Dear racist, you’re feeling sleepy -- very, very sleepy . . .
Cape Town author launches hypnosis plan to eradicate bigotry
IMAGINE if Penny Sparrow stayed at home with her earphones and cleansed away her hatred instead of spewing racism about black beachgoers.
Or, what if EFF candidate Thabo Mabotja, barred from the elections in Tshwane by the Electoral Court, signed up for a simple audio treatment instead of calling for whites to be hacked and killed?
Both scenarios could become a reality, thanks to Cape Town author Helen Brain, who was delighted by the positive response from an overseas selfhypnosis company that was seeking new ideas.
She suggested a course in curing internalised racism after realising that she, like most people, had an inner voice of racism.
“We are all racist. It’s part of this tribal sense of ‘us and them’. But it’s unacceptable,” Brain said this week.
“I have this internalised voice that I can’t control when it pops up. I think we all do — and we need to counteract it.”
She grew up in a racist family and noticed different ways in which people of colour were dehumanised. Fear was always part of the mix.
Now, as she gets older, that “voice” pops up. “So I thought hypnosis would be the ideal way to counter that,” she said.
Local hypnotherapist Russel Brownlee said the basis of hypnosis was to get below the mind’s “critical factor”, which recognises patterns and exaggerates them, so that you end up judging others and yourself as “a harsh inner critic”.
In our conscious state, we are very analytical. “The conscious mind tells you things about certain race groups and gives reasons to justify it,” Brownlee BRAIN POWER: Hypnotist Russel Brownlee and author Helen Brain, whose idea it was to use hypnotism to try to change racist attitudes ‘STAY AT HOME’: Inflammatory estate agent Penny Sparrow said, “but it takes effort for the brain to put that whole programme of hate together.”
When hypnosis quiets the mind, we go into a more relaxed state where we accept things without analysing them.
“In this state, it is all about feeling. We become more suggestible, so hypnosis can change those feelings.”
The hypnotherapy audio uses “lots of embedded suggestions and clever ways to gently change your mind”.
The audio begins in a conversational tone with general ‘SIGN UP’: Limpopo University law student Thabo Mabotja comments on racism. The narrator, in a lulling Scottish accent, then begins to speak more slowly, explaining to the listener that it’s not his or her fault that they were drawn into a racist mindset as a child.
The narrative then moves into the ‘undoing’ of old associations. For example, the listener is taken back to childhood where she or he now has a friend of a different race group. An idyllic scenario is created, and the listener, with all defences now down, creates a new association with that race. The indoctrination of childhood is undone in the process.
The South African environment “hypnotised most people into racism” from early childhood, said Brownlee, but if you could “relax deeply enough through hypnosis, your brain can make new associations”.
The audio “takes the listener into a deep state of relaxation”, then “takes them on a journey”. But it would only work on those who want to be cured.
For Professor Chabani Manganyi, chairman of the Tiso Foundation, racism “isn’t a deep-seated psychological illness” and neither is it “an inevitable occurrence”.
Instead, it comes from “structural inequality”, and the only cure is made up of “carefully crafted legal, education and economic strategies” to eliminate race-based inequality.
Retired psychology professor Queen Mokhuane, however, said she could see merit in hypnosis to cure racism.
“You have to work on the subconscious mind. Things learned in the past are not part of your conscious mind yet they direct your behaviour,” she said.
Her children used to ask why they had white classmates, but were not allowed to own a house
If you relax deeply enough, your brain can make new associations
in Pretoria’s affluent suburbs.
“You could try and explain about the laws of the country, but it was beyond their comprehension,” she said.
Even the “language debates” at universities showed that “the Anglo-Boer war is still going on — it’s just far subtler”.
Because racism was such a “deep thing”, hypnosis could work, but like Brownlee, she felt it would only help those who realised they had a problem. Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.sundaytimes.co.za