Could Obama be using Ericksonian Hypnosis in his speeches?

I stayed up until 2 am reading a document that someone provided to me on this blog that alleged that Obama is using a hypnotic technique pioneered by the psychologist Milton Erickson.  Erickson’s work is widely recognized today and has become a standard for certain kinds of hypnosis therapies.  And it’s used in particular to treat smokers to stop smoking.  Obama is a smoker and may have learned about the technique while trying to quit.

It isn’t “magic” and it doesn’t work on everybody.  But the kinds of audiences upon whom it would be most effectively used do appear to conform to just the kinds of persons who are being most affected by Obama.  For starters is would be most effective upon people who already are predisposed to like Obama a lot and who would welcome his vague recommendations of “change.”  To be more precise, it’s maximum effect ought to work on people who really detest president Bush.  It would be least effective on people who support Bush strongly (a small minority at the moment), or who are “okay” with him.  Among Republicans, it would be most effective with people like me who supported the president but who constantly feel the pressure of the anti-Bush faction because of the accident of living side-by-side among them (I live in a Democratic majority region).

In my own case, I was affected by Obama’s charismatic appeal early in the race and was affected chiefly by the fact that I saw him pushing out Hillary (I was as opposed to Clinton as most of my neighbors are opposed to Bush).  For me a “good riddance” to Hillary was the “change” I wanted — so much so that I was happy to see her Democratic challenger push her out and eliminate the need for my candidate to do it.  How I regret that judgment now!

I am persuaded that this allegation that he’s using hypnosis has enough merit to be further investigated.  My own reading of Milton Erickson’s work — which admittedly I’ve been able to do for only the last two days using sources at a university library — corroborate the document’s allegations. 

If true, it would mean that Obama is indulging in a very reprehensible deception more “audacious” than anything anyone has ever tried to do in American history.  If the allegation is true, it means that Obama has an expert (or several) crafting his speeches and coaching him carefully for this is not something that one just lands upon by accident.

Consider this, also, if Obama is doing this he only needs to succeed with a small percentage of susceptible individuals who might be motivated to vote for him.  He can expect to do well among Democrats almost automatically, especially in a year when the incumbent is of the other party and is doing very badly in public opinion polls.  Democrats are a voting block he’s already got.  African Americans can be expected to vote for him for reasons of history and aspiration — and I can fully understand that feeling.

The last two presidential contests were extremely tight races, and Bush won both times by extremely narrow margins, and the race against Gore was close enough to amount to a statistical tie that had to be resolved at the state level in Florida by court decisions and recounting.

All Obama would need to do would be to influence a small segment of the electorate who are particularly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion and it might be only a small margin that he needs.  Moreover, if true, this effort would coincide with an unprecedented “get out the vote” effort on the part of the organization ACORN with whom Obama has ties.  ACORN has been caught making fraudulent registrations and is under investigation in some states.

I’m writing in hopes that someone with expertise in neuro-linguistic programming might find this link and analyze the argument to see what scientific merit the claim itself has.  The anonymous author analyzes specific speeches for their characteristics and finds “pacing,” “leads,” “transderivational searches,” “embedded messages,” “language stacking,” “anchoring” and other hypnosis techniques.

 Reasoned arguments can work with people when they’re being reasonable, but some Obama supporters are responding to a subliminal “cult-like” appeal right now.  Evidence of this cult appeal can be found here, for instance.