Ian Dryden

People actually appear to believe they are Elvis Presley, Sophie Tucker, or Olivia Newton-John.

Muhammad Ali, dressed in a bright red robe, reclines on the apron of a full-size boxing ring set up in the Regency Ballroom of San Diego’s Le Baron Hotel. From across the room a stocky man with a pompadour hairdo, wearing a blue iridescent suit, stares at the fighter. He is stage hypnotist Dr. Michael Dean, Ph.D.

Dr. Dean: “I teach people to believe in themselves."

Ian Dryden

Ali sits up straight on the ring apron. “Hey you,” he shouts across the room. Are you a hyp-no-tist?"

Dean tilts his chin up slightly. He takes a deep breath and seems to swell up. “Yes," he says. He pierces Ali with a steady gaze. He has eyes that would make an average man turn away.

“You are a little baby,” he tells one man. The man crawls around the stage, then cuddles in Dean's lap."

Ian Dryden

But Ali is not an average man. He jumps to the floor and fixes Dean with a stare of his own—the Ali Whammy. “You mean you can really hypnotize Norton and make him do something he couldn’t do otherwise?’ “Yes.” Dean never takes his eyes from Ali. “You know I can. You’ve been doing it yourself for fifteen years—self-hypnosis, that is.” Sportswriters, sparring partners, and money men scattered around the ballroom are silent while the two men wage their staredown. “I don’t want you to be hypnotizing Norton,” Ali declares, stepping toward Dean. “I’m the only one who’s going to be putting him to sleep." He talks loud and fast. Dean tries to speak, but Ali doesn’t yield. “Hypnosis," he snorts. “There ain’t no such thing."

Dean claims he was flat broke when he moved to San Diego and began working the Catamaran Hotel.

Ian Dryden

“You know there is," Dean inserts with his gaze still steady. “All this time, you’ve been psyching other people out. Now you’re trying to psych yourself in." Dean doesn’t flinch as Ali strides up to him purposefully. “You’re overcompensating." Dean shows Ali a disdainful smile. “You’re not what you used to be. You’ve slipped, Ali." Ali waves an arm in the air. He is irritated. “You’re getting old," Dean persists. “So you have to psych yourself. You’re not what you used to be."

“I’m getting outta here.” Ali interrupts, and with that he stalks off.

Dean sings a fair country-western ballad, which is unusual for a man named Sanford I. Berman.

Ian Dryden

The next day, a week before the first of three Muhammad Ali-Ken Norton fights— the one in which Norton broke Ali's jaw and took the decision — Ali’s trainer Angelo Dundee threatened to take Norton before the State Athletic Commission. He questioned the legality of hypnosis in boxing. He also threatened to bring his own whammy man, then in retirement in Georgia, to San Diego for the fight. Witnesses say he was only half-kidding.

What kind of man mau-maus Muhammad Ali? Dr. Michael Dean claims to have hypnotized 125,000 people in a career that encompasses county fairs. Las Vegas, and fifteen years of weekend engagements in San Diego at the Catamaran Hotel and the Midway Fun Center. Modern science accepts hypnosis as a valid phenomenon even though there is no objective way of identifying or measuring the hypnotic trance; and yet many people, like Muhammad Ali, refuse to believe it exists. Such subjects are moved with almost religious force when a master showman like Dean exposes their ignorance.

Hypnosis is his theatrical gimmick. His billing, “King of San Diego Show Business,” says as much about local audiences as it does about Dean’s skill as an entertainer. But Dean is more than a stage hypnotist. When he isn’t busy performing at county fairs or the Gaslight Room in the Midway Fun Center he prepares and delivers success seminars—essentially pep rallies for jaded salesmen and success aspirants. He is a prophet of positive thinking, which may in part explain his status as a self-made San Diego real estate millionaire, owner of five Dr. Michael Dean Enterprises companies and a boxing gym, Michael Dean’s Boxing Club of America, Inc., located at 3086 Fairmount Avenue. Dean is also a recording star. He sings a fair country-western ballad, which is unusual for a man named Sanford I. Berman. Dr. Michael Dean is an alias. And his pompadour hairdo is a wig.

He was born in a small Minnesota town. Sandy Berman, the man nightclub audiences never see, flirted with show business as a teenager and was radio announcer for the state high school basketball championships in Minnesota before he entered college. At Northwestern University he majored in Speech, working his way through college as a taxi driver, singing bartender, and member of a singing trio. His introduction to hypnosis came in a college class on parapsychology. And after fifteen years of self-supported study under such notables as Dr. S .I. Hayakawa and the late Dr. Irving Lee, a a stint in the army, and the development of an unusually resonant and commanding voice, he earned a Ph.D. in semantics.

Before he received his doctorate, he had already launched a profitable show business career as a hypnotist in Chicago bars and nightclubs. He also taught effective communications and success seminars while still a teaching assistant in graduate school, using his real name, Sanford I. Berman. Then Sanford Berman faded as a public person, and Dr. Michael Dean took front stage.

Dean claims he was flat broke when he moved to San Diego and began working the Catamaran Hotel. He made his first investment in real estate before the current San Diego property boom. Today he estimates that the value of his property has climbed to $3,500,000. He recently bought his wife a Cadillac. When talking about the car Dean seesaws between a real enthusiasm for conspicuous consumption and a candidness which shows he understands the symbolic value in the word Cadillac. “Why shouldn't I buy my wife a Cadillac? I can afford it,” he will say nonchalantly at success seminar lectures while he whips up audience enthusiasm for the good life. But then at lunch, speaking with an interviewer, he seems a trifle embarrassed by the car. “Look. It’s for my wife. I drive a station wagon."

Dean looks like a corpulent Jerry Lewis with slicked-back hair and glittering eyes. He is a gregarious man, varying his moods from sentimental familiarity and confidential modesty to fierce bragging and savage disdain for people and groups who have offended him. Dean's hobby is hypnotizing athletes and teaching them the power of positive suggestion, a la Vince Lombardi. His experience with Ken Norton has blossomed into a dominant interest. Sport is an arena where his two main teachings—concentration via hypnosis and the power of positive suggestion—are essentials. Besides Norton, Dean has hypnotized the San Diego Mariners, as a team; San Diego Padre pitcher John D’Aquisto; and Will Connally, a former San Diego State basketball star. Connally scored fifteen points above his average in a game after their first session, boasts Dean.

He trumpets his philosophy like an evangelist minister: Set your goals high. You are what you think you are. Think as big as you want to be. Believe you can succeed and you will. Take a deep breath, relax, then re-read this paragraph.

Dean is a success himself, and in his world perhaps that is all that counts. He has an incredible ability to hypnotize the curious. Every time he walks on a stage he gambles that he will succeed. Hypnosis, under the conditions he works in, is difficult and requires great skill and confidence. And Dean is a master craftsman. He is the kind of showman that thrived in vaudeville, and on the Chautauqua circuit before that.

Patrons begin lining up at least an hour before either of his two nightly appearances, Friday and Saturday, at the Gaslight Room. There is no generation gap here. The patrons are elderly couples, white-shoed executives and their wives, college students, and mod types who go next door to Spanky’s Saloon for a quick drink after buying tickets. Most have made reservations. A guy who looks like Dean’s brother expends a lot of energy keeping the fire lanes open. He makes some enemies doing it. The line is ragged and tense.

Finally the line moves up a three-lane staircase in groups of thirty, flanked by photographs of Dean with Ken Norton, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman. Patrons present their tickets at the door and waitresses seat them at long banquet tables placed perpendicular to a bright-lit stage on which three rows of scarred, wooden chairs are carefully arranged. The decor is red and plush, with false colonnades and metal fixtures that glow dully—synthetic Gay Nineties.

Then the lights dim. Dean’s two-man orchestra plays a few original compositions, exits the stage, and then a country-western record sung by Michael Dean, “Anytime You’re Feeling Lonely,” starts up. People are still tense after the long wait. They look on their guard, as though they expect Dean to yank them out of their seats and hypnotize them against their will. But when Dean walks on stage and, after a brief patter, invites anyone who wants to be hypnotized to come up and join him, the rush is on.

People battle each other up the stairs to stage. The available chairs on stage fill up quickly. The latecomers in this game of musical chairs stand in a group behind the rows of seats. Dean calls for silence and the overflows reluctantly leave the stage.

Dean speaks in a clear, authoritative voice to the group on stage, the oldest a business executive in his mid-forties. “Your eyes are getting heavy,” suggests Dean. “You feel very relaxed and your eyes are tired. They want to close. You are completely relaxed.” Dean keeps telling the group that their eyes are getting heavy. Some eyes close, a few people let their chins drop to their chests; other stare at Dean as if they were in a stare-down contest. Dean commands all of them to open their eyes.

He selects fourteen subjects and seats them, boy girl boy girl, in fourteen chairs placed in a line across the stage. The other chairs are removed. Dean faces his subjects. “You are going deeper and deeper into a state of relaxation. You are relaxing more and more. As I count to ten you will go deeper and deeper into a state of relaxation. When I count to ten and stamp my foot you will be relaxed.” Dean counts to ten and stamps his foot. The subjects nod, heads on chests. He tells them that they are watching the funniest movie they have ever seen. They begin to laugh, several uncontrollably. Dean tells them that when he stamps his foot again they will be awake. He stamps his foot and they sit up as if nothing has happened.

Dean approaches a girl who sits on one end of the row of chairs. “Are you hypnotized?” he asks. She shakes her head, no. He takes her hand. “Are you sure you’re not hypnotized?” She smiles and shakes her. head again. Suddenly he jerks her hand and she collapses like a rag doll. Dean goes through the same act with two people sitting near her and they collapse as well. One of the women sitting on stage whispers to the man beside her. “Did that really happen?"

Dean puts the whole group again into the funniest movie they have ever seen, and this time the laughter is nearly hysterical. Then he tells them that the movie has changed. “It is now the saddest movie you have ever seen." Several of the subjects begin to cry loudly. “They shot the dog,” moans the business executive, snuffling.

Dean tells two subjects to leave the stage. He explains to the audience that they are resisting slightly. “They must work at something that requires a lot of reading and use of their conscious minds.” He proceeds to ask each of the people left if they are hypnotized.

He stands in front of each subject, takes a hand, asks them conversationally, “Are you hypnotized?” Then he jerks the hand unexpectedly and the subject collapses, inert. The men from the warm-up band stand behind the chairs to keep the subjects from falling to the floor.

Finally the real fun begins. Dean plants suggestions in each subject. “You are a little baby,” he tells one man. The man crawls around the stage, then cuddles in Dean's lap. He tells another man that the microphone is Raquel Welch, and the man takes the microphone to his chair and begins to make mad, passionate, inept love with it. Dean tells all of the subjects they are naked, and they all run behind the curtains. He gets them to sing and dance. People actually appear to believe they are Elvis Presley, Sophie Tucker, or Olivia Newton-John. A chicano George Harrison impersonator speaks with an English accent before singing “Rocky Raccoon.”

After the show is over, Dean removes his hypnotic spell and customarily gives the subjects positive reinforcement to perform better in school, lose weight, stop smoking, or stop biting fingernails. Most of the subjects seem to remember nothing of the performance. Some continue to deny that they are hypnotized until they have woken up several times with their shirts unbuttoned, hugging a microphone, or sitting on the floor with their shoes off. Dean parades smugly through the audience after the performance, confident that he has proven once again the validity of hypnosis to a new congregation of doubters.

What is hypnosis? Like the scientists. Dean has no conclusive answer. “The standard definition of hypnosis is a state of concentrated relaxation and suggestibility,” he says. “In a way hypnosis and religion are the same things. They have the same three variables—relief, faith, and the power of suggestion. Billy Graham is one of the great modern hypnotists. He doesn’t know it, though.” Dean shakes his head. “Jesus Christ was one of the greatest hypnotists. He embodied the principles of a great semanticist, and was a perfect human being.”

In his larger moments, Dean compares himself to Jesus Christ. In a primitive culture he would possess shaman or witch doctor status. Perhaps that is why he is fascinated by the witch doctor’s modern equivalent—university professors. “I would have been very happy as a professor,” says Dean. “But working as a professor would be a waste. That’s partly why I went into show business—to educate people.”

Besides show business. Dean has two major interests; they are related. He still lectures on an updated Chautauqua circuit managed by his International Communication Institute, teaching success habits at seminars for businessmen throughout the country. His basic text is Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. He underscores Hill’s lessons in positive mental attitude with hypnotic suggestions at each seminar. And the businessmen flock around him as if he were a capitalist guru.

He has held seminars at the Pentagon, and for national concerns like Kaiser Aluminum and the B.F. Goodrich Company. For people who can't attend his seminars. Dean spends much of his time preparing cassettes to be marketed through his company. Educational Cassettes, Inc., on such topics as “The Formula for Success," “Success Is a Journey,” “How to Use Mind Power for Success,” and “The Closed Mind.” Of the cassettes, he says, “I see them as a legacy. Something I can leave behind. When I was a kid I used to play sports all the time. I never picked up a book. Now I spend all my spare time reading and transcribing notes.” He gestures at his study, crammed with every self-improvement and positive mental attitude text published in the last twenty years. “That’s proof that anyone can change. People can change for the better. Closed minds are a tragedy and a waste.”

He shakes his head, then points to his temple. “A person’s real mental and physical power lies in his subconscious. The conscious mind contains all the barriers and hangups. With hypnotism you can get to the unconscious mind. I’m teaching autosuggestion. If you believe, you are. Tell yourself you're a failure and you become a failure. Napoleon Hill, who wrote Think and Grow Rich, and Claude Bristol, author of The Magic of Believing, discovered these principles. That’s what hypnosis is all about.” For many people in San Diego, Michael Dean is what hypnosis is all about. He shrugs it off. “I’m not as smart or as great as people think I am.”

The man and his act certainly represent a strong authoritarian model. Many who have attended his shows or seminars have an unnaturally ugly reaction to any criticism of the good doctor. Others are rabid in their dislike. Religious fundamentalists, who, like Billy Graham, have an intense antipathy to hypnosis, seeing it as a sacrilegious act, have been instrumental in placing a ban on hypnotic demonstrations at local public schools, a ban Dean claims is directed primarily at him. Before the ban, he had been a leading fundraiser for local school charity functions.

Some are more extreme in showing their dislike. A rival hypnotist, who was coincidentally the seventh husband of Lana Turner, was convicted several years ago of paying an undercover police officer to kill Dr. Dean. The rival is now serving seven to ten years in the Arizona State Penitentiary. “I was just lucky,” comments Dean, “that he offered the money to an undercover police officer. One-millionth of a chance." Dean attended the man’s trial. It made him cry, he says.

It is not surprising that a hypnotist excites such extreme passions. Hypnosis, like astrology and transcendental meditation, services a religious need. It is no accident that Dean mentions Billy Graham and Jesus as great hypnotists and expresses genuine scorn for the fundamentalists, who also recognize the religious import of hypnotic phenomena and brand it sinful as a result.

Michael Dean is a preacher himself. He preaches success and the Protestant Ethic. He has taken God and the Bible out of the Ethic and left in the rest. He teaches lessons that seem basic, that people feel they already know because they have heard them all before. “The average American is flat broke at the age of 65,” he says at least several times each day, as if this were an unnecessary tragedy which could be avoided if only people would learn the lessons of concentration and positive suggestion.

“I teach people to believe in themselves, to set goals and achieve them, that there are no limits to their potential. I’m a hundred years ahead of my time for a Ph.D. That means I’m either a genius or insane.” Dean fixes his penetrating stare on his interviewer. “And I know I’m not a genius.” This is one of his favorite lines, and Dr. Dean believes in repetition.