Where is the hypnotist?

X: Another interesting trance effect is that sometimes you are "there" and sometimes you are not. Let me try to explain. Most of the time I am aware of you as a separate person interacting with me. However at other times you slip into the background and are no more or less worthy of my separate attention than is a random book on your bookcase. This is not to mean that I am ignoring you -- it is quite the contrary. At those times you are probably quite busy with me and I am probably being almost completely responsive to your words. What is lost is my mental recognition of you as a separate person interacting with me. Whatever you are saying or doing is being internalized and I am in my own isolated universe -- it just happens that you are greatly influencing what that universe is and my reactions to it. You can probably build upon this trance effect to become effectively "invisible". You would probably not be able to get me to think that I can see through you, but you could get yourself to be unworthy of my attention and become unacknowledged. You would be there and be guiding me, but you would be just one of those many things that disappear from my attention. I don’t know if this has therapeutic usages.

Conversely to your becoming "invisible" at some times, at times I am intensely aware of your presence and of not much else. These moments establish rapport and help build to some of the trance effects I mention here. I’m probably feeling this way when I’m echoing your suggestions and this intense awareness of you and the report shown in the echoing may be some of what allows me to ”let you in” to my mind.

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