Theory of Hypnosis

Dennet offers a perspective of consciousness in "Consciousness Explained"  that humans are a self-reporting being and we use language to do this.  This mental dialog and self report equates to our conscious awareness.  Our brains evolved from one that needed to report on itself.  Heat, pain, balance, all needed to be regulated and so your body sends signals to its central processor.  Over time, the central processor started to report on itself.  All of a sudden there was a language.  A thought.  Maybe the first being to discover this heard a voice for the first time.   Maybe they thought that voice was god.  Who knows.  But they had the first language as it was needed to self report.  Eventually people started using that voice to communicate with other people.  Language and consciousness go hand in hand because language is needed to have a thought and thus awareness.  Luckily we also have the voice box necessary to conduct the noises for the thoughts in our heads.  And we can use this to communicate to others the state of things.  We then learn to use these sounds to self-report, and the self report changes from an abstract language to the language with which we are familiar.  The idea one has is captured in the language.  We have these memes that show up in groups and cultures which in a sense form a sort of group consciousness. 

Considering this notion of consciousness, one can then interpret hypnosis under this paradigm.  Hypnosis quiets these memes for a brief moment which leaves a blank slate for the hypnotist to insert memes that are beneficial to the client.  These memes have direct acess to your operating system to then be continually processed and looped within the individual.  A meme that is constantly repeated and not rejected is taken to be reality by the individual. Thus the suggestions take and the individual responds to them because the reporting system is continuously being looped.  That idea having come from the hypnotist makes it valuable because it takes an art of an individual to pose the correct language. Concepts are contagious and hypnosis is the best method to transfer those concepts.