What’s your hypnosis origin story?
I can remember becoming interested in the subject before my teenaged years. I most likely was around 9 or 10 at the time. Of course, by that time, I had seen hypnosis as represented on advertisements on the back of comic books and seeing it on TV. I remember watching it presented on movies, especially “The Woman in Green”. However, the most vivid impression I can remember was finding a copy of a book on hypnosis one day at the library Bookmobile. I was amazed to find such a thing and even more amazed to be allowed to check it out. I do remember the man in the Bookmobile asking me if I wanted to get more books like this, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want adults knowing about my interest in the subject.
It was a slender copy with black&white photographs showing the male hypnotist and female subject(s). It might have been “How to Use Hypnosis” by Dr. David Tracy (1952) but it was certainly something from that same era. I really can’t remember clearly any longer, as that was about 50 years ago. After that it was things like watching Pat Collins on the Showtime cable network or her appearance on “The Lucy Show”, going to the downtown library by riding the bus and checking out books on hypnosis there, and seeing hypnosis and all related subjects on television and at the movies. All of this when I was still a teenager.
And that’s my origin story.