1982. Assoc. Prof. Wendy-Louise Walker, head Dept. of Behavioural Sciences in Medicine at Sydney Uni.
There is the pervasive perception that female sexuality is less predatory than male.
– Wendy-Louise Walker
* * *
‘Do a classic induction,’ I asserted. ‘Something very seventies.’
My therapist walked me through an imaginary forest. ‘…you come to a dark area in the woods where there’s a stone staircase that leads underground. You descend the stairs one at a time: Ten…nine…eight…’
Damn it! You’re doing it wrong again. You’re supposed to count forwards, not backwards. ‘Ahhhh!’ I moaned, ‘The right side of my head aches.’
‘Let’s go in there. Let’s go into that part of your brain.’
At the base of the imaginary stairs, I start to fall – down the rabbit hole. I land with a thud on the chequered floor.
‘Go through the green door…’ he suggests.
I walk through the empty garden. I hear a child crying. Eight-year-old Alice sits at the head of the Hatter’s tea party, weeping.
‘Put your arm around her,’ my therapist suggested.
‘No, she wants me to ask her what’s wrong.’
‘Ask her what’s wrong.’
‘She’s lonely and has no friends.’ Alice, I implore, ‘Please show me what’s wrong?’
I see a man’s naked crotch sat on a chair beneath a table. To my right, light shines through a draped tablecloth. I am in Nanna Holowczak’s kitchen.
‘I’m being raped. I’m very little. I’m beneath the table. His cock is in my mouth and I’m choking.’
Tap-tap-tap… My therapist then asks me the dreaded question I was avoiding – the whole reason for this session: ‘Tell me about Wendy-Louise Walker…’
A vivid scene suddenly appears before me. I am in a little cave chiselled out of the bedrock. Thick black bars are in front of me. The cavern ceiling touches my head, obscures my view of the ‘White Coats’ and the upper part of their torsos as they move about the black-and-white chequered lab floor. It is the cage beneath Holsworthy, only this time it is not a fuzzy dreamy image. This is crisp and clear. This is the same cage where I bonded with the blonde children whom Chang and his Delta soldiers butchered, the same cage in which Chang ordered his dog to rape me, the same cage I was trapped in while the White Coats stood and laughed and mocked as they electrocuted me with cattle prods. One of those White Coats was Antony Kidman. Another was Wendy-Louise Walker.
Then I saw it, a close up of Walker’s creepy face, her bulging eyes staring deep into mine.
‘Was she hypnotising you?’ my therapist guessed the obvious.
‘Yes…’
‘Now what do you see?’
‘They’re tossing me up and down in a white blanket, to teach me the sensation of falling, so they can use it my induction…’
‘Now what’s happening?’
‘I see a small wading pool with striped sides. I think they’re drowning me in it.’ I cough. ‘I think they’re electrocuting my whole body in it. Is that possible? Can they electrify the water?’
‘Yes, they certainly can.’
Suddenly, my body spasms in agony as the pain of whole-body electrocution hits. I scream, and scream, and scream at the top of my lungs, while simultaneously burying my being into the lounge, clawing through the fabric, trying to the escape the agony. This is the first time in six years that I have abreacted so.
The moment passes, and I weep into the pillows.
Suddenly], I am flooded with scenes of child soldier training at Holsworthy, Jason and our team members encouraging me to keep going, to do things a certain way, to avoid Colonel Chang.
‘I miss my team,’ I quietly sobbed…
The vision suddenly changed again. This time I am looking down into the chaotic cockpit of a helicopter that is out of control and spinning, nose first, toward the ground. ‘I see a helicopter spiralling! Our helicopter is crashing! It’s spinning!’
‘Okay,’ my therapist asserted, ‘Time to say goodnight to the helicopter. I’m bringing you back now.’
I emerged from the abreaction in shock. I had been triggered by reading Wendy-Louise Walker’s research papers.
* * *
HYPNOSIS OPENS DOOR TO HEALING
Sydney Morning Herald, 18 March 2004
In the 1950s there were five big hypnosis labs in the world – four in North America and the other at Sydney University, under the guidance of professors John Phillip Sutcliffe and Gordon Hammer. It was partly due to the interest they fostered that the research continues.
Dr Wendy-Louise Walker was a student at Sydney University during that period. She went on to teach hypnosis at the university, delivers lectures for the Australian Hypnosis Society and has used hypnosis in psychological practice over the past 40 years.
‘Hypnosis is variable, imaginative and very creative, but it is not a simple, single-treatment modality. We do not treat patients by hypnosis,’ she says. ‘During hypnosis the practitioner works with certain characteristics of the altered state of consciousness – suggestibility, increased imagination and dissociation – to facilitate the learning of new skills or the integration of different views.’
A patient is able to distinguish between different mental functions; in pain relief, for example, a patient can be helped to change the perception of pain and to decrease the sensation of it.
Studies have shown distinct physiological changes in the brain during hypnosis. Research by US psychologist Dr Helen Crawford has demonstrated that during analgesic hypnosis, the executive functions of the frontal lobe activate to work with other parts of the brain to inhibit the perception of pain…
Walker has helped several patients apprehensive about the pain of childbirth. ‘I train them to put themselves in hypnosis and ask them to choose a certain piece of music. When the music comes on, my patient takes herself serenely into hypnosis – you rehearse this. If people speak to her, she can respond, but in this state she will register the sensation but not the pain.’
She is also treating several police officers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. ‘I use music as a pathway to and through trance, with my words woven in with the repeated suggestion that, bit by bit, as they feel the glory of the music, the harmony, little bits of emotional debris from their traumas will begin floating away. The memory will stay clear, you don’t want to lose that, but the emotional debris – the fear, the anger, the bitterness – will slowly float away over time.’
About 10 to 15 per cent of the population are seen as highly hypnotisable; the same percentage are not good subjects, and the rest are average. Barnier says: ‘It’s a figure that parallels the circumstances for any treatment. Some people are more susceptible to particular drugs than others.’
There are clinical measurements to gauge hypnotisability, but the best subjects tend to have good attention abilities and become easily absorbed in activities.
The Australian Society of Hypnosis runs regular courses for doctors, dentists and psychologists. A few years ago, Sydney GP Dr Monica Moore attended one and ended up introducing the technique into her practice. She sees the conscious mind as a computer screen that allows about eight windows to be open at one time. ‘The subconscious mind is the computer hard drive that sometimes makes connections that are not helpful. Hypnosis is a tool for reworking those connections in the subconscious mind…’
* * *
Following the initial release of Eyes Wide Open, I was contacted by Ben, a retired navy seaman and lawyer. The first thing he said to me was: ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for years!’ Ben then stunned me with a story about his friend Keith Dawes, assistant to Wendy-Louise Walker:
In late 2015, Ben and Keith were watching television when my press conference footage appeared on TV. Suddenly, Keith blurted: ‘Wendy and I have decided to help that girl.’ Keith then told Ben about his and Wendy’s MK-ULTRA work with the kids kept in cages beneath Holsworthy. By then Wendy had become a slave to the system she joined in her youth. She was not permitted to buy a home, in case she had to be uprooted and moved quickly. Following my 2015 documentary expose of Holsworthy, the military transferred the human lab rats to RAAF Base Glenbrook at the foot of the Blue Mountains and simultaneously moved Wendy to a rental property in nearby Leura.
Keith and Wendy’s attempt to help me was an article they submitted for publication in the Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. However, Graham Burrows redacted the paper. Wendy said a clue to Project MK-ULTRA being conducted at Holsworthy lay in the sample of children cited in her research publications, because those children were in fact the lab rats kept in cages beneath Holsworthy. Ben told me to read between the lines of those papers.
Ben said he felt unsure of Keith’s testimony, until he was coincidentally contracted to assist with electrical work at the Glenbrook Air Force base. While at Glenbrook, the base’s permanent electrician told Ben he wanted him to meet a strange character who, along with several other adult victims, lived in an area beneath the base’s main building. The stranger had reddish-brown dark hair, and although he told Ben he was 57, he only looked only 40 years old. During their five-minute conversation, the man told Ben he was one of the caged kids raised at Holsworthy who had been transferred to RAAF Base Glenbrook. The stranger was permitted to roam the base due to his compliance. The other victims were not allowed out because they were either to aggressive or, according to the base electrician, ‘Too far gone to save.’ The stranger was familiar with the ‘Light Man’ that I mentioned in my story.
Graham Dene Burrows died on 10 January 2016, aged 77 years. Keith Dawes died on 2 June 2016, aged 67 years. After Keith died, Ben tried to locate Wendy, with the intention of getting a copy of the redacted article she allegedly wrote to help me. By the time he arrived at 20 Blackheath Street in Leura, the house was empty. Wendy Louise Walker had died on 30 August 2018, aged 83 years.
Perhaps Ben was right. Perhaps Walker and Dawes grew a conscience in their final days, and they intended to help me by publishing an article. Or maybe my instincts were more accurate: they were using an unwitting Ben to access and silence me again.
It was Ben’s story that inspired me to take a closer look at Keith Dawes and Wendy-Louise Walker. I found major hints in Keith Dawes’ CV, suggesting his involvement in Project MK-ULTRA:
- Sydney University (1970) BA in Psychology and Education (minors in Philosophy, Anthropology and Fine Arts); (1971) BSc in Psychology / Zoology (minors in Botany, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Medical Science); (1972) Dip Ed (Student placement at Fort St High School); (1984) Master of Psychology.
- Macquarie University (1986) Master of Science (Implicit & Explicit Memory in Post Hypnotic Amnesia).
- Australian Society of Hypnosis (1988) Dip. Clinical Hypnosis
- (2007) PhD (Tacit knowledge)
- (1972 to 1975) Taught Science at Fort St Boys High (selective school for gifted kids).
- (1983) Lectured at Mitchell College in Bathurst.
- (1986) Lectured in subject ‘Exceptional Children’ at Sydney University.
- (1990 to 2000) taught psychology at Sydney University.
- (2008 to 2010) taught tacit knowledge and implicit knowledge in France.
Wendy-Louise Walker was a Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, inaugural President of the NSW Psychologists Board, President of the Australian Society of Hypnosis, and Editor of the Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Her published writings focused on variables highly pertinent to MK-ULTRA. Viewed in the context of CIA mind control, Walker’s writings provide insight to MK objectives and methods, and clues to healing from the abuse she and her fellow monsters perpetrated against the likes of me. Her writings support my hypotheses concerning the MK subject selection, abuse and integration processes I espoused in Eyes Wide Open.
Below I summarise Wendy-Louise Walker’s pertinent writings on hypnosis. I urge you also to read between the lines. When Walker refers to ‘damaged subjects’ she is talking about MK-ULTRA victims like me. When she discusses the ‘hypnotisability of highly gifted subjects’ and the ‘hypnotisability of child abuse victims’ – she is talking about the Holsworthy victims. When she mentions the use of music to induce / trigger dissociation in gifted subjects – she is sharing their MK methods with the reader. Throughout her writings, Walker says, ‘it seems that…’ or ‘I believe that…’ When she does this, she is in fact sharing knowledge gained from MK-ULTRA experiments that is not published mainstream. I add the odd ‘Note’ to draw your attention to something I recognise as particularly relevant to the MK-ULTRA methods Walker and her associates used on me. I summarise and synthesise three of Walker’s papers in this fashion:
- An Introduction to Hypnosis: Student Handbook.[1]
- The Gifts and Vulnerabilities of the Highly Hyponotizable: Relevance for Therapy.[2]
- Combining music and words as a pathway through hypnosis: Practical guidelines.[3]
AN INTRODUCTION TO HYPNOSIS: STUDENT HANDBOOK
This Introduction was originally written in 2004 by Dr Wendy-Louise Walker for distribution to students starting the Diploma in Clinical Hypnosis conducted by the NSW Branch of the Australian Society of Hypnosis. In 2014, Walker gave permission for this publication to be provided to students undertaking the Diploma in all states.
Definition of Hypnosis
Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness. Hypnosis causes a partial lifting of the executive (i.e., background) controls of consciousness. The hypnosis experience depends on an interaction of many variables, including the subject’s hypnotisability, cognitive ability (especially vividness of imagery), expectations, and the hypnotist’s suggestions. Hypnotic responsiveness is identified by measuring:
- Absorption; i.e., the capacity to become lost in experience (Measure: Tellengen Absorption Scale).
- Dissociation proneness, which is inherited, and exaggerated or distorted by childhood abuse and over-strict punishment. (Measure: Dissociative Experiences Scale, which wrongly assumes all dissociation is abnormal).
- Vividness of sensory imagery (Measure: Betts Questionnaire of Mental Imagery). Most gifted hypnosis subjects have good sensory imagery.
Hypnotic responsiveness is more an ability than a personality trait. Highly hypnotisable subjects naturally shift in and out of altered states of consciousness in everyday life.
The hypnotist’s suggestions focus on progressively narrowing focus of attention, and on ignoring external and internal distractions. Hypnosis inductions involve the notion of moving. Classic inductions moveddown, deeper and deeper asleep. Modern ones move further and further forward, into a meditational state.
Hypnosis and meditation are considered different paths to the same place.
The Hypnosis Process
Walker describes the hypnosis process, beginning with the three major consciousness control systems that hypnosis disables:
- Attention. The subject enters hypnosis by (a) changing her focus of attention, and (b) progressively surrendering her executive control of consciousness to the hypnotist. Attention is the accessing, focussing control that influences what the mind processes. Attention is also involved in accessing memory. Attention can be under voluntary control when one is in active, directed, problem-solving mode of consciousness. Alternatively, attention can float randomly, unfocussed, and uncontrolled when one is in passive, receptive mode of consciousness. In hypnosis, the subject’s attention is focused inward rather than on the external world. The hypnotist’s instructions connect to the subject’s inner world. The hypnotist directs the subject’s focus of attention.
- Critical Self-Awareness is a major consciousness control. It develops in childhood, and teenage years. It is the constant monitoring of one’s own thoughts and actions that accompany waking consciousness. It reaches the forefront of attention when highly threatened or anxious; or it is a background hum when one is safely alone, reading a novel. This mechanism often malfunctions in the damaged patient, causing great subjective discomfort. Hypnosis causes a partial suspension of critical self-awareness. It may lift early in the hypnotic induction, since self-watching is incompatible with hypnosis. The suspension of this function allows the absorption in imagination, which is central to hypnosis.
- Vigilant Monitoring is the scanning of the outside world, the detection and analysis of cues, physical and interpersonal, that accompanies waking consciousness. This is also partly suspended during hypnosis. This function is also disrupted in PTSD victims, since hypervigilance is a main PTSD symptom. This function must be partly suspended before one can enter hypnosis and, the further one goes into hypnosis, the more distant the threats within external reality become. This contributes also to the increased reality and vividness of involvement in imagined activities in hypnosis.
Abstracting, Comparing, Interpreting are the ongoing data processing of the mind-computer. There is a partial suspension of some of the abstracting, comparing and interpreting functions of consciousness in hypnosis. The hypnotist’s words are taken literally. The words elicit strong feelings and imagery. Music similarly provokes imagery and strong feelings during hypnosis. Owing to partial suspension of the abstracting, comparing and interpreting functions of consciousness, the subject tolerates logical incongruity.
Dissociation (Double-Tracking)
Going into hypnosis, there is an increased ability to dissociate. Damaged, highly hypnotisable subjects have their fears and rages split off from the object. Dissociation can also refer to running parallel streams of consciousness. This is a normal phenomenon for the dissociation-prone, who are highly hypnotisable. Examples of double tracking in hypnosis include automatic writing and the hidden observer phenomenon (a part of the mind that functions separately, experiencing things which the subject is unaware of).
The term ‘dissociation’ can also denote a maladaptive defence mechanism of the personality, where whole parts of the ego system are separated by amnesia and function independently (e.g., multiple personalities).
Walker said:
Hypnosis can be used to treat the amnesia barriers between parts of consciousness and personality, and to achieve integration.
The Relaxation Response
Entering hypnosis is associated with the relaxation response, a combination of mental quiet and physical relaxation, accompanied by a slowing of heartrate, a lowering of blood pressure, and beneficial changes in body chemistry.
During hypnosis, one can be either unrelaxed, or re-live a dreadful trauma with powerful negative feelings, or imagine and experience with great subjective reality, vivid imagery and strong feelings.
The typical hypnosis state is one of eyes closed, physical relaxation, and inner focus of attention. Most inductions incorporate the notion of relaxation, and it is easier to enter hypnosis with accompanying relaxation than without it. This association between hypnosis and the relaxation response links up with the imaginative involvement dimension.
Involvement and Absorption: Sensory Imagery & Subjective Reality
Hypnosis brings an increasing involvement and loss of self in the experience. Highly hypnotisable subjects have a greater capacity for involvement (e.g. in reading or daydreaming). In hypnosis, sensory imagery becomes more vivid. The subject also has an enhanced sense of subjective reality in what is being imagined. This increased involvement stems from the partial lifting of the three major consciousness control systems mentioned earlier. Absence of the analysing and damping-down effects of these monitoring systems permits the enhanced experience of feelings and sensory imagery.
What is imagined during hypnosis is more vivid, subjectively real, and elicits strong feelings compared to what is imagined in the waking state.
After reaching a certain level of hypnosis, in response to the hypnotist’s suggestions:
Gifted subjects may actually hallucinate something in one of the sensory modalities (commonly vision and hearing). Some subjects can hallucinate with their eyes open.
Hypnosis facilitates experiences like synaesthesia and eidetic imagery for those who can already do this.
[Note: Synaesthesia is the merging of senses that aren’t normally connected. The stimulation of one sense causes an involuntary reaction in one or more of the other senses. Eidetic imagery is the ability to remember an image in so much detail, clarity, and accuracy that it is as though the image were still being perceived.]
The visual memories of high visual-spatial IQ children were enhanced using hypnosis, so they could recall location and target details. You can see how hypervigilance was enhanced through trauma, to produce desirable soldiers.
Response to Suggestion
In hypnosis, there is an increased compliance with, and receptivity to, suggestion. The subject is likely to do and experience what the hypnotist suggests. The subject is receptive to post-hypnotic suggestion. The subject is more likely to incorporate the hypnotist’s suggestions into her self-concept, the way little children incorporate the evaluative comments of their parents (good/bad, pretty/ugly, lovable/unlovable) into their developing self-concepts. [Note: The potential for using hypnosis to bond a victim to her perpetrator, to create new personalities, in a child whose brain has been washed clean and made ripe for suggestion.]
Highly hypnotisable subjects are more suggestible in the waking state compared to others, and hypnosis accentuates this. By the time they reach adulthood, gifted subjects develop protection against this suggestibility; but these protective controls dissolve again when they enter hypnosis. [Note: Another reason why high visual-spatial IQ kids made ideal MK-ULTRA candidates.]
Hypnotic suggestion can be effective in the waking state after hypnosis has ended, and these are called post-hypnotic suggestions. The hypnotist’s suggestions or comments can create strong expectancies concerning the subject’s hypnosis experience, and these expectancies partly determine what happens for the subject after hypnosis induction. Post-hypnotic suggestions link what has been learned, incorporated, or experienced in hypnosis, to the subject’s external reality. [Note: This explains how the hypnotist’s suggestions are reinforced or triggered every time the MK subject hears a certain cue implanted during the hypnosis process.]
Loss of Awareness of Body Boundaries, Loss of Sense of Self as Separate
Awareness of body boundaries is the basic awareness of self as separate from the world. It is a basis for normal, waking consciousness. This awareness is exaggerated in damaged subjects. In sensory deprivation situations, this background awareness becomes unavailable, normal consciousness disintegrates, and the subject experiences non-unity and merges with other things. [Note: I was left alone in the dark, in a dungeon beneath Holsworthy, at a very young age. The sensory deprivation split off a section of my personality which I bonded with my panda teddy bear named ‘Snookie.’ The new personality took the name Snookie.]
Hypnosis blurs body boundaries so that the subject’s sense of self feels separate from the world. Deep hypnosis achieves a sense of merging the self with the world, becoming ‘one with universe,’ as in meditation. If a subject enters what Walker called the ‘psychedelic depths of trance’ (a two-hour process) the sense of self is lost about halfway along the journey, after pushing through a fear barrier. Walker wrote:
Sensory deprivation experiments and the scraps of information that leak out about brain washing, support the notion that sense of ego boundaries is disrupted when sensory information about body in relation to environment is disrupted.
[Note: Wendy-Louise Walker and her pedophile comrades subjected me to the very sensory deprivation experiments and brain washing that she just referred to.]
Partial Lifting of Repression Barrier
Wendy-Louise Walker wrote: Repressed traumatic memories are easier to access in hypnosis. Hypnosis partially lifts the executive controls of consciousness, which weakens the repression barrier. This plus flexible focus of attention in response to therapist suggestion, allows access to and reprocessing of, trauma memories normally unavailable to consciousness. This can be difficult, and sometimes one must use suggested optional amnesia as a safety mechanism, while the patient slowly comes to terms with the repressed trauma events.
Walker said, ‘Some of my own research or research I have supervised supports the notion that the repression barrier is somewhat weakened in hypnosis, with a significantly greater intrusion of primary process thought in hypnosis than in the waking state with highly hypnotisable subjects.’
[Note: To explain, primary process thought is intuitive and unconscious; it lets us react quickly and adaptively to our environments. Secondary process thought is more conscious and analytical. Creativity combines primary and secondary process thinking, to produce tertiary process thought. Walker is in fact talking about combining the left and right hemispheres.]
Primary process thought is the illogical, timeless thought carried out mostly in sensory imagery rather than in words; it is not grounded in reality and intrudes in dreams. Walker supervised research which found: While primary process thoughts intruded the fantasies of highly hypnotisable subjects more frequently in hypnosis rather than in the waking state, these subjects were more likely to have primary process thoughts intrude their waking fantasies or daydreams compared to less hypnotisable subjects. This suggests that highly hypnotisable people have less effective repression barriers. Gifted subjects prefer dissociation as a maladaptive defence, over repression.
Ideomotor Phenomena is unconscious movement during hypnosis (e.g., automatic writing). Following the hypnotist’s suggestions, the subject can experience a hand feeling light, and lifting without apparent volition; hands can also feel heavy, and parts of the body can feel numb, or hot or cold. Gifted subjects experience ideomotor phenomena as non-voluntary. Ideomotor responses depend on the mechanism of dissociation.
Awareness of the Passage of Time
During hypnosis, the subject does not process the cues used to register passage of time. This may result from the suspension of vigilant monitoring, an awareness of external reality. This may be what Ronald Shor called ‘general reality orientation’ – one of the dimensions along which he proposed consciousness changes when one enters hypnosis.
For highly gifted subjects, hypnosis so differs from the waking state that, shortly after returning to alert waking, they feel almost like the hypnotic experiences did not happen, or were unreal, and they’re remembered in fragments, like a dream.
A short time after return to the waking state, the sensation may feel like water closing over a gap, resulting in continuity of memory from the early stage of induction to the end of the de-hypnotising, with nothing in between.
[Note: In other words, if you are High IQ, and you undergo hypnosis, you will naturally forget whatever happened during the session. Further, even if you attend hypnosis as a gifted adult, you are still vulnerable to abuse by the hypnotist. This explains why gifted kids were selected as MK-ULTRA subjects and why they forget being subjected to unethical hypnosis by MK perpetrators like Wendy-Louise Walker.]
Hypnosis & Memory
The lowering of anxiety and partial lifting of some important controls of consciousness during hypnosis, enables access to repressed or dissociated memories. ‘Ernest Hilgard suggests that memories of events, registered on the peripheries of attention and stored in dissociated memory stores, may be accessed in hypnosis.’ Hypnosis does not automatically improve memory. After hypnosis, a gifted subject may lack memory of what was experienced in hypnosis.
Walker’s research suggested, even when gifted subjects are able to recall and describe their experiences in hypnosis when back in the waking state, they tended to have some gaps in recall and to lose some of the detail. It was like trying to remember a dream straight after waking up. It is often easier for a subject to remember what happened in an earlier hypnosis session rather than in the waking state. This is consistent with the view of hypnosis as facilitating dissociation, with some difficulty in accessing memory of hypnotic experience in the waking state.
[Note: The relevance of this to intelligence gathering and soldier training, where MK handlers can hypnotise an asset subject and access a particular brain fragment (i.e., split personality, alter) that holds the memories of previous hypnosis / programming sessions. For example, a child asset who has been trained to service high officials, gather intelligence, hang at parties, and use eidetic memory to function as a human tape recorder. The handler later accesses the alter and has them play back the recording.]
Hypnosis & Control
The hypnotist directs the stream of consciousness, directs the focus of attention, and suggests the general content of consciousness. ‘Hypnotists, especially those who are not hypnotisable themselves, often do not realise the responsibility that goes with such trust, nor the sense of vulnerability that accompanies it for the subject.’
Transference & Hypnosis
Hypnosis intensifies the therapeutic relationship, including the transference components. This is reflected in content of dream-like fantasies. Walker found this phenomenon occurs with clinical, but not research, subjects.
[Note: This phenomenon in hypnosis complicates and risks the therapeutic relationship which I discuss in subsequent chapters.]
Levels of Hypnosis
There exists a deeper state of consciousness than is achieved in clinical hypnosis, which Walker called the ‘psychedelic depths.’ This is reached by slowly and carefully guiding a highly gifted subject further and further into hypnosis. Reaching this level of consciousness requires the subject to push through a fear barrier. This fear barrier involves the total suspension of critical self-awareness (vigilant monitoring and abstract interpreting having probably been suspended earlier in the voyage), loss of all sense of body boundaries and self, with reality becoming totally the ongoing experience of vivid and elaborate imagery.
Here is a summary of what happens at the different depths of consciousness:
Stage 1. At very light depths, one can get the relaxation response and some lifting of both self-awareness and vigilant monitoring. This is all some people ever achieve and is pleasant and useful. Even here, there is probably increased responsiveness to suggestion, so positive suggestions about motivation to do therapeutic things and increased self-worth can be appropriate. At this depth, the relaxation response can be conditioned to an image, such as falling petals, feathers or snowflakes, or to words such as ‘breathe out and relax.’
Stage 2. Some little distance further, critical self-awareness fades to a smaller voice, and there is marked increase in vividness of sensory imagery, subjective reality of imagined experience, the range of ideomotor responses available, and marked augmenting of affective response – most of the sorts of things one wishes to use therapeutically. Already also there is increased likelihood of intrusion of primary process thought, if the instructions to the subject allow a reasonably free rein for thoughts to flow. The subject is likely to take one’s words in a very literal way, and there may be noticeable tolerance for logical incongruities.
Stage 3. Going to what we as therapists call ‘deep’ – though not what I the researcher would call ‘deep’ – the subject is likely to be profoundly relaxed, unless abreacting or pretending to be awake (if instructed to do so). The subject is likely to be literal and compliant in response to our words, to be able to produce the hallucinatory responses he or she is capable of, to show total suggested amnesia, in general, to pass all or almost all the items of the standard tests of hypnotisability. At all these levels, the subject is able to talk with the hypnotist. Heart rate will vary from resting low for that person, to higher if a strong feeling, pleasant or unpleasant, is experienced.
[Note: Walker’s words ‘pretending to be awake (if instructed to do so).’ This suggests CIA handlers have discovered a way to disguise the fact that their assets were in a state of hypnosis, so that observers would not detect anything amiss. So, if someone tried to access the asset, the asset could throw them by pretending to be in the waking state.]
Stage 4. ‘Beyond that is ‘psychedelic’. There is not a great deal in the literature, but it was what was referred to in the old literature as the ‘somnambulistic’ level of trance. Sherman, in his unpublished doctoral dissertation, had a few subjects take themselves to the depths and found a drop-in amplitude of alpha wavesin EEG. Even at this depth, hypnosis did not look like sleep. By the time they reach the fear barrier, pulse rate is very slow, and the reported strong fear does not result in increase in heart rate. However, at this time I find the EEG flooded with theta waves.’
‘As my subjects go far beyond the usual involvement in hypnosis, they become profoundly relaxed, immobile and cold. They no longer speak. Heartrate drops and breathing becomes slow and shallow. It takes a long time to go to the depths and I give my hypnotic virtuosi a long time to come back. I always maintain contact by holding the wrist in case verbal contact is lost.’
One does not use these levels of hypnosis therapeutically; it is unsafe and unnecessary. If a subject accidently goes a long way beyond the depth you meant, bring her slowly and confidently back to a good working depth.
[Note: Wow! Remember John C. Lilly’s research with altered states of consciousness using a combination of psychedelic drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation in salt-filled floatation tank, and simultaneous hook up to an EEG? I was subjected to this very process, during my core splitting at the ‘psychedelic level’ of consciousness. This same level was sought during the Project Stargate. During all the training phases of all these procedures, my brain wave activity was monitored. Drugs were used to lower the fear response. Theta waves were relevant to reaching the interdimensional level of dissociation I described in earlier chapters.]
Hypnosis Ability
People vary in their responsiveness to hypnosis and, when it is formally measured, hypnotisability is distributed in a large, unselected population, in a more or less normal distribution, more like an ability than a personality trait. About 2/10 of a large population will be very hypnotisable, about 2/10 won’t respond at all, and the rest distributed in the typical bell-shaped normal distribution, from a little bit hypnotisable to quite hypnotisable.
Focus on Dissociation (aka, Double-Tracking)
Wendy-Louise Walker considered dissociation in the context of child development. Inheritance determines variability in proneness to double track or dissociate. Dissociation is not normal or abnormal, but simply a cognitive style. Those with a marked capacity to dissociate (whose upbringing did not inhibit development of the gift) are highly hypnotisable. Walker wrote:
We then divided our very-young dissociation-prone into two pathways: (1) those who were abused, or who suffered horrendously in childhood, and (2) those who did not suffer undue damage.
[Note: Walker gives no reference to the sample of children she refers to here. This sounds like the Holsworthy child victim sample Ben spoke of. Walker included ‘burn victims’ in the sample of very young kids who suffered horrendously in childhood. Does this mean kids were burned at Holsworthy, the way Nazis experimented with burns?]
The Relatively Undamaged
The non-abused dissociation-prone child would naturally develop skills of double tracking (to alleviate boredom) and some splitting of affect and cognition (where appropriate). She would also develop capacity for loss of self in experience (i.e., ‘absorption’) to alleviate boredom and stress (e.g., love of nature, fiction), especially when her childhood lifestyle facilitated this. Such children learned spontaneously to use fantasy not just for fun or escape, but for rehearsing difficult situations.
We noted that highly hypnotisable people did not have a set particular personality type. [Note: Having no set personality type allows for creating multiple new personalities within all MK child recruits. It also says that creating personalities will not affect hypnotisability.]
When highly hypnotisable subjects presented for therapy (whose hypnotic gifts hadn’t been distorted by child abuse) Walker taught them about the gifts and vulnerabilities of the highly hypnotisable. This is the script she suggested using with clients:
You have a special kind of gift, being highly hypnotisable, that only about 1 or 2 in 20 people have. It is almost certainly inherited. Since you have doubtless learned that we get nothing for nothing, there is a flip side, a set of vulnerabilities that go with this gift, and it is important to recognise and manage these.
Dissociation-proneness. You have demonstrated in the hypnotisability scale that you can run two tracks of mental processes at once; the gift is great flexibility and interest. For flexibility you pay in error proneness in any complex system. When you are tired, have a hangover or have been stressed, it is easy to feel separated from the rest of the world; or less than a whole person. [Note: A hangover caused me to dissociate and experience a vivid visual flashback to serving in Nicaragua.] When faced with life-threatening crisis, you are likely to split off from your panic or distress and focus just on calm problem solving, and this is fine as long as you retrieve and work through the feelings a bit later (not leaving them split-off and not accessible to memory as part of your life experience).
High level of suggestibility both in and out of altered states. This is one of the correlates of high hypnotisability and it means that, even in the waking state, people of this kind are extremely responsive to suggestion both in the sense of compliance (by behaviour or experience) and incorporation of the content of evaluative suggestions into the self-system. This is an open invitation to those in the family and workplace to play the highly hypnotisable with guilt and manipulation. [Note: Hence, CIA programmers use guilt and manipulation to control their victim.] Recognising this, the subject must learn to be aware of the processes of suggestion and to evaluate which suggestions will be accepted and which rejected. This can cause a quite radical increase in experienced self-esteem! Further, self-talk is a very important medium of change for the highly hypnotisable, since they can respond to their own suggestions (compliance and incorporation into the self-concept) and, aware of this, they learn to recognise when they are producing negative feelings by their negative self-talk. [Note: Hence why Gittinger had me write my own script, since the programming is better accepted and will stick if I create the scenario and imagery.]
Capacity for loss of self in experience, absorption, vivid imagery. This is the area of choice for selecting treatment methods in hypnosis for the highly hypnotisable, as it teaches them flexible and creative ways of living and of producing an harmonious and joyous inner life. This can involve using music as the pathway in, through and out of trance, using other artistic media like poetry if it suits your own style, eliciting and modifying emotional responses, rehearsing coping in difficult situations. I have a comprehensive workshop in imaginative involvement and music which I love teaching.
Anxiety-proneness and proneness to phobia are associated with high hypnotisability, but on the other hand, such patients have the gifts to learn to manage the vulnerability with great style and flourish.
[Note: The above description fits the creative, high visual-spatial IQ individual I described in Relevance of Intelligence. High IQ children make the best hypnosis candidates, which is another reason why Gittinger targeted the likes of me.]
The Abused, or Badly Damaged, Highly Hypnotisable
If dissociation-proneness, absorption and suggestibility are hallmarks of those who have inherited high hypnotisability, if these children are severely abused, sexually, physically or psychologically, the gifts of dissociation and absorption are their only coping mechanism. Their gifts develop in highly distorted and pathological ways, with multiple personality disorder and other highly abnormal dissociative disorders like fugue states at the extreme. Less extreme will be disorders of reality perception and self-perception, which may lead to mistaken diagnoses of schizophrenia or borderline personality.
Substance abuse distorts and amplifies tendency to dissociate. Alcohol is particularly potent.
Alcohol is dangerous when regularly combined with marijuana. However, opiates lessen dissociationproneness for a time, which may be why many formerly abused young people end up addicted to heroin.
These patients display a great range of symptoms and in therapy they often fear abuse, have a terrible lack of trust, and a terror of loss of control. They are horrendously difficult and complicated to work with but, of course, very rewarding sometimes.
The central aims of therapy are to achieve unity of personality, with acceptance and re-education of the less likeable parts, control, and a capacity for peace, joy and love.
Re-parenting is often a relevant concept in understanding what is needed in therapy. Teaching the patient eventually to understand and redevelop her hypnotic gifts is part of therapy.
[Note: Acceptance of the less likeable parts is what I found the most difficult aspect of the integration process. To integrate these splits or parts, I had to break their cycles of pain and feelings that manifested as mood swings or sensory flashbacks. I had to recall, observe, feel, and acknowledge (i.e., actually relive) the abuse experiences committed to create and maintain each part. Then I had to, in my mind, visualise comforting and verbally acknowledging their abuse. Then I had to visualise physically cleaning and dressing the part, and move her to a pleasant mental location for her to permanently reside, to replace her previous nightmare place in my mind. For example, and in my mind, I physically bathed young alters in the bath in my early childhood home. Then I sat them on the 1960’s vinyl lounge in my actual childhood home, turned on our old TV, and handed them two spoons and a jar of the Italian choc-hazelnut spread my mother would buy from an inner Sydney delicatessen. The amazing thing is, during this reprocessing, I recalled details of our bathroom and lounge that I could not previously remember. This entire process aligns with Walker’s emphasis on the therapist’s reparenting of the child parts.]
General Comments on Dissociation, Repression & Hypnosis
That hypnosis partially suspends some important controls of consciousness, allows a great deal of flexibility in hypnotherapy. While hypnosis does not magically enhance memory, it facilitates retrieval of memories unaccessible to awareness, whether they be repressed, stored in somewhat dissociated memory banks, or simply overlaid by the passage of time and difficult to access.
Trains of thought or very strong feelings can be terminated appropriately in the session, and suggested amnesia can be used as an optional temporary defence to prevent the patient from being overwhelmed with distressing memories until she can cope with them.
Increased Compliance & Suggestion Receptivity with Moderately / Highly Hypnotisable
The general increase in compliance with suggestion means that subjects usually focus attention as requested, and experience or do what the hypnotist requested of them. Carried through into post-hypnotic suggestion, the therapist can influence motivation in the waking state, sometimes mood for a time; and suggestion, as mentioned earlier, is used to carry what is learned in the dissociated state of hypnosis into behaviour and experience in everyday life. Subjects in hypnosis are also more liable to incorporate statements by the hypnotist into their ego systems, their beliefs and values relating to themselves. The therapist must be careful not to create conflict by making suggestions that are contrary to the patient’s central values or personal goals.
Using the Imaginative Involvement Dimension
Walker said: ‘The increased vividness of sensory imagery in hypnosis, the enhanced subjective involvement in what is imagined, the loss of self in experience… This is my own very favourite area.’ [Note: Walker preferred the main feature of MK programming.]
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THE GIFTS & VULNERABILITIES OF THE HIGHLY HYPNOTIZABLE: RELEVANCE FOR THERAPY
This paper discusses the gifts and vulnerabilities of highly hypnotizable clients. It also explores the relevance for therapy of those in this category and the differences between those who are damaged (e.g., traumatized) and those who are not damaged.
Gordon Hammer taught: Only those in the far-right tail of the norm distribution are actually hypnotized at all.
Highly hypnotizable subjects experience major and complex shifts in consciousness, and they are simply different. This view is supported by the research and writings of the Spiegels, the Hilgards, and Wendy-Louise Walker’s own work and self-observations.
Hypnotizability is more an ability, a cognitive style, rather than a personality trait. There is almost certainly a genetic factor in hypnotizability. The learning and experiences that foster or inhibit development of hypnotisability, are relevant to therapy. Walker wrote:
The role of abuse in childhood is almost certain to exaggerate, or make pathological, the capacity for dissociation and double tracking (c.f., compartmentalization) with which the highly hypnotizable are born.
[Note: Walker demonstrated familiarity with the notion that, traumatising high IQ kids induced the dissociation and brain compartmentalisation necessary for creating mind-controlled slaves.]
One study showed that undamaged highly hypnotizable subjects reported using dissociation when very upset as children…
Walker said the highly hypnotizable are probably ‘stimulus hungry.’
For the highly hypnotizable, hypnosis accentuates a process they already practise. Focus of attention is the access key. Hypnotic suggestion is the driving program. Walker wrote:
The highly hypnotizable go in and out of altered states of awareness, and switch hemispheres, quite readily.
They do not need a ‘crisis’ or to have been abused, to shift. The undamaged highly hypnotizable keep themselves to themselves [i.e., introverts]. They may occupy all sorts of jobs but tend to gravitate to the arts. When they are actors, they go for method acting rather than Lawrence Olivier’s carefully constructed performances.
Looser background controls of consciousness lead to greater flexibility, which leads both to creativity and to increased error. The highly hypnotizable are a group for whom background controls are very readily lifted; indeed, they often spontaneously shift this control. When highly hypnotizable people are damaged, upset or drunk, they can appear strange, but are clearly differentiated from schizophrenics.
Dissociation Proneness
Dissociation is the double tracking of consciousness. It is not a disease process but something that some (1 to 2 in 20 people) do easily and habitually.
Double tracking: This is par for the course for the highly hypnotizable, engaging two competent sets of cognitive processes, with self-awareness and executive awareness flitting back and forth. This hinders total recall, since memory access is easier with material that was in the central focus of conscious attention. Advantage: great flexibility, rarely get bored, can get a lot done. Disadvantage: memory gaps, especially when tired. However:
The second consciousness track can often be accessed by entering other information, especially sensory information.
Splitting affect from cognition: There may also be dissociation in the meaning of splitting of affective components of cognition and memory. Highly hypnotizable people use this as a conscious mechanism in an emergency. When it is unconscious and extensive, it is a defence mechanism. Advantage: excellent for crisis, can put terror aside, ride with the demands, carry on ‘as if in a trance’ [Note: An essential DELTA soldier ability]. For the non-damaged highly hypnotizable there is no problem: They need to process the feelings soon after the event, just postpone a little, meet the practicalities first, and then weep. [Note: This is why I was allowed moments to cry and grieve, under the supervision of Patricia Anne Conlon.] For the damaged, this is done automatically, non-volitionally, then it splits off feelings from perceptions and cognitions; if this is in a major way, life becomes unreal, bleak, two-dimensional, and they may be misdiagnosed as schizophrenic!
There can be a splitting off of whole systems.
Dissociation may also refer to the splitting off of relatively sizeable chunks of consciousness (systems of cognitions, motivations, and patterns of affect) separated by walls of amnesia.
There is major loss of control, with MPD and fugue states as the extreme. The damaged highly hypnotizable tend to use dissociation in a maladaptive way, as a defence, rather than repression. These major maladaptive dissociations may very likely be initiated and fostered in childhood.
Highly hypnotizable people, even those without damaged personalities, have more of a sense of multiplicity, they have looser controls of consciousness. Multiple personality is the abnormal extreme. An important goal with highly hypnotizable patients, who come for help because they have been damaged, is fostering a sense of flexible unity in the personality, of accepting the different facets. [i.e., Integration.]
The spontaneous emergence of primary process thought in the waking state is more frequent among the highly hypnotizable, and primary process thought is more frequent in hypnosis compared with the waking state.
Imaginative Involvement & Spontaneous Hypnosis-Like Experiences in Everyday Life
Non-damaged highly hypnotizable people report this area with pleasure and commonly produce it on purpose and guard against it when it is likely to seem inappropriate. Damaged patients have less ability to shift consciousness and have a sense of loss of control of consciousness in everyday life, and a fear of this. Walker’s own work on imaginative involvement suggests that it can be a great refuge and a rich and growth-provoking experience. Equally vividly, it can create a sense of doom. For example, if a husband is late home and the thought that he might be dead emerges, the highly hypnotizable can experience trains of imagery and affect which are quite commonly self- propelling. The flexibility and vivid loss of self in imagined experience with access to vivid emotional responses accessible to the highly hypnotizable, are great for problem solving, magical, but need to be kept on leash.
For the undamaged highly hypnotizable, this is the quality-of-life dimension. They automatically use this for stress management (e.g., get lost in nature, sparrows in rain puddles, off with music). They use it for problems-solving (e.g., rehearsal), for recreation. They read novels and poetry and extend their life experience and spirituality. Sometimes things just ‘pop into their heads’…
The damaged highly hypnotizable tend to underutilize this dimension as a source of entertainment, wonder and joy. Also, it is their major source of unharnessed, negative and overwhelming suffering. The goal then is to teach them controls and limits. The negative future is created and reacted to, and negative suggestions are amplified imaginatively into complex vistas of creative suffering, with ensuing wear and tear on the body. The greatest gift of being highly hypnotizable becomes shut off, because it can generate such suffering. For therapy: Teach about the area, teach how to use self-direction, self-talk to direct these processes, controlled involvement.
Suggestibility
Both damaged and undamaged highly hypnotizable people are highly suggestible, both in the sense of compliance with suggestion, and in terms of incorporating suggestion into the self-concept. The undamaged highly hypnotizable learn to protect themselves against undue invasion quite early in childhood. The damaged highly hypnotizable are confused and tortured by this dimension, and continue the suffering with negative self-talk, which acts as suggestion. Teach the damaged highly hypnotizable about their qualities, teach them to have imagined ‘force fields’ around them. Teach them to evaluate suggestions before responding or incorporating. Teach them to use self-talk in a positive and creative way. Education is a powerful modality in therapy and is very necessary for the highly hypnotizable. Teach further limiting and harnessing of their great gifts.
Interacting with the Hypnotist
There are differences here according to transference and reality components of the relationship, and according to whether it is taking place in the context of therapy or research. The highly hypnotizable can be very concrete in receiving instructions, but they may not always be compliant. Even in research, with the weakening of executive control in hypnosis, one may find spontaneous regression or abreaction. This occurs infrequently in research because of the contract. Interpersonal relationships are greatly intensified when we use hypnosis in therapy, especially with the highly hypnotizable. The relationship needs to be kept safe, and proper limits set.
High Hypnotizability & Memory
Spiegel suggests that the highly hypnotizable have very good memory, but they are probably prone to amnesia gaps. Many of the memory problems of damaged highly hypnotizable patients are probably dissociative rather than repressive.
Gifted subjects are skilful at alternative accessing of memory stores, e.g., by using sensory imagery rather than words to access memory.
[Note: This points to Gittinger’s extensive combining of visualisation and hypnosis to structure multiple personalities. It also helps explain how and why Art Therapy can effectively access MK memories. It also suggests that these memories are technically dissociated – not repressed, and that effective therapy should focus on integration.]
Treatment Implications
Here I emphasize the notion of, first of all, fostering a sense of control and unity at the central core of personality. Use hypnotic techniques in the beginning to foster this sense. Teach the subject what it feels like going in and out of hypnosis, and to defend against trancelike consciousness in inappropriate situations via voluntary barriers. Emphasize in and out of hypnosis, the joys of having a creative and flexible mind, but emphasize also that we get nothing for nothing. Anxiety proneness and the sense of the mind slipping out of gear, are liabilities that accompany the gift. For self-hypnosis, use ritual such as listening to a piece of beautiful music with trance directed by that music, and the direct suggestion with such beautiful music that no negative or discordant experience is possible. With highly hypnotizable clients, it is also very easy to transfer fragments of the hypnotic state into waking habits.
Highly hypnotizable people are unpredictable to hypnotize; they require sensitivity and attention; and ‘routine’ hypnosis is not suitable. Get constant feedback about what is being experienced and learn to use language appropriately. The damaged, highly hypnotizable person needs structure and clear definition of the hypnotic experience. Their needs are somewhat different from less hypnotizable people, and from my 40-plus years of experience with them, ‘indirect’ methods are often quite noxious to them.
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COMBINING MUSIC & WORDS AS A PATHWAY THROUGH HYPNOSIS: PRACTICAL GUIDELINES
Music has powerful effects on consciousness and, combined with appropriate hypnotic words to guide attention and experience, makes a natural pathway into hypnosis. Music makes an effective deepening technique. Music can also be used as the primary focus of attention for induction. Also, when hypnosis is achieved, music can be an effective vehicle for carrying verbal suggestions, a primary stimulus for production of emotional experiences, or a background for therapeutic fantasy, guided imagery, or imaginal rehearsal.
Hilgard (1979) noted that her highly hypnotisable subjects were more likely than less hypnotisable ones to become absorbed in classical music rather than pop or jazz. [Note: I was raised with rock music and forced to watch Countdown weekly. While my teenage peers listened to The Cure, Sex Pistols and U2, I preferred Mozart, Handel and Bach.]
Sensory imagery elicited by ‘imaginative’ music is more vivid and subjectively real in hypnosis than in the waking state. Sensory imagery tends to be highly individual across different subjects. There is more loss of self in the experience of listening to music in hypnosis than in the waking state. [Note: Disney’s Fantasia,which relied on this phenomenon, was used for programming.]
Combining Music & Words as the Pathway into & out of Hypnosis
If hypnotic instruction is combined with the correct consciousness-altering music, the two inputs augment each other. Music as a focus of attention is more attention-holding than watching a spot on the wall. Music reduces intrusive thoughts during moving into hypnosis.
Walker used flute, guitar, and lute music of Bach’s Arioso, Boccherini, Vivaldi, Handel and others, and Celtic harp music. Highly hypnotisable subjects prefer music that captures consciousness (e.g., Baroque). Baroque chamber music can make excellent deepening music, a slow rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon, can be powerful as a deepening pathway. Renaissance dance music can also be effective, and the suggestion would be that the mind dance into hypnosis with the music.
When music is combined with the hypnotist’s verbal suggestions, the highly hypnotisable can’t recall the verbal suggestions after the hypnosis session.
[Note: MK-ULTRA programming is characterised by an inability to remember the abuse. The role of music in that process seems obvious, after reading Wendy-Louise Walker’s hypnosis methods.]
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Reading between the lines, I found Wendy-Louise Walker’s writings validated my memories. They strike me as clandestine instructions for accessing high-IQ trauma victims. They seem to elucidate things Walker can’t mention in professional journals. Walker’s writings suspiciously lack mainstream research referencing to support how she acquired much of her knowledge. She provides almost no referencing for how she reached her conclusions, what subjects were used, or the nature of the research from which her conclusions were drawn. Consequently, I’m inclined to believe Ben. Walker’s knowledge of hypnosis was founded on unethical hypnosis, drug experiments, and Nazi-style torture and trauma conducted on little children kept in cages like lab rats beneath Sydney military bases.
[1] Walker, W-L. (2014). An Introduction to Hypnosis: Student Handbook. Australian Society of Hypnosis, NSW.
[2] Walker, W-L. (2013). The Gifts and Vulnerabilities of the Highly Hyponotizable: Relevance for Therapy. Australian Journal of Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis, Vol 40, No.2, 77–83.
[3] Walker, W-L. (1998). Combining music and words as a pathway through hypnosis: Practical guidelines. In B.J. Evans & G.D. Burrows (eds) Hypnosis in Australia, 40-54. Australian Society of Hypnosis.