Suggestions of Power: Searching for Efficacy in Indonesia's Hypnosis Boom

Abstract

From relative obscurity in the 1990s, hypnotherapy has become a major industry in contemporary Indonesia. This article examines its tremendous surge in popularity, and the subsequent trajectories of its vernacularization. It shows the hypnosis boom to have been underpinned by the introduction of a distinctive “30% theory, 70% practice” seminar format, structured in such a way as to allow mass‐market consumers to experience themselves as hypnotically efficacious. With such efficacy proving unsustainable outside the seminar context, Indonesians reached for and developed alternative conceptions of “hypnosis” that allowed them to continue as effective hypnotherapists. Such material demonstrates the value of incorporating a theory of interactional affordances into anthropological models of cultural transmission and globalization. [efficacy, hypnosis, globalization, Indonesia, interaction, psychotherapy]

Mental Health

“…An important trajectory of anthropological research in the field of mental health has focused on the production of neuroscientific facts (Cohn 2008(Cohn , 2010Dumit 2004), the effects of pharmaceuticals (Dumit 2012;Jenkins 2010;Petryna, Lakoff and Kleinman 2006), and the construction of 'disorders', such as bipolar disorder (Martin 2007), autism (Belek [2019] 2023), depression (Kitanaka 2012), and schizophrenia (Luhrmann and Marrow 2016). Furthermore, the expansion of 'evidence-based psychological therapies', especially cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness, and a proliferation of mental health initiatives and psy professions around the world have been a recent focus of ethnography by which new accountabilities, healing modalities, and configurations of care and politics have been examined (Brenman 2021;Bruun 2023;Cook and Cassaniti 2022;Duncan 2018;Huang 2018;Long 2018;Matza 2018;Pickersgill 2019b;Vogel 2017;Vorhölter 2021;Zhang 2020). These studies deal diversely with issues of precarity and access to mental healthcare, the transformation of therapeutic practices within and beyond their particular cultural or clinical environments, and the social and ethical consequences of particular scientific, economic, and political framings of mental health.…”

The Perception and Impact of Covid-19 News on the Society

“…Maybe right or wrong is another problem, but because it's often and lots of, the perception arises that the news is true (Allington, Duffy, Wessely, Dhavan, & Rubin, 2020). The idea of Hypnosis Massa is a component of this research because the media is that the key to delivering all the required news (Long, 2018). Except for hoaxes or lies, people will quickly accept them with true feelings.…”