Taken from “Surely You're Joking, Mr.
Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Phillips Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton edited by
Edward Hutchings
On
Wednesdays at the Princeton Graduate College, various people would come in to
give talks. The speakers were often interesting, and in the discussions after
the talks we used to have a lot of fun. For instance, one guy in our school was
very strongly anti-Catholic, so he passed out questions in advance for people
to ask a religious speaker, and we gave the speaker a hard time.
Another
time somebody gave a talk about poetry. He talked about the structure of the
poem and the emotions that come with it; he divided everything up into certain
kinds of classes. In the discussion that came afterwards, he said, “Isn’t that
the same as in mathematics, Dr. Eisenhart?”
Dr.
Eisenhart was the dean of the graduate school and a great professor of
mathematics. He was also very clever. He said, “I’d like to know what Dick
Feynman thinks about it in reference to theoretical physics.” He was always
putting me on in this kind of situation.
I
got up and said, “Yes, it’s very closely related. In theoretical physics, the
analog of the word is the mathematical formula, the analog of the structure of
the poem is the interrelationship of the theoretical bling-bling with the
so-and so”—and I went through the whole thing, making a perfect analogy. The
speaker’s eyes were beaming
with happiness.
Then
I said, “It seems to me that no matter what
you say about poetry, I could find a way of making up an analog with any subject, just as I
did for theoretical physics. I don’t consider such analogs meaningful.”
In
the great big dining hall with stained-glass windows, where we always ate, in
our steadily deteriorating academic gowns, Dean Eisenhart would begin each
dinner by saying grace in Latin. After dinner he would often get up and make
some announcements. One night Dr. Eisenhart got up and said, “Two weeks from
now, a professor of psychology is coming to give a talk about hypnosis. Now,
this professor thought it would be much better if we had a real demonstration
of hypnosis instead of just talking about it. Therefore he would like some
people to volunteer to be hypnotized.
I
get all excited: There’s no question but that I’ve got to find out about
hypnosis. This is going to be terrific!
Dean
Eisenhart went on to say that it would be good if three or four people would
volunteer so that the hypnotist could try them out first to see which ones
would be able to be hypnotized, so he’d like to urge very much that we apply
for this. (He’s wasting all
this time, for God’s sake!)
Eisenhart
was down at one end of the hall, and I was way down at the other end, in the
back. There were hundreds of guys there. I knew that everybody was going to
want to do this, and I was terrified that he wouldn’t see me because I was so
far back. I just had to get in on this demonstration!
Finally
Eisenhart said, “And so I would like to ask if there are going to be any
volunteers …”
I
raised my hand and shot out of my seat, screaming as loud as I could, to make
sure that he would hear me: “MEEEEEEEEEEE!”
He
heard me all right, because there wasn’t another soul. My voice reverberated
throughout the hall—it was very embarrassing. Eisenhart’s immediate reaction
was, “Yes, of course, I knew you
would volunteer, Mr. Feynman, but I was wondering if there would be anybody else.”
Finally
a few other guys volunteered, and a week before the demonstration the man came
to practice on us, to see if any of us would be good for hypnosis. I knew about
the phenomenon, but I didn’t know what it was like to be hypnotized.
He
started to work on me and soon I got into a position where he said, “You can’t
open your eyes.”
I
said to myself, “I bet I could
open my eyes, but I don’t want to disturb the situation: Let’s see how much
further it goes.” It was an interesting situation: You’re only slightly fogged
out, and although you’ve lost a little bit, you’re pretty sure you could open
your eyes. But of course, you’re not opening your eyes, so in a sense you can’t
do it.
He
went through a lot of stuff and decided that I was pretty good.
When
the real demonstration came he had us walk on stage, and he hypnotized us in
front of the whole Princeton Graduate College. This time the effect was
stronger; I guess I had learned how to become hypnotized. The hypnotist made
various demonstrations, having me do things that I couldn’t normally do, and at
the end he said that after I came out of hypnosis, instead of returning to my
seat directly, which was the natural way to go, I would walk all the way around
the room and go to my seat from the back.
All
through the demonstration I was vaguely aware of what was going on, and
cooperating with the things the hypnotist said, but this time I decided, “Damn
it, enough is enough! I’m gonna go straight to my seat.”
When
it was time to get up and go off the stage, I started to walk straight to my
seat. But then an annoying feeling came over me: I felt so uncomfortable that I
couldn’t continue. I walked all the way around the hall.
I
was hypnotized in another situation some time later by a woman. While I was
hypnotized she said, “I’m going to light a match, blow it out, and immediately
touch the back of your hand with it. You will feel no pain.”
I
thought, “Baloney!” She took a match, lit it, blew it out, and touched it to
the back of my hand. It felt slightly warm. My eyes were closed throughout all
of this, but I was thinking, “That’s easy. She lit one match, but touched a
different match to my hand. There’s nothin’ to that; it’s a fake!”
When
I came out of the hypnosis and looked at the back of my hand, I got the biggest
surprise: There was a burn on the back of my hand. Soon a blister grew, and it
never hurt at all, even when it broke.
So
I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you’re
saying to yourself, “I could do that, but I won’t”—which is just another way of
saying that you can’t.