As I’m sure you’re aware by now, CBS’s show The Mentalist had an interesting episode last night. So interesting that even the pastor at my church commented on it to me, asking if I’d seen it. 

What made it so interesting?

It was billed as a hypnotist using hypnosis to murder.

Yep, that old theme that Hollywood likes to use: hypnosis used for nefarious purposes. Great drama. No argument there. But is it accurate? Are hypnotists really able to do things like that? Could a hypnotist use someone in the way that was depicted on The Mentalist?

The answer isn’t quite as cut and dried as you might think.  The short answer is ‘no.’ The longer answer is more of a ‘no, but.’

Patrick Jane, the star character played by Simon Baker, does give the game away fairly early on. He says “You can’t hypnotize someone against their moral code.” So if a hypnotist were to try to hypnotize someone to commit murder, it wouldn’t work … unless they were already willing or predisposed to murder. And that’s demonstrated when one of the police officers is hypnotized. 

Oh, I think now is a good time to remind you to be careful when reading this; if you haven’t watched the episode yet and you want to, there may be some slight spoilers in here. I’m doing my best to not reveal anything vital, but I am only human.

So if that’s true, is the plot of this episode plausible? If you won’t do something against your morals while under hypnosis, is the premise of a hypnotist convincing someone to commit murder a viable premise?

No. 

Unless they’d already be willing to commit murder.

And even then, there’d be a *lot* of work involved. It couldn’t be something that was from a quick, first time trance, except in very unusual conditions. And then it’d be brainwashing with hypnotic methods tossed into the mix. And brainwashing is a completely different story.

So that’s that, right? The Mentalist episode debunked. Not quite. 

You see, there’s more to the story. There’s also a guy, at the very beginning of the episode, bringing what he thinks is a sack of potatoes to the police. It’s really a body, and Jane realizes he’s hypnotized. He was hypnotized as part of an attempt at covering up the crime and confusing the police as to who did it. 

You might think that’s not possible as well, but it is plausible. Yes, really.

Take a look at this clip of Anthony Jacquin on YouTube convincing a shopkeeper to give him a garbage bag full of cucumbers.

Not quite the same thing as convincing someone a body’s really a sack of potatoes, but the concept is there. Again, to actually pull it off with a body would take a lot of work, in my opinion. (On that note, there was a slight bit of prep in Anthony’s clip: if I remember right, he did do a quick intro and induction before the clip began, then gave the guy amnesia so things would go faster.)

One last bit. Jane, throughout the episode, claims to be unable to dehypnotize the people who have been hypnotized. That’s a bit of falsehood right there. There is something called a “hypnotic seal,” and it works to prevent people from being hypnotized by anyone else other than that hypnotist. It’s unethical.

And ineffective. 

Any competently-trained hypnotist is able to break such a seal and hypnotize the person anyway. It’s not terribly hard, and you don’t “need to know the trigger” in order to do it. 

All in all, this episode stayed mostly accurate when talking about hypnosis, but did have a couple slight failings in that regard. Also, despite being mostly factually accurate, it managed to still give the impression of hypnosis being used for nefarious purposes. 

Joshua

PS. Don’t read this PS if you don’t want a spoiler. 

Remember what I said above about making someone commit murder under hypnosis? At the end, the evil hypnotist tries their best to have Jane murdered by a hypnotized colleague. Telling the guy he’s by a pool, the ocean, and to push Jane in as a joke, etc. They’re really on top of a building and Jane would fall to his death. He gets Jane pushed up against the edge of the roof and stops there. 

Granted, he’s being pushed two ways by Jane trying to work suggestions to stop and the evil hypnotist shouting for him to do it. BUT. He doesn’t do it. He freezes at the edge of the roof and doesn’t complete the act of throwing Jane off. 

Despite being hypnotized and having his sense of reality so distorted that he thought he was somewhere completely different, he still stopped short of killing someone.

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