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Hypnopaedia

 

In the late autumn of 1957 the Woodland Road Camp, a penal institution in Tulare County, California, became the scene of a curious and interesting experiment.  Miniature loudspeakers were placed under the pillows of a group of prisoners who had volunteered to act as psychological guinea-pigs.  Each of these pillow speakers was hooked up to a phonograph in the Warden's office.  Every hour throughout the night an inspirational whisper repeated a brief homily on 'the principles of moral living'.  Waking at midnight, a prisoner might hear this still small voice extolling the cardinal virtues or murmuring, on behalf of his own Better Self, 'I am filled with love and compassion for all, so help me God.'

      After reading about the Woodland Road Camp, I turned to the second chapter of Brave New World.  In that chapter the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning for Western Europe explains to a group of freshman conditioners and hatchers the workings of that state-controlled system of ethical education, known in the seventh century after Ford as Hypnopaedia.  The earliest attempts at sleep-teaching, the Director told his audience, had been misguided, and therefore unsuccessful.  Educators had tried to given intellectual training to their slumbering pupils.  But intellectual activity is incompatible with sleep.  Hypnopaedia became successful only when it was used for moral training - in other words, for the conditioning of behaviour through verbal suggestion at a time of lowered psychological resistance.  'Wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behaviour required by the State.  For that there must be words, but words without reason' ... the kind of words that require no analysis for their comprehension, but can be swallowed whole by the sleeping brain.  This is true hypnopaedia, 'the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time'.  In the Brave New World, no citizens belonging to the lower castes ever gave any trouble.  Why?  Because, from the moment he could speak and understand what was said to him, every lower-caste child was exposed to endlessly repeated suggestions, night after night, during the hours of drowsiness and sleep.  These suggestions were 'like drops of liquid sealing wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.  Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions and the sum of these suggestions is the child's mind.  And not the child's mind only.  The adult's mind too - all his life long.  The mind that judges and desires and decides - made up of these suggestions.  But these suggestions are our suggestions - suggestions from the State ...'

      To date, so far as I know, hypnopaedic suggestions have been given by no State more formidable than Tulare County, and the nature of Tulare's hypnopaedic suggestions to lawbreakers is unexceptionable.  If only all of us, and not only the inmates of the Woodland Road Cam-, could be effectively filled, during our sleep, with love and compassion for all!  No, it is not the message conveyed by the inspirational whisper that one objects to; it is the principle of sleep-teaching by governmental agencies.  Is hypnopaedia the sort of instrument that officials, delegated to exercise authority in a democratic society, ought to be allowed to use at their discretion?  In the present instance they are using it only on volunteers and with the best intentions.  But there is no guarantee that in other cases the intentions will be good or the indoctrination on a voluntary basis.  And law or social arrangement which makes it possible for officials to be led into temptation is bad.  And law or arrangement which preserves them from being tempted to abuse their delegated power for their own advantage, or for the benefit of the State or of some political, economic or ecclesiastical organization, is good.  Hypnopaedia, if it is effective, would be a tremendously powerful instrument in the hands of anyone in a position to impose suggestions upon a captive audience.  A democratic society is a society dedicated to the proposition that power is often abused and should therefore be entrusted to officials only in limited amounts and for limited periods of time.  In such a society, the use of hypnopaedia by officials should be regulated by law - that is, of course, if hypnopaedia is genuinely an instrument of power.  But is it in fact an instrument of power?  Will it work now as well as I imagined it working in the seventh century A.F.?  Let us examine the evidence.

      In the Psychological Bulletin for July 1955, Charles W. Simon and William H. Emmons have analysed and evaluated the ten most important studies in the field.  All these studies were concerned with memory.  Does sleep-teaching help the pupil in his task of learning by rote?  And to what extent is material whispered into the ear of a sleeping person remembered next morning when he wakes? Simon and Emmons answer as follows: 'Ten sleep-learning studies were reviewed.  Many of these have been cited uncritically by commercial firms or in popular magazines and news articles as evidence in support of the feasibility of learning during sleep.  A critical analysis was made of their experimental design, statistics, methodology and criteria of sleep.  All the studies had weaknesses in one or more of these areas.'  The studies do not make it unequivocally clear that learning during sleep actually takes place.  But some learning appears to take place in 'a special kind of waking state wherein the subjects do not remember later on if they had been awake.  This may be of great practical importance from the standpoint of economy in study time, but it cannot be construed as sleep learning ... The problem is partially confounded by an inadequate definition of sleep.'

      Meanwhile the fact remains that in the American Army during the Second World War (and even, experimentally, during the First) day-time instruction in the Morse Code and in foreign languages was supplemented by instruction during sleep - apparently with satisfactory results.  Since the end of the Second World War several commercial firms in the United States and elsewhere have sold large numbers of pillow speakers and clock-controlled phonographs and tape recorders for the use of actors in a hurry to learn their parts, of politicians and preachers who want to give the illusion of being extemporaneously eloquent, of students preparing for examinations and, finally and most profitably, of the countless people who are dissatisfied with themselves as they are and would like to be suggested or auto-suggested into becoming something else.  Self-administered suggestions can easily be recorded on magnetic tape and listened to, over and over again, by day and during sleep.  Suggestions from the outside may be bought in the form of records carrying a wide variety of helpful messages.  There are on the market records for the release of tension and the induction of deep relaxation, records for promoting self-confidence (much used by salesmen), records for increasing one's charm and making one's personality more magnetic.  Among the best sellers are records for the achievement of sexual harmony and records for those who wish to lose weight.  ('I am cold to chocolate, insensible to the lure of potatoes, utterly unmoved by muffins.')  There are records fro improved health and even records for making more money.  And the remarkable thing is that, according to the unsolicited testimonials sent in by grateful purchasers of these records, many people actually do make more money after listening to hypnopaedic suggestions to that effect, many obese ladies do lose weight and many couples on the verge of divorce achieve sexual harmony and live happily ever after.

      In this context an article by Theodore X. Barber, 'Sleep and Hypnosis' which appeared in The Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis for October 1956 is most enlightening.  Mr Barber points out that there is a significant difference between light sleep and deep sleep.  In deep sleep the electro-encephalograph records no alpha waves; in light sleep alpha waves make their appearance.  In this respect light sleep is closer to the waking and hypnotic states (in both of which alpha waves are present) than it is to deep sleep.  A loud noise will cause a person in deep sleep to awaken.  A less violent stimulus will not arouse him, but will cause the reappearance of alpha waves.  Deep sleep has given place for the time being to light sleep.

      A person in deep sleep is unsuggestible.  But when subjects in light sleep are given suggestions, they will respond to them, Mr Barber found, in the same way that they respond to suggestions when in the hypnotic trance.

      Many of the earlier investigators of hypnotism made similar experiments.  In his classical History, Practice and Theory of Hypnosis, first published in 1903, Milne Bramwell records that 'many authorities claim to have changed natural sleep into hypnotic sleep.  According to Wetterstrand, it is often very easy to put oneself en rapport with sleeping persons, especially children ... Wetterstrand thinks this method of inducing hypnosis of much practical value and claims to have often used it successfully.'  Bramwell cites many other experienced hypnotists (including such eminent authorities as Bernheim, Moll and Forel) to the same effect.  Today an experimenter would not speak of 'changing natural into hypnotic sleep'.  All he is prepared to say is that light sleep (as opposed to deep sleep without alpha waves) is a state in which many subjects will accept suggestions as readily as they do when under hypnosis.  For example, after being told, when lightly asleep, that they will wake up in a little while, feeling extremely thirsty, many subjects will duly wake up with a dry throat and a craving for water.  The cortex may be too inactive to think straight; but it is alert enough to respond to suggestions and to pass them on to the autonomic nervous system.

      As we have already seen, the well-known Swedish physician and experimenter, Wetterstrand, was especially successful in the hypnotic treatment of sleeping children.  In our own day Wetterstrand's methods are followed by a number of paediatricians, who instruct young mothers in the art of giving helpful suggestions to their children during the hours of light sleep.  By this kind of hypnopaedia children can be cured of bed wetting and nail biting, can be prepared to go into surgery without apprehension, can be given confidence and reassurance when, for any reason, the circumstances of their life have become distressing.  I myself have seen remarkable results achieved by the therapeutic sleep-teaching of small children.  Comparable results could probably be achieved with many adults.

      For a would-be dictator, the moral of all this is plain.  Under proper conditions, hypnopaedia actually works - works, it would seem, about as well as hypnosis.  Most of the things that can be done with and to a person in hypnotic trance can be done with and to a person in light sleep.  Verbal suggestions can be passed through the somnolent cortex to the midbrain, the brain stem and the autonomic nervous system.  If these suggestions are well conceived and frequently repeated, the bodily functions of the sleeper can be improved or interfered with, new patterns of feeling can be installed and old ones modified, post-hypnotic commands can be given, slogans, formulas and trigger words deeply ingrained in the memory.  Children are better hypnopaedic subjects than adults, and the would-be dictator will take full advantage of the fact.  Children of nursery-school and kindergarten age will be treated to hypnopaedic suggestions during their afternoon nap.  For older children and particularly the children of party members - the boys and girls who will grow up to be leaders, administrators and teachers - there will be boarding schools, in which an excellent day-time education will be supplemented by nightly sleep-teaching.  In the case of adults, special attention will be paid to the sick.  As Pavlov demonstrated many years ago, strong-minded and resistant dogs become completely suggestible after an operation or when suffering from some debilitating illness.  Our dictator will therefore see that every hospital ward is wired for sound.  An appendectomy, an accouchement, a bout of pneumonia or hepatitis, can be made the occasion for an intensive course in loyalty and the true faith, a refresher in the principles of the local ideology.  Other captive audiences can be found in prisons, in labour camps, in military barracks, on ships at sea, on trains and aeroplanes in the night, in the dismal waiting rooms of bus terminals and railway stations.  Even if the hypnopaedic suggestions given to these captive audiences were no more than ten per cent effective, the results would still be impressive and, for a dictator, highly desirable.

      From the heightened suggestibility associated with light sleep and hypnosis let us pass to the normal suggestibility of those who are awake - or at least who think they are awake.  (In fact, as the Buddhists insist, most of us are half asleep all the time and go through life as somnambulists obeying somebody else's suggestions.  Enlightenment is total awakeness.  The word 'Buddha' can be translated as 'The Awake'.)

      Genetically, every human being is unique and in many ways unlike every other human being.  The range of individual variation from the statistical norm is amazingly wide.  And the statistical norm, let us remember, is useful only in actuarial calculations, not in real life.  In real life there is no such person as the average man.  There are only particular men, women and children, each with his or her inborn idiosyncrasies of mind and body, and all trying (or being compelled) to squeeze their biological diversities into the uniformity of some cultural mould.

      Suggestibility is one of the qualities that vary significantly from individual to individual.  Environmental factors certainly play their part in making one person more responsive to suggestion than another; but there are also, no less certainly, constitutional differences in the suggestibility of individuals.  Extreme resistance to suggestion is rather rare.  Fortunately so.  For if everyone were as unsuggestible as some people are, social life would be impossible.  Societies can function with a reasonable degree of efficiency because, in varying degrees, most people are fairly suggestible.  Extreme suggestibility is probably about as rare as extreme unsuggestibility.  And this also is fortunate.  For if most people were as responsive to outside suggestions as the men and women at the extreme limits of suggestibility, free, rational choice would become for the majority of the electorate virtually impossible, and democratic institutions could not survive, or even come into existence.

      A few years ago, at the Massachusetts General Hospital, a group of researchers carried out a most illuminating experiment on the pain-relieving effects of placebos.  (A placebo is anything which the patient believes to be an active drug, but which in fact is pharmacologically inactive.)  In this experiment the subjects were one hundred and sixty-two patients who had just come out of surgery and were all in considerable pain.  Whenever a patient asked for medication to relieve pain, he or she was given an injection, either of morphine or of distilled water.  All the patients received some injections of morphine and some of the placebo.  About thirty per cent of the patients never obtained relief from the placebo.  On the other hand, fourteen per cent obtained relief after every injection of distilled water.  The remaining fifty-five per cent of the group were relieved by the placebo on some occasions, but not on others.

      In what respects did the suggestible reactors differ from the unsuggestible non-reactors?  Careful study and testing revealed that neither age nor sex was a significant factor.  Men reacted to the placebo as frequently as did women, and young people as often as old ones.  Nor did intelligence, as measured by the standard tests, seem to be important.  The average IQ of the two groups was about the same.  It was above all in temperament, in the way they felt about themselves and other people that the members of the two groups were significantly different.  The reactors were more cooperative than the non-reactors, less critical and suspicious.  They gave the nurses no trouble and thought that the case they were receiving in the hospital was simply 'wonderful'.  But though less unfriendly towards others than the non-reactors, the reactors were generally much more anxious about themselves.  Under stress, this anxiety tended to translate itself into various psychosomatic symptoms, such as stomach upsets, diarrhoea and headaches.  In spite of or because of their anxiety, most of the reactors were more uninhibited in the display of emotions than were the non-reactors, and more voluble.  They were also much more religious, much more active in the affairs of their church and much more preoccupied, on a subconscious level, with their pelvic and abdominal organs.

      It is interesting to compare these figures for reaction to placebos with the estimates made, in their own special field, by writers on hypnosis.  About a fifth of the population, they tell us, can be hypnotized very easily.  Another fifth cannot be hypnotized at all, or can be hypnotized only when drugs or fatigue have lowered psychological resistance.  The remaining three-fifths can be hypnotized somewhat less easily than the first group, but considerably more easily than the second.  A manufacturer of hypnopaedic records has told me that about twenty per cent of his customers are enthusiastic and report striking results in a very short time.  At the other end of the spectrum of suggestibility there is an eight per cent minority that regularly asks for its money back.  Between these two extremes are the people who fail to get quick results, but are suggestible enough to be affected in the long run.  If they listen perseveringly to the appropriate hypnopaedic instructions they will end by getting what they want - self-confidence or sexual harmony, less weight or more money.

      The ideals of democracy and freedom confront the brute fact of human suggestibility.  One-fifth of every electorate can be hypnotized almost in the twinkling of an eye, one-seventh can be relieved of pain by injections of water, one-quarter will respond promptly and enthusiastically to hypnopaedia.  And to these all too cooperative minorities must be added the slow-starting majorities, whose less extreme suggestibility can be effectually exploited by anyone who knows his business and is prepared to take the necessary time and trouble.

      Is individual freedom compatible with a high degree of individual suggestibility?  Can democratic institutions survive the subversion from within of skilled mind-manipulators trained in the science and art of exploiting the suggestibility both of individuals and of crowds?  To what extent can the inborn tendency to be too suggestible for one's own good or the good of a democratic society be neutralized by education?  How far can the exploitation of inordinate suggestibility by businessmen and ecclesiastics, by politicians in and out of power, be controlled by law?  Explicitly or implicitly, the first two questions have been discussed in earlier chapters.  In what follows I shall consider the problems of prevention and cure.