Special Move Yips - Hypnosis Theory

[Kaoz]

Alright, so a few weeks ago I came across an interesting thread on baidu in which the poster theorizes that Yips might be based on the principles of hypnosis. From what I was able to gather, it was a pretty interesting theory, so I want to try to summarize it for you guys.

You can find the original thread here.

The poster starts out by explaining that when an individual is in a hypnotic state, their senses and behavior can be changed according to the words uttered by the hypnotist. The poster also mentions that the hypnotized individual enters a subconscious state when hypnotized. At this point I want to add a snippet I found myself in a paper discussing hypnosis (Alladin, p7):

For example, some striking parallels have been observed in the mental processes involved in dreaming and hypnosis. [...] Similarly, Furster (1995), in dreaming observed a dissociation between context/sensory input and the cognitive features of dreaming such as altered sense of time, absence of temporality, lack of guiding reality and critical judgement, anchoring in personal experience, and affective coloring.

As you can see, several researchers have found a link between hypnosis and dreaming which is obviously of great relevance to us due to Yukimura's evolved ability being described as a dream.

Moving on, the baidu poster goes on to illustrate his point, that Yukimura utilizes stress-induced hypnosis, by examining the nationals finals match vs Ryoma:

1. Before the match starts, Ryoma tries to provoke Yukimura, but when they actually start playing he's unable to back up his words. Yukimura easily returns all of Ryoma's techniques and while Ryoma might have really just planned to make Yukimura's jacket drop off his shoulders, having his finishing COOL Drive returned like that - even though it's the shot he used to beat Sanada back in Kanto - causes him some stress.
2. During the second point, Ryoma uses the Selfless State to copy a variety of high level moves (Tanishi, Shiraishi, Chitose, Sanada, Kintarou, four of who participated in the semi finals), but once again Yukimura returns them without dropping a sweat. But it's not only that - nevermind just returning the shots, Yukimura basically negates each move's special properties here ("There's always only one ball", "The ball doesn't disappear") and by saying those things he again attacks Ryoma mentally and further contributes to Ryoma's increasing stress level.
3. After that, Ryoma unlocks the Pinnacle of Mastery, but as we all know, Yukimura just prevents him from even touching the ball from that point onwards. Normally you'd expect Yukimura's opponent to despair at this point, but Ryoma gets fired up when playing strong opponents, he still has some fight left in him. There's something noteworthy about what Ryoma says next though, "I'm gonna make you cry", which could be seen as him slowly losing his patience.
4. Ryoma then starts moving the aura around to different parts of his body and even unlocks the second door, however, by now he has already entered a hypnotic-like state. And then there's of course the infamous homerun smash. This might have been caused by a combination of Ryoma's desire to win as well as the stress Yukimura caused during the beginning of the match - once he was in a prime position to score and gain the upper hand, he had become so tense that he missed the shot and due to his nervous system setting out as a result of the psychological burden, he didn't notice the nosebleed afterwards.
5. Yukimura is in control again and because of his nervous system gradually shutting down, Ryoma loses his hearing and eyesight. Having lost those senses, his muscles also stop functioning properly. The poster emphasizes again that now, Ryoma hasn't really lost his five senses, he's just in a hypnotic state which causes his nervous system to malfunction.

That's about it. Again, I didn't come up with any of this, I just tried to replicate it in English to the best of my abilities. I'm also no expert on hypnosis, so I don't know how well the comparison really holds up, however, from the little bit I did read about it, there are some interesting parallels for sure.

What's your guys' take on the topic?

 

[Kaoz]

Nobody? How about this then: assuming you agree with Yips being based on hypnosis, and furthermore assuming Yukimura can't steal his opponents' senses anymore, do you think the new ability he is inevitably going to get will also have something to do with hypnosis? For instance, it could be like a reverse Yips that he uses on himself and his doubles partners that improves performance.

 

[LetalHawk]

Alright, so a few weeks ago I came across an interesting thread on baidu in which the poster theorizes that Yips might be based on the principles of hypnosis. From what I was able to gather, it was a pretty interesting theory, so I want to try to summarize it for you guys.

You can find the original thread here.

The poster starts out by explaining that when an individual is in a hypnotic state, their senses and behavior can be changed according to the words uttered by the hypnotist. The poster also mentions that the hypnotized individual enters a subconscious state when hypnotized. At this point I want to add a snippet I found myself in a paper discussing hypnosis (Alladin, p7):



As you can see, several researchers have found a link between hypnosis and dreaming which is obviously of great relevance to us due to Yukimura's evolved ability being described as a dream.

Moving on, the baidu poster goes on to illustrate his point, that Yukimura utilizes stress-induced hypnosis, by examining the nationals finals match vs Ryoma:

1. Before the match starts, Ryoma tries to provoke Yukimura, but when they actually start playing he's unable to back up his words. Yukimura easily returns all of Ryoma's techniques and while Ryoma might have really just planned to make Yukimura's jacket drop off his shoulders, having his finishing COOL Drive returned like that - even though it's the shot he used to beat Sanada back in Kanto - causes him some stress.
2. During the second point, Ryoma uses the Selfless State to copy a variety of high level moves (Tanishi, Shiraishi, Chitose, Sanada, Kintarou, four of who participated in the semi finals), but once again Yukimura returns them without dropping a sweat. But it's not only that - nevermind just returning the shots, Yukimura basically negates each move's special properties here ("There's always only one ball", "The ball doesn't disappear") and by saying those things he again attacks Ryoma mentally and further contributes to Ryoma's increasing stress level.
3. After that, Ryoma unlocks the Pinnacle of Mastery, but as we all know, Yukimura just prevents him from even touching the ball from that point onwards. Normally you'd expect Yukimura's opponent to despair at this point, but Ryoma gets fired up when playing strong opponents, he still has some fight left in him. There's something noteworthy about what Ryoma says next though, "I'm gonna make you cry", which could be seen as him slowly losing his patience.
4. Ryoma then starts moving the aura around to different parts of his body and even unlocks the second door, however, by now he has already entered a hypnotic-like state. And then there's of course the infamous homerun smash. This might have been caused by a combination of Ryoma's desire to win as well as the stress Yukimura caused during the beginning of the match - once he was in a prime position to score and gain the upper hand, he had become so tense that he missed the shot and due to his nervous system setting out as a result of the psychological burden, he didn't notice the nosebleed afterwards.
5. Yukimura is in control again and because of his nervous system gradually shutting down, Ryoma loses his hearing and eyesight. Having lost those senses, his muscles also stop functioning properly. The poster emphasizes again that now, Ryoma hasn't really lost his five senses, he's just in a hypnotic state which causes his nervous system to malfunction.

That's about it. Again, I didn't come up with any of this, I just tried to replicate it in English to the best of my abilities. I'm also no expert on hypnosis, so I don't know how well the comparison really holds up, however, from the little bit I did read about it, there are some interesting parallels for sure.

What's your guys' take on the topic?

First of all, Yukimura's yips makes you want to stop playing tennis, so I assume that he just creates an emotional state in the user that makes them think that no matter what strategy they use, it just won't work. By doing this, stress is acumulated in the body and as a consequence, it slowly starts shutting down like a machine until it loses everything and you have to forfeit the match.

However, it's true that Hypnosis and Dreaming are related to each other and have similar traits, so it can be of great help when trying to think about how Yuki's evolved yips work. By creating that much stress in the user, they lose their senses because they think they can win and the mind enters into a dreaming state, but I think that mainly is just a damaging blow to one's mental. Someone like Volk or even the pros aren't going to get affected by it because they have such strong mental and are superior to him in almost every way, but when it comes to somebody inferior to him, yips work for a certain period of time. The few exceptions we have seen (Ryoma, Sanada, Kintaro, Tezuka) prove that if you have a really strong willpower and you don't want to lose at all, you can overcome it by just your own strength. If Yuki couldn't put stress by returning everything, granted that it wouldn't work as well and, certainly, it wouldn't affect everybody the same way.

I think that Yukimura realized that at this stage, Yips nor his Dream technique will work, because at the WC there's plenty of people who are superior to him and don't feel the emotional pressure that he creates, so it's just useless. Assuming that by his last match he will stop yipping everybody, the best thing that he should work on is on improving his base stats and get a new, strong technique, or either an aura.

 

[Hardy]

The poster emphasizes again that now, Ryoma hasn't really lost his five senses, he's just in a hypnotic state which causes his nervous system to malfunction.

I just read Yukimura vs Sanada again to see if this holds up and it really doesn't though... Sanada doesn't go through all those stages and he admits he lost 3 of his senses after just the first point. Furthermore, the way he reacts to losing his senses is completely different to Ryoma's muscles malfunctioning -as Sanada manages to keep swinging like an idiot.

I always saw Ryoma's ¨Homerun Smash¨ as just him having incredibly poor tact due to being Yipped btw.

Edit: offtopic but maybe, in the future, you should write just your own view on the topic in a summarized way in the first post, then the detailed explanation in a post after it. I wouldn't be surprised if people feel a bit overwhelmed by such a huge explanation -although I do like those- even though the topic itself could easily interest most people here. Just trying to give a hand here ^^

 

[Philia]

Yips affect different characters differently. Kin-chan also lost his senses within a point. It took Ryoma 4 games.
I guess it's up to players will. Kin-chan's goal was just to stall for time. Mo real desire here. So he got yipped easily.Ryoma wanted to beat Yukimura and he hates losing. That's why yips took time to get in to Ryoma. Sanada was always at a mental disadvantage against Yukimura. He never managed to beat Yukimura. But he had sheer will power so managed to break through yips.

 

[TFJ]

Yips affect different characters differently. Kin-chan also lost his senses within a point. It took Ryoma 4 games.
I guess it's up to players will. Kin-chan's goal was just to stall for time. Mo real desire here. So he got yipped easily.Ryoma wanted to beat Yukimura and he hates losing. That's why yips took time to get in to Ryoma. Sanada was always at a mental disadvantage against Yukimura. He never managed to beat Yukimura. But he had sheer will power so managed to break through yips.

Sanada never broke out of Yips. He would most certainly would still have lost even if he had mastered Clutch in the tiebreak.

Will Yukimura get a Nightmare ability. Will he get a self hypnosis buff (strange). Will he give his opponents Guillain Barre (still fits with abilities affecting the nerves).
Interesting thing, Yukimura fought vs Volk/Frankensteiner without Yips, Dreams. I think that is a pretty big upgrade, sadly he had Tokugawa support so maybe Yuki didn't do much. But I was just thinking Yukimura always shows he crushes MS opponents, but he always uses Yips anyways. Did he just enjoy Yiping people, was it for an even more 100% victory, is his stamina low or something. Like if he can win without Yips, I find it odd that he uses it everytime. (Although if he didn't use it I would say it is dumb that he isn't).
Maybe he wanted to stop playing with Kintaro or show him true power.
He actually needed it vs Ryoma.
Maybe he was paying respect to Sanada.
Vs Fuwa and Frankensteiner he went to Dreams. Most people think he uses dreams on strong players who are too confident, but then again Ryoma was a strong confident player and he still got Yipped eventually.

 

[Anera]

How about this then: assuming you agree with Yips being based on hypnosis, and furthermore assuming Yukimura can't steal his opponents' senses anymore, do you think the new ability he is inevitably going to get will also have something to do with hypnosis? For instance, it could be like a reverse Yips that he uses on himself and his doubles partners that improves performance.

I also think as LetalHawk, the use of yips is definitely over. Firstly, I don't see any point for him to use it anymore, except against weaker opponents (mostly MSers) and secondly for the sake of the scenario, it's probably more interesting for his character to find a new ability. He's resourceful, a lot more than the other Japanese MSers (well, Atobe is an exception), he'll find a way.

If I still have to consider this possibility, the more interesting would be to hypnotize the partner to improve his performance but I don't think it could even happen. I mean, Yukimura is mainly a singles player and the only player with who it's interesting to play with is obviously Tokugawa. With Howling, no need to use yips. (I'm not even sure it would work anyway)

However, I think this theory is very interesting and the most likely I've read until now.

 

[Jyten]

Hypnosis is a pretty solid theory about Yips. I'm pretty sold on it. I think Yukimura's Yips is on accident though. I think between his personality (cocky/bored) and the gap between his skill and others causes this hypnosis (already impossible to win). I think after reading this, Yips is basically making people so bored/uncaring that they can't see, feel, and think. After all, hypnosis is all about believing the hypnotizer. And since he hypnotizes with out realizing it, it's super believable.

Yukimura's next ability could be more specific than a Nightmare but more like a suggestion. If his Yips doesn't auto trigger, he could fool his opponents into thinking it's much hotter outside than it normally is. Or that pushing a flaw in their play more. Like if you have a weak back hand, Yuki makes you think it's much worse than it actually is. Or the reverse of this, where they make you think your back hand is much better than it actually is. But his character would need a lot of build up for an ability like this. Irie/Fuji is much better suited for this ability.

With out character build up. He's naturally gifted at returning nearly every shot in a very plain manner. His ability is kinda boring. Against weaker opponents he looks like a god. To stronger opponents, he just looks like a solid tennis player. It's hard to build on that, with out making him superior in all areas. Howling is probably the best we can hope for.

 

[TFJ]

Dementia is also a huge mental illness. That would be very dark and extreme though.
Maybe reversion to childhood or younger days.