The Agentic State
A Practical approach
This blog post will discuss the agentic state, as I have applied it in recreational hypnosis.
The Agentic State Defined
Per Agentic State | Topics | Psychology | tutor2u:-
The agentic state is an explanation of obedience offered by Milgram and is where an individual carries out the orders of an authority figure, acting as their agent. The shift from autonomy to ‘agency’ is referred to as the ‘agentic shift’.
Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment in obedience and authority. In his experiment, participants were given orders to deliver electric shocks to a patient they could not see. The patient was, in fact, an actor in the next room; that actor was never in any real danger … but the participant did not know this.
Per Theories of obedience; Agency Theory Milgram (1974) – PsychStix:-
Milgram used the term ‘agentic state’ to explain the high levels of obedience in his famous experiments where 65% of [participants] followed orders to administer electric shocks to another supposed participant up to 450 V.
Milgram explained that people make the agentic shift when confronted with a person they perceive as having legitimate authority and begin to act as an ‘agent’, on behalf of the authority figure.
He goes onto say that when people in the agentic state believe that the authority figure is responsible for their actions; this is known as diffusion of responsibility.
He says that when not in the presence of an authority figure people are in the autonomous state, they behave independently and feel responsible for the consequences of their behaviour, making decisions according to their own freewill.
Personal Experiments
My clients enjoy experiencing the agentic shift, whether or not I have them in a trance, because they can feel that I have a position of authority: that I know what I am doing, and that they can let go.
I ave worked with clients in a group, and watched as the first few clients whom I put into trance caused others surrounding them to fall spontaneously into a trance themselves, simply because they had let go of their conscious mind, which signalled to the others that, if I knew what I was doing, and the tranced clients had slipped into trance, it would be okay for them to go into a trance, too.
The first few clients were like a supernucleating crystal causing the rest of the specimen to crystallise in the beaker.
When I tell you, in a trance, that there is something in the room for you to look at, given the right depth of trance you will see it, and it will be absolutely real.
This is something I have done with hundreds of clients, all of whom willingly let themselves enter the agentic state for me. Sometimes, without my needing to ask them.
Or command them.
Obedience
Per Theories of obedience; Agency Theory Milgram (1974) – PsychStix:-
Milgram says that because people will often commits acts of destructive obedience when in the agentic state, (i.e. harming another person – an act they would not normally do), they may experience moral strain and shows signs of psychological and physical anxiety as their behaviour conflicts with their beliefs about right and wrong.
Milgram says the agentic shift is reinforced in early childhood, when parents reward children for obedience and punish them for defiance; this is part of the socialisation process, which continues further when children learn to obey teachers at school.
In my case, as a client of mine, you do enter the agentic state, often because you believe it to be the right thing to do - backed by a post facto surge of dopamine as operant conditioning, but more often than not out of a sense that I have, in my way, earned your respect, and therefore you are allowing me to see you in the agentic state and let me take command.
You know that I have earned the right to take responsibility and free will from you, because what I make you do while in a trance is just so much sexy fun.