Altered States (13 page)

This would have been an effective dead end. But the project had some big sponsors and a new project leader was brought in to champion a new direction. This time the approach was to develop software to analyse people’s facial expressions, gait and body movements; with the same aim of identifying individuals harbouring malicious intent.

The system was dubbed Hostile Intention Detection Equipment –
Hide
. For those lucky enough not to work in an engineering environment, allow me to explain that the average engineer gets pretty horny over acronyms – like they do about Star Wars T-shirts. Sometimes an acronym happens to spell something tangentially pertinent and they even get excited enough to pee a little.

Oftentimes, they come up with the name first, then crowbar in vaguely relevant words in a random order just to spell it. Before Hide was chosen I had to veto
Stealth Malicious Intention Location Equipment
.

The sponsors of the project also sponsored the researchers at UCSD who ran the tests I’d volunteered for. So when I caused a spike on their charts, Bayliss soon knew about it. By all accounts,
I
was the leading expert in
their
field.

Progress was slow but positive. It took months just to create a system that could filter out micro-expressions, let alone divine any meaning from them. And that was from a full-on face-shot. The fun of dealing with partially-obscured, oblique footage was still to come.

Over time I began to feel very positive about my work. It felt worthwhile. It was all about identifying bad intentions and preventing them from being actioned. That had to be a good thing. I understood the benefit it could have on society as a whole.

But that was all a long way off. In fact, it was still a pipe dream. There could still be hurdles that would not be overcome. In this respect I felt unfulfilled. No one was benefiting right now and that made me uneasy about it. I’m quite impatient, it’s true.

So, in my spare time I began to dabble in my own extra-curricular activities, trying to fulfil my self-appointed superhero destiny.

And
writing
.

Learning to Write

Back when I was mastering my people-reading skills, before I came to America, I also began studying the spectrum of techniques that sheltered under the umbrella term of psychotherapy. This umbrella covers a truly massive domain. I’d like to say this is because not everyone responds in the same way to the same therapy - which is indeed true. But the main reason there are so many forms of therapy is that we know less about the fundamental workings of our own mind than we do about the cosmos. When minds are broken, we just don’t know how to fix them.

Yet.

However, some things I read did seem to strike a chord with me. In particular I grew very interested in a man named Milton H. Erickson. His lasting influence on the world, direct and otherwise, was so great as to be immeasurable. Many modern therapeutic techniques came in to being through studying this man’s work.

His range of techniques were so original and unconventional that the only appropriate way to classify what he practised was as
Ericksonian Therapy
. Although his methods often involved hypnotherapy, his approach was much less direct and authoritative than classical hypnosis. He
allowed
rather than
instructed
. Erickson recognised that resistance to trance resembles resistance to change, and so developed his therapeutic approach with this in mind.

He believed that the unconscious mind was always listening, and that whether or not the patient was in trance, suggestions could be made that would have a profound influence, so long as those suggestions struck some resonance at a subconscious level.

One of his key techniques, which interested me most, was to communicate via metaphor. And many of his metaphors were anecdotal or autobiographical, such as the story of how his own journey began: when he almost died of polio as a boy.

His therapeutic methods seemed to come naturally to him. He had a unique understanding of people and would instinctively know how best to treat someone.

On some occasions he chose to frustrate and aggravate a symptom to gain a response. For example, he might ignore a stubbornly silent family member until they eventually blurt out some telling truth through simple frustration. Conversely he may compliment a symptom and emphasize its positives, such that the subject might learn to accept it or use it to their advantage.

On other occasions he chose to manipulate the physical environment to elicit a response; or seeded ideas by metaphors and stories. Sometimes he even employed psychological shocks and unpleasant ordeals to achieve results.

Crucially, he would tailor his therapy to his subject and their particular needs. It wasn’t formulaic. He would
respond
to their reactions; he would set up a feedback loop. This is what so many therapists today do not understand. They learn a particular discipline, they execute their off-pat routine, and they assume it will solve all problems for all people. This is not how it works. Therapy is not about learning a script from a hypnosis book by rote and spouting it at someone who wants to quit smoking. That’s analogous to blurting English at people of different nationalities and expecting the same reaction from each.

Therapy is all about finding the
right
language.

But what was the world to do? There was only one Erickson. The best anyone could hope to do was to approximate his skills. In this respect it is a good thing that many forms of therapy spawned from his abilities, even if they cannot match the efficacy of this man’s healing words.

So, if Erickson is the Prodigy in the Prodigy-Professor-Scholar model, then the Professor – or one of the Professors – was a man called Richard Bandler. He, along with an associate, studied Erickson’s techniques in great detail. They co-authored many books on Erickson’s methods, as well as hypnosis, communication and language. Ultimately, they founded the discipline of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. In itself this was an amazing achievement. Unfortunately, many people jumped on the Bandler wagon and NLP gave rise to a cynical corporate money-making machine. This is a shame because its underlying principles are sound and extremely helpful.

Some of the more ethical high-profile practitioners distanced themselves from NLP; whilst others continued to write books with titles like,
Change your life in 10 days: How to become wealthy, successful, good-looking, younger and a Formula One champion with NLP
.

I devoured all the literature I could find on Erickson and all the therapies that followed him. And I got pretty good at understanding how to exploit the mechanisms that I studied.

When I was working for the agency I wanted to put my skills into practise. But my employers and fellow researchers were never really interested in it. They did not appreciate that this half of my abilities was the more powerful half. The more exciting aspect of what I could do.

So I had to go it alone, because I knew that by using my array of techniques I could change people,
help
people. All I had to do was identify the people to help. And to this end I spent a lot of time hanging around in bars on my own. Sad, I know.

If you are not used to it, drinking alone is a peculiar experience. You feel remarkably self-conscious and ill-at-ease. It’s odd that it’s culturally acceptable to be on your own in a library or a shop or a park; but not in a
bar
. Just after you’ve purchased your drink is when you notice it. That moment when you turn away from the bar and scan your eyes across the room, inconspicuously trying to find a place to sit. Standing there, with all those people sitting in front on you, you feel like you are on stage, that everyone is watching you. But you soon realise who’s on stage –
they
are. They are all busy with each other. It is
you
who is watching
them
. And indeed, that was exactly why I was there.

I was looking for people with some air of distress or unhappiness about them. This was not difficult, because it was everyone. No single person is one hundred percent at peace with the world and that’s the way it should be. There should always be room for improvement, a way forward, otherwise what’s the point? And I was the one to do the improving. The world was my surgery and I was open 24-7.

As I was playing out the role of this mysterious saviour character I felt I had to have a ‘thing’. Wisely, I decided that my thing would not involve wearing my underpants over my trousers; or in fact any other daring apparel-based experiments.

No, in my case it would be a phrase.

‘
What do you want?’

Simple, I know, but when asked at the right time, it is also powerful – because it works on so many levels. And when asked, it would be answered at each one of those levels, regardless of the vocalised response.

‘What do you want?’ I would ask, usually after a long slightly-drunken existential conversation. And they would respond. To give-up smoking; to get a promotion; to be more confident; to woo the girl in the office.

And then ... I would help them.

If I could.

I was in a bar once and there was a bunch of female students getting merry. I noticed that one of the girls didn’t fit quite right with the rest, like she was a jigsaw piece from a different puzzle. She looked the part but wasn’t hitting the same tempo as the others. Her laughter ended a little too soon; her movements were a little too fast.

After a while the girl headed to the bar and I went over to stand beside her.

‘What do you want?’ I asked. It was okay to be direct. We were in the same half-decade age-wise and it was a Friday night out on the town. This was the expected mode of contact, at least between people of the opposite sex. It’s true, it was a lot easier for me to approach women than men in general, which was a shame in light of my intentions. But give me a break, I can only save half the world at a time.

The girl turned to me with a smile. ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘but I’m getting a round in.’

She, of course, assumed I was talking about a drink. But some part of her, deep down, would have unconsciously registered the subtle inflection on the ‘want’. Some part of her would be answering the question differently.

She shrugged again before answering. ‘Everyone else seems so smart here. None of my family before me ever even went to college, let alone graduated.’

I nodded, more in empathy than agreement, but I nodded all the same. ‘Everyone has their limitations, right?’

The girl was a little dazed by my response. This was the point where the stranger hitting on her was supposed to be all encouragement and compliments, espousing just how great she was and how she was going to excel at everything she tried. But, unfortunately, I don’t deal in that kind of baseless goodwill prophesizing. I’m not a horoscope.

After a beat, I continued. ‘Maybe, it’s more important to focus on the task, than the limitation.’

The barman asked what we wanted and we placed our order. The girl ferried drinks back to her companions but left hers on the bar till last. When she came back she took a long sip of her wine, buying time to find a way into a conversation. I helped her out.

‘Want to hear a story?’ I asked. ‘A true one.’

‘Sure,’ she agreed with a puzzled but curious dip of the eyebrows.

‘For hundreds of years there was a well-established myth that running a mile in under four minutes was humanly impossible. People limited themselves based on this belief. But then a man named Roger Bannister decided he wasn’t going to be limited by this arbitrary barrier. He stopped thinking about it as four minutes and started thinking about it as two hundred and forty seconds. All he had to do was improve his time by a tenth of a second at a time, until he reached two hundred and forty seconds. And that’s exactly what he did. He broke the historic four-minute barrier.

‘Remarkably, it then only took
forty-six days
before somebody else did it too, even faster. And now? Now the record for the mile is almost
twenty seconds
inside four minutes. Twenty seconds.

‘You see, that’s why records are whittled away bit-by-bit. People limit
themselves
by
other people’s
achievements.’

The most important thing to know about good therapy, in my opinion – and others would disagree – is not to be authoritative. Not to spout edicts about thinking positive and being confident, because that encourages resistance – like telling an adolescent youth what’s good for him. Even those who seek out therapy are sometimes resistant when they receive it. As such, it’s important to give the individual the option; to be accommodating and to be
indirect
.

The girl paused before confirming, ‘You’re right.’ She had a mild uncertainty around her brow, as if she was wondering why she had never looked at it this way before. Then concern flooded back in.

I gave a gentle laughing smile. It’s important to get smiles right. You can spend a lifetime in front of a mirror just practising this.