by Alien4420 » June 11th, 2011, 7:44 am
Well, as Sarnoga says, human sexuality isn't quite as cut-and-dried/black and white as our very homophobic society supposes. But in the sense that before I listened to CFG, looking at a naked guy was about as sexually stimulating as looking at a dishrag, sure, I was straight.
I've noticed that people who haven't actually listened to these files sometimes have a hard time with the notion that our sexual responses can be reprogrammed the way a computer can. Those of us who have know that the things that turn you on can be flipped this way and that. No need for it to be preexisting. Although I agree with Sarnoga's point that those of us who are "straight" have a certain amount of repressed homosexual feeling -- certainly, homosexuality made me nervous back in the day, and Freud would have said that's the reaction formation -- essentially, the ego denying those repressed attractions. But this is true of all of our subconscious programming, we decide on a course and that's what's conscious, the rest is repressed. I've heard gay guys say that the sight of men and women kissing makes them feel much the same way as the sight of two guys kissing makes a straight guy feel.
I don't want to make this too complicated, but I want to add that I do believe that some people are "born that way," with a predisposition for being gay. The twin studies make that clear: if one identical twin is gay, the other has a 50% chance of being gay. So it's not destiny, but it does appear to be a predisposition.) Much of the objection to the possibility that our orientation can be flipped comes I think from the activities of homophonic religious groups, who stupidly assert that homosexuality is a matter of "choice," as if a gay guy could just think I'm going to be straight and be straight, or vice-versa.
I'm honestly not sure about conscious consent here. It's known that people will throw off a suggestion to which the superego has a strong objection. I've experienced that myself. You just pop out of trance, that happened to somebody who tried CFG. Or you're in a light trance, but your attention wanders. Or you give yourself a suggestion like "NO," although in that case, what I found is that after repeated listenings, the suggestion eventually wins. When I first listened to CFG, I didn't want to lose attraction to women. So every time those suggestions came up while I was in trance, I'd reject them. Ultimately, though, that didn't work, and I haven't been able to reverse it, and I've tried a lot of things.
If you're deeper in trance, of course, you aren't going to be arguing with yourself, and IME the suggestion will take effect more quickly. But I've heard hypnotists say that light trance can actually be more effective, since the conscious mind is engaged.
Beyond that -- I think we're influenced by our beliefs, sure. Also our experiences with the people around us. Which is to say that if everyone tells you you're going to go to Hell because you're gay, the suggestion is more likely to wear off than if you find a cute boyfriend and go off and live happily ever after. Also by earlier suggestions and experience, which tend to reassert themselves over time.
So really, I don't think you can think of hypnosis as some form of mind control that will make you do x, y, and z without question. Rather, I think it's a way of exerting strong influence on the motivational part of our brains. But there are other influences as well, both in the past and the present. Within that limitation, I do think you can be hypnotized to do something you don't want to do unless you have a huge objection to it, because hypnosis is, after all, about changing our minds. And also because your minds aren't unitary entitities -- we have conflicting desires. So forex someone might want to be forced to be gay because they have a hypnofetish and get off on it precisely because it *isn't* something they want to be. It's like a masochist seeking pain -- the sexual reward outvotes the aversion to pain.