There are lots of reasons to write books: fame, fortune, the ability to brag at cocktail parties. But according to Peter Masters, his motive for penning Look Into My Eyes: How to Use Hypnosis to Bring Out the Best in Your Sex Life was a more laudably generous and erotic one: to "enhance fun and sexy role-playing, to focus the mind for control of sexual responsiveness, and more." Certainly, Masters himself seems to get laid a lot, if one is to believe the book's sheer number of "personal examples." But when I first proposed the idea of sexual hypnosis to my partner, all he did was make Twilight Zone noises.
"Come on," I urged him. "It'll be fun. Like Fight Club, but with hypnosis . . . "
"Trance Club?" he asked.
"Yeah, Trance Club! If this is your first night at Trance Club"
"You must go under," he said.
Then we laughed at our joke. In our tiny world, we consider ourselves very funny people.
Masters is well aware of hypnotism's "quack like a duck" stigma, which he works hard to dispel. "Hypnosis is not magical and it doesn't require special powers," he explains. "It doesn't leave you 'weak willed' and it doesn't make you the helpless puppet of the person who hypnotized you." No, hypnosis is nothing more mysterious than mind relaxation exercises conducted between consensual partners. More like meditation than roofies, in other words. In his desire to take the higher ground, however, Masters glosses over some notorious bits of hypnosis history. From its inception, the technique has always been as much a naughty parlor game as it is a clinical tool. Hypnotherapy pioneer Anton Mesmer (whose work later inspired both nineteenth-century psychologist Charcot and Freud himself) was chased out of France after he used hypnosis to cure a sixteen-year-old girl of hysterical blindness, and then seduced her. In fact, feminist criticism of hypnosis has long focused on the fact that it purports to be about relaxation while actually exerting sexual control for entertainment value.
Masters emphasizes that his book is no manual for seducing the unwary. Okay, fair enough. After all, it's not as if Freud's hypnosis patients were able to turn to him and say, "Okay, now I'll do you!" And there's real work to be done here, for both partners. Masters says that successful sexual hypnosis requires three key elements: consent, practice and commitment between partners. I'd add a fourth element: the couple must be talkative by nature. If you don't relish the notion of chatting at length about every little nuance of your sessions, this book isn't at all for you. Fortunately, my partner and I process more than a Cuisinart.
As designated first-round hypnotist, I tried to follow Masters' instructions to the letter. First, I had my partner close his eyes and take some deep breaths. Then I launched into my guided relaxation script, choosing the classic "setting sun on the beach" story. (It helped that we actually do have a favorite beach in San Francisco.) I interspersed nature descriptions with future-tense suggestions about relaxation ("your body is soon going to feel very heavy"); these slowly progressed to present-tense descriptions. I then did the obligatory "depth of trance" experiments, asking my partner to tell me on a scale of one to ten how deep he felt his trance was.
Masters was quite right about the fact that I would be nervous my first few times as a hypnotist. Initially, I rushed through the scenario. In our debriefing session, my partner told me I needed to speak slower, take more pauses and try to time what I was saying to the rhythm of his breath. At first, I was resistant, insisting that "the guy in the book says long pauses confuse the person being hypnotized!" In his defense, Masters couldn't have known about my Chihuahua pace. Ultimately, I realized that unless I was going to start practicing at Bellevue, I needed to get the by-the-book approach out of my bedroom. Masters was, as the Buddha liked to say, merely a finger pointing at the moon. Though there probably is a "right" way to do "real" hypnotherapy, when one orchestrates a hypno-booty call, it's time to lighten up.
Masters had prepared me to be patient. Luckily for me, my partner seems to be a true hypnosis bottom. Once I slowed my speaking down, I could get him under in less than twenty minutes. In thirty, he had to struggle to speak to me. It was fun watching him get loopy. At first I thought he was faking. He wasn't. Unfortunately for my partner, I don't seem to take to trance as easily. For this reason, I wound up spending more time hypnotizing my partner than being hypnotized myself. At first I felt guilty about the whole thing. Then I realized I was like those massage students who sheepishly ask "to practice" on people. Free massage? Hell yeah!
As per Masters' recommendations, the first few times involved no nookie. Then we moved on to erotic trance, which appears to differ from the ordinary sort primarily by requiring more, well, sex. After running through the standard relaxation exercises, the book instructed my partner to begin stroking my body, going from classically "safe" body areas to more erogenous zones. Unless you have always longed to be in a Merchant Ivory film, I strongly counsel you to substitute your own personal banter for Masters'. When my poor partner uttered the book's line, "I am going to stroke you now," I was so weirded out that I opened my eyes and said, "Why is Jeremy Irons in bed with us?" A far more serious issue for us than language choice, however, was the difficulty of maintaining a monologue during certain, very specific sex acts. Sex acts with, say, the mouth.
While I respect that talking deepens the hypnotic state, Masters has clearly never sucked cock. Here is my rendition of me fellating my partner in a trance: "Oh, the sun is setting," I tell him, "and you are watching the waves breaking on the shore . . . " I take a deep breath and begin sucking. A minute later, I realize it's time to speak again. I raise my mouth, and continue, "Oh yes, the sun sets deeper, deeper." Then I submerge again, like a periscope done with my trip topside. This continues over and over, ad infinitum. True, my partner is in a fully relaxed state of pure ecstasy. I, on the other hand, am wondering which is more preferable: death caused by the bends, or life after giving this five-hour, TMJ-inducing blowjob.
Once the whole body-on-body thing has been explored, Masters encourages couples to move on to role play. Again, if you've had any quality sex in your life at all, I recommend avoiding his scripts. Perhaps somewhere in the known universe, Nancy Friday-esque scenarios ("You are alone in your hospital bed and a sexy nurse walks in . . . ") are erotically enticing. In my bedroom, they induce gales of laughter. It's not that I disapprove of fantasy quite the contrary. But trance added nothing to the experience. To quote the never-were-talented 2 Live Crew, I'm already as nasty as I wanna be with my partner. What's more, there's something deflating about trying to implant a spanking suggestion in my partner's brain, only to be told that he perceived only blurred words "like that teacher's voice on Charlie Brown."
For advanced participants, Masters recommends post-hypnotic suggestion (PHS), a "sexy surprise" command given to a partner in a trance, active only after they wake up. Here's Masters' idea of a good PHS: "Whenever we're alone and in private somewhere and I say the phrase, 'I love melons,' you will have an uncontrollable desire to show me your bare breasts. You'll show me your breasts, and then a few seconds later, the desire will suddenly disappear." Huh. To cancel a post-hypnotic suggestion, one must rehypnotize one's partner and tell them the PHS will no longer be effective. Unfortunately, Masters advocates using the phrase, "Horny, no!" as a post-hypnotic cancellation mechanism.
As potentially exciting as PHS's may sound, Masters explains that they are difficult to administer, they generally wear off, they don't always work and even when they do work, they sometimes don't work the way they were intended. This was certainly my experience. Though I repeatedly tried to get my partner to respond to the phrase, "We need to go to a party soon," by grabbing my ass, I've had no luck yet just some quizzical looks, given that it was eleven a.m. And of course, as soon as he reads this, I'm going to have to give him a new suggestion.
And then there's orgasm something Masters seems to give short shrift. Personally, I had no trouble climaxing during my trance, though I admit I preferred manual stimulation to penetration while under. It was extremely pleasant to just lie there like a fat lazy diva, awash in my own bodily sensations, not even responsible for bucking my own hips. When completely and utterly relaxed, I don't even make those little "ooh" and "ahh" sex noises, I discovered. My partner was a different story. While he maintained a trance-induced erection worthy of an ovation, I just could not get him to ejaculate in a hypnotized state. After discussing body mechanics for a while, we finally figured out what was going on.
"When I get woken up for sex after being asleep," he explained to me, "I'm coming from an unconscious state to a conscious one, and my body is ready to do things that orgasm requires, like tense up your muscles. But in a trance state, I don't want to come out of unconsciousness. I want to sink deeper into it."
At one level, I could identify with the level of relaxation he was talking about. At another level, I just couldn't. As I said before, my level of trance just never got as deep as his did. Sometimes, I would give up entirely and bring him out of his trance, in a "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" kind of way. Then, another sort of chaos would ensue. He would look at me, and then down at his monstrous erection. "What is this?" he would ask, sounding like Ricky asking Lucy why a chimpanzee was in their apartment.
In his defense, once we properly discussed the matter, my partner had no trouble consummating our love. Like I said, we're talkers. And if nothing else, the whole experience has added a great set of catchphrases to our repertoire. But do I think we'll keep this up? Horny, no!
after he used hypnosis to cure a sixteen-year-old girl of hysterical blindness, and then seduced her. In fact, feminist criticism of hypnosis has long focused on the fact that it purports to be about relaxation while actually exerting sexual control for entertainment value.
merely a finger pointing at the moon. Though there probably is a "right" way to do "real" hypnotherapy, when one orchestrates a hypno-booty call, it's time to lighten up.
suggestion, one must rehypnotize one's partner and tell them the PHS will no longer be effective. Unfortunately, Masters advocates using the phrase, "Horny, no!" as a post-hypnotic cancellation mechanism.
