Someone shared this video with me and asked me to comment. I feel like I should help a lot of people understand something about hypnosis. It was hard for me to watch because it involve a lawyer covertly using hypnosis on one of his clients to exploit and abuse her. This is the type of abuse that creates public fear and misunderstanding about hypnosis.
On the surface it shows that hypnosis can be misused to hurt people but that is only on the surface. What was TRULY being misused was the lawyers perceived authority. He took his position of authority to manipulate and exploit people. Hypnosis was only a tool. In the history of human abuses authority has lead to more abuse than hypnosis. Teachers have used their authority to abuse students in their charge, Doctors have abused patients, clergy have abused their flock… all without hypnosis, just authority. Clearly the vast majority of teachers, doctors and clergy are decent people who respect the ‘in loco parentis‘ responsibility of their position. Attorney Michael Fine is clearly not so decent.
He learned a skill of hypnosis and leveraged his authority as lawyer to hurt people.
My point is that hypnosis is a powerful tool that kand help people make powerful changes. When the changes are positive and beneficial they last, but if hypnosis is used to harm people it will eventually get undone and explode in the face to the offending hypnotist.
You can read more about this abuse of power in Mind Control Hypnosis: Hypnosis Without Suggestion
I read about this when it happened and honestly, I thought it was fake. My thinking was that a lawyer who couldn’t cast doubt over a story this far fetched couldn’t possibly be serruptitiously hypnotizing people and erasing their memory of it. It just seems so…..unbelievable. Seeing the video, I was wrong. This wing nut did it.
I question why he did this with unwilling subjects. There is a world full of people out there, and some of them like some really off the beaten path stuff. Yes, there are people in the BDSM world who seek to (not submit to, seek to) be the “slave” in a M/s relationship. Complete with Master/ slave contracts defining what is and is not agreed to. This sort of hypnosis is completely OK in that context if that’s what both adults agree to. No laws broken, no jail time, nothing but consenting adults doing stuff most people think is weird. He could have found a woman or women who wanted to play this game with him, but he did it to his clients?!? Not just unwilling and unwitting women, his professional clients. What the hell was he thinking? Not just grossly unethical but stupid. Maybe the secret law breaking was part of the “thrill” he was after?
You’d think a divorce lawyer would have known he needed a divorce and a “mid life crisis girlfriend.” Should have joined a swingers club.