what is hypnosis and why would we use it?

What is hypnosis?

Hypnosis has kept strange company. Jay Haley said the hypnosis hangs out with marginal people, and that whenever there’s something strange happening in the therapy community, there’s usually a hypnotherapist in the wings. It has been thought of as the work of the devil, definitely out of the ordinary.

Hypnosis became popular about the same time as general anaesthesia, and borrowed some of the jargon - putting someone out to it, putting them under, making them unconscious, unaware, forgetting their experience - some of which persists today.

I remember my mother saying that she would never let anyone hypnotise her. She didn’t want anyone getting inside her head.

There was a fascinating scene in the 1931 film “Dracula” where von Helsing was challenging Dracula who looked at him with a “hypnotic” gaze and said, in a strong Eastern European accent “come …” and von Helsing looked confused, obviously struggling, shook his head, and then, with considerable effort, regained his composure. Dracula commented “You have a very strong will”.

Erickson broke the “hypnotic spell” when he spoke about the common everyday trance where any of us can focus and become absorbed in reading a book or watching a movie. This brought hypnosis down to earth from the esoteric weirdness it previously inhabited, and made it more accessible to us all.

Instead of trying to define hypnosis, which will create endless arguments about what it “really” is, we can make an observation, that hypnosis is an experience where there is focus and absorption that we can mutually agree on as hypnosis. We can then explore how to use it to reduce suffering.

A young mans had a fixation on the appearance of his ears, had plastic surgery without benefit, and was adamant that hypnosis would cure him. He saw a psychiatrist who was trained traditional hypnosis and said he was not hypnotisable. He came into my office, sat in a chair, and before I could say anything, he spontaneously showed all the evidence.

Why would we use hypnosis?

For me, the major contribution that hypnosis offers is EXPERIENCE. When we ask a client what they want, what would be helpful … we can become clearer about where we can usefully get to. If we invite this person to have an experience as if they have already arrived at that destination, they can have the bodily felt experience of having arrived. Hypnosis is wonderful as a way of generating experience.

A woman had been trying to lose weight with a whole list of diets, but none of them resulted in a lasting result. She was invited into hypnosis and enjoyed the experience as if time had past, and she’d achieved the weight she wanted, and then to learn that experience and get familiar with it. She was able to bring her experience back to the present moment, and was able to know that her desired result was inevitable.

Another woman told me she wanted to stop smoking so she could live long enough meet her first grandchild. In hypnosis I invited her to imagine that she was holding the baby and then to imagine that she was blowing cigarette smoke into the baby’s face. She was so horrified with her experience, that from that moment, she found she was unable to smoke.