Casebook of Clinical Hypnosis

When is hypnosis brought into play with various theoretical and clinical approaches to psychotherapy? What does a hypnotherapist actually do on a case-by-case and a session-by-session basis? What specific strategies can be implemented? What are the scope and nature of the challenges that hypnotherapists and their clients face? What interpersonal issues emerge in hypnotherapeutic treatment? The editors of the Casebook of Clinical Hypnosis have marshaled an impressive group of eminent hypnotherapists to consider these issues and to illustrate them with interesting and memorable cases from their own experience. Each chapter is devoted to the explication of clinical techniques and strategies, and many chapters contain transcripts of actual sessions and suggestions administered, thus providing readers with a window onto the world of clinicians' best hypnotherapeutic work with their clients. Contributing therapists offer the presenting background and assessment information of a client, the treatment rationale, the role of hypnosis within the treatment, outcome and follow-up data, and concluding commentary. Such client problems as eating disorders, depression, anxiety, personality disorders, enuresis, dissociative identity disorder, dysmennorhea, nicotine dependence, attentional deficit disorder, and the aftereffects of sexual abuse and rape are addressed. One of the unique features of the Casebook is a "clinical case conference" that illustrates how experts from very different traditions of clinical hypnotherapy conceptualize and treat a person with problems in living. The section presents a challenging case followed by commentaries of well-known clinicians who represent psychoanalytic psychotherapy, rational-emotive behavior therapy, multimodal therapy, and Ericksonian hypnosis.