I was watching Psych on USA earlier today - have you ever seen the show? It’s very funny. The premise is that the “psychic detective” is actually just hyper observant and has a photographic memory. He fakes a lot of psychic episodes in order to keep up her psychic persona. It got me thinking about how in general, people aren’t typically observant. Have you ever heard of the police using hypnosis on a witness to determine what really happened? People see things, but they don’t really NOTICE things, and hypnosis can help to determine what the suspect really looked like, or what the license plate read - things you saw, but didn’t notice.

Of course, you can’t just get anyone to fall into a hypnotic trance by waving a watch in front of their face like in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. You need to have someone with hypnosis training to do it correctly. Hypnosis has more than just a forensics application as well. It’s been used to help people stop smoking, lose weight, and change bad habits. Hypnotherapy is now commonly used to help people who have been in a accident or through a traumatic event. It’s definitely an interesting an evolving field, with a lot of applications!