🚀 go-pugleaf

On the question of whether hypnosis can be used to enhance motivation, I'm
inclined to recommend a very old classic by Charles G. Leland (the folk-
lorist and gyspy-lorist) originally published in 1899 under the somewhat
hokey title "Have You a Strong Will," and later issued as "The Mystic Will."
(It's still in print under the latter title.)  He has a *very* ingenious
method for using one's own suggestibility [which he recommends enhancing
by self-hypnosis] in a step-by-step, round-about fashion which eventually
effects motivation and will-power.  For a term project last semester, one
of the students in my course on "Magic in the Middle Ages" undertook to
test Leland's method on himself, and reported that he was able to make it
work.  (He thought suggestibility was one of the means by which a Medieval
magician might have obtained empirically verifiable results from his magic.)

(Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM)