As I pointed out, there's a lot of human psychology involved! Using hypnosis I can make anyone believe having experienced an abduction by aliens. Including the whole typical research they'd do on humans.
Hypnosis only works on those who are happy to be hypnotised, [..]
While I'm happy to accept that whole paragraph was a joke (with the wink at the end), it was a funny thing to hear from someone who seems to be all about psychology.
The only joke I made was about people who claim to have been abducted and say they got probed.
You are by the way wrong in the assumption that hypnosis only works with people who allow to be hypnotized. This is simply not true. Yes, it's more difficult with people who do not want to be hypnotized and many people will need a different approach to reach a state of hypnosis, but ultimately everyone can be hypnotized.
There's no such thing as being immune to hypnosis.What I was trying to point out though, was that the whole UFO stuff and how people think about that subject greatly relies on perceived but fictional ideas, basically just someone's imagination sparked at the right time and moment. Suggestion is key here and as I said earlier, this is just human psychology. We all know how our eyes can fools us sometimes. The same is true for our minds.
and even then most won't experience something strong enough, and of those who do many won't retain that belief after they leave their state of hypnosis.
Something strong enough? What do you mean? With hypnosis you basically instruct people to believe something without their natural control system warning them that it's perhaps untrue or idiotic. As long as you're a good hypnotist, you can get some pretty strong experiences in their minds.
In fact, to give an example of how strong a hypnotic idea can be, there are a couple of stories floating around of people dying because of hypnosis. One of the stories was about a man on a stage hypnosis show that got 'virtually' beheaded, but actually died on stage.
I'm skeptical about that story, but I found it in a book* about stage hypnosis as a word of general caution. ( For some 'non-urban legend grade' examples;
http://www.dangers-of-hypnosis.co.uk/dangers_of_stage_hypnosis.html )
Leaving the state of hypnosis, isn't quite synonymous with 'stopping to believe' what was instructed. Sometimes a hypnotist screws up (or causes this intentionally by using a special anchor) and that's when people need much more time to recover and truly become the way they were again.
It can take up to several weeks for some to truly 'wake up' again,
without a hypnotist to 'wake them' again. There are also cases known about people that needed special therapy because of psychosis.
It's both a lot more dangerous and at the same time powerful as you seem to think. Which in itself is fine, but your claims are a bit off.
*The New Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnotism
