Brainwashing and Blankness

(Hi everyone! I hope you've enjoyed these more free-form articles over the last few weeks -- I'm quite a bit more recovered now from COVID and family stuff, and I should be getting back to regular articles very soon :) Thanks for your well-wishes and patience!)

Brainwashing and Blankness by sleepingirl

This essay is about brainwashing and the role of “blankness” in hypnosis, but requires a little background of why I am thinking about that.

I am in the middle of a lovely lecture series right now about “pleasure and pain” in Jewish law and practice -- but really it’s about the role of a person’s subjective feelings and how that reflects against the way they observe. For example, if you are depressed, what obligations are you exempt from? There are some examples where the way someone feels doesn’t affect observance at all; you are meant to do this thing whether it makes you happy or sad. But there are other examples where something is supposed to make you feel good and authentic, and you need to adjust your behavior for it to fit your personal pleasure.

One of these examples is in education. We looked at sources where rabbis and scholars spoke passionately that when teaching a student or child Torah, you must strive to do it in a way that is in accordance with how they learn -- not just style of learning, but content. Some students may not find pleasure in memorizing details of Jewish law, and if you force them to recite it by rote, they may ultimately turn their back on it. It is not what they were “meant” to do, or in the more poetic language, what is in their soul. Children, they argue, are not tabula rasa to be imprinted upon, but people who need to be revealed.

I was thinking about how this mirrors hypnotic relationships, especially where one partner is changing the other in a brainwashing, D/s context. I like thinking of these relationships as educational in nature, and I’ve been feeling more confident in saying that hypnotizing someone most effectively might be about teaching them how to go into trance in a given moment. Just as the teacher needs to learn who the student is to teach them, the hypnotist must learn who the subject is authentically to best hypnotize them.

But there is friction in this comparison because the general fantasy for many of us IS to become or create a blank slate that can then be written upon. This trope is so deeply ingrained -- even people with a lot of experience imagine hypnosis itself as a kind of blankness, that hypnosis creates an environment to accept ideas and suggestions BECAUSE of the lack of internal interference.

Of course, hypnosis and brainwashing works very effectively without this trope. Perhaps we could say that Erickson, who saw trance as a time where someone was MORE in tune with their authentic self, is a good example of this. For Erickson, blankness wasn’t a key factor of hypnosis. But it was unawareness, or the idea that there are processes and parts of a person that they are unconscious of, that he found important. This is similar to the idea that a person needs to be revealed in order to find their most effective learning.

Erickson was interested in revealing those things, but really only when it suited the problem at hand, and not necessarily bringing them all to full light. There are many examples of him telling a story that was meant to lead to some great introspective climax, but left parts of that unconscious. There are a huge number of therapeutic cases where a client reportedly called him later to say, “I don’t know what you did, but my issue improved.”

Ericksonian hypnosis also points us to the importance of learning an individual in order to best hypnotize them. Utilization is directly about understanding a person’s identity and inner process.

Blankness

This is all seemingly in conflict with the hypnofetishist’s desire for blankness -- whether that’s a perceived blankmindedness that occurs during hypnosis, or a blankness of identity that makes a person ripe for being changed.

The blankness we achieve is a bit of a farce. Even when it feels like there are no thoughts, or when it feels to a subject that they have become nothing and no one, it’s a trick of perception and hypnosis. The brain does not stop; the memories are not gone.

But it being subjective doesn’t mean it’s not a very real experience -- nor does it mean that it is useless or meaningless in hypnosis. It could be:

• A useful, metaphorical fantasy that helps a person buy into being changed

• A sort of shared hallucination that allows a relationship to live authentically within a fantasy space

• A thematic fantasy element that is simply necessary to give both partners what they need to be fulfilled in brainwashing

However, it could also be:

• An objective experience that somehow positively affects a person’s capacity to be changed

Even though those first three possibilities are just as “real” as the last one, most of us have this desire for the things we do in hypnosis to be tangible and objective. We may have a knee-jerk reaction to nonstate theories that describe hypnosis as a product of role enactment as opposed to a measurable state that alters a person’s suggestibility. Nowadays, I tend to sit in the middle and try to acknowledge that any subjective change in someone’s experience correlates with some “real” change in the way that they respond to suggestions.

It is fun to theorize about what the feeling of “blankness” does to a person’s response -- outside of fitting the fetish niche. A feeling of no thoughts may allow a person to focus more intently, or otherwise process suggestions in a way that is different from their norm. A feeling of identity being erased may allow a person to be less distracted/influenced by the way they usually process things through all the things that make up their identity -- opinions, beliefs, perspectives. Again, it’s a way to change the way they react to and process new incoming suggestions.

This kind of theorizing isn’t based in a measurable reality, so we’re always guessing about it, but the beauty of hypnosis is that making a good, suggestive case for why we’re doing something allows it to work better in the way we describe. And generally having some support and detail for our suggestions helps us flesh them out and make them feel more real and achievable.

Identity

Part of this is understanding what it is we are actually trying to do as well. I think an excellent area to explore is what actually makes up a person’s identity -- or more importantly, what does someone’s identity “feel like” so that we know how to erase it?

We could say that identity is made up of unconscious learnings and behaviors that inform outward, conscious expression. Hypnosis can’t permanently erase those unconscious things, but it can make them feel “hidden,” and we know it’s a great tool alongside other psychological principles to change them.

Memory is clearly part of this, and playing with amnesia is one option. But also addressing the “gut” feelings someone has, their unique patterns of thoughts, and their external expression can really add to the intensity of blanking someone out. Someone whose memories are hypnotically hidden may still have those deeply-ingrained patterns of emotional responses and thoughts. (As a side note, suggestively attending to those “byproducts” of memory can make amnesia feel more believable.)

Above, I talked about opinions, beliefs, and perspectives. In that model, it could be easy to imagine training a person to simply not respond to incoming information, or to ignore their own emotional or “thinky” responses. A very hot scene idea is systematically desensitizing someone to all of their own internal responses.

Confusing them about what they are actually feeling -- or how they are “supposed to” act -- is a useful tool as well. We are so used to unconsciously being who we are that if we start questioning our expression, that can make things feel a lot looser.

We can theorize and imagine that lack of response or doubt in “innate” response may make someone more ready to be changed, or learn new behaviors.

Regression

If we take a little detour back to Erickson, we see that he DID absolutely rely on a concept that allowed people to accept new ideas and behaviors more easily. Regression could be said to be Erickson’s version of blankness -- if you haven’t read any Erickson, he uses this A LOT.

Regression doesn’t erase a person, but we could say it hides a lot of memories and learned parts of a person’s identity. I’m interested in the way it seems to marry a kind of “blankness” with our original premise -- that a person’s identity is critical to learning or brainwashing. A regressed person may not be a blank slate, but one answer to the sort of philosophical question of how to treat a person as though they have an identity while simultaneously taking it away.

While I think it’s worth mentioning, I don’t think this is the only answer, and it may not be a satisfying one -- both for reasons of not fitting exactly into our fetish box of total blankness, and the fact that it is not the most simplistic, safest thing to play with with all intimate partners (nor is it desired by many hypnokinksters).

Other "Answers”

The reality is that this is not really a vexing question. How do we reconcile our partner’s identity being important to the process of brainwashing with a desire to erase it as part of that process? We do it easily -- we may barely even think about it. This question doesn’t stem from an actual problem; the point is finding new ways to think about what we do in hypnosis so that we can find new and interesting things to do.

An easy way to think about it might be that knowing a person intimately allows them to be more vulnerable and trusting in letting themselves be erased and changed.

Another way might be questioning the idea that a person really has an innate identity at all, and “knowing” them simply reveals what is blank underneath. Perhaps we can see all these memories, opinions, perspectives as being very surface-level.

It could be that erasing someone is a way to know them most intimately -- being what they most desire to be, a blank slate ready to be changed, and with nothing between “them” and “you.”

Blankness could be seen as a temporary state of mind that allows someone to develop more fully into who they “really are” -- or an opportunity to corrupt and change those so-called innate parts of a person.

There are of course tons of metaphors we use in a play situation as well: Someone made dumber and blanker like a bimbo, or like an unprogrammed computer or drone, or a pet that is imprinted upon, or a canvas being painted -- the list goes on. Any of those things that a person identifies with could be said to be a part of them.

Very simply as well there is the concept of a subject or “student” of all kinds who is ready to learn something new -- a quality of receptiveness that is simultaneously unique to who they are but “blank” in the sense that we are adding to and shaping their identity.

We are all partially products of the people we love and interact with. The question could be how much you can separate that influence from who you “really are” in a vacuum -- and in brainwashing, paying attention to how we blur that line gives opportunities for intense D/s.

Mind Reading

I want to end this essay by talking about mind reading. I’m really interested in mind reading as a hypnotic technique, because for some reason, it feels like proving to someone that you know them intimately is an excellent, effective step towards making them blank of mind or identity.

There isn’t an easy answer. The above section explores some theories, and it makes sense that intense rapport from mind reading would allow for intense hypnotic experiences. But I really feel like mind reading creates a rapport that is unique among other “techniques” for building it.

“I understand you,” “I know you better than you know yourself,” “I can glean the thoughts and parts of you that you thought were hidden” are incredibly powerful concepts. This may be a bit of bullshitting or waxing poetic, but sometimes to me it feels like we put a lot of effort into showing other people who we are -- through our external actions, speech, and behaviors. I think maybe having a full confidence that we don’t have to “try” to do that leads to a sort of relaxing of the identity. A passivity in the way we externally behave that leads to passivity internally.

In hypnosis, if you can get someone to feel like they don’t have to “try” -- they don’t have to put effort into exaggerating their responses -- you get to a really magical place. (This too is Erickson.) If someone is not trying to express their identity or thoughts, what happens?

At the very least, it’s a good suggestion.