The Hypnotist

Fulbright in Hand, Alumnus Embarks on a New Career

by Molly Pindell

The year is 1998, and a young college student working at a large Manhattan investment bank stares out of his 80th floor window in World Trade Center Tower 2, intent on a tall, white sailboat cruising up the Hudson River. He has long thought that investment banking would be his future, his ticket to wealth and success. In fact, so keen was his interest in this field that he worked part time in an investment house during high school, getting a head start learning the intricacies of stocks and bonds, trading, and markets.

But today his thoughts are elsewhere. He considers the fact that he enjoys watching the sailboat much more than he enjoys the actual work of banking. His mind wanders to his hobby, hypnosis.

Many academics lump hypnosis into a category with crystal healing, tarot cards, and other New Age mumbo jumbo. Its practitioners are often portrayed as phonies holed up in incense-filled lairs trying to make a buck off of innocent people’s problems. But if you talk to James Song, who graduated in June with a 3.87 GPA and a Bachelor of Liberal Arts from Harvard Extension School, you will hear a very different description of what hypnosis can be.

Song, 26, has been studying psychology, psychotherapy, and hypnosis under the tutelage of Harvard psychology professor Daniel Wegner for three years. He describes hypnosis in terms of clinical studies, demand effects, and biofeedback—not past-life experiences, chanting, and trances. His ideas are compelling. In fact, he has won a Fulbright to conduct a treatment study on the efficacy of hypnosis and meditation on the well-being of an HIV-positive population in Uganda.

Song first became interested in hypnosis during high school, voraciously reading anything he could get his hands on about the subject. Because of his commitment to becoming a banker, however, this initial foray was only a hobby, something to occupy his wandering mind while he made money at his job. But two and half years and hundreds of tall, white sailboats later, Song realized he would never be happy as an investment banker. He quit his job, dropped out of college, and found a mentor, a renowned hypnotist and psychotherapist named George Bien. Soon Song was conducting smoking cessation clinics around the country and had opened a small hypnosis office on Broadway, just a block away from his old investment firm in the World Trade Center. Business was booming—until 9/11.

The area surrounding Song’s office was closed off for weeks after the attacks, the stench of burnt rubber permeating the entire neighborhood. The seminars floundered because no one wanted to travel. Like so many New Yorkers whose lives were altered by 9/11, during the aftermath Song found Manhattan an unbearably sad place to be. He left the city to regroup, renting a small studio apartment in Albany, where an old high school friend lived. Song describes the night he finally emerged from his stupor and figured out a plan for himself. "It was a really cold January night; we got about 15 inches of snow. My window was broken, and cold air was coming through all night. I couldn't sleep because I was freezing. It was one of those moments when you have all the time in the world to think, and I said to myself, 'What do I really want to do?'"

Song awoke the next morning and began investigating universities. In his chilly sleeplessness, he had decided that he wanted to go back to school to study hypnosis and psychotherapy in an academic setting. He quickly discovered Daniel Wegner, and the pieces fell into place. "He seemed like an open, giving, and generous person," he says. "Harvard was a nice place to carve out my own little spot."

Song is keenly aware of society’s often negative characterization of hypnosis. He is careful to define the term in a clear, scientific way: "a state of relaxation characterized by increased suggestibility and concentration." However, he points out that this definition could be applied to a man watching television: he is relaxed, focused on one thing, and highly suggestible, as advertisers are well aware. That’s where the science comes in. Researchers have conducted studies measuring brain activity that show a qualitative difference between a hypnotic state and normal wakefulness. It is research like this that motivates Song. "We find that we can do certain things under hypnosis; like, if you imagine your hand in a bucket of ice water, it will become numb. I think if we can really get to the heart of that and start to extract that process, it has a lot of potential for science."

Song further defines the power of hypnosis. "It’s not as mystical as most people believe. It’s really just concentrating on something at the exclusion of everything else. What I find fascinating about hypnosis is this: Everyone looks at the world through their own eyes, and through that experience they learn limits, saying, 'I'm not smart enough to do certain things or not capable of doing what the guy I idolize can do.' Hypnosis gives you an outlet to say, 'Hey, maybe that’s possible.' If only for a moment, it alters your perception of what is possible."

Song is testing this hypothesis in Uganda. He maintains a healthy skepticism of the process. While there is some evidence that meditation and hypnosis can help raise T-cell counts in HIV-positive people, Song isn't sure what kind of results his study will yield. When he is finished in Africa, he has plans for further research. He has applied for a Marshall Fellowship to continue his studies for a year at Oxford and a year at University College London.

Song admits his family still has misgivings about his chosen path. Despite his high academic aspirations, they are somewhat skeptical of a son who would give up investment banking for hypnosis. But Song is happier now than he was 80 stories above Manhattan. With his Harvard Extension School degree, a Fulbright, and perhaps a Marshall, he is charting a course for a different kind of wealth and success.