Chapter 56 Hypnosis
OVERVIEW.
Hypnosis (i.e., under hypnosis) is a state resembling sleep but induced by suggestion whereby the individual is responsive to imaginative experiences. During a session, the individual is guided to respond to suggestions for changes in thoughts, behaviors, sensations, perceptions, or subjective experiences.1
Abreaction is a specific technique that involves the reliving (dramatic) of traumatic events under hypnosis for the treatment of trauma victims (e.g., child abuse cases; posttraumatic stress disorder). Patients may present with massive psychogenic amnesia, or loss of a single functional system such as limb paralysis or psychogenic blindness. The technique serves to release repressed material that must then be followed up with psychotherapy to process the material.2
SUMMARY: CONTRAINDICATIONS AND PRECAUTIONS.
Note: Health care providers should probably be informed if their patients are undergoing hypnosis so that a patient’s induced behaviors don’t become confused with a real deterioration in medical status. In 1984, Smith and Kamitsuka3 reported a 13-year-old girl who used self-hypnosis to treat anxiety/tension headaches and confused health care workers into thinking that subsequent hypnotic-induced myopathies had an organic basis.
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