Essentials of Clinical Hypnosis – Steven Jay Lynn & Irving Kirsch

As in the field of psychology generally, within the area of hypnosis there is often a gap between the world of the laboratory and the world of clinical practice. Many clinicians complain that most research in hypnosis fails to address the issues that they confront daily in their practices. On the other side of the divide, researchers may feel that their work is ignored by most clinicians.

Essentials of Clinical Hypnosis: An Evidence-Based Approach was born out of a desire to bridge the gap between research and practice, and to bring hypnosis into the mainstream of science-based clinical psychotherapy by introducing a wide readership to the benefits of incorporating hypnotic methods into clinical work. The authors are best known as researchers and theorists. Between them, they have authored well over 300 journal articles, most of them focused on scientific research. But they are also active clinical psychologists who have both practiced and supervised psychotherapy. Their previous books, The Handbook of Clinical Hypnosis and the Casebook of Clinical Hypnosis, both published by the American Psychological Association, are widely regarded as landmark volumes in the field.

Essentials of Clinical Hypnosis represents the culmination of their individual thinking about hypnosis, as well as the fruits of a twenty year collaboration. Essentials is a clinical book with a research base. The clinical strategies and techniques presented are ones Lynn and Kirsch have used in their practice and taught to their graduate students and thousands of professionals around the globe. Many of the specific techniques they describe have been validated in clinical trials and outcome studies, and their approach to most strategic issues has been shaped by their understanding of the research literature in hypnosis, psychotherapy, and psychopathology. If there is a fundamental difference between this book and the many other guides that have been published on clinical applications of hypnosis, it is the degree to which the principals and practices the authors describe are evidence-based. Hence, the subtitle of this book.

As implied by the title, Essentials distills the available science and practice of hypnosis into a clear and coherent package, accessible to students of hypnosis at all levels. Beginners will appreciate transcripts of basic inductions and suggestive methods, information about how to present hypnosis to patients, how to test for suggestibility, and when and when not to use hypnotic procedures. Practitioners already acquainted with “the basics,” will benefit from detailed descriptions of advanced and specialized techniques and strategies, and thoughtful discussions of how to maximize treatment effects. Readers will encounter fundamental information about the history of hypnosis, surveys of different theoretical perspective on hypnosis, up-to-date literature reviews on the empirically supported treatments described, and balanced discussions of thorny issues including the use of hypnosis for memory recovery. Transcripts from sessions, illustrative examples, and step-by-step descriptions of clinical procedures serve as road maps for the detailed treatments the authors present of anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, pain and medical conditions, smoking, and eating disorders.

Essentials of Clinical Hypnosis is a book with which every clinician who is curious about hypnosis should be acquainted. Combined with supervised experiences in using hypnotic procedures, Lynn and Kirsch’s book provides readers with the knowledge required to practice hypnosis with confidence.