The Big Difference: Stage Hypnotist vs Hypnotherapist

In Could I Lose Control? we talked about how a hypnotherapist or even a stage hypnotist cannot make somebody do something that they really don’t want to and naturally, most people immediately think of stage hypnotism and people clucking like a chicken or eating an onion.

Firstly, these people willingly volunteered to take part in the show.  Of course they can’t know exactly what they’ll be asked to do so it is possible the hypnotist could ask them to do something they really don’t want to and then the show would be over. 

The stage hypnotist doesn’t want that to happen because his career as a stage hypnotist would be rather short-lived and so he’s going to be quite selective about his volunteers.

What you often don’t see on these shows is the process the stage hypnotist uses to whittle down the volunteers to the select group that he uses in the show.  The hypnotist uses some simple suggestibility tests to make his selection.  This is what confuses a lot of people.  These suggestibility tests are not to find out who will do anything.  They test how open that person is to receiving direct suggestions or persuasion from the stage hypnotist.  You can’t make anyone do what they don’t want to do, but remember, some people will do what others wouldn’t.. with a little persuasion.

Derren Brown did a Channel 4 programme in 2005 called The Heist where he attempted to persuade 4 businessmen or women to steal £100,000.  It took over 2 weeks of progressive persuasion tests, the ‘heist’ situation had to fit certain triggering criteria and one of the four still wouldn’t do it.  That’s one of the UK’s leading hypnotists and as he pointed out, if it was possible to hypnotise someone into robbing banks for you then stage hypnotists probably wouldn’t be working out of pubs and clubs in dodgy resorts.

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