Therapeutic Trances

Introduction

This is a book about the therapeutic use of trance states. It is written primarily for therapists, although other health professionals may find applications as well. Based on the seminal work of Milton H. Erickson, M.D., it is intended to provide a sense of how therapists may cooperate with clients to translate problems into solutions.

A major premise of the book is that hypnosis is an excellent model for describing how experience is generated. Hypnosis is conceptualized as an experientially absorbing interactional sequence that produces an altered state of consciousness wherein self-expressions begin to happen automatically (i.e., without conscious mediation). As we will see, this naturalistic approach enables both the induction ...