Erickson never believed that some people cannot be hypnotized, and spent his life attempting to prove that. One student, in particular, required over 300 one-hour working sessions before he could develop a somnambulistic trance. Once that was achieved, he turned out to be an outstanding subject. Erickson also noted that most engineers are difficult to hypnotize. Something peculiar about engineers seems to make them exceedingly impatient with anyone even attempting to hypnotize them. The result was that during many of his studies, it was always the engineers that would quit on him, often en masse. What can Creator tell us?

What happened with the refractory individual, who required over 300 one-hour sessions to achieve a deep trance state, was a gradual acclimation and a growing inner sense of trust in the hypnotist to eventually come to feel nothing bad would happen at the hands of this individual, and eventually a breakthrough occurred to allow the subject to enter a trance state. That was possible to do all along, but simply not allowed by the subconscious mind wanting to protect the inner sanctum from intrusion, and this was because of prior trauma. The refractory characteristic of engineers singled out here is a recognition of the way their minds work, being highly intellectual, and so the focus of energy is on the highest level of conscious awareness because of the demanding nature of dealing with things in a quantitative sense, and a specific sense with the most exquisite of details, and holding many bits of information in place to focus on at one time. That rigor and intensity of focus is holding the conscious level of awareness in place with great strength, in order to go the distance needed to think through a problem and get to the next step in what might be required to happen without the mind wandering and letting go, as happens during daydreaming and the kinds of reverie that will allow people to drift into a trance state spontaneously. Good hypnotic subjects tend to be highly imaginative, and that is an exhibition of the free-roaming nature of their consciousness wanting to be out and about and exploring things, looking for new possibilities, sniffing out new trails to explore, and so on, and that state of mind keeps the person very open to accepting intuitive information, and they will be functioning many times in a semi-trance because it is normal for them to be in that state of consciousness. Such individuals will be readily hypnotized because they practice hypnotism on themselves many times during the day. So this is using one indicator of conscious functioning, the readiness to be hypnotized, as a readout for the range and variety of mindsets people exhibit in how they operate. This is both a function of their makeup genetically and the soul expressions uniquely assigned and favored as their life plan, as well as learning and practice at thinking during their formative years, because much of what the mind does will be done out of habit, including how one thinks.