Word: hypnotist
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...less than a minute. The hypnotist had talked to Olga Schmulders, a Harvard graduate student, for the first time in his living room last Tuesday night. He said just a few words and then started a slow countdown. Her eyes closed and she was completely mesmorized. "Olga, you can't remember the number eight," or "You can't bend your left arm," he told her. It was obvious that, despite efforts to resist, the hypnotist had Schmulders acting exactly as he wished...
...that was only part of the show. More surprising was what the hypnotist said after proving that Schmulders was hypnotized. "The stunts are for you skeptics," the hypnotist said. "Now Olga, I want you to relax completely and to think of all the wonderful feelings which you have now," he said, in contrast to his earlier tricks. "Tomorrow, you will concentrate harder on what you study, and you will pursue your interests more avidly because now you know that you can succeed. You will tell yourself that without even thinking about it from this point...
...What the hypnotist had done was to show another aspect of his craft--one that has emerged in this country only recently. He had performed hypnotism to correct particular negative behavior patterns and substitute them with more desirable attitudes. Its practitioners say that it is difficult to find many people willing to undergo "serious" hypnotism. But its use is becoming more widely accepted...
Technically, it was a demanding project. Amid the confusion, Hine accosted his subjects, lined them up, got them to look at the camera (an instrument not familiar in Italian villages or Russian hamlets in 1904) and ignited the magnesium flare. "It took all the resources of a hypnotist, a supersalesman and a ball pitcher," he said, "to prepare them to play the game and then to outguess them so most were not either wincing or shutting their eyes when the time came to shoot." The results rank among the greatest camera portraits ever taken, calmly relentless in their inspection...
Interrogation by hypnosis is not infallible. Mesmerized witnesses can fantasize, make mistakes, even lie. But handled with care, hypnosis does offer leads. "We take the information at face value and then verify it," says L.A.P.D. hypnotist Lieut. Ed Henderson. It is up to a judge to decide whether to admit testimony of witnesses whose memories have been jogged by hypnosis...