Ethnographic Research Data on Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy in Indonesia, 2020–2024

Hypnotherapy is very popular in contemporary Indonesia, where it is used to address medical and emotional problems, but also penetrates many aspects of everyday life. Hypnoteaching and hypnomotivation are becoming widespread in Indonesian schools; ever more families are experimenting with hypnoparenting; employers uses hypnotherapy to help manage their workforce. In the process, Indonesian citizens are being asked to understand, relate to, and govern themselves in new ways informed by psycho-therapeutic discourses of hypnosis and suggestion. Such developments raise three broad sets of questions:

1) Empirical questions regarding the modes of hypnotherapeutic practice that are gaining ground in Indonesia, and the forms of subjectivity, sociality, and governance that are emerging as a consequence;

2) Analytical questions regarding how and why these regimes of practice—and their associated modes of subjectivity, sociality, and governance—have come about, and are being transformed or maintained;

3) Broader theoretical questions regarding the ways that Indonesian hypnotherapy practices might shed new light on what Blackman (2007) has termed the ‘suggestive realm’ of human experience.

This project sought to contribute to all three of these fields of enquiry via an ethnographic study of the Indonesian hypnotherapy circuit and its socio-cultural ramifications. Semi-structured interviewing of therapists generated rich qualitative accounts of how and why their practice and understanding of hypnotherapy has evolved over time. I collected life stories of 150 therapists with a view to documenting the full range of experiences prompted by encounters with hypnotherapeutic discourse. Interviews were relaxed and exploratory, focusing on identifying key stages and turning points in their training and professional practice, their life experiences prior to training, their experience of their family life and social relations, and their broader aspirations for their town, province, and country.