While traditional hypnotherapy has been around since the late 19th century, this in turn may be seen as a development from the earlier current began by Franz Mesmer.
Mesmer’s sometimes dramatic treatments involved an intense communication between doctor and patient, often using elaborate tools to channel the doctor’s own “animal magnetism” which was thought to influence the physiology of the patient. This theory gradually waned but aspects of his treatment did persist, owing to favourable results in some people. By the time of his death in 1815 it was increasingly thought that these results stemmed from the patients themselves rather than the doctor’s mysterious magnetism.
It could be argued that this was Freud’s starting point in hypnotherapy. The traditional psychoanalyticapproach was founded by Sigmund Freud who tried to investigate deeply into the patient’s own“unconscious”, which was the source of all primitive drives as well as mental “neuroses”. All behaviour was influenced by memories, with subconscious memories usually having the strongest effect in the formation of a personality. In this way most people, and certainly the people of his time and place, could be seen as a hotbed of mental problems and illnesses, in need of resolution by psychiatrists. In psychotherapy Freud tried to explore and if possible untangle the relation between the conscious andunconscious mind. Freud’s attempt to understand the personality in the systematic terms of the conscious-unconscious-primitive minds was the first such attempt, and whole branches of psychotherapy, including hypnotherapy, grew out of this. In Freud’s thought all mental, psychological / spiritual processes are experienced and may be understood in terms of the influence and interplay of theconscious, preconscious (or, primitive) and unconscious minds.
The problem with the unconscious for the therapist was that it was by definition not accessible, while accessing it was the key to any potential resolution. From 1886 Freud used hypnotherapy privately, which he saw as one possible key to unlock the memories and repressed thoughts of the unconsciousmind. While hugely controversial and still hugely influential, we can say that psychoanalytic therapy has been very useful for bringing awareness to the often conflicts that prevent or undermine making adecision consciously.
Milton Erickson was the greatest influence in modern hypnotherapy. His view about the unconscious mind was different from Freud’s whose ideas dominated the context of the times. Erickson’s perspectivewas that preparing the foundation to communicate with the unconscious mind was a key stage allowing the client to access its contents without trauma. The contents themselves, which Freud saw as wholly problematic, Erickson treated as useful resources. In traditional hypnotherapy, “solutions” came with direct suggestion at the core of the session. Erickson introduced more indirect suggestion.
The next key development was the Solution-Focussed brief Therapy approach developed by American social worker Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berk. This took a radically different approach from traditional psychotherapy, which analyses – focusses on – how a problem happens. Solution-focussedtherapy saw focussing on the problem as pushing the client away from solutions. It aims to help clients themselves identify a positive direction for change using different tools such as “miracle questions” and scaling questions, and to focus on, develop and then use clients’ own strengths, skills and coping abilities to enable them to reach their goal.
This was further developed by David Newton who worked as a Solution focus brief therapist and hypnotherapist, and combined the two into Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy (SFH). He also integrated advances and insights of neuroscience and other research evidence into hypnotherapy.
Traditional hypnotherapy built the reputation for giving good results in the short term, but not so good long term, which has been attributed to the placebo effect. SFH has tried to establish longer term results by completely discarding any direct or indirect suggestion by the therapist and empowering the client himself to build the foundations for their positive resources so as to establish long tome solutions for problems.
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