THE POWER THAT MOST HYPNOTISTS DON’T EVEN REALISE THEY HAVE.
Hypnotists are sitting on a power most do not realise they have, a psychologist claims. Dr Peter Marshall, creator of The Trance Theory of Mental Illness, explains.
Hypnotherapists today often like to give themselves sexy titles that suggest they are more than mere hypnotists and only use hypnosis as a sort of anaesthetic to put people under ,so that they can carry out a correctional operation on their mind while they are in a receptive state.
They shirk to call themselves hypnotists and instead use the term hypnotherapist. This is, to some extent, an attempt to distance themselves from the frivolity associated with hypnotism in its stage act form. They often go even further and present themselves with professional titles such as hypno-analyst, hypno-analytical psychotherapist, hypno-dynamic psychotherapist, cognitive hypnotherapist, behavioural hypnotherapist, cognitive-behavioural hypnotherapist, and so on, suggesting there is something vulgar and base about a mere hypnotist. Presumably they feel that these professional roles are more respectable than a mere hypnotist and the technique use that they imply is more effective.
How wrong they are, for they are failing to see that they have at their fingertips the most powerful curative technique of all, and it does not require the use of any complicated procedure other than an understanding of the conscious and unconscious minds. This is a most interesting area and one that for most is an intriguing mystery.
We learn about science of the physical world at school and we are continuously being encouraged to extend that knowledge in adulthood, with TV programmes devoted to exploring the cosmos and the like. This is the world we can see, and until recently it was the only kind of world that was approved by most people for study. Things you could not see, like the mind, were regarded as airy fairy stuff. Things have begun to change and interest in the mind is gathering pace, with psychology courses now being hugely over-subscribed in schools and colleges.
But what is not yet widely in the public domain is science of the conscious and unconscious itself. Besides researchers in the area, the only ones who dip their toes into this pool in the course of their profession are therapists.
Even here, most of them revert to psychoanalytical, behaviourist, cognitive, humanist, or other psychotherapeutic treatments once they have their client in a trance, but they are not aware that they have, at their fingertips, the most effective treatment of all without resorting to psychotherapy techniques. They are working at the coalface of where psychological disorders actually begin, develop, persist, generate their effect and from where they can also be corrected, for they all amount to trances themselves and nobody understands trances better than a hypnotist. Rather than focusing their attention on getting the patient into a trance, they should understand that when the latter report with symptoms of a psychological disorder they are already in a trance. The therapist can help best by leading them out of it – out of their maladaptive, problematic trance. They can then show them that their malady amounts to a trance, how to recognise it, show them how to avoid entry to the same and how to exit the trance if they fall into it.
What is even more beautiful about this is the fact that it does not contradict any other theory of psychological disorders. Unlike, behaviourism, psychoanalysis, humanist theories and so on, which are mutually exclusive in their explanations of symptoms, the trance theory sits comfortably with all of them, for it is a different level of analysis.
Many of these techniques have drawbacks. Psychoanalysis, for example, is a long process, expensive to the client and it fosters a tendency for introspection, which, itself, can perpetuate the disorder. In fact, research has shown that a patient is more likely to recover without psychoanalysis than with it. The worst outcomes of psychoanalytical treatments come in the form of false memory syndrome, where therapists however wittingly or unwittingly have helped clients to find roots of their problems in childhood events that never happened, and even more insidious - past lives and even alien abductions. Humanist therapy techniques, such as Rogerian counselling, so popular with the emergency services, cause patients to re-experience traumatic experiences that have caused the disorder in the first place and some authorities argue, understandably, that this serves to entrench the effect rather than relieve it.
In contrast, showing a patient that their symptoms amount to a problematic trance, that they can learn to recognise, avoid and exit at will if they fall into it is a simple process with no such drawbacks. There is no need for complication. Cure can be simple, quick and inexpensive.
Dr Peter Marshall is the author of Marshall, P. A HANDBOOK OF HYPNOTHERAPY: A Practitioner’s Guide, published by Oakley Books, ISBN: 978-0-9569784-5-5
See also: Wikipedia/Curative Hypnotherapy/Trance Theory of Mental Illness www.amazon.com/author/drpetermarshall for other publications .