This article will examine the practice of Hypnotherapy and its effectiveness in making changes to both conscious and unconscious behavioral processes.

Unconscious and Conscious Minds

Hypnotherapy is based on the principle that we have two 'minds'. As science confirms, we have a left hemisphere that deals with logic and thought processes and a right hemisphere that is not logical but emotional and governs such processes as creativity.

Hypnotherapists recognize that the cause of a lot of problems such as phobias and the associations that cause us to smoke or overeat are a result of miscommunication and misrepresentation of certain aspects of reality within our minds.

Inducing a State That Is Conducive To Healing

Hypnotherapy then recognizes that if a certain mental state is produced, commands or directions can be interpreted in a way as to powerfully effect the mind of the client.

If you were to try to convince someone to stop smoking you would find it difficult because you would have to penetrate their thinking and logic (that causes them to smoke) and influence the emotional part of the brain enough that it would create a command to itself to stop smoking.

While this can be done it is rarely successful and relies on many factors being present in the client. Hypnotherapists achieve this goal by inducing a 'trance' or a mental state in a client that is conducive to this positive change.

Through various means of communication the therapist will distract the logical thinking mind and without the patient's recognition, implant a command into the unconscious mind that will cause behavioral change.

Because it seems to passive and lacking in force, the patient generally receives the treatment well and assuming the therapist does everything correctly, the treatment is successful.

Milton Erickson

Milton Erickson is considered to be one of the foremost pioneers in the field of hypnotherapy. There are many accounts of his ability to cure patients of varying types of inflictions with his creative use of language and ability to induce powerful trances in even clients who were non believers in the power of hypnosis.

One story is recounted of how Erickson cured a man who had needed to urinate every 30 minutes for the past 20 years. The man came to Erickson after reportedly having seen 100 physicians and even 4 supposed hypnotherapists, none of whom could achieve the appropriate causative outcome.

Through an intense one and a half hour talk where he utilized many of the key aspects of hypnosis, the man left Erickson's office and walked back to his home and began going about his day. It wasn't long before he noticed it had been 6 hours since he had needed to urinate.