NORTH PORT, Fla. (AP) — High school principal George Kenney acknowledged using hypnosis to help people: students who needed to relax before tests, a basketball player having trouble making free throws and even school secretaries who wanted to quit smoking.
But now the popular 51-year-old principal’s future at North Port High School is in question since it came to light that he had hypnotized two students before their separate suicides this spring. There is no indication their deaths were any more than a tragic coincidence. However, Kenney acknowledged conducting the sessions after being warned by his boss to stop such one-on-one hypnosis with students at school. In April, according to the Sarasota County School District report, he hypnotized a 16-year-old student to help him better focus on a test. The next day, the boy committed suicide. Kenney was put on leave in May when the boy’s parents, who had given their permission for the sessions, raised concerns after his death.
The administrator’s situation then got stickier when an investigation showed that he had also hypnotized another student five months before her May 4 suicide, initially lied about it and had defied three separate verbal warnings to stop the sessions with students.
A 134-page independent investigative report released by the district last week includes an interview with Kenney, who acknowledged defying the orders and then lying.
“I’m not saying I used great judgment all the time here,” he told an investigator. “I think I used poor judgment several times.”
Poor judgment would be an understatement, sheesh.
So much for being innovative or novel in teaching methods
It would of been better for this fellow to have stayed in bed – or got in his truck and went fishing or hunting
Then again what has Obama with all this stimulus money done for education and the education process ?
I neither trust hypnosis but among all this: It can hardly be a coincidence these students all comitted suicide! The only explanaition I can imagine is them just having weak minds from the outset and therefor being prone to this esoteric crap.
There’s actually quite a lot of interesting brain research on hypnosis. People who are susceptible to hypnosis, or can use self-hypnosis easily, usually also have well-developed imaginations and sometimes a tendency to the type of dissociation that we commonly experience when we drive home from work, deep in thought, and can’t remember any of the trip.
Hypnosis is really just a state of deep relaxation. It’s a very useful therapy for quitting smoking, compulsions like overeating, and anxiety.
I can’t even imagine what connection there could be between hypnosis and suicide. However, if the principle is untrained and just goofing around, he was unethical and perhaps criminal to goof around with children.
#22 Martha, I agree. Whether the hypnosis resulted in the deaths or coincided with them is unclear. Hypnosis, I assume is manual suggestion which bypasses inhibitions.
Continuing to think about this, possibly students who go to the principal and willingly sit around for pseudo-therapeutic ‘treatments’ are already pretty much troubled.
Post hoc propter hoc is a logical fallacy.
#24, I’ve heard of some problems of hypnotherapists inadvertantly placing false memories in patients. I don’t believe there is any documented case of someone being made to act against their normal code of behavior, ala “the Manchurian Candidate”.
#26…I recall many of the once-fashionable “my relative sexually abused me 25 years ago” stories came about as a result of hypnotherapy.
#27, correct, that’s placement of false memories. See also alien abductions.
This also could explain bobbo’s confession in #13 that he’s not always sure what’s a real memory. I mean, alien abduction could explain it, not hypnosis.
There’s an interesting book, “Kluge”, that talks about the deficiencies of human memory.
lynn–my anus is in good shape, no alien abductions or weekends on Fire Island for me. While I did make a weak recognition between hypnosis and dream states, you really did make it concrete for me.
what I enjoy about my own commentary is how I like to posit/play with the notion that truths are universal in their applicability–so when I say “I” sometimes have to really concentrate to tell the difference between a dream and an actual experience that I am only remembering==I mean we all do that, BUT I wonder how many false memories are lazily accepted as true by people who are not as interested as I am in how we think/what we believe/how we define ourselves.
Few negative things we recognize in other people are not also present in ourselves, and vice versa. All a matter of degree and insight. As stated–and even if that is not true, or to the degree its not true==its still a valuable idea to play around with.
A life unexamined has not been lived.
Bobbo, I really enjoyed your last post. You are a philosopher. And lest I sound too sappily positive for DU, thanks for sharing about your anus.
lynn–I was careful in posting that knowing how you like to plumb the depths of things philosophical. Some habits are hard to break, I don’t know what your particular order was into but its one of the few things that men and women share in common. In fact, all too often, it appears to be the only thing we share in common? Ha, ha.
Another break?
While hypnosis is known to sometimes help with problems mentioned in the article, anyone who messes with the emotional mine field that is an adolescent’s mind must be VERY careful to do no inadvertent harm and should probably be very highly trained before being allowed to do so.
Uncle P–I suppose thats true but if the goal is to relax the kiddie before taking a test, how would one slop over into implanting thoughts of suicide?
“You are in a deep sleep. You are in class about to take a test. Imagine this is the best day of your life and the test is like petting your pet dog. No matter what, don’t imagine your dog gets loose and runs into the street and gets hit by a car and that you killed him. It was just an accident. When you hear me snap my fingers, wake up refreshed and start looking for your dog.”
I don’t think you have to be an expert to avoid mistakes like that one anyway. Maybe it is more subtle. To sleep, to dream, to die. Horatio!!!
#33, Bobbo, “its one of the few things that men and women share in common. In fact, all too often, it appears to be the only thing we share in common? ” – an anus?
Yeah, it’s a slow day here.
Hey it’s nearly 5PM! I’m outta here! ‘night -
Whoa! lynn!!!!===Where did THAT come from? No. Certainly Not. Never. In context, obviously, I’m talking about the love of delving into the depths of human psychology. My word, anus indeed. Who would ever think/say that? ….and I didn’t even say “Taken as a whole….”
I’m watching Reindeer Games right now while having fun with word games. They just fell through the ice. Only in Hollywood would they live. Do guns shoot under water? I can see they would but the bullets not go far if even out of the barrel? More false physics?
Speaking of which, how could men and women share an anus? Maybe joint custody of a kiddie?
Ha, ha.
Speaking of our blessed kiddies, here are 9 things you should never say to them. Read closely: probably better off to never say these things to anyone? Or not talk at all?
http://cnn.com/2011/LIVING/07/12/dont.say.to.child.p/index.html?&hpt=hp_c2
Pedro: STFU!
#38 “9 things you should never say to them”
Richard Prior added one more-
“The worst day of my life was the day my daddy told me I wouldn’t even be here sep’n the rubber broke.”
Progressive are hypnotized already…we need a way to wake them.