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hypnotic session. I had arrived a few minutes before an d was chatting with Dr. Clamar when the doorbell buzzed, and I an swered it. Vi rgin ia ste pped in, a tall, handsome woman wearing a tailored suit and carrying, as I reca ll a thin attache case. An instant half memory flashed through my mind, a long forgotten image from a Fifties movie of Alexis Smith in a b usi n ess suit hurrying through a rev olvin g door, every in ch the attractive, effi cient career woman . Virginia's gaze, when she fixes it upon you, conveys a combination of feminine vuln erabil ity and enormously clear-headed a n a lytica l skill. She is above average in he igh t per haps five-feet-eight-inches or so, and has the kind of athletic pro portions that suggest a bun da nt physical health. One of the touch ing aspects of the subsequent hypn otic regressions was seeing Vir ginia relaxed upon the couch in a deep trance, a solid and fully m a ture businesswoman, speaking slowly with locutions proper to the little first-grader she was at that moment revivifying. Mark, her husband, was rather q uiet This was Virginia's af tern oon , and one can on ly guess what he was thinking about a subj ect so bizarre, which his wife was intent upon exploring. In any case, he see med supportive of her desires in t he matter, and, since the idea of hypnosis strikes fear into even well-educated hearts, perhaps his presence was necessary to steady both of them. We entered Dr. Clamar's l it tle office and took our usual posi tions: the subject rec Jini ng on the leather couch, the d octo r about three feet away, sitt ing on her straight-backed wooden chair, an d I o n the floor near the head of the couch with my recorder and hand-hel d m icrophone at the ready. An extra chair had been brought i n to the room and Mark placed it at the other end of the couch. Occasionally, during the hour-long session, he would reach over to gently stroke Virginia's feet and an kles in a nice, calming gesture of physical support. Dr. Clamar first induced a hypnotic trance in Virginia si m ply to let her experien ce the feeli ng of such deep relaxation for a few minutes before bringing her out of it. This is the "dry run" that prepares the subj e ct for the next step which is to introduce a deeper trance state, and then to move into regression . Aphrodite takes her time bringing the subject slowly down, d ow n into a very deeply relaxed state. Then she sets the scene describing the time, the place, and the circumstances to trigger specific recall. The verbatim transcript of a hypn oti c session is, in its cold, ,
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