Dave Elman 1900-1967
Here are the notes from the speech by Dave Elman's son, Colonel H.L. Elman at the National Guild of Hypnotists Convention 8 August 2009.
DAVE ELMAN
A Short Biographic Summary
Dave
Elman (May 6,
1900 – December 5, 1967)
grew up in North Dakota. At
age 6, he saw his father attempt
(unsuccessfully) to treat a stutterer using hypnosis.
At age 8, he witnessed a
hypnotist supply his father with enough pain relief for his father to play with
the children. This was the
last time Dave saw his father, who
died of cancer shortly afterwards on a business trip.
That incident inspired a life-long interest in hypnosis,
with particular interest in its medical applications.
As a young teenager, Dave
experimented with hypnosis on his classmates,
an action which did not endear him to the parents of some of the more
proper young ladies in his school.
Dave
next ran away to join……. Vaudeville! In
vaudeville, Dave performed in many
different capacities, including
musician, comedian,
bit player, and several
others. The one which got him
the best billing, however,
was as “The World’s Youngest and
Fastest Hypnotist.” It
was while performing under this billing that he realized that there were three
important requirements for stage hypnosis: 1.)
Speed of induction; 2.)
Reliability of method of
induction (i.e.,
90% or more of all subjects); and
3.) Sufficient depth for commands to reliably
“take.” His research on
these requirements and the techniques to achieve them would later apply to more
than stage hypnotism. The
better billings obtained with this skill often did not fit the theater marquee,
so Dave’s name was shortened from David Kopelman to Dave Elman.
The
early 1920’s found Dave in New York as a song writer employed by the legendary
W.C. Handy. At this point,
he was also playing sax in jazz bands.
As the new media of radio developed in New York,
Dave and many other former vaudeville personalities began writing and
producing radio shows. Dave remained
at this work from the early 1920’s to the mid 1930’s.
In 1936, his eldest son,
Jackie, died from pneumonia.
To overcome his severe mourning,
he was advised to develop a totally new kind of radio show;
one whose originality and unusual problems of development would keep his
mind occupied. The result was HOBBY LOBBY
in 1937. This program,
and others developed by Dave Elman, continued
in various formats for over 20 years.
During World War II, Dave
Elman raised huge sums of money for the war effort through war bond sales (War
Bond Auction, later renamed Victory Auction) becoming almost as popular a show as Hobby
Lobby). While continuing to
write, produce,
direct, and MC these two
shows, Dave Elman also assisted in
counter-intelligence work.
Dave
Elman continued his studies of hypnosis during the almost 30 years from his last
appearance as a vaudeville hypnotist until 1949,
when he began teaching medical hypnosis to physicians and dentists.
In medical hypnosis, the
physician, pressed for time in most
office visits, faces the same
requirements as those discussed above for the stage hypnotist.
The doctor also needs additional tools, but rapid,
reliable induction and reliability of the suggestions given are the
doctor’s first concerns. The
rapidity and reliability of the Elman induction methods rapidly spread the use
of hypnosis among physicians. However,
many additional subjects were included in the
Elman course, such as
regression, treatments for phobias
and allergies, hypnotherapy,
preparation for surgery using hypnotic anesthesia,
and many other topics. Dave
Elman continued actively teaching these courses (six
or seven days per week) until his heart attack in 1962.
While recovering from the heart attack,
he wrote Findings in Hypnosis,
currently still in print as Hypnotherapy.
He had recorded many of his classes,
and those recordings, combined
with his added commentaries, became
the several sets of Dave Elman audio
recordings still available to the student.
Among
the many accomplishments of physicians trained by Dave Elman were the first open
heart surgery performed with only hypnosis for anesthesia,
the first delivery of a baby with hypnosis being both the only anesthetic
and also a measure for improving the mother’s efforts in the birth,
and many thousands of less dramatic procedures.
Items Discussed by Col
Elman in His Talk at the NGH Convention,
But Not Included in the
Preceding Handout.
When my
eldest brother, Jackie, died about
two years before my birth, my
parents went into an even more severe depression than one might expect the death
of a child to cause. My father
was advised to develop a totally new
kind of radio show; one whose
originality and unusual problems of development would keep his mind occupied.
Dad took that advice.
But my
father, being very solicitous of my
mother, asked the person who
suggested this, “But what about
Pauline?” “Ah – she’s only a
woman – just get her pregnant.” The
1930’s were an era of Male Chauvinist Pig run rampant!
The
result of the advice to concentrate on the new show resulted in HOBBY
LOBBY.
The
pregnancy resulted in me.
My
parents, with much love,
told me I was the “replacement child” for Jackie.
NEVER tell a child
he is a “replacement baby” – the parent may think they are saying this
with love, but that is not the
child’s perception. I mention this
in part because my father devoted a great deal of his teaching to emphasizing to
physicians the importance of semantics – think of what the other person HEARD
not about what you think you said. Dad’s
emphasis on this point is extremely valid for hypnotherapists because of the
heightened awareness and suggestibility of the subject.
Dad was
much aware that before Hobby Lobby he was a much respected man in radio
but a total unknown outside that field, He
was also aware that before Hobby Lobby he was struggling financially.
When I was born, Hobby Lobby
had made him a major celebrity nationally, and
also made him a millionaire. Considering
all this, he determined to name me
HOBBY LOBBY ELMAN. My mother with
(I’m happy to say) much greater wisdom, gave
Dad an ultimatum that I would NOT be named that way.
The resulting compromise is reflected in my initials – HLE – Hobby
Lobby Elman, but my name is H. Larry
Elman. (I have not used my
full first name since age 7 – it took me about 6 months to train Mom to call
me Larry – it took longer to train Dad, who
while brilliant, could be a “slow
learner” if something irked him.)
I will
not cover them in detail here, but
there are several stories about my father’s role in counter-espionage in World
War II which can be found on the Internet. Many
of these irk me because they often repeat two errors which (to me) defy all
logic. The first is the time Dad and
Mom spotted spies signaling from a nearby building and informed the FBI.
The story is true but the incident happened about 11PM at night.
At the 3 or 4 PM in the afternoon (often claimed on the Internet)
one could not have spotted the signals.
And why was my father’s call to the FBI answered when several dozen,
perhaps hundreds, of others
were treated as false alarms? Well,
Dad was quite proud of having been in the first Boy Scout Troop in North
Dakota and was able to provide details of the signals which alerted the FBI that
this was not another crank call false alarm.
The second one that bothers me is the tale of Dad being worried about an
assassination attempt and treating my mother rather gruffly when she searched
for her house keys. What is omitted
on that one in most cases on the Internet is the fact that a bullet struck the
door frame as Dad and Mom were trying to unlock the door – I saw the bullet
hole many times – whenever I used that door.
Omitting the bullet hole makes my father appear mean-tempered to Mom,
which he never was.
When I
was about 10 or 11 and Dad had begun teaching medical hypnosis,
I asked him to teach me. (I
had already seen several hypnosis stage shows and heard our normal dinner table
conversation.) He handed me a
book on Mesmer – a 19th Century translation of Mesmer and his
contemporaries. He insisted that I
not only read it, but that I report
to him what was true, what was
false, and what has been learned
since Mesmer’s day. When I
finished that task, he handed me
another of his books on hypnosis with the same assignment.
I went through 5 or 6 such books, in
some cases with only a chapter or three to read.
It was only AFTER that introduction that Dad allowed me to attend
his course. I took it three times
over the next several years.
Part way
through his course my first time, he
urged me to do stage hypnosis among local high school clubs and things.
He even insisted I use his old vaudeville billing –
THE WORLD’S YOUNGEST AND FASTEST HYPNOTIST.
While I
did adequately and performed for a number of years,
I never lived up to Dad’s billing.
The billing may have been true – after all,
at 11 or so, WORLD’S
YOUNGEST is a valid claim. FASTEST?
I wasn’t bad – after all, I was using my father’s techniques of
rapid induction – but I still feel the billing belongs much more to Dad as a
youngster than it ever did to me.
Many of
you will remember the quote in Dad’s book that hypnosis should not be used as
a parlor game, but should be
primarily employed in medicine and related fields.
So why did he encourage me to do stage hypnosis?
His position on this subject was complex.
He always insisted to his students that they should never forget that his
methods were developed in vaudeville – never demean the research done by some
stage hypnotists. Yet he also
insisted (as I just mentioned) that hypnosis belongs in medicine.
His urging that I perform stage hypnosis was primarily because he felt
strongly that EVERY student in his
course needed to practice rather than just attend lectures,
for without experiencing the varied situations a hypnotist may meet,
how could one understand the reasoning behind the next lesson?
So stage hypnosis was my “homework” in his classes.
Dad’s
initial classes were at the request of the medical community.
But when his methods proved very effective,
a physician – in Newark, New
Jersey if memory serves – found that Dad’s success was cutting into the
income of his hypnosis school. He
began complaining to fellow doctors and to state medical authorities that Dave
Elman was practicing medicine without a license.
Dad was not doing that; in
fact Dad’s stand on the ethics of hypnotherapy and the dividing line between
physicians and hypnotists is an important pillar of the current codes of the
hypnotherapy profession. However,
in the hopes of entrapping the unwary,
the Newark doctor phoned constantly with fictitious scenarios that he
wanted Dad to respond to. The
problem was that I was a “latch-key kid” and got home from school several
hours before my parents. I was the
recipient of dozens of such calls and for an 11 or 12 year old such a call is
very traumatic – police sirens in the background and someone yelling that if
you don’t send your father to where they say,
someone will die. “But Dad
doesn’t treat patients.” “What
sort of kid are you – trying to kill someone?”
If I ever meet that scoundrel I will dismember him.
That
greedy disturbed fool was followed, several
years later, by a very famous member
of the hypnotic community who many of you can identify but I will,
as a gentleman, not
name. The motive again was jealousy
and greed because Dad was more effective. The
man’s weapon? Blackmail.
Not of Dad, but of physicians
who signed up for Dad’s course. He
would threaten the physician with a complaint to have his license revoked on the
premise that paying for Dave Elman’s course was “assisting someone to
practice medicine without a license.” I
have spoken with persons who were present when doctors were threatened in this
manner. I have very severe anger at
this hypnotist to this day because blackmail and false accusations are the tools
of a criminal. I also have
contempt for such a person.
In this
posting I will not attempt to cover my entire talk.
However, some incidents I
consider instructive. Between
our New Jersey home and Manhattan, one
had to cross the Jersey Meadowlands, which
in those days was a rather unpleasant swamp with pig farms on the few items of
land which stuck above the bull rushes. There
was one seven mile segment with no gas stations or other stops and no shoulder
to the road. And the road was
divided so one couldn’t make a U-Turn. Just
as we entered this section, Dad
announced that he had to urinate. He
began to fidget and Mom was remarking about the traffic jam we could see a few
miles further on as one approached the Lincoln Tunnel.
From the back seat I asked, “But
Dad, why don’t you try
auto-suggestion like you taught us last week?”
My memory of the shock and surprise on Dad’s face has ever since made
me listen to my students. I’ve
taught on several faculties, and
students often teach the teacher. As
for Dad’s problem, the
self-hypnosis worked just fine of course.
Among my
father’s many accomplishments, one
that I treasure is the story of the man who was too weak for ANY of the many
kinds of anesthesia drugs available in the 1950’s.
This man required open heart surgery immediately.
His surgeon and his anesthesiologist conferred.
At least one, perhaps both,
was a student of Dad’s. They
called to say their only course would be to use hypnosis,
but could Dad come into the operating room as their “coach?”
He did, and it was the start
of a large number of similar cases.
I will
end with an incident from my parents’ wedding.
Dad was a Leftie, as were all
his children. (Mom claimed to be
ambidextrous, but I suspect she was
a Leftie forced by the schools of her time to “write Rightie.”)
Dad was not only left-handed, he
was also left-footed. In a Jewish
wedding, the bride and groom drink
wine from the same cup, which cup is
then to be crushed under the groom’s foot.
The Best Man took the cup, wrapped
it in a napkin as tradition demanded, and
placed it in the traditional place – behind the groom’s right foot.
The Rabbi told Dad to smash the cup and Dad’s left foot came up and
slammed down, missing the cup.
Dad realized what had happened and went to try again,
but with his right foot. The
Best Man simultaneously realized and moved the cup.
Dad spent the first one to two minutes of married life flat on his butt
in a broken wine cup. The family
delighted in kidding him about it for 40 years.
My
father accomplished a great deal, and
in many fields. His biggest legacy
is probably in medical hypnosis, but
that is not the only one. Not only
did I love him and Mom very much, but
I always realized that those two were both “hard acts to follow.”
DAVE ELMAN, Significant
Dates, Page 1
Significant Dates:
May 6,
1900
David Kopelman is born in
August
9, 1905
Pauline Reffe is born in The Bronx, NY
Approx
1906
Dave witnesses a partially unsuccessful hypnosis attempt.
November
1908
Jacob (Jake) Kopelman (Dave’s father) dies of cancer.
Dave’s
final memory of his father is of hypnosis being used
for pain control so that Jake can play with his children.
`Approx
1913-1914
After studying books on hypnosis and watching vaudeville
hypnotists, Dave hypnotizes
his classmates.
Approx
1914-1921
Dave in vaudeville. For a
portion of this period, Dave’s
billing
is
“The
World’s Youngest and Fastest Hypnotist.”
This was the period in which David Kopelman began to call himself Dave
Elman. This was also the period in
which Dave Elman developed his induction technique and his other unique
procedures in hypnosis. However,
it was also the period in which he developed his mastery of show business
by working as a musician, a comic,
a bit player, and almost any
other on-stage position in vaudeville.
Approx
1921-1926
Dave works as a songwriter for the legendary W. C. Handy and
other music publishers. One
of his best songs is
purchased by Eddie Cantor, becoming
Eddie
Cantor’s theme song.
1922
Dave Elman meets Pauline Reffe.
They would go together for
five years before marrying.
1925
Dave spends the Summer (possibly more) playing Sax in a Jazz
Band in the Catskills.
1927
Dave & Pauline marry.
1928
Birth of son Jacob Kopelman (Jackie Elman).
Nov.
1930
Birth of son Robert Kopelman(Bob Elman).
1936
Jackie Elman dies of pneumonia.
October 1937
Dave Elman launches Hobby Lobby.
Hobby Lobby remains on the radio through the 1940’s
plus some appearances in the 1950’s.
Dec
1938
Birth of son H Larry Elman (“Hobby Lobby Elman”).
Early
(Feb?) 1942
Dave Elman launches War
Bond Auction later
called
Victory
Auction.)
Early (Feb?)
1942
Dave Elman begins assisting in counter-intelligence operations,
in addition to his normal professional activities.
1949
Dave Elman begins teaching medical hypnosis.
The classes
were at the request of the medical community,
and
were initially supported by a local chapter of the
AMA. Later,
the issue of a layman teaching
Physicians became controversial in the AMA.
DAVE ELMAN, Significant
Dates, Page 2
Significant
Dates: (Continued)
1951
Elman Family moves to 304 Brook Avenue,
Passaic, NJ.
This home was large enough to be used for classes
for several years. {The
subsequent move to Clifton, NJ
(Dec 1956) was a move of less than 10 blocks.}
1949-1953
Classes remained primarily in NJ with only a few classes far
enough away to require overnight hotel stays.
1954-1962
Classes all over the country, requiring
Dave & Pauline Elman
to be on the road three months or more at a time.
May or
June 1962
Dave Elman suffers a major heart attack while teaching in
Los Angeles.
1962-1964
While recovering from the heart attack,
Dave Elman writes his
book Findings in Hypnosis (currently titled
Hypnotherapy).
December
5, 1967
Dave Elman dies.
1968-1989
Pauline Elman continues to answer questions on Dave’s
writings
and methods. This is
appropriate because, except for a
few
weeks when recovering from surgery in 1953,
Pauline
attended
and assisted at every class
Dave Elman taught. The
income
from the Elman book and the audio recordings support her.
September
30, 1989 Pauline
Reffe Elman dies.
Also available, the classic book "Hypnotherapy" by Dave Elman
