“Hypnosis is not inexplicable, uncanny or occult, and it is not abnormal. Hypnosis is a natural consequence of a specific application of definite and understandable laws. The laws hypnosis follows are not laws of hypnotism, but are the laws of thought. Hypnosis is the logical result of thinking when, under a particular set of circumstances, there is no other way to think.”  Hugh Lacy

“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” H.L. Mencken
“ONLY FOOLS FALL FOR SCIENTOLOGY” Variations of this headline is a common fallacy that needs to be addressed once and for all.

“Weak willed”, “dumb”, “idiots”…

Ex-members of cults like scientology hear this all the time, but there is a problem, it is just not true!

Hypnosis is most effective upon those with superior intelligence. The old hypnotists all agreed, stating this in one form or another and concluding that this is because:

“Intelligent people can control their minds better”

Ralph Slater in his book “Hypnotism” said:

“Contrary to general belief, it has been my experience that the more intelligent the subject, the easier it is to induce hypnosis” Ralph Slater, Stage Hypnotist, played Carnegie Hall several times the winter of 1949/1950 then Dianetics appeared the next spring..

 

Page 18, Andrew Salter, “Conditioned Reflex Therapy” (c) 1949 contains a summary of prior psychologists conclusions regarding intelligence and hypnotism:

“Krasnogorski, a disciple of Pavlov, has demonstrated that in children the ease of reflex formation increases with intelligence.(22)

It is impossible to establish conditioned reflexes in congenital idiots, but in higher types of mental defectives reflexes can be conditioned, though only with difficulty and for short duration. In normally intelligent children the reflexes are easily conditioned. If intelligence is associated with ease of conditioning, we would also expect intelligence to be associated with ease of hypnotizability. And in fact there is extensive evidence that this is the case Clinicians working in the older tradition have always known that hypnotizability goes with intelligence. Lloyd has said that the better the intelligence, generally speaking, the better the subject, if he can be hypnotized at all.(23)

Tuckey also emphasizes this and speaks of the “fallacy of the contention which one sometimes hears urged against hypnotism, that it is only applicable to fools and weaklings.”(24)

It is easy to hypnotise intelligent children, almost impossible to hypnotise dull ones. These observations have been verified in the laboratory. White found that students with higher college marks were somewhat better hypnotic subjects than those with lower ones.(25)

He found that high scores on college level intelligence tests had a positive relationship with hypnotizability, and David and Husband, using the American Council of Education scholastic aptitude tests. found a similar and stronger correlation.

Hull presents a page of similar positive correlations. (27)

Hull (Clark Hull), who said “words… are assumed..to have acquired during previous history of the subject, through the process of association or conditioning, the capacity to to evoke the reactions of which they are the names, ” calls the conditioned reflex “one of the most primitive of all learning and memory processes.”(28)

In a broad sense, then, there should be no occasion for surprise that intelligence helps rather than hinders, the acquisition of hypnosis. ”

Hana Eltringham as the D/Commodore, the highest “rank” in Hubbard’s navy, now Hana Whitfield, described following Hubbard (The Commodore) down a passage of the Apollo when he paused and said

‘You know, it’s really all just hypnosis...”

Sufficiently reawakened survivors of the cult experience eventually realize that they have a microcosmic perspective on society as a whole:

A recent X-Files episode ended with Mulder talking to Scully, “What is it that could induce a person to tie explosives to the their chest and then blow themselves up at a checkpoint?”. (Pause) then he says “Hypnosis and suggestion”.. scene then fades to black