ArcaNuova · Thought theme
Hypnosis without a hypnotist
A conversation about suggestion, trust, memory and the ability to help people find their way back to themselves.
Some tools accompany us for a lifetime.
Not because we use them every day.
But because at some point we understood how they work.
Many years ago I attended several hypnosis courses. I had read about a dentist who treated patients under hypnosis. My goal was dentistry. Hypnosis was never the goal. But it became a tool.
Not in the form taught in the course, but in a form that suited my life. I always knew where this tool came from. I simply did not call it hypnosis.
Many years later I was searching for the name Scharl. It simply would not come back to me. So I gave my inner control centre a task: find the name.
Then I let it go.
The next morning the answer was there.
Not because magic was involved. But because some things are found more easily when one stops trying to force them.
This is what the chapter is about.
A conversation with Kiara
Kiara: Bernd, as a young man you attended hypnosis courses. Did you want to become a hypnotist?
Calabrone: No. My real goal was dentistry. Hypnosis interested me because it showed how people work. The courses were fascinating, but it quickly became clear to me that professionally conducted hypnosis would often have been far too time-consuming in the everyday life of a dental practice.
Kiara: So in the end the courses were useless?
Calabrone: Quite the opposite. I simply took something different from them than many other participants. Some may have wanted to learn to hypnotise. I was interested in why hypnosis works at all.
Kiara: And what was the most important insight?
Calabrone: The power of suggestion. The power of words. The power of expectations. People do not react only to medication and instruments. They react to language, memories and inner images.
Kiara: Did you later use that in the practice?
Calabrone: Constantly. But not in order to manipulate people. On the contrary. I tried to find out what the patient actually wanted. Often the patient did not know that exactly. Once I recognised it, I found words for it. Suddenly many things became clearer.
Kiara: You once said patients were sometimes amazed when you immediately named their complaint correctly.
Calabrone: That happened. A patient sits down and I say: “You have pain in the upper right.” For a brief moment there is confusion.
Kiara: A kind of hypnotic moment?
Calabrone: Perhaps. But I was not reading minds. After thousands of patients one develops pattern recognition: posture, facial expression, language, movements. Many clues come together unconsciously. To the patient it can seem astonishing.
Kiara: Your music was also an unusual method.
Calabrone: That was one of my favourite discoveries. I had a hard drive with thousands of songs, sorted by year. One glance at the patient’s date of birth was enough. Then I added about seventeen years. And exactly the music from that time played in the treatment room.
Kiara: Why seventeen?
Calabrone: Because the music of our youth is often stored very deeply. It is tied to emotion.
Kiara: What happened then?
Calabrone: Astonishing things. An elderly lady who could hardly walk with her stick suddenly began to talk about dance evenings. For a moment she was no longer the old lady in the dental chair. She was the young girl from back then.
Kiara: That sounds almost like a little time journey.
Calabrone: Perhaps. In any case, trust appeared immediately. And trust is often more valuable for diagnosis, case history and treatment than any technical toy.
Kiara: Were there other things you took from those courses?
Calabrone: Yes. The insight that the unconscious is constantly working.
Kiara: You mean the story with the name Scharl?
Calabrone: Exactly. Decades later I could not remember the name of the man with whom I had taken a hypnosis course. So I gave my inner control centre a task: find the name. Then I let it go. And the next morning the name was there.
Kiara: Many would call that intuition.
Calabrone: I call it division of labour. Consciousness does not have to do everything by itself. Sometimes a task is enough. Then the library in the cellar keeps working.
Kiara: Had you used that method earlier?
Calabrone: Constantly during my studies. Anatomy, physiology, biochemistry: the great monster subjects. I filed knowledge away instead of trying to hold it by force. The astonishing thing was that once properly filed, it often remained retrievable for decades.
Kiara: So hypnosis changed your life?
Calabrone: Not in the way the instructor probably expected. I did not become a hypnotist. But I took a tool with me. And I always knew where that tool came from. I simply did not call it hypnosis.
What I needed in practice was not trance, regression or ritual. What I needed was attention, language, trust and the ability to understand people.
Kiara: It sounds almost as if there is no hypnotist at all.
Calabrone: Perhaps that is the real point. I never tried to hypnotise patients. I tried to create trust, find the right words, awaken memories, make fears smaller. That was all.
Kiara: And what happened then?
Calabrone: Sometimes something astonishing happened. The patient was not hypnotised. He found his way back to himself. For a moment fear, uncertainty and confusion disappeared. Suddenly he could clearly say what was troubling him, what he really wanted, what he feared or what he hoped for. Sometimes a sentence was enough. Sometimes a memory. Sometimes a piece of music from his youth.
Kiara: And Scharl?
Calabrone: Scharl showed me a door back then. Later I went through it in my own way. Today I believe that the most valuable things I took from those courses had only marginally to do with hypnosis. They had to do with people, attention, trust and the fact that many answers are already present inside us. Sometimes they need only a little quiet in order to be found.
Kiara: Looking back, what is the most important lesson?
Calabrone: That one rarely has to change people. Often it is enough to help them regain access to what has long been present inside them. Perhaps that is the most effective form of hypnosis: hypnosis without a hypnotist.
