere by a mind greater than ours and I can do no better than to refer readers to "Pluto's Republic" by Peter Medawar (1984) Oxford University Press - especially the chapters on "Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought" and "Hypothesis and Imagination". The notion of Hidden Observer exists, for those who choose to believe,within the domain of Hypnosis.
Bill writes "Houston seems to arbitrarily place ideas together in thereby assumes a connection e.g. post hypnotic suggestion, e.g. Monica Seles and religious murders."
Reply:
Nothing arbitrary about it at all. What could be more precise, given the model, than to link stabbing in hypnosis to stabbing in religion and stabbing in play; then to attempt to find a common explanation.
Bill writes "He then offers an explanation for her assailant's state of mind. I would assume that he has never met this person"
Reply:
Got me there Bill ( but see later in " Interviewing the Cat " ).
He then writes "Houston says 'It seems to me that each row constitutes a logical and definable area for research...' In the absence of data, this is simply nonsense"
Reply:
Come on Bill, since when was a theory nonsense because of the absence of data? The proof of a theory or it's refutation might be nonsense in the absence of data.
I am fascinated by the discussion on Hypnosis and the use of American Sign Language(ASL) To me the crucial thing about ASL is the absence of the verb 'to be ' a characteristic, a correspondent tells me, it shares with Hebrew. Perhaps it is itself a form of becoming. Following is a small piece I wrote three years ago. Call it free association, call it creativity, call it nonsense; I don't know.
Serendipity
A few weeks ago I presented a paper on hypnosis in which I discussed the use of words in an hypnotic induction procedure. I had hit on the verb 'to be' as being the most important and I related this to hypnosis, to religious experience and to play, suggesting that play was the correct model for hypnosis and also for much religious experience. I regarded hypnosis as the experiencing of a story, the story being our beliefs and expectations. It seemed to me that all life was led through a story or pseudology and that hypnosis itself and theology were merely pseudologies which could be experienced, depending on the culture from which they emerged and depending on the keeper of the word , such as the hypnotist, the priest, the rabbi or mullah.
About the same time a family of starlings had nested in my roof and I was being bitten severely at night by bird lice. I blocked off the nest and was surprised to find that the youngsters had moved downstairs to the eaves where they were trapped by some chicken wire through which the roof was ventilated. The parent starlings were managing to feed the youngsters and had been joined in their efforts by other starlings who seemed to be responding to the youngsters' cheeping. Their distress was manifest and my neighbour and I had taken some grim satisfaction in watching their antics for three days. His wife, however, became quite upset and it was obvious to us both that she would be much happier with us if I were to release them. I unblocked the entrance to the nest and within hours the birds had flown. I was struck by how the birds had managed to communicate.
About this time I happened upon an advertisement from a local book shop and was surprised to read that a man called Theodore Xenophon Barber had written a book called The Human Nature of Birds. Now T.X. Barber is THE authority on hypnosis. Why was such a man writing such a book? Thirty years earlier he had written a book called Hypnosis: The Scientific Approach. His seventy "Empirical Generalisations" had struck the hypnosis establishment like Luther's ninety-five theses and had systematically destroyed the notion that hypnosis was a special state. The book had forced me to rethink almost all I had been taught at a course on hypnosis.
In the dedication to "The Human Nature of Birds" T.X.Barber told of his illiterate Greek grandparents who had shown him that there is an intelligence that is deeper than words. Within the book I found that in American Sign Language there was no mention of the verb 'to be' . Fascinated, I took up my copy of Oliver Sachs' book, Seeing Voices, only to find that ASL was not just a language but that it involved a spatial representation of words akin to pantomime. This brought me in my mind, round in a circle when I realised that Milton Erickson, one of the gurus of hypnosis, had a pantomime technique.
What is going on here? I don't yet know, but I intend to find out. Does anybody catch my drift and can anyone help?
Subject: Credulity. Old and New Testaments
There seems to have been a sudden outbreak of credulity on this list. May I suggest the antidote?
There is no God and there is no hypnosis.
The "God experience" as Bishop Spong puts it, is culturally determined, and so is Hypnotic experience.
The "God experience" is defined by the priest, mullah and rabbi, while the Hypnotic experience is defined by hypnotists some of whom seek to be scientific by so doing. There can be no objectivity where subjectivity reigns, particularly when one is working within a story framework. Objectivising one's subjectivity as R.D.Laing would have put it, cannot succeed in any meaningful sense. It's like being inside the layers of an onion. You have to step outside the onion in order to see the other onions.
The only sense in which Hypnosis is real is the sense in which Play is real. I sometimes think that those among us who loudly proclaim how scientific they are, may be the most credulous of all.
We need to recognise that Hypnosis was culturally determined for us by (among other things) the antics which occurred at the Salpetriere in Paris last century when Charcot hypnotised actresses and hysterics. Just the right place for Lady Di to end her days.
In this regard Graham F.Wagstaff's brilliant book "Hypnosis,Compliance and Belief" is worth reading especially the last section entitled THE BIGGEST MYSTERY
The only sense in which Hypnosis is real is the sense in which Play is real.
Some might like to have a look at my Home Page for a really skeptical view of Hypnosis. No doubt, in parts, I too have mistaken illusion (that which is in play) for reality
From Reg Reynolds:
It has been suggested both that there is no such thing as hypnosis and that everything is hypnosis. Similarly re God.
You might enjoy "Stolen Lightning: the Sociology of Magic" by O'Keefe, which is a very interesting statement about the social context of reality.
At one stage on the List a number of theorists ventured opinions as to what hypnosis was. One said it was "AS IF" behaviour, another that it was "BELIEVED IN IMAGININGS",another that it was "DISSOCIATION" and yet another that it was "NEO-DISSOCIATION"
Subject: Interviewing the Cat
In one of Desmond Morris' films about Man he shows footage of a cat playing with a leaf. That cat was playing with the leaf AS IF it were a bird or a mouse. In that cat's BELIEVED IN IMAGININGS the leaf was a mouse or a bird. Dammit,that cat was DISSOCIATED or maybe it was NEO-DISSOCIATED. Leaf, mouse and bird were three in one (Trinity).
Hark! I hear someone calling and it's Bill saying " How can you infer all that when you haven't interviewed the cat?" Good question Bill and one which is worth answering. Unfortunately this option of interviewing the cat is not open to us but what use would it be? How would that cat rationalise it's behaviour. It would only confuse the issue.
For cat substitute human being. For leaf substitute bread and/or wine. Then you can interview the human being and find out what his theories are. This is theology
For bread and/or wine, substitute another culturally determined idea, namely hypnosis, and again interview the person. The result is some of the theories of hypnosis.
To all theoreticians, clinical therapists and researchers I suggest that we always bear in mind that we are interviewing the cat.
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. -
Friedrich Nietzsche
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." -- Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813.
The representation of a wish is, eo ipso,
the representation of its realization.
But magic brings a wish to representation;
it expresses a wish.
Wittgenstein
"If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have
any significant first person, present indicative."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
I suspect that Christian objections to Hypnosis stem from the suspicion that they themselves are in some way hypnotised.
Looked at objectively, Christianity consists of taking a man who died 2000 years ago, and talking about him in the present tense, as though he were alive. This is akin to a hypnotist taking his subject back in time (age/time regression) in order to experience a deceased relative. The Bagwan Rajneesh left a directive to his followers, after his death, always to refer to him in the present tense. The streets of Memphis are full of people who speak of Elvis Presley in the present tense who refuse to believe he is dead. Some in my parent's generation refused to believe that Rudolph Valentino was dead. Now on the 31st of August 1997, we have the death of Diana the Princess of Wales.
Theology is literally "what is said about the gods". Thus we have Christology and Mariology. Could we not now have Presley-ology and even Diana-ology. My son Edward, after the funeral said that the thing which kept going through his mind was "what if the coffin is empty?" Time and again,at Diana's funeral, the public said that it did not hit home to them that Di was really dead, until they actually saw the coffin.
If one were to compare the secular deaths of, for example, Rudolph Valentino, Elvis Presley and Princess Di one would notice that the belief that they still live, tends to die out when the time of their natural life expires about 40 years later. This is the time when false diaries can arise as they did with the death of Jesus, Adolph Hitler and Mussolini.
What distinguishes the religious story from the secular, is the story of the Empty Tomb. Only this allows for a story of death and resurrection.
Note however that the empty tomb is a function of the requirement that the god lives and not the other way round. If Di's coffin were empty then people could claim that the absent body was proof of her bodily resurrection. This is the central con of Christianity.
No wonder the church and the authorities want it to be seen that the Hero is dead and buried. For it secures the Status Quo and their continuing legitimacy and employment.
Imagine that you are a religionist faced with the recurrent problem of famous people dying young and the public refusing to believe that they are dead.It was the Roman custom to make gods of their Emperors. Someone somewhere came up with the contrivance of a story involving an empty tomb(or coffin) leading to the resurrection story and allowing for immortality of the person.
Was it a Roman administrator who devised the story or did it evolve in the Eastern Empire? Administrators always want control and with control comes power. State and Religious establishments seek to bury potential rivals to maintain the Status Quo.
Very apt topic with the approach of Easter.
Hypnosis and Memory:
I too have been watching the debate and delighting in the clarity of thought and expression, the academic brilliance and erudition. I'm loth to step into the ring with these heavy-weights but, here goes.
There is abundant a priori evidence that hypnosis is play, but no empirical evidence that I am aware of. I have likened amnesia of intra-trance events to a tennis player who forgets what the score is in a tennis match, and whose turn it is to serve.
There are many forms of play and some of them involve memory as a strong feature. Could the claimed hypermnesia for pre-trance events found in clinical,legal and forensic practice, be likened to the playing of chess or bridge? Take bridge for example: You have fusional elements between the partners; the bidding of a contract in the expectation of taking a number of tricks; the necessity of recall of the bidding pattern and cards played ; total absorbtion etc.
There is a different system analysis of course and a different social setting and no confabulation (one hopes) from one's partner, but still the parallels to me, are compelling. Would it be possible to find some psychological measures which correlate between hypnotic subjects and chess or bridge players?
( See John Kihlstrom's reply below.)
Andrew Houston wrote:
There are many forms of play and some of them involve memory as a strong feature. Could the claimed hypermnesia for pre-trance events found in clinical, legal and forensic practice, be likened to the playing of chess or bridge?
In reply John wrote:
No, the claimed hypermnesia for pre-trance events should be likened to a delusion on the part of the hypnotist. The experimental evidence is overwhelming that hypnosis cannot reliably refresh recollection -- that is, that hypnotic suggestions for hypermnesia or age regression do not reliably lead to the recovery of previously forgotten material. Clinicians who use hypnosis to recover memories, and fail to obtain objective corroboration for the memories so recovered, are making a big mistake -- as the excesses of the recovered memory movement, here in the US and elsewhere, amply testify.
For extensive documentation of the available evidence on hypnotic hypermnesia see the chapter by Eric Eich and myself in the 3rd report of the National Academy of Science/National Research Council Committee on Techniques for Enhancing Human Performance: _Learning, Remembering, and Believing: Enhancing Human Performance_ (National Academy Press, 1994).
John F. Kihlstrom, Professor Editor, Psychological Science
It seems to me that the only objective way is to regard Hypnosis as play behaviour and look at it from the viewpoint of an anthropologist, sociologist or some such other. Some theorists have the right idea, for example the roleplaying theorists and social/cognitive-behavioural theorists who are correct as far as it goes. It's just that this needs expanding to cover all the manifestations of play. I suspect that even within the constraints of hypnosis as defined by some, there are still different games being played.
It is time to emerge from this pseudo world of our own imagination,in which we can stay satisfyingly immersed till the end of time. It's time for a new model and I think that Play, in all it's wider manifestations, proves the model which (as Bobby Fisher might have said) 'holds in all variations'.
If hypnosis is illusion then the things that follow from it, are delusion and the reality of what is really going on, is elusive. The answers are out there for the observant.
From James:
As a clinician who first got some training in hypnosis 30 years post-residency (psychiatry), I'm struck by Andrew Houston's observations on play. Having been beaten at chess by my cousin who played"blindfolded" (not viewing the board), and having watched Koltanowski play several blindfold games at once, I now wonder at the virtuoso capacity for dynamic imagery these minds possess. Does that, plus narrowing of focus, equal trance-in-play? On a lighter note, I recall a New Jersey physician defining masturbation as the thinking person's television...
E. James Lieberman, M.D.
George Washington U. Sch. of Medicine, Psychiatry and Esperantic Studies Foundation
It is possible to be a scientist and not know what the words a priori and empirical mean. It is also possible to know the above and even the whole philosophy of science and yet not be a scientist. I argue that knowledge of the philosophy and techniques of science enables one to pretend or to play at being a scientist. I assert that this is exactly what has occurred within the community dedicated to scientific enquiry into hypnosis.
The physicist Richard Feynman described what he termed "Cargo Cult" science, a reference to events in Melanesia during the second world war, when the natives set up pretend airports and control towers in order to attract American planes filled with goods.
He said :
" So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science.
I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw air planes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas -- he's the controller -- and they wait for the air planes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No air planes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land."
( from "Cargo Cult Science", Last chapter in "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman" by Richard P.Feynman . Publ. Vintage 1992)
In our case too the planes don't land because we're only going through the motions of quasi-scientific study of hypnosis. We're not scientists - we're playing at being scientists. We don't recognise that our enquiry is illusory ( literally that which is in play ) and that is why it is elusive,ludicrous and riddled with delusion. I look forward to the day when some bright psychologist/anthropologist writes a paper equating the antic phenomena of Hypnosis, Religion and Play and demonstrates their equivalence. The answers lie not totally in the Psychology lab but also in a comparison of religion, cultural anthropology, sociology, drama, theatre and play. Our study of hypnosis is crying out for cross fertilisation from the above disciplines in order to rid it of cargo cult science.
For example, last summer I was in England and was talking about hypnosis to a young student of theatre . She described an exercise within one of the theoretical schools of acting which sounded very much like the Experiential Analysis Technique. Such a comparison might add some concrete to the EAT which would not otherwise be available if one stays entirely within the discipline of Psychology. A walk along the corridor to discuss hypnosis with a colleague from another department, might bear fruit.
From Mike:
Dear all,
I think Dr. Houston has made some good points.
I wonder if anyone can enlighten me on this. People who disagree over the nature of hypnosis carry out and publish their respective laboratory experiments which they say support their position and disprove opposing theories and claims.
Then their opponents assert that the methodology is flawed and the research doesn't discredit their theory at all. And so it goes on. And on. And on.
I have this REALLY GOOD IDEA. Why don't the opposing camps get
together BEFORE they carry out their experiments, and come to an agreement on
the appropriate methodology, procedure, analysis, etc. which will test which of their
respective theories is the correct one. (This approach is used when testing people who claim to have paranormal abilities, so afterwards, when (as it seems always to happen) they fail, then they can't claim that the experiment was unfair.)
Well, I did think it was a good idea, but when I put it to one of the most eminent academic and clinical authorities on hypnosis he said it couldn't possibly work because the opposing parties would never agree on what should be an appropriate experiment to test their theories.
Does this mean we all ought to go home and do something else?
Yours
Mike Heap
John has said elsewhere that Hypnosis is a delusion and in this he is quite correct. To delude someone is to "befool the mind or judgement of, so as to cause what is false to be accepted as true" (SOED Third Edition 1944) One is also deluded if one thinks that what is in Play is real. And that is, I think ,what happens in Hypnosis. One must therefore re-think the concept of Suggestion. To understand Suggestion one should witness children when they are negotiating a play scenario. One makes suggestions that the other agrees to and the other makes counter suggestions which are in turn agreed to. These decide how the game will be played.
Children typically start such conversations with " Let's make it that ..."
Hence make-belief.
In Hypnosis the play arrangements are - " Lets make it that I'm the hypnotist and you're the patient. You sit in that chair over there and I'll talk to you..etc etc."
This is how I make sense of the otherwise bizarre phenomena of hypnosis.
Regards Andrew
Etymology can be misleading. If I were investigating assassination it would probably be unhelpful to observe that the word assassin means literally "Hashish eater". The case for Delusion is different because here I think the etymology is crucial to an understanding of Hypnosis. It means literally "from play" and it is failure to take this insight seriously that results in much futile "research ". The research and statistics you do when you don't know what you're doing. ( to paraphrase Martin Seligman)
Let me make two predictions. If and when physiological markers are found for Hypnosis, the exact same markers will be found for Play.
If a "God centre" is ever found it will also turn out to be a 'Play centre"
Depth, dissociation (another unhelpful word), suggestions and relaxation can be just as much a feature of play as they can be of hypnosis
A propos of nothing I am reminded of Omar Khayyam's quatrain (and here I quote from memory)
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Master and sage and heard great argument
About it and about
But ever more came out
The door which in I went.
Dear Andrew,
Thanks. Also, Josie Hilgard in her classic work found relationships between hypnotizability and certain types of play (eg, imaginary playmates). The connection you are arguing for may well lie in absorption and fantasy involvement. You can explore the literature further through medline (www.nih.gov -- it is free access). Here is one of many references:
Correlates of hypnotizability in children: absorption, vividness of
imagery, fantasy play, and social desirability. AUTHORS: Plotnick AB; Payne
Regards
Prayer is easily understood. It is simply talking to an imaginary friend. A child who talks to an imaginary friend is playing. An adult who does it, is deluded. Hypnosis is a form of play, misunderstood - another delusion.
Readers who are interested might like to turn to my home page for a consideration of the whole issue of Hypnosis Religion and Play.
The first point I should make clear is that I am an excellent hypnotic subject and so it may strike you as odd that I should be arguing that hypnosis does not exist. I well remember my first hypnotic experience at Noosa in 1985. I came away from the experience feeling very different and there was this tremendous feeling of exhilaration at having overcome my paranoia and of having experienced something that I had not done for a long time. That "something" I now understand to be Play. There was a ripple effect on other aspects of my life.
Secondly I should also make it clear that I am an explicit atheist and that if I use the word god it is only for reasons of shorthand and explication and should not be taken as implying that such a thing exists.
The third point I want to make is that the words illusion and delusion derive from the Latin verb Ludere meaning "to play". When I use the word delusion I want you to understand it in that sense, of a false belief derived from play. Many years ago in the UK there was a popular television program called Coronation Street. During one episode of the plot a magistrate wrongfully jailed one of the characters. The Home Office was besieged by phone calls from angry viewers demanding that she be released and that the magistrate be taken off the case. Such was the criticism of the British justice system that the Home Office contacted ITV, requesting that they alter the plot. Here we have an excellent example of how something in play was regarded as real.
Alfred Korzybsky in Science and Sanity has written a lot about the verb to be from a philosophical point of view and you may find him interesting. In passing it is worth noting that Albert Ellis in the second edition of his Rational Emotive Therapy used the verb to be as little as possible since he thought it forced one to think in a different way, avoiding -isms.
This snippet is by writer unknown. His identity got lost in all that cutting and pasting.
“It's hard to tell with that crowd, they intimidate me. That's a group of people I have revered all my life for their contributions to psychology, and I tend to have an overinflated view of them. Most of those guys are more scientists then practitioners, so story I think is less popular with them than with the clinicians. They're really into research results. But it's surely reasonable to share your reflections, and of all places to interject a little metaphor, a hypnosis list should certainly be appropriate.
I'd like to share some thoughts with you as well, if you don't mind.
Barber is an interesting fellow. Everyone gets the impression of him that you expressed in your bird story, the severe surgeon of sloppy hypnosis ideas. He was surely that. And he was always fascinated by the real phenomena of hypnosis, he didn't seek to debunk them, he wanted to explain them. His work with Sheryl Wilson on Fantasy Proneness is a case in point. They found the most fascinating things about our capacity for fantasy, they just never associated them uniquely with hypnosis. I think the "hypnosis does not exist" crowd often falsely claims an allegiance to Barber, as well as to Sarbin. Both men always emphasized that many of the experiences and phenomena of hypnosis were real, but that hypnotic trance was not a parsimonious explanation for the way we follow the hypnotist's voice and suggestions.
Still, there are moments of 'felt shift' in therapy at critical moments that are in some way related to our state at the moment, and are at the core of transformations often attributed to hypnosis. There is the lingering capacity for "play" that you talk about that certainly does appear to be part of the essence of change work, but it is punctuated by periods of significance, not just an ongoing narrative that gradually shifts to rescript our lives. We change entire stories at pivotal points in therapy or pivotal points in our lives in general. These points don't appear related directly to hypnotic suggestibility, but they do have something to do with our "state" at the time.
Not sure where I'm going with this. If you follow it, let me know.”
To Andrew Houston: from Judy
I have finally read your treatise on play on the hypnosis email. It's one of the most stimulating and fascinating writings so far! Very thought-provoking. Thank you so much for taking the time to write it and transmit it.
In my professional life, I am a psychiatric social worker (in San Francisco, California, USA). In my personal life, I spend a large amount of time dancing. I've probably danced for a total of 13-15 years. For the last ten years, I've mainly done partner dancing, such as ballroom dance. As I was reading the elements of play (hypnosis, ritual, etc.) in your article, I couldn't help but think that most of them are a description of dance and the "dance world," the elements of which result in an altered state, ecstasy, laughter, and a compelling sense that "I must do that!" Though adults find play optional, it's usually a mistake. Perhaps stress should be defined as a deficit of play in one's life. Perhaps play is the element that makes some "type A" people who revel in their work thrive, whereas "type A" overworkers who don't feel play in their work are stressed.
Again, thank you for such a great article. I expect it will be mulling through my mind for quite a while.
To Andrew Houston:again from Judy
I have just read your second missive and have a new comment to it. You are writing mainly from an English-speaking and Christian perspective. You are referring to the Bible, the original part of which was neither in English nor Christian-based, so I wanted to clarify my understanding of the original writings.
I am Jewish and lived in Israel for almost a year 1971-72. I learned Hebrew while I was there, having grown up in the U.S. speaking English. Hebrew was a dormant speaking language for 2,000 years, being used only for religious purposes, forbidden in ordinary speaking life, as it was the sacred language. It was resurrected as a living language in the 20th century and now is the language of the state of Israel. It retains the basic same structure as it did in ancient times, with modern updates.
In the Hebrew language....the verb "to be" is never used in the present tense. It is used in the past and future tense but not in the present tense. If I translated the sentence "I am going," ("annee holechet," transliterated), it would be "I walk." It is forbidden to use this verb in the present tense. In fact, I wouldn't even know how to do so, as it's not a verb form in use. I think the reason it's forbidden is that the state "to be" in the present tense is considered to be the God-state. The word for God, which can be written but is (again), even today, dreadedly forbidden to be spoken aloud (which you referred to as "yahweh"), is a pronunciation of the Hebrew word for "to be," the infinitive form. It's forbidden to say it aloud because that is considered to be the state, the essence of God, and as such must be respected as holy, as unapproachable, to be approached in a state of awe and respect.
To understand the original Hebrew, one can't go to any Latin or any other translations. The Torah has been translated from the original text about 10 years ago into English, the first translation from the original in about 2,000 years. It was translated into Latin, then into Greek, then into who-knows-what, then into Old-English, etc., etc. I don't know the path, but I definitely know that it's original meaning has been completely altered by all of the translations. I have a copy of the new translation and it's great. It was published by the Jewish Publication Society in New York.
I don't know much about the Christian writings. I suspect that they were also written in the original Hebrew and probably were affected by the thinking of the Hebrew language regarding the verb "to be."
I hope that this linguistic information is of interest to you and of relevance to your thinking.
Andrew Houston wrote:
There are many forms of play and some of them involve memory as a strong feature. Could the claimed hypermnesia for pre-trance events found in clinical, legal and forensic practice, be likened to the playing of chess or bridge?
In reply John wrote:
No, the claimed hypermnesia for pre-trance events should be likened to a delusion on the part of the hypnotist. The experimental evidence is overwhelming that hypnosis cannot reliably refresh recollection -- that is, that hypnotic suggestions for hypermnesia or age regression do not reliably lead to the recovery of previously forgotten material. Clinicians who use hypnosis to recover memories, and fail to obtain objective corroboration for the memories so recovered, are making a big mistake -- as the excesses of the recovered memory movement, here in the US and elsewhere, amply testify.
For extensive documentation of the available evidence on hypnotic hypermnesia see the chapter by Eric Eich and myself in the 3rd report of the National Academy of Science/National Research Council Committee on Techniques for Enhancing Human Performance: _Learning, Remembering, and Believing: Enhancing Human Performance_ (National Academy Press, 1994).
John F. Kihlstrom, Professor Editor, Psychological Science
From Brian Robinson:
Re a recent posting: As you are interested in cults, you probably know Richard Noll's "The Jung Cult: Origins of a charismatic movement"
Princeton Univ Press 1994, 1995 with corrections Fontana Press (HarperCollins) 1995.
The following quotation is from Chap 4, "Fin-de-Siecle Occultism and Promises of Rebirth (p 63, pbk):
"The allure of spiritualism was its simplicity and egalitarianism: almost anyone could attempt, with some margin of success, direct communication with the dead, and spiritualist circles and (later) organizations and "churches" (with Christian-oriented services) were open to anyone with "the will to believe," to use the words of William James (1842-1910), a student and explorer of the phenomena of spiritualism. Seances could be held right in your own home at any time. The bureaucracy of Christianity, with its layers upon layers of mediators and its official discouragement of direct mystical experience, could thus be circumvented. Christianity supplied the theory; spiritualism provided the praxis, with technical assistance from Mesmerism, which taught hypnotic-induction techniques that could be used by aspiring mediums for entering trances. Jung, as is well known, had a very early interest in spiritualism and attended many seances throughout his life. Jung used such hypnotic induction procedures to place his cousin Helene Preiswerk into mediumistic trances during the seances he attended with her in the 1890s."
From a list member:
I was very impressed by Hans Vaihinger's "The Philosophy of 'As-If': A system of the theoretical, practical and religious fictions of mankind", Tr C K Ogden, 1st publ England 1924, 2nd edn 1935 ISBN 0 7100 3019 3 London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. For example, the square root of minus 1 doesn't "exist" but it's very useful for solving problems.
See also Jeremy Bentham (1843) "Logical Arrangements, or instruments of invention and discovery", in J Bowring (ed) "The Works of Jeremy Bentham III" (p 286) Edinburgh: William Tait.
God, "God", or "god", or "The Gods" or "the gods" (or Godot?) may similarly be (like "trance"?) sometimes quite useful to people. But on balance I'm inclined to think that religion has done humanity more harm han good. a lot of other questions.
Is there a God?
I'm reminded of what Richard Dawkins said some months ago when talking about peoples' natural tendency to seek meaning in the face of tragic events (I think it was a week that saw a mass killing and a huge lottery win). I hope I convey his sense here. It's random and doesn't have a meaning and is just what you'd expect from a universe of blind electrons and selfish genes.
To a Correspondent
Glad you liked my little essay. I'm an atheist now but my child hood was spent in the Church of Scotland. It was a matter of family pride that my father went to school with William Barclay, for many years Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University and famous for his Commentaries on the New Testament. So I've been there done that, and now am exploring the mysteries of hypnosis. Got into it from a study of religion and particularly when my curiosity was roused by two opposing books - "Psychology,Religion and Healing" by Leslie Weatherhead and "Religious Aspects of Hypnosis" by William J. Bryan Jr., - both believers in God. The former thought there was no connection between hypnosis and religious experience whereas the latter acknowledged the fact.
I wish you well.
Regards
Andrew
What I find disgusting is that a film director can set out to seduce, influence, entrance, fascinate, engross his audience and can then de-construct his art in an interview, whereas we hypnotists are so daft that we don't even know what it is that we are doing.
Fond Regards
To a Correspondent
Dear Greg, thanks for your letter.
The source I have for stage hypnotism is an article by T,X.Barber in "Hypnosis - Research Developments and Perspectives" Edited by Fromm and Shor:(1972) publ. Paul Elek (Scientific Books) Limited.
It is chapter five titled "Suggested('Hypnotic') Behaviour: The Trance Paradigm Versus an Alternative Paradigm". This is a truely scientific explanation of what purports to be going on on stage. I'm sure you are correct that much of it is staged and the Encyclopaedia of Stage Hypnotism by McGill (1947) may explain it all.
My opinion of clinical hypnosis is that it is real only in the sense that play is real.
Regards Andrew
Jim, thank you. I had read and been thoroughly convinced of role playing theory. I once witnessed a subject go into hypnosis while in role as someone else, so who could doubt that role playng was involved?
What I asked was - Since role Playing is involved, what about Play itself, as a sufficient explanation? So I looked at the phenomena of Play and Hypnosis, and for good measure the phenomena of Religious experience and found them to be identical. The results and tabulation are in the second paper of my home page, which was presented at the Fraser Island conference in 1996. Others might like to add to it, for I'm sure to have missed some.
When we order children out of the house with the admonition to "go outside and play" we take for granted and without a second thought that they will immediately drop into an altered state of conciousness. It is this capacity for child like play, retained into adulthood which Ithink is hypnosis.
Hypnosis is a game, not usually recognised as such, which is culturally determined, wherein one player (the hypnotist) seeks to delude the other player (the patient or subject) using all the phenomena of play at their disposal. The hypnotist too is deluded if he believes that it is real.
This could serve also as a definition of religious experience. For hypnosis substitute religious experience. For hypnotist substitute priest, mullah, rabbi or minister. For patient or subject substitute parishoner.
From Thierry Melchior
Andrew Houston says that "Hypnosis is a game, not usually recognised as such". I would state it a bit differently : it is a very peculiar game, because it is a game which actively denies itself as a being a game. In other words, one of the rules of this game is "this is not a game".
I would like to emphasize that this being so doesn't preclude that the effects of this peculiar pragmatic structure are not "real". They are real, even if they are a result of something like a self-denying game.
It is high time that we get rid of the multisecular dichotomy according to which a "thing" is either real or purely imaginary ; either found, discovered or merely created, invented. Hypnosis IMO is precisely the kind of "thing" that gives us valuable reasons to escape the trap of this typically Western dichotomy. (Along the same path of thoughts, there is a huge overlap between the semantic field of the word "role" and the semantic field of the word "state" : for not recognizing this overlap, some of the discussions regarding what is hypnosis become aporetical).
Thierry Melchior Brussels
Subject:: Experiences - Real or Otherwise
Dear all
In a posting some months ago Thierry Melchior wrote "'Hypnosis is a game, not usually recognised as such'. I would state it a bit differently : it is a very peculiar game, because it is a game which actively denies itself as a being a game. In other words, one of the rules of this game is "this is not a game".
This insight knocked my socks off as it seemed to me to be the last missing piece in the jigsaw that is Hypnosis.
It was what came next that puzzled me, when he wrote:
"I would like to emphasize that this being so doesn't preclude that the effects of this peculiar pragmatic structure are not "real". They are real, even if they are a result of something like a self-denying game.
It is high time that we get rid of the multisecular dichotomy according to which a "thing" is either real or purely imaginary ; either found, discovered or merely created, invented. Hypnosis IMO is precisely the kind of "thing" that gives us valuable reasons to escape the trap of this typically Western dichotomy. (Along the same path of thoughts, there is a huge overlap between the semantic field of the word "role" and the semantic field of the word "state" : for not recognizing this overlap, some of the discussions regarding what is hypnosis become aporetical)".
I am not clear on what he means by this. Mulling it over it occurred to me that the problem might be elucidated by an analysis of the word "experience".
Everyone has experiences and to each of us these are real. If I am kicked in the shins the experience is real as I have the pain and bruises to prove it. If I go to the cinema and watch a film I have an experience which is illusory (i.e. In Play) To some this is also a "real" experience. However an experience cannot be real and illusory at the same time or words cease to have meaning. We must find a way to discriminate between the two. Perhaps "real experience" and "imaginary experience" will do the trick.
It is common in practice, to work with a patient utilising his "narrative truth". These are his beliefs, or what is "real" for him and often they are untrue and unreal. It is the essence of CBT to break through the patient's false beliefs to give him a better grasp of reality. I don't see that this Western or scientific view has any holes in it. Reality is user friendly and CBT proves it.
If one makes love to a woman, that is a real experience. If one masturbates about making love to a woman that is illusory. They don't call it playing with oneself for nothing. If one goes to the cinema and watches another couple pretending to make love, that too is illusory. It may be that hypnotic experience can be used for therapeutic effect but that does not make it any more real.
I'm going to my favourite room. There are 72 virgins waiting for me there.
Regards
Andrew Houston
Margaret Meek Spencer on Stories
When I read a story, where am I? I am not in the novel, not in a space ship, nor in the town where the author has set the story. But I am not in the real world either, for all that I am sitting in a chair. We agree to the illusion of being somewhere else. Successful early readers discover that the story happens like play. They enjoy a story and feel quite safe even with giants and witches because they know that a story is a game with rules.
Stories are the essential link between learning to talk and learning to read, because they are a special kind of play with language that separates it from speech. The simplest answer to the question - How does a child come to know how print works? - is "By being read a story". I have already said that it is never too early to read to children; we need not even wait until they have fully learned to talk; nursery rhymes and jokes depend on conventions of narrative which are forms of play.
Children's language develops with everyday social talk; most of it is directed at getting things done. But there is another kind that emerges when the day's activities are over. You hear it clearly in some children between the ages of two and three, especially if they sleep alone. They are lying in bed, not expecting attention, talking to themselves. If you listen carefully, you will hear that they are distinguishing sounds and practising them. Then they whisper, shout, squeak, sing, and produce a whole range of the noises that make up words like a violinist trying out a new instrument. This seems to be play. If so, it is play for real.
The most important play for real is play with language. It begins very early, sometimes unnoticed as anything more than babbling, calling out or the repetition of certain noises. In children's prolonging of sound-making, we soon see the human instinct for games, especially when they talk to themselves just before they settle to sleep. Then they turn words into playthings.
Ba-bee, ba- bee Nice girl, nice girl, nice boy
Ba-bee want a drink want a teddy want a lolly.
We encourage this language play when we make noises for the duck or the boat in the bath, when we recite nursery rhymes or sing old songs, family choruses or pop hits, that is, whenever we make sound patterns apart from ordinary speech.
'Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross' is rhythm rather than sense.
The meaning of 'This little pig went to market' includes the fun of pulling toes.
In language play children discover the special ways by which the rules of language can be combined in order to bring about what they want. In the sophisticated games they play with their friends, children submit to the rules. A friend says, 'It's night now.' Then all the players lie down, shut their eyes and enact all the rituals of bedtime. In this game, the rules are the rules of living. Almost suddenly, you can hear them extending the rules and language, so that to say, 'Open the door' makes it possible to say 'Open the light', instead of 'Switch the light on.' When children use a stick to gallop around the garden or the play park, they separate the meaning of 'stick' from the stick itself and supplant it with 'horse' and act according to the meaning of 'horse'. Long before they go to school children know that they can speak of their legs and the legs of the table without believing the two things are the same.
Play produces metaphor: the way by which language recreates itself. In play, children discover that it is possible to separate what is said from what is meant and still make sense. By adopting other roles, they can try out other forms of speech. Understanding both words and the world becomes, for children, more and more complex and yet still manageable. They acquire, in both proverbs and clichés, little pockets of folk wisdom from listening to what adults say. Things like, 'He hasn't a leg to stand on.' (He has, of course.) 'They couldn't organise a tea party in a baker's.' 'He's a fly-by-night'. 'You'd think she owned the Crown Jewels.'
Even when they don't fully understand what is meant, children know that it is more than is conveyed by the words alone.When they know that language, like behaviour, follows agreed rules, children begin to explore the rules and, of course, to break them. They want to discover the boundary of sense and nonsense, what is meaningful and what is not. They find you can say, 'I am dead' when this is clearly not the case. Then they exploit nonsense purely for effect, as in the poem that goes:
Three children skating on the ice Upon a summer's day or when they say they hear with their nose and smell with their eyes. Splitting apart the agents or ideas that go together is at the heart of riddles. And as they learn to play with language children come to objectify it. Their play is metalinguistic.
Kornei Chukovsky, the Russian poet who, in 1925, insisted in the teeth of political opposition that the construction of reality depended upon the understanding of nonsense, called children linguistic geniuses and tireless explorers. He showed how, in their early years, they not only learn to talk, but also to inspect words and to play with them.
'Why are you dying to have a cup of tea? Will you die if you drink it?'
'Hotsy totsy hullabaloo, Hootsy tootsy that makes two.'
The metalinguistic awareness that the experts say is the mark of the good early reader and the risk-taking of young writers is born in speech games, the nonsense rhyme, the topsy-turvys of re-inventing the familiar, and all the lore and private subversions that young children make up with words.
Happy birthday to you,
Squashed tomatoes and stew,
You look like a pudding
And smell like one too.
As they become aware of language rules and how they operate, children use 'anti-language' to break up the hierarchies of common sense, so as to re-define for themselves what counts as common sense. In the carnival of their word play they are discovering two sets of ordering: of the world, and of their language.
In doing so they learn how to signal 'This is play', so that their utterances are not to be taken literally. They know when they are talking nonsense. And the comic verse of the nursery rhymes, and the folk-tales and the singing games are at the heart of the matter, as are rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration.As your well-known children's writer Mem Fox has observed:'Children adore rhyme, rhythm and repetition Š Young children are mesmerised and enchanged by a predictable pattern of language, which is fun for them to say and pleasing for them to hear.
'Mrs Red went to bed
with a turban on her head
Mrs White had a fright
in the middle of the night
Saw a ghost eating toast
half-way up a lamp post
Mrs Brown went to town
with her knickers hanging down
Mrs Green saw the scene,
put it in a magazine.
If they have played with language in any of these ways, children are not strangers to narrative fiction. They understand stories which contain a world where the rules of everyday life are the rules of the narrative and people behave as expected. But fiction can also subvert these rules, in ways that imagination and language make possible.
Let us now apply these understandings to the whole range of language in which children's lives are immersed: television, drama, personal stories, new pop lyrics, proverbs, talk and argument, and slang. Then it is clear that play with words, which generates metalinguistic awareness, is not the privilege of only those families who are used to self-conscious literacy. Segments of a wide range of discourses appear in the play talk of most children. But literate adult observers may notice only those that are like their own. Children are as likely to create alternative worlds from the detachable pieces of life in a TV serial, as from the expensive nursery rhyme book which no-one has yet read to them.
The question is whether children's language play counts as a literate competence when the children begin, formally, to learn to read and write. The evidence suggests that children who have a repertoire of oral songs and verses learn to read by discovering that they can tell themselves how to see what they say. The phonology or sound system of our written language is richly exploited in oral language play. This experience is undoubtedly helpful in early reading of all kinds of texts, especially in English, where the written representation of the sounds of the language is sometimes confusing for beginners.
It is in the realm of play that children also discover how to manoeuvre themselves into writing. They adopt writing roles before they expect their marks on paper to be read by others. If they make lists and write messages when they play at house, and an adult responds to their intentions by seriously reading aloud what seems to be written down, then children are more concerned to learn the rituals of the writing system, to learn the rules. Observers of early writing are persuaded that children intend to make meaning from their earliest squiggles, and that their first attempts at writing are more logical and intentional than they were formerly perceived as being.
The great virtues of children's play, virtues even beyond its usefulness in introducing the young to a wide range of symbolic systems are twofold.
First, in play, children, no less than adults, experience a release from the apparent inexorability of the here and now. Then in play, children 'walk tall'; their limitations are not confining, their imagination lets them invent possibilities.
What has this to do with reading? Language, both speech and writing, is a system of symbols where one thing stands for another. By discovering early how to operate these symbol systems, both in talk and in playing with toys that 'stand for' real things, the child represents the world to himself. The pictures in his mind, his mental imagery, and pictures in a book can be dealt with in the same way, because he knows how to separate meaning from appearance, although he does not yet know that he does it, nor how he does it.
A book or a story offers him an area like his play world. Tolkien called it 'an alternative world' and created one of the most famous examples for both children and adults to enter.
You can understand it if you ask yourself, 'When I read a story, where am I?' I am not in the novel, not in a space ship, nor in the town where the author has set the story. But I am not in the real world either, for all that I am sitting in a chair. We agree to the illusion of being somewhere else.
Successful early readers discover that the story happens like play. They enjoy a story and feel quite safe even with giants and witches because they know that a story is a game with rules. Stories are the essential link between learning to talk and learning to read, because they are a special kind of play with language that separates it from speech.
The simplest answer to the question 'How does a child come to know how print works?' is 'By being read a story'. I have already said that it is never too early to read to children; we need not even wait until they have fully learned to talk; nursery rhymes and jokes depend on conventions of narrative which are forms of play. The child does not separate fiction and fact as we do, and he relates the illusory happenings of the story to what actually happens in the course of his day. The words of the book move into his speech.
Early contact with stories and poems has the greatest single effect on a child's linguistic development. Stories are at the heart of learning to read because they make a pattern of deep imaginative play.
The words illusion and delusion derive from the Latin verb Ludere meaning "to play". When I use the word delusion I want you to understand it in that sense, of a false belief derived from play. Many years ago in the UK there was a popular television program called Coronation Street. During one episode of the plot a magistrate wrongfully jailed one of the characters. The Home Office was besieged by phone calls from angry viewers demanding that she be released and that the magistrate be taken off the case. Such was the criticism of the British justice system that the Home Office contacted ITV, requesting that they alter the plot. Here we have an excellent example of how something in play was regarded as real.
Number 96 many years ago when one of the units was vacated on the show 100 viewers wrote to Channel 9 asking if they could have the vacant unit.
Nurse Betty
To delude someone is to "befool the mind or judgement of, so as to cause what is false to be accepted as true" (SOED Third Edition 1944) One is also deluded if one thinks that what is in Play is real. And that is, I think ,what happens in Hypnosis. One must therefore re-think the concept of Suggestion. To understand Suggestion one should witness children when they are negotiating a play scenario. One makes suggestions that the other agrees to and the other makes counter suggestions which are in turn agreed to. These decide how the game will be played. Children typically start such conversations with " Let's make it that ..."Hence make-belief. In Hypnosis the play arrangements are - " Lets make it that I'm the hypnotist and you're the patient. You sit in that chair over there and I'll talk to you..etc etc." This is how I make sense of the otherwise bizarre phenomena of hypnosis.
Margaret Meek Spencer
Stories are the essential link between learning to talk and learning to read, because they are a special kind of play with language that separates it from speech. The simplest answer to the question ‘How does a child come to know how print works?’ is ‘By being read a story’. I have already said that it is never too early to read to children; we need not even wait until they have fully learned to talk; nursery rhymes and jokes depend on conventions of narrative which are forms of play. The child does not separate fiction and fact as we do, and he relates the illusory happenings of the story to what actually happens in the course of his day. The words of the book move into his speech. Early contact with stories and poems has the greatest single effect on a child’s linguistic development. Stories are at the heart of learning to read because they make a pattern of deep imaginative play.
Hypnosis is
Virtual Reality
Altered State of Consciousness
Play Consciousness
Ludic Consciousness
A Game
Not a Unitary Phenomenon
Spiritualism
From Brian Robinson:
Re a recent posting: As you are interested in cults, you probably know Richard Noll's "The Jung Cult: Origins of a charismatic movement"
Princeton Univ Press 1994, 1995 with corrections Fontana Press (HarperCollins) 1995.
The following quotation is from Chap 4, "Fin-de-Siecle Occultism and Promises of Rebirth (p 63, pbk):
"The allure of spiritualism was its simplicity and egalitarianism: almost anyone could attempt, with some margin of success, direct communication with the dead, and spiritualist circles and (later) organizations and "churches" (with Christian-oriented services) were open to anyone with "the will to believe," to use the words of William James (1842-1910), a student and explorer of the phenomena of spiritualism. Seances could be held right in your own home at any time. The bureaucracy of Christianity, with its layers upon layers of mediators and its official discouragement of direct mystical experience, could thus be circumvented. Christianity supplied the theory; spiritualism provided the praxis, with technical assistance from Mesmerism, which taught hypnotic-induction techniques that could be used by aspiring mediums for entering trances. Jung, as is well known, had a very early interest in spiritualism and attended many seances throughout his life. Jung used such hypnotic induction procedures to place his cousin Helene Preiswerk into mediumistic trances during the seances he attended with her in the 1890s."
Dear Richard,
I am currently reading your book "The God Delusion" and have a few comments to make. I have myself been studying religion for many years and have concluded that the best way to attack religion is to explain it. To the question 'what is really going on?' the answer is Play. Religious experience is really a series of play phenomena. You allude to this when you describe God as an imaginary friend but the scope for play as an explanation, is much greater than just that.
By way of preamble it is important to note that the word delusion derives from the Latin words meaning "from play' One is therefore deluded if one thinks that that which is in play, is real. The words illusion, ludicrous and elusive, are closely related and with good reason.
There is, as you know, no God. I know this because I have met Him. I have recently taken to inviting my audience to meet Him. Contrary to popular opinion he is not an old man with a beard, but a five-year-old boy named Travis whom I first met 15 years ago when he was my son's imaginary friend. It is important to emphasise to your audience that you are playing, lest they think that you are deluded. Bring out Travis and sit him on an empty chair. Introduce him to the audience and try to start a conversation with him. The first thing you notice is that he cannot speak, so someone else in the group has to answer for Travis. Ask him if he would like a biscuit and someone else has to 'interpret'. Yes he would like a biscuit and he is particularly partial to those wafery things and even to a glass of wine. You get the idea. Keep this up and you are sure to dissolve in laughter, another play phenomenon found in some religious services.
You mention the Trinity. Guess what - another play phenomenon. In one of his TV series Desmond Morris shows footage of a kitten playing with a leaf. That cat was playing with the leaf as if it were a bird or a mouse. Leaf, mouse and bird were three in one (Trinity). We cannot interview the cat to find out what it thinks it is doing. How would it rationalize its behaviour?
For cat substitute human being. For leaf substitute bread and/or wine. Then you can interview the human being and find out what his theories are. This is theology. Bear in mind that we are 'interviewing the cat' when we talk to religious people.
Religion can also be seen as a game. It is a very peculiar game, because it is a game which actively denies itself as being a game. In other words, one of the rules of this game is "this is not a game."
Regards
Andrew Houston
PS Much of my formal research was done on hypnosis. It turns out that this too does not exist and is a game. You can find much more relating religion to play, at my home page.
http://ahouston.customer.netspace.net.au/
Dear Richard,
A further missive. I have just been enjoying the chapter 'The Roots of Religion' in your latest book, in which you attempt to explain religion in terms of natural selection on the basis that it should confer some selective advantage on our species or within our species. You are even prepared to concede that it may be a by-product of something else. Still I think, the shoe doesn't fit, because we have to consider that in the case of human events, we ourselves have influenced our development. Human selective processes, these last few millennia, have more in common with 'unnatural selection', selective breeding and domestication of wild animals, than they have with natural selection.
At our level of intelligence we have to consider that culture has a direct effect on our reproductive rates and patterns. Our language, stories, myths, fashions, wars, material wants, have all had a direct effect on us, quite independent, I think, of natural selection, and these are active influences rather than the passive influences of natural selection.
All mammals play. Johan Huizinga in his book 'Homo Ludens: A Study of The Play Element of Culture,' (1949) described how play was an integral part of human culture as evidenced in religion, law, language, war and contests. It was this book, more than any other, which influenced my thinking on the matter.
Three features of play come to mind as I write this letter. The first is misattribution, in which events are attributed to another cause even when we ourselves are the cause. This is a play phenomenon and I have recently come across a beautiful demonstration of this. It is to be seen in a video on the Net, in which a Labrador dog is chewing on a bone. It brings its Lt hind leg up and proceeds to snap at its foot AS IF it were another dog competing for its meal. In a similar fashion it is never said in religious circles that one wants to become a priest, but rather that one is 'called'.
The URL of this video is: http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=20
The next is dolls. Children play with dolls. You can get dolls that blink, dolls that cry and even dolls that pee.
Similarly, dolls are used in nativity plays but also weeping statues (dolls) are used to delude the adult population who experience them as a crying mother. When children play with dolls they know, at some level, that they are playing. When adults play with dolls and don't recognise that this is what they are doing, they are deluded.
Prayer is easily understood as play. It is simply talking to an imaginary friend. A child who talks to an imaginary friend is playing. An adult, who does it, is deluded. Religion is a form of play, misunderstood - another delusion.
I wonder, did you realise how very apposite was the title of your book? The god delusion (The god from play) indeed!
Regards
Andrew Houston
Dear Richard,
I have just read and reread Chapter 10 of your latest book, and think you are getting close to the problem, when you tell of Binker, who is an imaginary friend, a product of childs play. I have indicated to you that religion is a form of play and so the question, from an evolutionary perspective becomes; what benefit has play conferred on mammals and man in particular, that it has such a strong hold on us? I suppose religion could be the by-product of play, a concept that you posit in chapter 5.
Elsewhere you mention that some psychiatrists cautioned you against using the word Delusion. I could not disagree more and heres why. Delusion has the correct etymology.
Etymology can be misleading. If I were investigating assassination it would probably be unhelpful to observe that the word assassin means literally "Hashish eater". The case for Delusion is different because here I think the etymology is crucial to an understanding of religion. It means literally "from play" and it is failure to take this insight seriously that results in much futile "research ". The research and statistics you do when you don't know what you're doing. ( to paraphrase Martin Seligman)
It is true that Delusion has a precise meaning in psychiatry, but there is no better word to describe the false belief, when people mistake that which is in play, for reality. You may remember a few years ago, when Deirdre Rashid, a character in Coronation Street was wrongfully jailed by a magistrate. There were many complaints from the public and questions asked in the House and the Prime Minister himself jokingly said that he would refer the matter to the Home Secretary. Here we had an example of how many people confused play with reality.
Richard, be aware that in a world of play you are being a spoilsport. As Huizinga says; the spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoilsport. This is because the spoilsport shatters the play world itself. He robs play of its illusion, a pregnant word which means literally in-play (from inlusio, illudere or inludere)
See if you can find a little boy who has an imaginary friend. Get yourself introduced to him and you will know that you have met god and understand why so many people claim to have experienced him. Next time you are lecturing you can introduce your audience to Blinker (mine was Travis) or whomever and have some fun. Remember that;
"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." Mat.18:3. (K.J.V.) and that
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Regards
Andrew Houston
From: "BDoran" <bdoran@ozonline.com.au>
Date: 27 May 2007 10:32:02 AM
To: "Andrew Houston" <ahouston@netspace.net.au>
Hi Andrew,
I agree with most of what you have said in your letters, but I think the prevalence of religious belief goes further than that. There are some very real evolutionary advantages for "believers". We only survive today because our ancestors learned way back in our evolutionary past, to believe warning signals from their peers, ie to do what other more experienced people said and did. It's the old "fight or flight syndrome", to react quickly and follow the leader out of danger, or become a meal for a predator. And that propensity to believe is still very much a part of the psyche of most of us today. On the matter of religion, we were brainwashed when we were very young and had few if any personal resources to challenge what we were being told.
Also, one of the most powerful learning strategies, is to copy others; life is too short, and we have far too much to learn, to discover everything for ourselves. Children particularly, copy their parents and other significant older people and authority figures, and play at "growing up". As they grow older, they increasingly copy their peers (and rebel against their elders). I can remember a picture in one of the magazines, New Scientist or Time maybe, of an Islamic man praying, and his small son observing him, almost transfixed by the father's activity, and of course, learning to do likewise. So kids growing up in a particular place, learn to become deluded believers about the particular God, religion, or belief, endemic to that region. This explains why kids growing up in an Islamic society, end up as Muslims, and not Christians, and vice versa. So much for religion being a matter of personal faith, or free will; it's what has been stuffed down our throats by our significant others, when we were too young and ignorant to do anything about it. And by the time we do have enough personal knowledge to refute it, many people don't do so, for a whole host of reasons.
The person's belief is even more deeply inculcated when they come to identify psychologically with the particular group or religion. They invest so much time and activity in socialising and behaving according to the group's paradigms, that they become as one with the group, and often dependent on the group. This bond exerts such a strong hold on the person, it's like a "psychological superglue" binding the person to the group. They will then defend the group against outside attack of any kind, even in the face of evidence to the contrary (which explains in part, cultists and suicide bombers). It is often very difficult for many people who get caught up in cults or fundamentalist organisations, to extricate themselves from the group; and of course with cults, the guru always exerts a profound hold over the members, through other means as well, such as financial or sexual means. Even if a person does begin to question their religious beliefs, because of the powerful identification bonds which have been forged over many years, they often still "remain in the fold", because of the "tribal" sense of belonging it exerts. And this also had evolutionary advantages in the past, when the alternative was excommunication from the tribe or group, and possible death from starvation. Even today it has its advantages in providing support groups for people in need; I know many people like that; one lady who is a retired pharmacist, said that she still went to church because her friends went, and having friends about her at her stage of life, was very important.
There's absolutely no doubt that religion is all delusion, imagination, or "play", as you put it, but I believe that it goes much deeper than that. The idea of talking to an "imaginary friend" is often used in "gestalt therapy", where a client is encouraged to imagine that he/she is talking to another person, usually the one who is perceived to have "caused" the problem being experienced. It is a very powerful technique, and I have used it many times myself, with great success. It enables a person to experience a particular situation from the perception of someone else, and therefore to consider other points of view, or if you like reframe his problem. Of course, it is all imagination, but so is everything else we humans set out to accomplish in this life. We are thinking creatures, and thanks to the evolution of language, we are able to imagine and think more deeply and abstractly than animals who are still trapped in a pre-lingual state.
Another case where play, or games are used increasingly in education, is in management training, where various business models and strategies, are taught by having students role play their way through structured games. During the process, the participants experience successes and failures, and have to make decisions to counter unforeseen circumstances. They experience the emotional side effects as well, which adds more realism to the learning process. I'm sure this is also the reason why children are much more efficient at learning language than adults are. Adults are often hung up over "fear of failure", and consequent "loss of face", whereas young kids at play don't give a damn; they don't have any great expectations; everything is new, and they're just having fun. If the cubby house falls down, they just build another one - "This time I'll be the architect - you be the builder"; and so they both learn from the experience.
There is no doubt that play is a vital part of the process of personal development for all animals, ourselves included. It enables us to develop the physical and mental skills necessary for life, in a safe environment, and to sort out who the leaders are in any group. Even British Prime Ministers were supposed to be decided on the playing fields of Eton! Play certainly involves a lot of delusional activity; it allows our imagination free reign to role play, pretending we are someone else, having greater abilities, being anywhere we like, and even regressed in time back into the past, or forward into the future (again very valuable therapeutic tools). But I believe that once the framework of a belief set is established, it is perpetuated by a whole range of other factors.
I agree that play or creative visualisation, imagination etc, as used in hypnosis, during both the inductive and therapeutic phases, is essentially all delusion, but hopefully with the use of appropriate imagination and suggestions, it can be of some benefit to the subject. I also agree with your assertion in one of your website articles, that the use of metaphor, and inviting someone to experience past and future events in the present, is important to produce the expectation of healing. But again, that's intelligent use of imagination too. Your example of the Catholic mass ritual is a good one in the case of religion - again, suggestion, ritual, cues, acting out the part, and creating expectation.
In another article you raise the question of hypnotisability. While we humans all belonging to the same species, homo sapiens, we are all different, physically and psychologically, and I guess in hypnotisability as well. But I believe that one of the greatest impediments to trance induction is that old primeval emotion, "fear". All or most of the "difficult" subjects I have encountered, have had either a conscious or unconscious fear of hypnosis; almost always, this has been because of ignorance of the process, and of what might happen, such as loss of control, or psychological damage. On further investigation, almost every one of them expressed concerns of this nature, usually stemming from the experience of observing a stage hypnotist's show, where the subjects were made to look foolish, or do something "against their will". Once this perception was put to rest, and good rapport established, most of them were much easier to induce into trance.
However, we still need to explain the almost complete suspension of reality (and consciousness) which accompanies deep trance, and why a subject can be given a post hypnotic suggestion, that he/she will do something, or feel no pain under specific circumstances etc, and have this happen on cue, and be virtually a compulsory act. And furthermore, suggestions can be given that if necessary, the subject himself can trigger the PHS by some cue at an appropriate time. For this reason, I have difficulty accepting the standard definition of trance, as "an altered state of consciousness". For a light trance, I'd agree; but a person in deep trance is far from being conscious, although they may be brought to such a state that they are aware of everything that is going on about them, hearing your voice etc, and still be in trance. But deep trance is more like sleep (the term "sleep" is often used by the hypnotist during the process); it would seem that they are more closely in a state of "unconsciousness".
A few years ago, I participated in a debate with other Atheists and some religious people, on the question "Is God relevant to our modern society"? During question time, one lady in the audience, refuted my claim that we couldn't possibly know anything about any hypothetical "supernatural realm", because by definition, it is outside of nature, and we have no means of communicating beyond any imaginary "celestial fence". The lady became quite indignant, and explained that she "regularly spoke with God" while lying on her kitchen floor and meditating (meditation is only Clayton's hypnosis). Furthermore, he had given her explicit advice on how to heal her young daughter, "which had amazed the doctors, who could not cure her". Nothing I had to say about her "religious experience" most likely being an hallucination, and most likely the result of self hypnosis, would convince her that it was anything other than "very real". I explained that trance experiences certainly can at times appear to be very real indeed, and can even be responsible for creating false memories. But she said, how else could I have heard God so clearly? And what's more, he looked so real too"! She still would not believe that "the voice of God", or the imagery, could have been a product of her own imagination. Unfortunately, in the limited time available, it is impossible to debate issues such as this with people who have no prior understanding of hypnosis or "altered states", and have already made up their minds about the matter.
Consciously, many religious people will not have anything to do with hypnosis. According to them, "It could allow the Devil to enter the soul, and produce evil influences". Yet ironically, many of the techniques used in religious ceremonies, are very hypnotic, in that they carry suggestions, and trigger unconscious emotional reactions in the congregation. They use hypnosis probably more than most people, and yet they seem to be completely oblivious to its use. It's just another example of what I call "Clayton's hypnosis", (after the "drink that you're having, when you're not having a drink", as their advertisement used to say). Perhaps the best example is that of "faith healing". Another Humanist (Robert Heard) and I attended one such session up here at Caboolture, a few nights ago. The "Prophetess" as she called herself, was very good at inducing trance in her "victims", but I'm sure she didn't really have a clue what was actually happening. According to her, the Holy Spirit was entering the soul to produce the requested "healing changes" for the faithful.
The architecture of churches, cathedrals, temples, synagogues and mosques, with their lofty spires, minarets and vaulted ceilings, stained glass windows depicting Jesus, Mary, or some other significant person, designated holy spaces within the building, such as the altar, crypt etc, the authority figure and dress of the priest (the hypnotist), the holy scriptures themselves, usually couched in ancient language, the group dynamics during the service, kneeling, genuflecting before the altar, taking holy communion, the other rituals such as clasping one's hands, closing eyes, bowing heads, praying, singing hymns, use of organ music, chanting, ringing of bells, use of candles, incense and symbolism such as crosses, robes (hijabs) etc, all act as powerful stimuli or anchors to consolidate belief and produce desired reactions from participants. And of course, "fear" of not making it through the pearly gates, is exploited for all it's worth, in sermons and readings from the scriptures. The behaviour of people during religious ceremonies, is essentially a conditioned response to these various stimuli, in a similar way that others respond to post hypnotic suggestions - automatically and compulsorily.
In general, the old psychological principle of "longitudinal consistency" also applies to anything we do, including religious practice. If we do things in a certain way, or hold the same beliefs for extended periods, the more likely it is that we will continue to behave or believe that way. Older people are often said to be "set in their ways". No doubt there are other issues which bear upon this propensity to believe, but they'll have to wait for another day. Suffice to say that I regard religion as the "original false memory syndrome". Once people have been "programmed" to accept what they are being told as the "truth", their responses are quite predictable. No wonder the Jesuits used to say, "give us the boy until he is seven years old, and we will give you the man".
Regards,
Bernie.
Posting to RD site
• Religion is man made. Man made god in his own image and no doubt women
made goddesses in their own image. There is therefore no point in attempting to
explain religion in terms of natural selection on the basis that it should confer some
selective advantage on our species or within our species.
•Religion is culturally determined and it is competition between cultures, that
explains the "survival of the fittest" element which Richard seeks. This missing
concept was new to me, until I read Roy Baumeister's address titled " Is there
anything good about men?" in which he states;
"Let's turn now to culture. Culture is relatively new in evolution. It continues the
line of evolution that made animals social. I understand culture as a kind of system that
enables the human group to work together effectively, using information. Culture is a
new, improved way of being social.
Feminism has taught us to see culture as men against women. Instead, I think
the evidence indicates that culture emerged mainly with men and women working
together, but working against other groups of men and women. Often the most intense
and productive competitions were groups of men against other groups of men, though
both groups depended on support from women.
Culture enables the group to be more than the sum of its parts (its members).
Culture can be seen as a biological strategy. Twenty people who work together, in a
cultural system, sharing information and dividing up tasks and so forth, will all live better
- survive and reproduce better - than if those same twenty people lived in the same
forest but did everything individually."
The full article is available at http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm
•Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens demonstrated how culture consisted to
a large extent, of the elements of play. Religion which is a part of every culture,
also consists of a series of play phenomena - laughter, crying dolls, music,
imaginary friends, tolerance of incongruity, misattribution etc. For a fuller
description readers can go to my home page at ahouston.customer.netspace.net.au
• The words illusion and delusion derive from the Latin verb Ludere meaning "to
play". When you see the word delusion you should understand it in that sense, of a
false belief derived from play. Psychiatry will have to share this word with us all
because that is its original meaning.
•Religion is a game which is culturally determined in which one player, the
religionist, attempts to delude others, the rest of us, using all the phenomena of
play at our disposal. It is a peculiar game however, for it is a game which actively
denies itself as being a game. In other words one of the rules of this game is - this
is not a game. Those players who believe it to be real, are deluded.
Perhaps the question from Richard's point of view could be restated as " What is
the evolutionary basis of Play?"
• "The God Delusion" means "The God from Play"