Title: The Dave Elman Shorties
Author: Dave Elman Hypnosis Institute
Format: Two CD Set (plus bonus CD)
Price: $40
Rating: Mixed
Have you ever wished you could go back in time and take a
lesson from Dave Elman?
In an earlier post, I commented that watching an interview
with Colonel Larry Elman was the closest we could get to going back in time and
actually attending one of Dave Elman's classes.
I was wrong. There's an even better way.
Even better than a lecture, have you ever wished you could
go back in time and have Dave Elman hypnotize you?
Now you can—with The Dave Elman Shorties from the
Dave Elman Hypnosis Institute.
The DEHI represents the work of H. Larry Elman to preserve,
honor, and continue his father's legacy as a hypnosis innovator and teacher.
According to a pamphlet from the DEHI, it's now been 100 years since Dave Elman
first devised his famous induction, which many vocational hypnotists still
consider the gold standard for getting clients into somnambulism quickly.
This two-CD set presents rare excerpts of Dave Elman's
studio recordings made between 1956 and 1959—originally 33 and 78 rpm records
that Elman would sell only to doctors or those with prescriptions—along with
commentary from the famous hypnotist's son, H. Larry Elman.
The vintage
recordings are delightful—very clear, from both an auditory and a content
perspective. Dave Elman and his wife, Pauline, roleplay interactions between
doctors and patients, perfectly teaching by modeling; they both sound like
1940s radio stars, which in fact Dave Elman was.
The teaching in the old records is also golden:
instructions and advice to doctor hypnotists, variants of well-known
inductions, advice on working with children, and lessons in "medical
relaxation"—Elman's own attempt to get around the H-word. It's all very
engaging, particularly Elman's method for dealing with a "brat" in
the doctor's office.
One particularly intriguing short is "The Magic
Fairy," an example of Dave Elman combining his hypnotic knowledge and
performance background to tell a fairy tale written to teach hypno-anesthesia to
children. It's brilliant—and a curious artifact in that it employs a number of
methods many hypnotists would label "Ericksonian" today, such as the
My Friend John technique.
Indeed, I think that even my readers who aren't crazy about
the Elman Induction and despise regression-to-cause—you know who you are—will
find a lot of appealing material in Dave Elman's recordings, information
that goes beyond Elman's two most famous hallmarks.
Dave Elman was a great performer and engaging speaker,
having forged a career as a stage hypnotist, vaudeville trouper, and radio show
host. Unfortunately, that flaire for entertainment either didn't get passed
down to his son Larry, or years of serving our country in the United States Air
Force drained it out of the younger Elman.
It pains me to say this, because I deeply admire the colonel
for his knowledge, wisdom, dedication, kindness, integrity, and generosity—but
the commentary on the Shorties is dry and dully academic, lacking the
production values we've grown to expect from other products the DEHI sells
(such as Sean Michael Andrews' videos). At times it drones past the point of
being interesting even to a history geek like me. The recording quality of the
2011 commentary—I'm guessing produced at home using Audacity, based on some of
the poorly executed noise reduction artifacts—sadly fails to hold up next to
1950s studio recordings. (That is one irony of modern life—anyone can make a
recording now, but really doing it well is still something limited to the few who
have access to professional studios.)
It is perhaps unfortunate that the younger Elman's dryest
delivery comes in the first words of each disc, which contain a stern and
forbidding warning about copyright. While I sympathize with his concerns over
piracy, a hypnotist of any Elman's stature should know the value of first
building rapport before making a suggestion.
Still, from a historical and academic viewpoint, Larry
Elman's comments hold a number of brilliant insights. Unlike many hypnotists today who
parrot Dave Elman's words as though they were magic spells, Larry Elman engages
his critical mind, analyzing every detail of his father's work. This is
necessary, as times have changed. What was appropriate and useful for a doctor
in the 1950s is often inappropriate and detrimental to a vocational hypnosis
practitioner in the twenty-first century. The commentary even discusses
innovations and changes in hypnotic practice between the 1950s and now.
I particularly enjoyed Larry Elman's loving discussion of
his mother's contributions to Elman hypnosis. He recounts that in addition to
playing the role of the patient on all the recordings, Pauline R. Elman
attended all of Dave Elman's classes, serving as a teaching assistant, coaching
doctors on their form. Indeed, one of the doctors claimed that Pauline was a
better teacher than Dave! Her son heartwarmingly recognizes her as a brilliant
hypnotist and gives her credit for inventing the "Dave Elman" method
of getting clients into the Esdaile state.
Listening to Dave Elman role-play a physician fills me with
wistfulness for a simpler time, when general practitioners had enough time to
teach self-hypnosis to their patients, the AMA was recommending that doctors
learn hypnosis, and prescriptions for "medical relaxation" recordings
kept young Larry Elman busy putting records in the mail.
At the beginning of this review, I asked if you'd ever
wished you could experience what it would be like for Dave Elman to hypnotize
you. Well, I found myself listening to the master's voice, drifting into a nice
relaxed state, and then locking my eyelids shut. I had for a moment stepped out
of time, and a famous hypnotist's voice had gone with me.
If for nothing else, that's worth the $40 ticket to ride.
Full Disclosure: H. Larry Elman provided a copy of the
Shorties and his centennial of the DEI pamplet to me for review. He also
generously sent me an inscribed copy of his father's famous book Hypnotherapy
to help me rebuild after my office burned down.
