Recently, the Discovery channel presented a curiosity feature entitled “Brainwashed to Assassinate” which has raised some questions among some of our members, along with some obvious confusion.

In the show they demonstrate how a person can be “Brainwashed” into assassinating another human being. The main question raised is “If it’s true that a person cannot be hypnotized to do anything that violates a core belief or principle, then how is it that the individual on the show was ultimately influenced to shoot someone?”

Well, let’s break down what happened in the show. First, they went through 100 candidates, in order to find the 1 subject that they could work with, a corrections officer. Then they utilized not only Hypnosis, but also some other ‘conditioning’ techniques.

Let’s look at the candidate. A corrections officer, much like police, and military personnel, are trained to accept the reality that they may one day have to take the life of another human being, while in the line of duty, to protect their own life, or the lives of others. This means that, although not desirable, the act of killing another human has been accepted as a core belief or principle. This means, that if the right context is created, they will act on this belief without violating the rule stated in the question above.

Now let’s look at the techniques used. Hypnosis alone was not used to create the context. There were other conditioning techniques used, like submersion into freezing water. Also, the subject was told that the person to be assassinated was a ‘bad’ person, which was in line with his internal representational system of an acceptable context to use lethal force.

Understanding all of the elements involved, it becomes easier to understand why this process worked, and why they had to go through so many candidates to find the right subject to successfully complete the assignment.

So, in my opinion, the basic rule about not being able to hypnotize someone to violate a core belief or principal is fully intact. However, it does demonstrate, that by creating the right context to fit within the belief system of the subject, it’s not unreasonable to assume that you could influence the subject to follow through a broad range of suggestions.

That’s all I have for now.

Michael C. White, C.Ht.