What is Hypnotherapy?

By Eric Greenleaf PhD 

In early hypnosis, focus was achieved by gazing at a pendulum or listening intently to the hypnotist’s voice. Some hypnotists enjoy having their patient gaze deeply into the hypnotist’s eyes. Then there develops in a patient a sort of “soft focus” or broad attention; unhurried, relaxed, curious, and expectant. The patient’s gaze turns inward in a sort of inner search for resolution of his or her troubles, pain, or confusion. Sometimes hypnotists accompany this search with their own words of help or comfort. As one of my patients said: “You’re talking to me, yet you’re not talking to me. You’re talking to all of me. I like it!”

Do you, by turning inward, find more of you? Well, yes. And this “more” is what hypnotists call the “unconscious mind.” After all, our hearts beat and our lungs breathe without much conscious planning, and I our bodies digest and excrete and see and hear without conscious instructions. And this sort of thing also goes on during sleep, when we literally are unconscious. And so do learning, thinking, experiencing, and planning continue while we sleep. In dreams, this experimental, exploratory, and highly original thinking in images is said to be unconscious.

The notion of hypnotherapy is to help people, by focusing and searching inwardly, utilize all their learning and skills to resolve their problems, and to do so with the aid of unconscious learning and understanding. What scientists do when they “dream up” inventions and theories, what diplomats do when they “sleep on it” before solving problems of state, what athletes do when preparing for a match by “visualizing” the flight of the ball—this is the sort of thing that hypnotized patients do to apply themselves to difficult problems of living.

Hypnosis is based on respect for people as whole organisms, in all that complexity and unique experience that has made them who they are. It may be thought of as a state of mind that can imitate many of the original and useful actions of the mind, body, and spirit. In hypnotic trance, a person may experience reduced pain, heightened sensation, strong emotion, remembering and forgetting, imagining and creativity, and an enhanced sense of self.

Patients come for hypnosis fearing that it involves “giving up your will” to another person, or being compelled to do embarrassing things, such as the antics that stage hypnotists demonstrate for the amusement of their audiences. The idea that the patients may grow to trust themselves more through hypnotic dreaming has not yet become part of their expectations. When it does, the surprise and delight they evince are very moving.

In psychotherapy, two or more persons sit in chairs in a room. One may lie on a couch or pillows. Gesture is generally confined, as is movement. There are no integrated, complex actions such as occur in sports, sex, war, adventure. There is talk, and the most generous range of emotion and thought and dramatic circumstance. Terror and joy are experienced intensely, but as things in the theater or at the movies, or in dreams or reverie.

Hypnotherapy organizes and directs these dreams for the patient’s benefit.

The “dreams” of therapy are often unresolved situations, interrupted by fear or anxiety. The “unfinished business,” “fixation,” “impasse,” or “bind” of a given life is brought to the therapist’s attention. He or she must guide the patient through the ambiguity and uncertainty that have brought that life’s development to a halt. The discussion of meaning or pattern in a person’s life is helpful, but a type of conversation that promotes action or change is what is called for, not simply “interpretations”. Hypnotherapy helps motivate us to pursue our goals in our own way, in our own good time, and using our own unconscious resources.