by It was put in place more than 70 years ago to protect citizens from the “dark arts” but now an old-fashioned law banning hypnosis and mesmerism has been overturned by a comic hypnotist – and he did it without asking anyone repression.
Robert Temple was due to perform his show Red Raw, described as “improvisational comedy under the influence of hypnosis”, to an audience of hundreds at Bolton’s Albert Halls next Saturday.
However, he found that his show violated the Hypnotism Act 1952, a historic law that prohibits public hypnosis without a local authority permit, which covers “hypnotism, mesmerism and any similar act that produces induced sleep or trance” that makes one “susceptible to suggestion. or direction”.
While most councils scrapped the legislation in subsequent years or opted to give hypnotists unfettered approval, Temple found that Bolton had taken the opposite approach – imposing a “complete ban” on hypnotists. hypnosis in the 1980s that remained in effect, which prevented him from. operating in town.
Temple said: “Most councils will put a form on their website but Bolton didn’t have one, so we got in touch to ask. When they came back, they said: ‘It’s a total ban.'”
This meant that the only way her show could go ahead was for Temple to apply to the council’s licensing committee to repeal the legislation entirely.
Temple, who has been running for 20 years, said: “I talked about my proposal and what I want them to do going forward, which is to give me permission but then, as part of that, look fairly immediately at the process. so that this is not a one-off show that will never happen again, but so that I and other hypnotists can continue to work in the city.”
His four-page application was granted on Wednesday evening.
During the committee meeting, Labor councilor Sean Fielding put forward a motion to repeal the rule which he described as “outdated and inadequate”.
Fielding said: “Hopefully we don’t have to come together to consider the actions of hypnotists again, and we can rewrite the policy.”
Labor Joint Councilor Debbie Newall supported the motion. She said: “There is something about this that is very strange and old-fashioned, isn’t it, in 1952, hypnotism – they talk about mesmerism too – it was almost a dark art that had to be controlled and had to be looked at. very, very carefully. Whereas now hypnotism is really just part of mainstream entertainment, isn’t it?
“So I agree that although this type of legislation has no place in modern life, there is something – I don’t know, maybe because I’m old – that there is something nice about the old laws this is what we had to see. .”
Speaking after his historic win, Temple, from Sunderland, said: “It’s a really big day for us. It seems like a really small, insignificant, weird little thing in the grand scheme of things, but yeah, it’s nice to overturn a 40-year-old rule.”
Temple’s show is “basically everything people could think of about stand-up comedy, sketch comedy and improv comedy, all three of those comedy genres rolled into one, except the people in the show rather than being a cast of professional actors. of random people from the audience who want to volunteer and explore their own imaginations on stage”.
As a “weird, shy kid” who was not good at sports, he learned to perform magic tricks, eventually transitioning from magic act to stage hypnosis, which he performed all over the world, including in the West. End in London and Las Vegas.
“Touring is my favorite thing in the world,” he said.” I want to bring it back to a mainstream audience in the same way it was when I started doing it 20 years ago.”
Her show is touring towns and cities across the UK until the end of March.
What are the dangers of stage hypnosis?
Although the attitude towards hypnosis among the general public is becoming more favorable thanks to its increased use in health care, the number of performers is lower than ever.
Most councils have no problem with stage hypnosis in their towns and cities as it is considered low risk entertainment.
In 1996, the government published a review in which psychological experts and hypnotists wanted the guidelines for hypnosis to be relaxed when it was found that it was no more risky than other types of performance.
“So, for example, they went from saying ‘a million pounds of public liability insurance’ to ‘an appropriate amount of public liability insurance’,” said Temple.
The art form was not without its controversies however.
In 1998, 24-year-old Sharon Tabarn died hours after being hypnotized by a stage hypnotist in a pub in Lancashire. An inquest found there was insufficient evidence to suggest hypnosis was involved in the death of the otherwise healthy woman, who died after choking on vomit in her sleep.
Her mother Margaret Harper, however, sent an unsuccessful request to the attorney general for a second inquest into the death of Tabarn, who was pulled out of the trance she was in because of the hypnotist’s suggestion that 10,000 volts of electricity were running through her body.
Harper said her daughter had a “terrible fear” of electricity after suffering an electric shock as a child so powerful it threw her across the room.
Temple said hypnosis should always be performed by someone who knows what they are doing and was in favor of regulation.
“Hypnosis is only dangerous if it’s by the wrong people and used in the wrong way,” he said. “I’m all for regulation, and making sure people are insured and high-risk assessed, have some sort of training and know what they’re doing.”
