As a profession Hypnotherapy is young; as a force it is as old as the world.
The first words uttered, ‘Let there be light,’ constitute its character. All nature is vibrant with its impulse.
The key to Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy and all related therapies have one common factor that is fundamentally responsible for the incredible effectiveness of these therapies.
THEY ALL LEVERAGE THE POWER OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND!
Hypnotherapy: Leveraging the Unconscious Mind
The unconscious mind has long been surrounded by many myths and misunderstandings. We fear the unknown instinctively because we crave certainty. As a result our relationship with our unconscious mind has suffered greatly.
For a long time the unconscious was considered a dark place festering with evil tendencies. Only the bravest of souls would venture into this unseen realm using various meditative techniques and of course also hypnosis.
Paracelsus is credited as the first to make mention of an unconscious aspect of cognition in his work Von den Krankheiten (translates as “About illnesses”, 1567), and his clinical methodology created a cogent system that is regarded by some as the beginning of modern scientific psychology.
What most people still don’t realise that our understanding of the unconscious mind has grown in leaps and bounds in recent times. Scientific exploration of the brain and nervous system and advances in the behavioural sciences has greatly increased our understanding of the functioning of the unconscious, or invisible, part of the mind.
There are many different definitions of the unconscious mind floating around. To clarify, I consider the unconscious mind to be every part of the mind that is not under direct conscious control. Hence, for example muscular movements are mostly unconscious. By this definition the unconscious mind accounts for well over 90% (probably closer to 99%) of our total Mind capacity.
Hypnotherapy: Seat of the Emotions
I purposely referred to Mind capacity rather than mental capacity in the previous paragraph. While we associate the Mind with mental activity it is vitally important to understand that a very important function of the unconscious mind is to manage our emotions. Emotions originate in our unconscious and the unconscious is the primary place for managing our emotions. Advanced Hypnotherapy techniques are very effective in clearing painful unprocessed emotions from the past. Conscious therapies generally tend to take far longer to achieve the same outcome relating to clearing emotional pain. In my experience one Hypnotherapy can often achieve what would normally take ten sessions or more with conscious therapies.
Hypnotherapy: Leveraging Your Supercomputer
As previously mentioned, your unconscious mind accounts for well over 90% of your total Mind capacity. Hypnotherapy and related therapies provide us with access to this incredibly powerful Bio-Supercomputer. I have witnessed many times the power of the unconscious mind to review and re-assess a lifetime of experiences in minutes, sometimes even seconds.
In over 20 years of Clinical Hypnotherapy I have witnessed many astounding examples of the power of the unconscious mind to resolve deep seated issues, whether they be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or any combination thereof. Hypnotherapy is extremely effective in dealing with a wide range of issues. Here is a very small sample of specific applications for Hypnotherapy:
Hypnotherapy for Smoking, Hypnotherapy for Anxiety, Hypnotherapy for Depression, Hypnotherapy for Anger
There is still much to learn about our unconscious mind and about better more effective and even more efficient Hypnotherapy techniques. In years to come Hypnotherapy will undoubtedly become more and more mainstream as more people become ware of this incredibly effective therapeutic technique.
HYPNOTHERAPY: Unconscious Mind Research
Allman, J.M. (2000). Evolving brains. New York: Scientific American Library.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Bargh, J.A. (1992). Why subliminality does not matter to social psychology: Awareness of the stimulus versus awareness of its
effects. In R. Bornstein & T. Pittman (Eds.), Perception without awareness: Cognitive, clinical, and social perspectives (pp.
236–255). New York: Guilford.
Bargh, J.A. (Ed.). (2006). Social psychology and the unconscious: The automaticity of higher mental processes. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Bargh, J.A., & Chartrand, T.L. (2000). A practical guide to priming and automaticity research. In H. Reis & C. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social psychology (pp. 253–285). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bargh, J.A., Gollwitzer, P.M., Lee-Chai, A., Barndollar, K., & Troetschel, R. (2001). The automated will: Unconscious activation and
pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1004–1027.
Brill, A.A. (1938). Introduction. In A.A. Brill (Ed. & Trans.), The basic writings of Sigmund Freud (pp. 1–32). New York: Modern Library.
Campbell, D.T. (1974). Evolutionary epistemology. In P.A. Schilpp (Ed.), The philosophy of Karl Popper (pp. 413–463). La Salle, IL:
Open Court Publishing.
Chartrand, T.L., Maddux, W., & Lakin, J. (2005). Beyond the perception-behavior link: The ubiquitous utility and motivational
moderators of unconscious mimicry. In R. Hassin, J. Uleman, &
J.A. Bargh (Eds.), The new unconscious (pp. 334–361). New York: Oxford University Press.
Chen, M., & Bargh, J.A. (1999). Consequences of automatic evaluation: Immediate behavioral predispositions to approach or avoid
the stimulus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 215–224.
Damasio, A.R. (1996). The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 351, 1413–1420.
Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species. London: John Murray.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dennett, D.C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Boston: Little, Brown.
Dennett, D.C. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings of life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Dijksterhuis, A., & Bargh, J.A. (2001). The perception-behavior expressway.
In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 33, pp. 1–40). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Dijksterhuis, A., Chartrand, T.L., & Aarts, H. (2007). Automatic behavior.
In J.A. Bargh (Ed.), Social psychology and the unconscious: The automaticity of higher mental processes. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fitzsimons, G.M., & Bargh, J.A. (2004). Automatic self-regulation. In
R.F. Baumeister & K.D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications (pp. 151–170). New York:
Guilford Press.
Freud, S. (1961). An autobiographical study. In J. Strachey (Ed.), Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund
Freud (Vol. 20, pp. 7–74). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1925)
Frith, C., & Wolpert, D. (Eds.). (2003). The neuroscience of social interaction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gazzaniga, M. (1985). The social brain. New York: Basic Books.
Goldsmith, M. (1934). A history of mesmerism. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company.
Gollwitzer, P.M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54, 493–503.
Greenwald, A.G. (1992). New look III: Unconscious cognition reclaimed. American Psychologist, 47, 766–779.
Greenwald, A.G., Klinger, M.R., & Schuh, E.S. (1995). Activation by marginally perceptible (‘‘subliminal’’) stimuli: Dissociation of
unconscious from conscious cognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 22–42.
Heckhausen, H., & Beckmann, J. (1990). Intentional action and action slips. Psychological Review, 97, 36–48.
Higgins, E.T., & Bargh, J.A. (1987). Social perception and social cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 38, 369–425.
James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology (Vol. 2). New York: Holt.
Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lhermitte, F. (1983). Utilization behavior and its relation to lesions of the frontal lobes. Brain, 106, 237–255.
Libet, B. (1986). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
8, 529–566.
Locke, E.A., & Latham, G.P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task performance: A 35 year odyssey.
American Psychologist, 57, 705–717.
Loftus, E.F., & Klinger, M.R. (1992). Is the unconscious smart or dumb? American Psychologist, 47, 761–765.
Mayr, E. (1976). Evolution and the diversity of life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Meltzoff, A.N. (2002). Elements of a developmental theory of imitation.
In A.N. Meltzoff & W. Prinz (Eds.), The imitative mind: Development, evolution, and brain bases (pp. 19–41). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Morsella, E. (2005). The function of phenomenal states: Supramodular interaction theory. Psychological Review, 112, 1000–1021.
Neumann, R., Fo¨rster, J., & Strack, F. (2003). Motor compatibility: The bidirectional link between behavior and evaluation. In
J. Musch & K.C. Klauer (Eds.), The psychology of evaluation: Affective processes in cognition and emotion (pp. 371–391).
Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Nisbett, R.E., & Wilson, T.D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84,
231–259.
Rosenbaum, D.A. (2002). Motor control. In H. Pashler (Series Ed.) & S. Yantis (Vol. Ed.), Stevens’ handbook of experimental psychology: Vol. 1. Sensation and perception (3rd ed., pp. 315–339). New York: Wiley.
Schacter, D.L., & Addis, D.R. (2007). The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the
future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 362, 773–786.
Schwarz, N., & Clore, G.L. (1996). Feelings and phenomenal experiences.
In E.T. Higgins & A.W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 433–465). New York: Guilford.
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural
cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 675–691.
Tucker, M., & Ellis, R. (2001). The potentiation of grasp types during visual object categorization. Visual Cognition, 8, 769–
800.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wegner, D.M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Westen, D. (1999). The scientific status of unconscious processes: Is Freud really dead? Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 47, 1061–1106.
Wilson, T.D., & Brekke, N. (1994). Mental contamination and mental correction: Unwanted influences on judgments and evaluations.
Psychological Bulletin, 116, 117–142.
Recent Comments