I don’t often tell people I do hypnotherapy anymore.
Very few people distinguish between hypnosis and hypnotherapy ie hypnosis for a therapeutic purpose.
The explanation my first mentor used was that one was given Catholic approval by Pope Pius XII in 1956, and the other was not.
In casual conversations I got tired of the discussions about “Is that stuff you see on stage/TV real?” and “Can you make me cluck like a chicken / quack like a duck?”
[My current answers: “Almost always. Yes.” and “I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t already able to do that for themselves so I’ve never tried.”]
People who came in to see me would have all these magical ideas about what hypnosis was about. I didn’t mind the twirling fob watch, or “what if I do something I didn’t want to do” questions. The ones that bothered me were those that expected me to snap my fingers, put them to sleep, and have them wake up cured. The “wave a magic wand” idea.
A friend of mine was a counselor for many years and found a similar problem.
Fortunately he did a training class back in the 70s where they got him to make a magical wand out of a TV antennae and a coin. The coin was cut into the shape of a star and fixed to the top of the TV antennae, which was conveniently extendable for easy storage.
Since then every time a person came in wanting someone to “wave a magic wand so I can be cured” he would bring out his wand from his drawer and wave it around mysteriously with a few strange words and a tap.
Then he would ask them if they were cured.
When they said no, he would put the wand back in the drawer and say “Oh well, I suppose we’ll have to try something else then.”
He hasn’t been assaulted by anyone so far.
-Dr Martin Russell
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4 Comments
Having never really been to a hypnotherapist, are you able to hypnotize a person and take them back to a memory or series of memories?
If you go back to a memory without using hypnosis it is called remembering, or nostalgia, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or some other name, depending on the context.
Yes hypnosis can be used to assist people to remember, but one of my original trainers did a demonstration of deliberating implanting a false memory into someone for the Australian investigative journalism TV program called “Four Corners”. Fun to watch.
Hypnosis and memory are very powerful but tricky topics.
Thank you Dr. Russell. I do realize that it would be much easier to guide a patient when they are in their most receptive state, whatever that may be. Life is tricky when you don’t remember correctly too. How often are our memories actually factual?
I don’t think “truth” or “fact” is a very useful concept. It’s always subjective at least in human terms.
In practical terms when people have come to me for hypnosis to remember (or forget) I have more interest in their purpose in wanting this eg to win an argument with their spouse
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