He didn’t look much like his framed portrait of maybe ten years ago, but this was Dr. Joseph W. Bryant, Jr., all right, pushing at 400 pounds hard, putting the hippo in hypnotist.
“Dr. Joseph W. Bryant, Jr.,” he confirmed pleasantly as he proffered his hand. I took and shook it, a clammy thing reminiscent of a pet’s rubber squeeze toy.
He gestured for me to enter and I did, with him closing the door behind us. The office was good-size, its walls at right arrayed with framed diplomas and clipped magazine and newspaper articles about its inhabitant; at left were framed posters of three films — Tales of Terror with Vincent Price, Dementia 13, and The Manchurian Candidate, on all of which he’d been a consultant. A shrink’s couch was against the back wall. To the right of his desk, where he could swivel, was a console with microphones and push buttons and knobs and dials arranged in a wide V. The area in back of the console was curtained but glass could be glimpsed where the curtains joined.
“You would be the famous Private Eye to the Stars,” he said jovially as he settled into his chair. He was like a department store Santa with questionable intentions.
“That does follow me around,” I said, taking the client’s chair he’d indicated with a pudgy palm. Or was that “patient’s” chair? At least I wasn’t shown to the couch.
“I suppose it’s inevitable we should meet,” he said, a twinkle in the lens-magnified eyes.
“Is it?”
“Private Eye to the Stars,” he said with a modest flourish of a hand, “meets Hypnotherapist to the Stars.”
I didn’t know of any celebrities he’d treated and the framed pictures on the wall didn’t include any. Maybe he’d been on some of the film sets.
Still, he must have read something in my expression because he added, “I refer of course to the celebrity likes of Albert DeSalvo and Carl Coppolino.”
The Boston Strangler and a convicted wife murderer.
I smiled, nodded, said, “Our mutual friend Lee Bailey sends along his regards.”
“Very kind of him.” Bryant was reaching for a pipe in a holder of several. “We shared some very interesting, and if I might say, hair-raising experiences. I can share some of those with you, if you like, for your article.”
“Not necessary. Lee has already filled me in.”
He lighted a match. “If you wish a direct quote or another point of view, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“I’d like to talk to you about hypnosis,” I said, taking out a pad and pen, to pretend to take notes, “as it pertains to therapeutic work.”
“Certainly.”
“I notice you list criminology,” I said, with a gesture toward his outer office, “as one of your specialties.”
A confident nod. “I’m very much an expert in the use of hypnosis in criminal law.” He had the pipe going now. The smoke smelled pleasant, floral and sweet. And expensive.
“Of course,” he continued, “I’m probably the leading expert in the world on hypnosis itself. It’s hardly surprising the LAPD would call upon me from time to time. Or the lawyerly likes of Melvin Belli and our friend Lee.”
I asked, “How would you define hypnotism for the layman?”
Bryant rocked back, challenging his chair. “Hypnotism is an increased concentration of the mind, a supreme relaxation of the body, and an enhanced susceptibility to suggestion. Sometimes drugs are employed, but often not.”
“You offer sex therapy as an option, I see.”
He nodded several times, firmly. “Sex and religion are my chief interests, hypnotism merely a means to an end. Seeing that term ‘sex therapy,’ you most likely took notice of how physically attractive my receptionist is... and, this is off-the-record you understand, but I admit to making a habit out of hiring my current bed partners as receptionists.” He chuckled. Puffed his pipe. Leaned across chummily. “When a relationship breaks up, I need to cast for both roles, so to speak.”
Yuck.
I asked, “You did a Playboy interview, didn’t you?”
His grin didn’t have as many teeth in it as his receptionist, but it was Cheshire-like just the same. “I did. But then you’re a friend of Hugh Hefner yourself, aren’t you, Mr. Heller? Perhaps I should call you ‘Nate’ and I should be ‘Bill.’”
“Sure, Bill. Yes, Hef is a client. Going way back. And, well... I’ve dated a few Playmates and Bunnies in my day.”
“Or rather in your nights.” His smile was as cute as a kitten. A dead kitten. “I am convinced the best way to get to know a woman, really know her, is at a deep emotional level. This requires sexual intercourse, of course. Oh, don’t mistake me for some sort of sybarite. I’m an ordained priest in the Old Roman Catholic Church, which some dismiss as a fire-and-brimstone sect, and a frequent guest preacher at fundamentalist churches all around Southern California. That you can quote me on.”
“Perhaps we should get back to the kind of subjects Life magazine is interested in as opposed to Playboy.”
He let out a single Ha! “Yes. Perhaps we should!”
I said, “You mention religion as your other obsession. What does religion have to do with hypnotism?”
The big buggy eyes got bigger and buggier. “Only everything! The prophets produced their visions by a form of auto-hypnosis and, in the Middle Ages, most of the prophets who heard the voice of God actually disassociated their own voices and heard themselves. Many elements of hypnosis remain in religion today — the chanting testimonials, the flickering candles, the cross as a fixation point.”
This mumbo-jumbo I couldn’t care less about, but I said, “Interesting. Let’s back up, though. I could really use some background about your work for the government.”
He waved his pipe like he was in the backseat of a convertible in a parade. “Certainly. During the Korean conflict I was chief of all medical survival training for the United States Air Force, which translates to ‘Brainwashing Section.’ Accomplished great things there. Stateside, I established this institute in 1955, started our teaching program in 1958, and in 1960 began publishing a medical journal devoted to our work here.”
“By ‘great things,’ do you mean your groundbreaking work in brainwashing? Both in rehabilitating our military personnel who’d been prisoners of the enemy and developing techniques that could be used against those enemies?”
He stiffened just a little, scratched the Amish beard at the chinny chin chin. “That’s substantially correct. But you understand I can’t provide detailed information about any of it — we’re talking about research and events that remain classified years later. Definitely top secret.”
I tossed a casual hand. “Perhaps you could talk in more general terms. For example, how does one go about brainwashing a subject?”
He thought about that briefly, then pontificated: “Well, you have to have control over the person, either lock them up physically or dupe them into cooperation. You may have to use a certain amount of physical torture or else deploy what we might call mental gymnastics. And there is the use of long-term hypnotic suggestion, probably drugs, and so on. Under these situations, where you have all this going for you — like in a prison camp or in a controlled seemingly positive environment — you can brainwash a person to do just about anything.”