Psychotherapists who have acquired the ability to hypnotize and apply hypnotherapeutic
procedures will likely recognize their need to acquire more
complex ways of using hypnotic interventions. A few of the more advanced
techniques were introduced or hinted at, but not truly described, in Barabasz
and Watkins (2005). As promised in the introduction to that book, this one
will carry on where the fi rst treatise left off .
Th is book teaches sophisticated procedures, practiced within the hypnotic
modalities, which are aimed at a more fundamental reconstruction of
a patient’s personality. Th is is the goal of both hypnoanalysis and psychoanalytic
therapy. Hypnoanalysis accepts the psychoanalytic principle that neurotic
symptoms are generally, although certainly not exclusively, the consequence of
intrapsychic confl ict. Our aim as therapists is to eliminate or at least reduce
symptoms by emotional as well as cognitive restructuring, not merely by social
infl uence, placebo manipulations, or mere suggestion without actual hypnosis
per se (A. Barabasz & Christensen, 2006; see Barabasz and Watkins, 2005,
pp. 203–206). When the hypnoanalytic process is successful, it is usually accompanied
by “insight.”
Accordingly, hypnoanalysis should be regarded as a form or variant of psychoanalysis
in its broadest sense. Freud (1953a) explained that any treatment
can be considered psychoanalysis if its eff ectiveness comes from “undoing
resistances and interpreting transferences.” Given these criteria, hypnoanalysis
is defi nitely “psychoanalysis” in spite of Freud’s vacillating history with
regard to the use of hypnosis, which began with embracing the modality, then
rejecting it, and fi nally depending on it to manage the pain of his cancer in his
fi nal days. Hypnoanalysts are very much concerned with undoing resistances
and interpreting transferences. Th e specifi c step-by-step techniques to accomplish
these goals will be made clear as the chapters in this book unfold.
Hypnosis, when applied according to psychodynamic understandings, is
a part of the hypnoanalytic strategy. Th e therapy becomes “hypnoanalytic”
when its hypnotic aspects are so naturally applied by the practitioner as to
become secondary to the patient’s developing focus on the main objective of
achieving reconstructive understandings.
Hypnoanalysts, like psychoanalytic practitioners, attempt to reconstruct
and deal with memory material, lift repressions, release bound aff ects, and
2 • Advanced Hypnotherapy: Hypnodynamic Techniques
integrate previously unconscious and unegotized aspects of the personality.
Th ey are also concerned with factors of resistance, transference, and countertransference
as are the psychoanalysts. Similar to Freud (1953a), many
hypnoanalysts see dreams as a “royal road to the unconscious” and dream
interpretation as a major hypnoanalytic technique. In that sense, their theoretical
views of personality structure and neurotic symptom formation closely
parallel those of the classic psychoanalysts. Th e analysis of transference has
always been a major psychoanalytic method, along with free association and
dream interpretation. Freud simply emphasized its importance.
Free association may ultimately unearth early memory material and
ingrained interpretations of early experiences represented as reconstructed
memories. Unfortunately, many sessions are required to secure the same data,
which within a much shorter time may become apparent through hypnotic
hypermnesia, regression, and particularly regressive abreactive techniques.
Furthermore, in doing so, there is little if any evidence to support Freud’s
contention that the ego is bypassed by hypnosis and his notion that consequently
such personality changes would be only temporary. As early as 1979,
E. R. Hilgard and Loft us showed that memories reconstructed by hypnotic
regression can be distorted, but, of course, Freud had already found that
through “screening memories,” these recollections (more accurately termed
reconstructed memory material) secured by free association could also be
distorted. Th ere is no evidence whatsoever that hypnosis is any more likely
to distort memories than numerous other commonly used therapeutic or
detective-like questioning techniques. Furthermore, there is no data extant
comparing the validity of hypnotically secured memory material versus those
elicited through free association.
Dream interpretation has been a valuable psychoanalytic tool, especially in
the hands of gift ed and intuitive practitioners such as Wilhelm Stekel (1943c).
Hypnoanalysts also employ dream and fantasy analytic procedures (Barrett,
1998). Th e hypnotic modality provides greater fl exibility in the activation,
analysis, and interpretation of these creations.
Transference reaction analysis is a very potent psychoanalytic procedure
for achieving reconstructive changes in the basic personality. Such reactions
appear during an analysis when the patient projects onto the analyst feelings
and attitudes that he or she once experienced toward earlier signifi cant fi gures
such as a love for one’s mother or hatred toward a dominating father. As these
inappropriate reactions are pointed out and explained to the patient by the
analyst’s interpretations, new insights and growth can be achieved. However,
without hypnosis, many weeks and months will typically elapse before such
responses develop and become manifest in such a relationship.
More signifi cant is the fact that the patient’s regression (Menninger &
Holzman, 1973) that brings this about can be far better achieved and appropriately
controlled by the use of hypnosis because hypnosis itself is a form of
Introduction to Hypnoanalytic Techniques • 3
regression in the service of the ego (Gill & Brenman, 1959) or, as Hartmann
(1939/1958) termed it, “adaptive regression.” A personal communication
(August 11, 2002, to A. Barabasz) from Erika Fromm is referred to in Barabasz
and Watkins (2005) (pp. 68–70). Fromm explained that a person suff ering from
a cold might well curl up in bed “just like a child,” watching hours of senseless
lightweight TV programs, letting him- or herself simply be taken care of by
others. Th is regression helps the person to get well, healthy, and independent
once again more quickly. She further likened the activity to taking a vacation
in which one engages in entertainment, napping, or reading nondemanding
materials. Clearly, these regressions in the service of the ego are nonpathological
and healthy. Regressive experiences in the hypnotherapeutic relationship
can help to bring about self-healing and facilitation of inner strengths
(Frederick, 1999b). In a brief period of time, of course, the patient might be
willing to engage in the experience under the guidance of the hypnoanalyst.
Th is book will also focus on hypnodiagnostic procedures and new, revised,
and updated approaches to abreactive techniques. Abreactive techniques,
which remedy the early criticisms voiced by Freud and Breuer (1953), are still
voiced by some hypnoanalysts. We will also explain the use of hypnography
and sensory hypnoplasty as methodologies to derive information about
unconscious processes that go beyond verbalizations alone. Th e reader will
learn how to hypnotically facilitate dissociative and projective approaches so
that an even greater degree of fl exibility is off ered to the psychoanalytic practitioner.
Th e latest developments in ego-state therapy beyond those described
by J.G.W. and H. H. Watkins (1997) will be presented, with extensions of dissociative
techniques that provide yet another dimension in psychoanalytic
theory. Th e theoretical origins of ego-state therapy (Frederick, 2005; Frederick
& McNeal, 1999; Emmerson, 2003; J. G. Watkins and H. H. Watkins, 1997)
stem from the writings of both Paul Federn (1952a) and Edoardo Weiss (1960).
In this book, we approach it from the perspective of concepts concerning the
structure and functioning of the self as foreshadowed by Kohut (1971) and
Kernberg (1972). However, this book is primarily about treatment techniques,
not theory.
Hypnoanalytic techniques should not be regarded as competing with the
traditional practices of psychoanalysts or those employing psychoanalytically
oriented therapy, but rather as a means of complementing their work. Hypnoanalysis
can be viewed as merely an extension and an elaboration of the methods
by which Freud and his colleagues undertook to explore the fascinating
world of the human mind, one that continually infl uences our behavior and
well-being, but of which we are oft en so little aware.
Th e enormous time and cost required for traditional psychoanalysis
(three to fi ve times a week for several years) limits its use to a very special
and typically affl uent population. Hypnoanalysis provides a much more rapid
and incisive form of psychoanalysis, while also dealing with deep-underlying
4 • Advanced Hypnotherapy: Hypnodynamic Techniques
confl icts. Hypnoanalysis, as described in this volume, is intended to achieve
genuine personality reorganization in a much shorter period of time, thus
making the enormous capacity of psychodynamic thinking and psychoanalytic
therapy more widely available.
Hypnotherapy is much more than a collection of techniques, because its
success involves the very “self” of the doctor (A. Barabasz & Christensen,
2006). Th erefore, we have attempted to place our procedures in a broad and
philosophical context. Th at is to say, two practitioners may employ “identical”
techniques, yet one achieves far better results than the other. In our chapter
on existential hypnoanalysis and the therapeutic self, we explain how to integrate
our two books using the concept that all “techniques” in psychological
therapy must be practiced within a constructive interpersonal relationship
and that in the fi nal analysis, our success or failure may depend more on how
we relate with the patient than on what we do to the patient.
We hope that those skilled psychotherapists and analysts who have
experience in clinical hypnosis will fi nd this book stimulating, in that a number
of new and exciting therapeutic techniques can be added to their practice.
As behavioral scientists, we must all continue to explore the inner human
condition. Hypnoanalytic techniques off er many sophisticated ways of accomplishing
this, both in the clinic as well as in the hypnosis research laboratory.
procedures will likely recognize their need to acquire more
complex ways of using hypnotic interventions. A few of the more advanced
techniques were introduced or hinted at, but not truly described, in Barabasz
and Watkins (2005). As promised in the introduction to that book, this one
will carry on where the fi rst treatise left off .
Th is book teaches sophisticated procedures, practiced within the hypnotic
modalities, which are aimed at a more fundamental reconstruction of
a patient’s personality. Th is is the goal of both hypnoanalysis and psychoanalytic
therapy. Hypnoanalysis accepts the psychoanalytic principle that neurotic
symptoms are generally, although certainly not exclusively, the consequence of
intrapsychic confl ict. Our aim as therapists is to eliminate or at least reduce
symptoms by emotional as well as cognitive restructuring, not merely by social
infl uence, placebo manipulations, or mere suggestion without actual hypnosis
per se (A. Barabasz & Christensen, 2006; see Barabasz and Watkins, 2005,
pp. 203–206). When the hypnoanalytic process is successful, it is usually accompanied
by “insight.”
Accordingly, hypnoanalysis should be regarded as a form or variant of psychoanalysis
in its broadest sense. Freud (1953a) explained that any treatment
can be considered psychoanalysis if its eff ectiveness comes from “undoing
resistances and interpreting transferences.” Given these criteria, hypnoanalysis
is defi nitely “psychoanalysis” in spite of Freud’s vacillating history with
regard to the use of hypnosis, which began with embracing the modality, then
rejecting it, and fi nally depending on it to manage the pain of his cancer in his
fi nal days. Hypnoanalysts are very much concerned with undoing resistances
and interpreting transferences. Th e specifi c step-by-step techniques to accomplish
these goals will be made clear as the chapters in this book unfold.
Hypnosis, when applied according to psychodynamic understandings, is
a part of the hypnoanalytic strategy. Th e therapy becomes “hypnoanalytic”
when its hypnotic aspects are so naturally applied by the practitioner as to
become secondary to the patient’s developing focus on the main objective of
achieving reconstructive understandings.
Hypnoanalysts, like psychoanalytic practitioners, attempt to reconstruct
and deal with memory material, lift repressions, release bound aff ects, and
2 • Advanced Hypnotherapy: Hypnodynamic Techniques
integrate previously unconscious and unegotized aspects of the personality.
Th ey are also concerned with factors of resistance, transference, and countertransference
as are the psychoanalysts. Similar to Freud (1953a), many
hypnoanalysts see dreams as a “royal road to the unconscious” and dream
interpretation as a major hypnoanalytic technique. In that sense, their theoretical
views of personality structure and neurotic symptom formation closely
parallel those of the classic psychoanalysts. Th e analysis of transference has
always been a major psychoanalytic method, along with free association and
dream interpretation. Freud simply emphasized its importance.
Free association may ultimately unearth early memory material and
ingrained interpretations of early experiences represented as reconstructed
memories. Unfortunately, many sessions are required to secure the same data,
which within a much shorter time may become apparent through hypnotic
hypermnesia, regression, and particularly regressive abreactive techniques.
Furthermore, in doing so, there is little if any evidence to support Freud’s
contention that the ego is bypassed by hypnosis and his notion that consequently
such personality changes would be only temporary. As early as 1979,
E. R. Hilgard and Loft us showed that memories reconstructed by hypnotic
regression can be distorted, but, of course, Freud had already found that
through “screening memories,” these recollections (more accurately termed
reconstructed memory material) secured by free association could also be
distorted. Th ere is no evidence whatsoever that hypnosis is any more likely
to distort memories than numerous other commonly used therapeutic or
detective-like questioning techniques. Furthermore, there is no data extant
comparing the validity of hypnotically secured memory material versus those
elicited through free association.
Dream interpretation has been a valuable psychoanalytic tool, especially in
the hands of gift ed and intuitive practitioners such as Wilhelm Stekel (1943c).
Hypnoanalysts also employ dream and fantasy analytic procedures (Barrett,
1998). Th e hypnotic modality provides greater fl exibility in the activation,
analysis, and interpretation of these creations.
Transference reaction analysis is a very potent psychoanalytic procedure
for achieving reconstructive changes in the basic personality. Such reactions
appear during an analysis when the patient projects onto the analyst feelings
and attitudes that he or she once experienced toward earlier signifi cant fi gures
such as a love for one’s mother or hatred toward a dominating father. As these
inappropriate reactions are pointed out and explained to the patient by the
analyst’s interpretations, new insights and growth can be achieved. However,
without hypnosis, many weeks and months will typically elapse before such
responses develop and become manifest in such a relationship.
More signifi cant is the fact that the patient’s regression (Menninger &
Holzman, 1973) that brings this about can be far better achieved and appropriately
controlled by the use of hypnosis because hypnosis itself is a form of
Introduction to Hypnoanalytic Techniques • 3
regression in the service of the ego (Gill & Brenman, 1959) or, as Hartmann
(1939/1958) termed it, “adaptive regression.” A personal communication
(August 11, 2002, to A. Barabasz) from Erika Fromm is referred to in Barabasz
and Watkins (2005) (pp. 68–70). Fromm explained that a person suff ering from
a cold might well curl up in bed “just like a child,” watching hours of senseless
lightweight TV programs, letting him- or herself simply be taken care of by
others. Th is regression helps the person to get well, healthy, and independent
once again more quickly. She further likened the activity to taking a vacation
in which one engages in entertainment, napping, or reading nondemanding
materials. Clearly, these regressions in the service of the ego are nonpathological
and healthy. Regressive experiences in the hypnotherapeutic relationship
can help to bring about self-healing and facilitation of inner strengths
(Frederick, 1999b). In a brief period of time, of course, the patient might be
willing to engage in the experience under the guidance of the hypnoanalyst.
Th is book will also focus on hypnodiagnostic procedures and new, revised,
and updated approaches to abreactive techniques. Abreactive techniques,
which remedy the early criticisms voiced by Freud and Breuer (1953), are still
voiced by some hypnoanalysts. We will also explain the use of hypnography
and sensory hypnoplasty as methodologies to derive information about
unconscious processes that go beyond verbalizations alone. Th e reader will
learn how to hypnotically facilitate dissociative and projective approaches so
that an even greater degree of fl exibility is off ered to the psychoanalytic practitioner.
Th e latest developments in ego-state therapy beyond those described
by J.G.W. and H. H. Watkins (1997) will be presented, with extensions of dissociative
techniques that provide yet another dimension in psychoanalytic
theory. Th e theoretical origins of ego-state therapy (Frederick, 2005; Frederick
& McNeal, 1999; Emmerson, 2003; J. G. Watkins and H. H. Watkins, 1997)
stem from the writings of both Paul Federn (1952a) and Edoardo Weiss (1960).
In this book, we approach it from the perspective of concepts concerning the
structure and functioning of the self as foreshadowed by Kohut (1971) and
Kernberg (1972). However, this book is primarily about treatment techniques,
not theory.
Hypnoanalytic techniques should not be regarded as competing with the
traditional practices of psychoanalysts or those employing psychoanalytically
oriented therapy, but rather as a means of complementing their work. Hypnoanalysis
can be viewed as merely an extension and an elaboration of the methods
by which Freud and his colleagues undertook to explore the fascinating
world of the human mind, one that continually infl uences our behavior and
well-being, but of which we are oft en so little aware.
Th e enormous time and cost required for traditional psychoanalysis
(three to fi ve times a week for several years) limits its use to a very special
and typically affl uent population. Hypnoanalysis provides a much more rapid
and incisive form of psychoanalysis, while also dealing with deep-underlying
4 • Advanced Hypnotherapy: Hypnodynamic Techniques
confl icts. Hypnoanalysis, as described in this volume, is intended to achieve
genuine personality reorganization in a much shorter period of time, thus
making the enormous capacity of psychodynamic thinking and psychoanalytic
therapy more widely available.
Hypnotherapy is much more than a collection of techniques, because its
success involves the very “self” of the doctor (A. Barabasz & Christensen,
2006). Th erefore, we have attempted to place our procedures in a broad and
philosophical context. Th at is to say, two practitioners may employ “identical”
techniques, yet one achieves far better results than the other. In our chapter
on existential hypnoanalysis and the therapeutic self, we explain how to integrate
our two books using the concept that all “techniques” in psychological
therapy must be practiced within a constructive interpersonal relationship
and that in the fi nal analysis, our success or failure may depend more on how
we relate with the patient than on what we do to the patient.
We hope that those skilled psychotherapists and analysts who have
experience in clinical hypnosis will fi nd this book stimulating, in that a number
of new and exciting therapeutic techniques can be added to their practice.
As behavioral scientists, we must all continue to explore the inner human
condition. Hypnoanalytic techniques off er many sophisticated ways of accomplishing
this, both in the clinic as well as in the hypnosis research laboratory.
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