"I wonder if psychology is social hypnosis in that it connects, via the operator AND, psychology experiments with what proponents of psychology believe we should do in terms of ‘normal’ behaviour?" Virtually everything is social hypnosis as near as I can tell. The main criteria I track is whether the social hypnosis leads people to lead active engaged lives or simply to sit on their asses cerebrating and spinning BS theories that fit with whatever BS implicit theories they have had, unknowingly, since they were 9 years old. I've seen that pattern you mentioned above (and variations)many times in research, graduate classes and presentations. "We have presented evidence for X and Y and Z and this lead us to conclude inexorably that they are CAUSING P behavior (or whatever)." (what about the people that do X,Y, and Z, and yet engage in A, Q, R?) Or perhaps, "According to our analysis 95% of population X, Y and Z, engage in P behavior. The 5% percent that engage in Q behavior are therefore deviant and we must know find the CAUSE of the deviant behavior. I view Ericksonian hypnosis as process language leading another intentionally into new behavior. Modal operators in psychology lead the person UNintentionally and unsconsciously into "knowing" things/entities/facts that lead the person into de-contextualized non-sense of no immediate utility. A key perhaps is to track the epistemology that the research team is using unwittingly and then to use the verbal package to redirect/interrupt it. i.e. (in simplified terms): Causing, how specifically? deviant, how specifically? Another interesting question to ask, "What causes are you leaving out?" Or, "What makes you think complex human behavior can be explained by a single cause?" My favorite: "How do you know that that the behavior has a cause? Or more pointedly, " Who gives a damn what you think the "cause" is what can you do right NOW that can affect that developing system and lead it into a postive new direction?" - remembering that it is the individual who will need to fill in the nominilization "positive" and not the reseearher (yet, another issued with psychology research). see ya - Ryan BTW - some of my closest friends are psycholigists (smile).