Very embarrassing.
Indirectly, though, this job was my entrée into the film world. I went to California, initially in search of a cure for my amnesia. I had read a story about a ‘wonder’ drug that was apparently only available in the US. I never found it, but I did find a husband. I fell in love with an American producer and writer and we became engaged. When I returned to Britain, he phoned me every single night just to make sure I still remembered him! This was a bit comical, but actually it also gave me an idea. I was still praying for a cure for my memory loss and badly in need of some money to pay for it, so I sold my story to a newspaper in the hope that someone would see it and be tempted to offer help. The story appeared in papers in both Britain and America—one of them splashed it with the headline: ‘Will Bride Remember Her Husband?’
My ploy worked. A famous American hypnotist called Gil Boyne, a stage hypnotist turned hypnotherapist who has treated many Hollywood stars, happened to be lecturing in the UK and read my story. Boyne tracked me down and said that when I returned to the US he would treat me free if he could use me as a ‘guinea pig’ in front of his students at his training school in Los Angeles.
Boyne was as good as his word. He did precisely what he had promised and cured me of my memory loss before his entire class. To me it seemed the session only lasted a few minutes but later I discovered I was in hypnosis for an hour and a half. One session and I was cured! That was the day before I was due to be married. After a terrible two-and-a-half period of not being able to remember anything, I was now ready to start a new life in the US, with a new husband and a memory that worked!
Ironically, though, my cure did cause a strain in my marriage, almost from the start. The new me was quite a shock for my American husband, who knew me only as a wacky eccentric who was totally dependent on him. He had never met the ‘real’ me, an independent, responsible and quite astute businesswoman.
Gil Boyne recognized the important contacts I had made through my husband, who was a senior editor on one of the top show business newspapers in the US. Boyne was aware of the publicity potential in my cure. He hired me to do promotional work for him and I became his ‘pet amnesia victim’, accompanying him on various television and radio shows. At the time I still had no real serious interest in hypnosis. I was too busy enjoying myself, travelling, building up a good business, interviewing the rich and famous and editing a column in my husband’s newspaper. For two years everything went swimmingly. Then…disaster struck again. On one of my frequent return visits back home to Britain a string of family deaths, accidents and traumas so devastated me that I suffered a relapse into amnesia. Incredibly, the newspaper headline came true and I actually forgot that I had a husband in the US! I never went back to him.
I spent the next four years in another mental fog. My confusion and eccentric behaviour were, if anything, even worse than they had been before. I had a memory retention span of no more than 24 hours at the most, so planning ahead was impossible. I had to live literally for each day alone. One of the things I noticed was how cruel people could be, though mostly unintentionally. I lost count of how many folk joked to me that they would not mind having a memory loss, too!
Throughout the whole sorry saga, I tried work as a journalist, a pop group agent, selling industrial diamonds, selling films and TV pop shows and, holding an Equity card, acting as an extra. Many times I forgot to pick up my salary.
I launched a magazine (it only lasted three issues), while at the same time working in a pub. The customers quickly got used to being charged the wrong money. The magazine failed, mainly due to my inefficiency. I was constantly losing copy and generally causing havoc.
Then I came upon a British hypnotherapist who was an associate of Gil Boyne’s. This man was conducting a training school and was well versed in American hypnotherapy methods. I asked him to help. He did and I regained my memory once more. But this time I took a deeper interest in the whole subject.
I watched the students training and for the first time the thought came into my mind that I might enter the profession myself. My motives initially were selfish. I thought that if I understood more about the whole thing I might at least be able to help myself retain my memory, or be able to call upon professional colleagues who could assist me. The more I learned about hypnotherapy, however, the more I came to see its tremendous value and its potential for helping people.
So that is how I became a hypnotherapist. I trained in Britain and later in the US where, because of my ‘celebrity’ status as Gil Boyne’s star ‘guinea pig’, I was lucky enough to receive some rather special treatment. However, there was a price to pay as well—as they say, there is no such thing as a free lunch! I found to my dismay that video tapes of me being treated in front of Boyne’s class were circulating in the hypnotherapy world for other therapists and their students to see. There were all my most private secrets publicly laid bare on tape and recorded for posterity. Many thousands of clients later, however, I have never regretted embarking on my new life and new career. I went through so many different traumas brought on by my memory loss that I found it easy to sympathize with my clients. I seemed to have had all of their problems myself at one time or another.
With everything I have learned since then, I now know that when I had my memory loss the car accident was only the catalyst. The problems actually stemmed from eight years before, from an even earlier trauma when I had witnessed a terrible crime. New hypnotherapy techniques cut through the more superficial problems of life and go straight to the heart of the real trauma. But it takes a special kind of training to find them and, unfortunately, few therapists are taught these techniques.
A BRIEF LOOK AT HYPNOSIS IN THE PAST TWO CENTURIES
Before we come to the main purpose of this book, it may help your understanding of hypnosis to know just a little of its history and background. Important dates include:
1775: Franz Mesmer developed healing by ‘animal magnetism’, which was later renamed hypnosis.
1784: Count Maxime de Puysegut discovered a form of deep trance he called somnambulism.
1821: First reports of painless surgery in France using magnetism.
1841: A Scottish doctor, James Braid, changed the name from magnetism to hypnosis. He established it as a psychological phenomenon.
1845-53: A surgeon, James Esdaile, performed 2,000 operations—even amputations—with the patients under hypno-anaesthesia and feeling no pain.
1883-1887: Sigmund Freud became interested in hypnosis and began to practise it.
1894: Freud abandoned hypnosis to concentrate on developing psychoanalysis.
1947: Hypnosis was being used by dentists in the US.
1950: Societies and associations for hypnosis started to sprout up.
1958: The American Medical Association approved the therapeutic use of hypnosis by physicians.
In short, it took nearly two centuries for hypnosis to be recognized as a therapy by the medical associations; after another 30 years-plus it still has not been fully accepted by the medical profession or the public in general.
It is true that there have been many casualties of hypnosis. However, these were not the clients but the practitioners, the brilliant men and women throughout history who have succeeded in hypnotherapy but who failed miserably in marketing the controversial phenomenon of hypnosis. Clouded