Strangely, I have just this minute taken delivery of “The Power of Your Subconscious Mind” by Joseph Murphy. Another one to add to the vast collection.

Cheers

Pete

Thanks Pete, great to hear from you and I look forward to developing your acquaintance in the Platinum members area 🙂

There are entire books written on the subject of how we go about making sure that someone responds to our suggestions, but your list is a very good place to start.

Thank you, Adam

I know from my own experience that when I give my clients an in-depth explanation of the hypnotic process and link the process to real brain physiology, the effect de-mystifies hypnosis and gives them insight into what is really going on inside. When the client sees that what is occurring in their life is because they are “human” and not broken and beyond repair, that will often create “lightbulb moments” for them. It also demonstrates that they can move forward and have more choices.

I believe that even though a competent therapist will have completed a lot of the changework with clients during the intake session before the formal induction. The therapist may have used questioning techniques such as the meta model or even ericksonian patterns to create that transderivational search, the client still expects (most of the time) to be hypnotised to overcome the presenting issues. I think that for most clients this is an expectation and as therapists we should respect that.

In my own work I will use NLP language patterns a lot of the time before engaging in the formal induction. In fact I think that this make the trancework even more effective.

As a therapist, I believe we need a number of things in place before inducing trance, such as:

Trust
Rapport
Congruence
Empathy
Belief in self and client
Positive expectation

The above is not exhaustive, however it is a good start to put clients at ease and facilitate a smooth transition to hypnosis.

These are just the ramblings of an old therapist.. 🙂

Pete

Only just started reading your posts Adam, just joined your plantinum club and enjoying it.

Thanks for that Matt, some fabulous thoughts there and you are quite right in many respects.

I would hasten to add, regardless of reputation and confidence levels, the individual (client) is still aware that therapy is going to be done and that the modality used is hypnotherapy, so will have some expectation helping them move forward, they are not wholly naíve.

The research conducted by Hull, then subsequently Barber and co, was not always done by them personally. That is, just because they organised and set up the research, they did not always conduct the hypnosis sessions themselves, and they would offer up some standardised processes so that every person got dealt with in the same manner, tone and with the same words being used each time. This tended to remove as much of the individual’s confidence levels and other variables as possible – therefore, it was hypnosis being measured and not the hypnotist.

All that you say is absolutely applicable in our therapy rooms, absolutely. But in a lot of the research, the types of questions you pose here were considered and dealt with as much as possible.

I think induction has a very important place in our work, though many do disagree with me and there is indeed a wide variety of reasons for their use in my own work for sure.

Thanks Matt, thoroughly enjoyed reading that response.

I tend to lean towards the idea that if a therapist has a solid reputation, and really does believe in his ability to induce change in subjects, then this will likely be communicated unconsciously with the subject. This could serve to enhance responsiveness and susceptibility, and then therapy can be administered successfully without any induction at all.

Apparently Clark Hull could induce hypnosis just by staring into subjects eyes until they ‘went under’ so to speak. For a guy to do this he must clearly have had confidence, respect and power, all drawn from his education and reputation. It therefore does not surprise me that his experiments showed powerful responses from people even when they were not induced into hypnosis.

So, with that in mind, now take a therapist with less confidence, and no real reputation who is working with a client that is of the impression for the therapy to work then there must be some kind of hypnotic technique utilised. The subject would probably then need to experience a formal induction to increase their expectations and responsiveness, because without it they might feel ‘let down’ or like that had wasted their money.

Essentially, the formal induction sometimes plays an important part in the ‘role play’ or negotiation of therapy between client and therapist which may be crucial to success, not because it generates a shift in state, but a shift in expectations and beliefs.

So the point of this post is to say – despite Mr Hulls findings, lets not underestimate what a powerful tool an induction can be!