Hypnosis, hypnotizability and treatment

The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis
Howard Sutcher

Abstract

There is broad agreement that a phenomenon we call "hypnosis" exists. However, there is no generally accepted definition of hypnosis. A brief historical overview of the use of hypnosis in healing practices demonstrates how it evolved willy-nilly, and like Topsy, "just growed" into its current status in medicine, psychiatry, psychology and dentistry. The mechanisms underlying hypnosis and how hypnosis differs from other cognitive states are almost totally unknown. With the exceptions of suggestions for pain control, current concepts of high, medium, low or non-hypnotizability do not reliably predict clinical outcomes for most medical, psychiatric or dental disorders. We do know that it is relatively easy to reliably evaluate hypnotizability, but other than choosing volunteers or subjects who will or will not exhibit traditional hypnotic phenomena, we rarely know what to do with that evaluation with actual clinical patients. Four case studies, representative of many others, chosen retrospectively from a practice that spans 45 years, illustrate how traditional or modern hypnotizability assessment is irrelevant in the clinical setting. Although the four patients differed obviously and vastly in hypnotizability, they all benefited f...Continue Reading

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Citations

Nov 13, 2008·The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis·William J Matthews
Nov 13, 2008·The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis·Rodger Kessler
Nov 13, 2008·The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis·Steven Jay LynnSean Barnes
May 27, 2010·The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis·Howard Sutcher
May 16, 2015·The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis·Gary R ElkinsJim Sliwinski
Mar 29, 2020·The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis·Douglas Flemons

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