Trance and Treatment

In this second edition of Trance and Treatment, the Spiegels, drawing on their combined clinical experiences and on relevant research literature, have revisited and updated their integrative framework for understanding hypnosis. They continue to stress the importance of individual differences in hypnotic responsiveness as assessed through their well-known Hypnotic Induction Profile. In numerous and remarkably wide-ranging clinical examples they illustrate their reliance on hypnotic ritual as the transactional context for personological and diagnostic assessments and for accordingly tailored interventions. Trance and Treatment is a richly documented exposition of today's arguably most encompassing and challenging trance-based model of hypnosis and hypnotic intervention. Auke Tellegen, Ph.D., University of Minnesota

This book provides a brief, disciplined technique for mobilizing and learning from an individual's capacity to concentrate. Putting to rest both fears about hypnosis and overblown statements of its efficacy, this compelling volume brings scientific discipline to a systematic exploration of the clinical uses and limitations of hypnosis.

What is hypnosis? Despite widespread misconceptions, hypnosis is not a treatment in itself; instead, it is a facilitator—a useful diagnostic tool that can help the practitioner choose an appropriate treatment modality and accelerate various primary treatment strategies.

The second edition of this remarkable work (first published 25 years ago) is written to provide both beginning and seasoned practitioners with a brief, disciplined technique for mobilizing and learning from an individual's capacity to concentrate. Putting to rest both exaggerated fears about hypnosis and overblown statements of its efficacy, this compelling volume brings scientific discipline to a systematic exploration of the clinical uses and limitations of hypnosis.

The challenge was to develop a clinical measurement that could transform a fascinating amalgam of anecdotes, speculations, clinical intuitions and observations, and laboratory advances into a more fruitful and systematic body of information. Thus was born the authors' Hypnotic Induction Profile (HIP), a crucial 10-minute clinical assessment procedure that relates the spectrum of hypnotizability to personality style, psychopathology, and treatment outcome.

Structured to reflect the flow of a typical evaluation and treatment session and highlighted by case examples throughout, this remarkable synthesis describes how to use the HIP, reviews relevant literature, and details principles and short- and long-term treatment strategies for smoking control; eating disorders; anxiety, concentration, and insomnia; phobias; pain control; psychosomatic disorders and conversion symptoms; trichotillomania; stuttering; and acute and posttraumatic stress disorders and dissociation. Meticulously referenced and indexed, this in-depth work concludes with an appendix on the interpretation and standardization of the HIP.
This unique work stands out in the literature because

• It is written both as an introduction for practitioners new to hypnosis and as an in-depth guide for practitioners with wide experience in hypnosis.
• Unlike current clinical works, it emphasizes the importance of performing a systematic assessment of hypnotizability to identify, measure, and utilize a given patient's optimal therapeutic potential—a process that, until now, has been relegated to clinical intuition.
• It describes...read more...