Hypnotism

specialberry

May 29, 2026

Only of interest as a historical read. This book is from the funny MKULTRA era where so many funny things were happening with propaganda, mind control and general advertising. Purportedly this man had nothing to do with the CIA though. Apparently he was a rabid anti-communist and wrote constant letters to the FBI to get his ideas put into practice only to get politely rejected. It is confirmed that he did work with the US military during WW2 and no word on the CIA. He seemed to be close with J Edgar Hoover for what it’s worth.

Anyway he outlines the potential uses of hypnosis and the most interesting chapter talks about its use in war.

We will use hypnotism to induce multiple per-sonality. Hypnotism is the means to an end, though the technique would be impossible did we not have hypnotism at our disposal...

In his normal waking state, which we will call Personality A, or PA, this individual will become a rabid communist. He will join the party, follow the party line and make himself as objectionable as possible to the authorities.

Then we develop Personality B (PB), the secondary personality, the unconscious personality...is rabidly American and anticommunist. It has all the information possessed by Personality A, the normal personality, whereas PA does not have this advantage.

My super spy plays his role as a communist in the waking state, aggressively, consistently, fear-lessly. But his PB is a loyal American, and PB has all the memories of PA. As a loyal American, he will not hesitate to divulge these memories.

As far as I know this was never tested or put into the field but then again that’s not the sort of info that would just be out there. The way Estabrooks talks about hypnotism makes it seem like a revolutionary weapon that could change the world. He also is honest in saying that it’s still not very understood (as of 1943) which is why I say this book is outdated. I don’t know enough about modern hypnosis to say how though which is unhelpful but oh well.