Dr. Edwin Turner, PhD, was not what Carrie Simpson had been expecting.
When she'd proposed doing a feature story on him for the Springfield Gazette, she'd pictured a grizzled old man with a beard, somebody in the Sigmund Freud tradition. Instead, he was a George Clooney look-alike who appeared to be in his mid-40s. The touch of gray at his temples took nothing away from the youthful vigor that seemed to radiate from him.
"Thank you for coming in so late in the day," he said now, as he ushered her into a large, well-appointed office. "I knew if we did this interview after my receptionist left, we wouldn't have to worry about interruptions."
Carrie took a seat in the unusually comfortable chair that Dr. Turner indicated and glanced around her. Every piece of furniture in the office looked both stylish and expensive, including the impressive desk behind which the psychologist now sat. She noticed, with some surprise, the large television on the wall behind him.
"So, Ms. Simpson, why did the Gazette decide they wanted to do a feature story about my practice?"
"Please, call me Carrie," she replied, flashing him her most winning smile. "It was my idea, actually. I suspect most of our readers don't know much about hypnotherapy. I thought they'd be interested in learning what it's all about."
This was true as far as it went. What had actually sparked the idea for the story, however, were Carrie's conversations with two women who had actually seen Dr. Turner for hypnotherapy.
The first of these women was a friend of a friend Carrie had run into at a post-work happy hour one Friday afternoon. The second was a former colleague who had quit abruptly the previous month. Both women reported that their sessions with Dr. Turner had changed their lives, and they spoke about him with a cult-like admiration. It was the glassy look in their eyes that had left Carrie feeling somewhat uneasy.
When she proposed the story idea to her editor, Carrie had visions of exposing Dr. Turner as a charlatan. On a more realistic level, she was just hoping to break out of the city hall beat she'd been stuck in since joining the Gazette a year earlier at age 24. After months of covering hearings and press conferences, she was longing to write a juicy feature story. She'd been thrilled when her editor agreed to the idea.
"So there's something I should confess from the start, Dr. Turner," Carrie went on now. "I'm a skeptic about hypnosis. It's always seemed like a lot of mumbo-jumbo to me. Is it true that if you don't believe in hypnosis you can't get hypnotized?"
If the psychologist was insulted by what she'd said, he didn't show it. "I appreciate your being up front about your point of view," he said with a smile. "And you're right that some people are not susceptible to hypnosis, particularly people who don't believe in the process."
"Why hypnotize people, anyway?" Carrie asked. "Why not just engage in regular talk therapy with them?"
"That's an excellent question," Dr. Turner replied, and Carrie felt an unexpected surge of pleasure run through her in response to his praise. She was also finding it difficult to tear her gaze away from his large, dark-brown eyes.
"What I discovered early on in my career," he went on, "was that hypnosis allowed me to get past a patient's defenses much more quickly than I could do using traditional talk therapy. In a remarkably short period of time, I could assist patients in breaking down the inhibitions that were holding them back and help them get in touch with their truest, deepest, most uninhibited selves."
There was something about the way Dr. Turner said the word "uninhibited" that triggered a momentary surge of warmth between Carrie's legs, and she looked away, embarrassed. "Get a grip," she told herself. "He's old enough to be your father."
Collecting herself, she glanced back at the psychologist. "So how does it work?" she continued in her best professional voice. ""Do you wave a bright shiny object back and forth in front of a patient's face?"
Dr. Turner laughed. "Nothing like that," he said. "Like people in other fields, hypnotherapists have embraced modern technology. Take a look."
He picked up a remote control and pointed it at the television on the wall behind him. The screen immediately sprang to life, and a huge black-and-white spiral appeared. With another push of the button, the spiral began to spin."
Carrie stared at the swirling spiral for a few seconds, mesmerized, and then quickly looked away. She wasn't sure what had spooked her—a momentary touch of vertigo, perhaps, or the memory of a scary movie. Whatever it was, she felt annoyed with herself for getting rattled.
"Everything okay?" Dr. Turner asked in his soothing voice.
"Everything's fine," she replied, turning to look at him. She was struck again by his eyes, so large and so deep. You could get lost in those eyes, she thought, before reminding herself that she was there to do an interview.
"So people just stare at that spiral for a few minutes and get hypnotized?" she continued.
"It actually happens in different ways," Dr. Turner replied. "Sometimes my patients look away, thinking that will keep them from falling under the hypnotic spell."
"And it doesn't?"
"Not at all. Once they've looked at the spiral, even if only for a few seconds, they continue to see it in their mind's eye, so to speak. It actually makes my job easier because the spiral isn't something external that they're looking at, but something inside their heads. I draw their attention to it, and however hard they try to resist, it is soon swirling through their brains, pulling them deeper and deeper into a hypnotic state."
Carrie was aware that she could picture the spiral turning in her own head, and for a moment she allowed herself to consider it. "But why would your patients want to resist? They came to see you for hypnotherapy. They knew that was part of the treatment."
"That's another great question, Carrie. It turns out that most people resist the idea of giving up control to another person. Even if they're seeking help, the idea of emptying their minds and letting another person take charge of them makes them nervous. It doesn't really matter, though, because most people are susceptible to hypnotic induction and are not able to resist however hard they try."
The warmth that Carrie had felt in her groin earlier was now a faint tingle, and she couldn't stop thinking about the spiral. At the same time, she was aware of feeling superior to the women who tried to resist Dr. Turner only to fall into his hypnotic trap. For some reason, the thought of the psychologist penetrating these women's psyches and taking control of them sent another stream of heat through her nether regions.
"Of course, you don't have to worry about any of that because you are not susceptible to hypnosis," he went on. "You are one of those strong-willed people who won't give up control. That means you would be able to enjoy two of the side benefits of watching the spiral if you chose to do that."
