Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis Read Online Free PDF

humiliating them. In Somerset Maugham's slightly ponderous tale
The Magician
(1908), the evil Haddo (a character based on Aleister Crowley, whom Maugham knew) hypnotizes Margaret in order to revenge himself upon her fiancé by taking her away from him. His will completely dominates hers, and the evil in him brings out the latent evil side of her nature. At one point in Peter Carey's excellent
Jack Maggs
(1997) the hypnotist's control over his subject's will is so total that the subject, implausibly, cries out: ‘Let me wake up!’
    The Russian monk Rasputin was evidently a larger-than-lifecharacter, and over the years has become even more so in various fictional treatments. In the 1966
Rasputin, the Mad Monk
(a poor movie salvaged only by Christopher Lee's efforts in the title role), he gets women to stare into his eyes: ‘Look deep into my eyes. Think only of me. Listen and obey.’ They are putty in his hands, to satisfy his sexual appetite and his ambition. He even uses hypnosis to get a woman with whom he has grown bored to commit suicide. To many people's minds Rasputin, Svengali and even Dracula merge, because of the similarity of their treatment on film: the camera pans in on their piercing eyes – never better than in the original 1931 Dracula film, starring Bela Lugosi, or in the 1932
Svengali
with John Barrymore. But, at the risk of spoiling the fantasy, I'm sorry to have to say that in actual fact Rasputin did not practise hypnotism. Not only did he consistently deny that he did so, but in February 1914 – that is, towards the end of his life (he was assassinated in December 1916), long after he had become famous for his healing powers – he took lessons from a hypnotist called Gerasim Papandato, nicknamed the Musician, because he was afraid his powers were waning and he wanted to supplement them by learning hypnotism. But I doubt that future film-makers will let the truth stand in the way of a good story.
    Fiction has steadily perpetuated the idea that women are more liable to be entranced than men. The sexual undertones of this are rarely brought out into the open (or are at least treated with some delicacy, as in Maugham's
The Magician
or Henry James's 1874 short story ‘Professor Fargo’), but
The Power of Mesmerism: A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts
(1880) is a piece of anonymously written Victorian pornography which goes all the way. The hero of the book has learnt hypnotism at school, and throughout the book uses it to seduce others, until the licentious side of their natures has been awoken enough for hypnotism and convenient amnesia to be unnecessary. Within a few pages he has had sex with his sister, mother, father and school friends – often in threesomes and foursomes. And so the wearisome book proceeds. Where films are concerned, Barbra Streisand remarks at one point in
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
(1970) to her hypnotist (Yves Montand): ‘That's quite a weapon you've got there. I mean, you guys must have one glorious night after another.’
    The fascination of film directors with hypnotism is shown by the fact that as early as 1909 D.W. Griffith, who is best known for his slightly later masterpieces
The Birth of a Nation
and
Intolerance
, made a film called
The Criminal Hypnotist
. No copies of this movie exist, unfortunately. The earliest extant film in which hypnotism plays a major part is the 1919
Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari
, directed by Robert Wiene. This atmospheric classic of expressionist cinema reflects both the main ideas of
Trilby
– the evil hypnotist and permanent entrancement.
    Dr Caligari appears as a fairground huckster, offering to predict the future through his somnambulist, Cesare, who has reputedly been kept entranced for twenty-five years. But Caligari also uses Cesare to carry out murders. Things go badly wrong when Cesare fails to murder Jane Olsen, the girlfriend of the film's hero, Francis. Her beauty wakens