Operant Conditioning
An Experimental Approach
Time for a confession. If you weren’t already aware before, I am a hypnotist.
I became a hypnotist some time ago. I was drawn to hypnosis by the possibilities opening to me through learning the fine art of operant conditioning.
Basically, I wanted to control people. For fun.
What Operant Conditioning Is
Operant Conditioning was described as such by B F Skinner last century. It is a type of learning where a behaviour is shaped by its consequences. If the behaviour is followed by a reward, that behaviour is reinforced. The more frequent the behaviour, the more the reward reinforces that behaviour until it becomes a habit. And habituated behaviour reinforced even after it becomes habitual becomes a compulsion that is hard to break.
A perfect example is addiction. The addictive behaviour is, by definition, reinforced by the consequence of the action - in this case, the high from the hit.
Enter DOPES
DOPES is an acronym for the five key hormones behind happiness - Dopamine, Oxytocin, Phenylethylamine, Endorphins, and Serotonin.
You can also use the acronyms POSED, SPODE, and DESPO if you like, but the hormones listed remain the same.
The most critical hormone from the above list is dopamine. In every positive interaction in operant conditioning, it is dopamine which triggers the pleasure from the hit. Dopamine is the sense of being rewarded. And dopamine is the key to changing behaviours through operant conditioning.
Right behaviour, obeying an instruction from your hypnotist for instance, is rewarded and reinforced by a dopamine hit. Wrong behaviour, in contrast, results in a surge of cortisol, generating anxiety and even triggering a fear response.
My Experiments With Operant Conditioning
I use operant conditioning a lot with my clients. The most prominent method is to reinforce triggered trances and implant those triggers while the subject is in a trance.
Examples have included activating a triggered dopamine hit each time a subject is sent into a trance state, either through an induction or via an anchoring trigger such as the command word “sleep” which I have implanted into many of my subjects. Whenever you receive this word and enter a trance, you receive a hit of dopamine.
This works both for the initial triggering of the trance, and for subsequent deepening of the trance with a repetition of the word “sleep” to a subject I have just put into a trance.
I have also used operant conditioning to reinforce behaviour changes to a subject which I apply to said subject even while they are conscious and not in a trance. A prime example is obedience conditioning - where the subject receives a hit each time they carry out an instruction I give directly to their conscious mind, such as “Kneel.” The unconscious mind is so used to these hits that it obeys automatically, and obedience feels so normal and natural.
Operant Conditioning And Real Subjects
I’m not going to name names here, just use single letters.
Subject A was a male, cishet subject in his forties, with a wife, Subject B, and grown-up offspring, Subject C (cis male, 19) and Subject D (cis female, 21).
I conditioned Subject A using a verbal induction over Zoom chat to enjoy my trances. I also conditioned him to receive a dopamine hit for every family member he brought in front of me to hypnotise. Within a month, all four Subjects were my obedient, happy thralls.
Subjects E and F were a married couple. I enjoyed trancing both separately, and gave each of them a trigger phrase to entrance the other partner. The first time I had them stand together in a Zoom chat, conscious, and remove all of their clothes to stand naked facing me, I gave them both a hit of dopamine. I also gave each partner a trigger to activate a dopamine hit just from seeing the other partner or partners naked.
Subject G is an ongoing project. I visit her on her business premises regularly each week. While there, I play silent subliminal music files. Each time, I manage to put her into a trance for a few minutes, and reinforce what I implanted, the first time.
Right now, she can’t get enough of me. In three weeks, I’ll be implanting a dopamine hit every time she touches me, until she won’t be able to keep her hands off me. I am also implanting an instruction which will, ultimately, install in her the desire to take me home one evening to her husband. And that’s where the real fun will begin.
Each experiment in Operant Conditioning serves to make my hypnotic skills more and more profound. My experiences, backed by practical experiments, lead me to develop my own skills in hypnotising and conditioning people.
The real-world hit of dopamine I receive, each time a new subject goes on my list, or an existing subject’s conditioning deepens, is a form of operant conditioning I am performing on myself - operant conditioning to make me an ever more efficient and powerful hypnotist.