Feynman Gets Hypnotized
A week before the demonstration the man came to practice on us, to see if any of us would be good for hypnosis. I knew about the phenomenon, but I didn't know what it was like to be hypnotized.
He started to work on me and soon I got into a position where he said, "You can't open your eyes."
I said to myself, "I bet I could open my eyes, but I don't want to disturb the situation: Let's see how much further it goes." It was an interesting situation: You're only slightly fogged out, and although you've lost a little bit, you're pretty sure you could open your eyes. But of course, you're not opening your eyes, so in a sense you can't do it.
He went through a lot of stuff and decided that I was pretty good.
When the real demonstration came he had us walk on stage, and he hypnotized us in front of the whole Princeton Graduate College. This time the effect was stronger; I guess I had learned how to become hypnotized. The hypnotist made various demonstrations, having me do things that I couldn't normally do, and at the end he said that after I came out of hypnosis, instead of returning to my seat directly, which was the natural way to go, I would walk all the way around the room and go to my seat from the back.
All through the demonstration I was vaguely aware of what was going on, and cooperating with the things the hypnotist said, but this time I decided, "Damn it, enough is enough! I'm gonna go straight to my seat."
When it was time to get up and go off the stage, I started to walk straight to my seat. But then an annoying feeling came over me: I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn't continue. I walked all the way around the hall....
So I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you're saying to yourself, "I could do that, but I won't"—which is just another way of saying that you can't.
