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American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis

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Circular Poetics and the Hypnosis of Hypnosis

Hillary Stephenson & Bradford Keeney
a b a b

Benemrita Universidad Autnoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico University of Louisiana, Monroe, Louisiana, USA

Available online: 29 Sep 2011

To cite this article: Hillary Stephenson & Bradford Keeney (2011): Circular Poetics and the Hypnosis of Hypnosis, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 54:2, 86-88 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00029157.2012.604821

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American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 54: 8688, 2011 Copyright American Society of Clinical Hypnosis ISSN: 0002-9157 print / 2160-0562 online DOI: 10.1080/00029157.2012.604821

COMMENTARY

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Circular Poetics and the Hypnosis of Hypnosis

Hillary Stephenson
Benemrita Universidad Autnoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico

Bradford Keeney
University of Louisiana, Monroe, Louisiana, USA

We celebrate Robert Musikantows encouragement to conceptualize hypnosis as an interactional event organized by circular causality where neither therapist nor client is seen as the sole (or primary) agent of action. It is an important theoretical step forward to go past linear models of both Mesmerian inuence and self-induction, suggesting that both sides equally participate in the performance and responsibility of hypnosis. With this momentum toward an interactional view, might we go further and say that there is even more to this form of circular engagement than each side simultaneously (and sequentially) acting/inuencing/directing in relation with the other? Shall we explore whether the pattern which connects (Bateson, 2002, p. 8) is more than the sum of the two linear views provided from the perspective of each side of the therapistclient relationship? When the circular pattern of interaction holding the dance of hypnosis is itself regarded as the locus of hypnosis, we change our inquiry to address how circular interaction brings forth the performance of both therapist and client. In other words, the interactional dance as a whole is hypnosis. Although the performers appear to lead one another, from the fullest circular interactional perspective, the dance leads the dancers. As Musikantow suggests, we can conceptually add the multiple views of all participants and infer a higher order view of interaction. But we can again go further and say that the interactional pattern itself, the circular dance, is more than a summative realization. It is the thing in itself: Hypnosis is a circularity embodied by therapist and client in such a way that they dance the bringing forth of hypnosis. Stated
Address correspondence to Hillary Stephenson, 729 Dumaine St., New Orleans, LA 70116, USA. E-mail: chillarystephenson@gmail.com

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differently, although more difcult to grasp: The participants of hypnosis are danced by the circular interaction of hypnosis. To get past the limitations of any and all linear descriptions of trance as self or other induced, we must nd a more inclusive way to express the dance of the whole. Whereas a summative view nods to each linear model and makes a compromise by saying that each view adds a partial perspective, the wholeness of the whole cannot be described without using paradox, self-reference, and circular logicthe notions that were historically banned by positivisms inuence on social science. However, the contributions of cybernetics from Norbert Wiener (1945), Heinz Von Foerster (2003), Gregory Bateson (1972, 2002), and Bradford Keeney (1983) as well as the postcybernetic considerations of Francisco Varela (1979, 1999) and Humberto Maturana (1978, 1992) invite us to use the forms of circular discourse that were previously regarded as dishonorably circuitous, illogical, and even nonsense. For example, Von Foerster (2101) was the principal architect of the cybernetics of cybernetics, a term which itself doubles the subject matter into a self-reexive encounter. Whereas cybernetics was the science of circular organization (whether in engines, computers, cells, or families) cybernetics of cybernetics became the study of the circularity of circularity. With this kind of second-order reection, other scholars interested in the dynamics of whole interactive systems began articulating a form of prose that created circularities inside their descriptions as a means of being isomorphic and resonant with the circularities of the subject matter they were discussing. Applied to hypnosis, we shift to the second-order phrase, hypnosis of hypnosis, to indicate how hypnosis inducts and creates itself. Although at rst glance this comment may seem redundantly obvious, with more serious consideration it evokes nontrivial understanding that gives us greater immediacy to the patterns that hold interaction. Here we are able to say things such as Hypnosis is the circularity that dances the distinction between a hypnotist and subject, creating the interactions that entrance hypnosis. Yes, this is a mouthful, but such an articulation is a circular way of holding onto the circularity in hypnotic interaction in a way that other reductionist descriptions fractionate and lose. Therefore, the hypnosis of hypnosisfor cybernetic reasonsuses double talk to double back upon itself to illuminate and highlight its circularity. (The circling is more than a circuitous journey; it is a recursion, that is, a self-production of its generativity, like Ouroborous, the mythological dragon or snake that swallowed its own tail to generate its circular existence.) It is no accident that the most entranced hypnotic encounters bring hypnotic experience to both therapist and client. Hypnosis as a unique form of circular interaction and expression dances the therapist and client into the hypnotic relationship. Neither merely hypnotizes the other. Both are hypnotized by hypnosis. And that is what is meant by the dance of hypnotic circularity. Stephenson (2010) proposed that circular poetics is an expressive form for evoking the embodiment of circularity. As such, its enactment exemplies and further brings forth its

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STEPHENSON AND KEENEY

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circularity. It walks its talk and talks its walk. Examples of circular poetics include the metalogues of Gregory Bateson (1972), the circular aphorisms of Heinz Von Foerster (2003), the recursively structured philosophical propositions of Humberto Maturana (1978, 1992), the teacherstudent koan interactions in the Zen tradition (Watts, 1957), and the circularities of hypnosis, especially as exemplied by the communicationally rich work of Milton H. Erickson (Haley, 1967). Circular poetics is an idea that enables us to identify and focus on the creative performance of circular interaction. Hypnosis is circular poetics in that it brings forth hypnosis, and, in so doing, therapist and client fall into a relational encounter that breeds creative participation. Musikantow (this issue) states that all hypnosis is a mutually created experiential reality. Perhaps all experiential realities are mutually created hypnosis, and all mutual creations are hypnotic. Last, all experience is the reality of hypnotically created mutuality. Circular poetics asks us to circulate and transform a never-ending dance of possible sayings, knowings, and experiences. In the improvisational movement that performs its ongoing interaction with its own productions, we become entranced in creative expression. Responsibility becomes response-ability, the degree to which we can allow ourselves to be spontaneously moved and played by the call-and-response rhythms of hypnotic interactions. References
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