Who Me?: How to Choose the Best Volunteers by Sean Michael Andrews

Title: Who Me?: How to Choose the Best Volunteers

Author: Sean Michael Andrews

Format: e-book (Amazon Kindle)

Price: $2.99 (I got it when the author was giving it away.)

Rating: Good

Readers of this blog will know that I’ve reviewed a number of Sean Michael Andrews’ videos, and I’m an avid reader of his Street Hypnosis Newsletter. So—full disclosure here—we are online friends if not bosom buddies, and he has sent me review copies of a lot of his work. In this case, though, I was able to nab his new kindle e-book for free before he raised the price to an exorbitant two dollars and ninety-nine cents!

So, here’s the low-down on this download:

Like a lot of e-books out there, it’s a quick read at low cost, but you shouldn’t be fooled by its “cheaper than food” price. Who Me?: How to Choose the Best Volunteers is packed with wisdom gained the hard way, through decades of trial and error, individual experimentation, and careful research.

I must admit that I’m often reluctant to work with an individual volunteer when I’m giving a presentation, and for the very reasons, SMA notes in his opening: You only get one shot to impress your audience or completely humiliate yourself in front of a room full of strangers. Indeed, I’ve often thought, “If only there were a sure-fire way to pick the right person to demonstrate with.”

Well, there is no 100% guaranteed way to get the right volunteer, but with the tips in this book, you’ll certainly stack the deck in your favor. And that’s a lot of what hypnosis is about—stacking the deck in your favor. So this book is the next best thing to a guarantee.

Now, fans of “hypnotizability scales” may be disappointed that SMA’s work is based only in part on clinical suggestibility trials. Most of his advice is based on personal observation. These are tricks of the trade, and the author is sharing them because they work.

Of course, it’s important not to fall in the trap of thinking that this book supports the idea that some people aren’t hypnotizable. In your office, you should presuppose that everyone is hypnotizable, because you have the time to give individual attention and find the right approach for each client.

But when you need to be sure you get the best responder for a public demonstration, Andrews’ advice is golden.

Now, very few works are perfect. I give SMA points for a readable text with clarity and good grammar (not to mention some humor). In fact I was a quarter of the way into the book before I stumbled over a typo.

I would love it if SMA had provided a summary checklist at the end of the book, just to make internalizing the material that much easier. I’ll probably re-read and create such a checklist myself.

My biggest concern with this book has to do with something the author mentions in passing. When noting that people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) tend to be highly suggestible, SMA repeats a highly questionable theory that DID is caused by childhood trauma, specifically that it’s an extreme form of repression.

As it turns out, there’s considerable evidence that, like repressed memories, multiple personalities almost never present “in the wild” and appear to be overwhelmingly iatrogenic—that is they are far too often caused by suggestions from therapists (or popular culture). So of course, those with DID are highly suggestible: That’s why they were able to develop a syndrome at the suggestion of their therapist.

(For more information on this, check out Mark Pendergrast’s Victims of Memory, which I’ll feature in an upcoming review.)

That said, the advice that people with DID will make for highly suggestible volunteers is spot-on. It’s just the passing reference to discredited ideas about the syndrome’s origin that bother me.

My final complaint is hardly the author’s fault, though he might be able to remedy it. I’d appreciate it if the book were available in PDF format as well as Kindle e-book. The reason is simple: Despite the fact that the Internet has at least a dozen ways to get an Android device to read a Kindle book aloud, none of them have worked for me. For that reason, I can’t listen to SMA’s book during my commute, which is inconvenient, as I’d like to re-visit it periodically.

These few criticisms aside, I have to say I’m delighted with this book. And at less than three dollars, there’s absolutely no reason every hypnotist in the world shouldn’t buy it and read it today.