A Guide to Trance Land_ A Practical Handbook of Ericksonian and Solution-Oriented Hypnosis

123 Pages·2009·4.057 MB·English

by  Bill O'Hanlon

ALSO BY BILL O’HANLON
Pathways to Spirituality
A Guide to Inclusive Therapy
A Brief Guide to Brief Therapy
(with Brian Cade)
A Guide to Possibility Land
(with Sandy Beadle)
An Uncommon Casebook
(with Angela Hexum)
Even From a Broken Web
(with Bob Bertolino)
In Search of Solutions
(with Michele Weiner-Davis)
Stop Blaming, Start Loving
(with Pat Hudson)
Solution-Oriented Hypnosis
(with Michael Martin)
Taproots
A NORTON PROFESSIONAL BOOK

To Helen
my entrancing paramour
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction to Solution-Oriented or Ericksonian Hypnosis
Elements of Solution-Oriented Induction
1. Permission
1.1 Accept, Normalize, Reassure, and Validate Whatever the Person
Presents
1.2 Give Permission To
1.3 Give Permission Not to Have To
1.4 Note and Include Any Distractions, Difficulties, Negativity, or
Resistance
1.5 Use Possibility Words and Phrases (Rather Than Mind Reading
or Prediction Language)
1.6 Give Multiple Possibilities for Responding
2. Presupposition
2.1 Before
2.2 After
2.3 Rate
2.4 Timing
2.5 Depth
2.6 Means, Pathways, or Method
2.7 Awareness
2.8 Verb Tenses
3. Splitting
3.1 Make Distinctions
3.2 Split Something Previously Considered One Thing into Two or
More Parts
3.3 Make the Split Nonverbally as Well as Verbally
4. Linking
4.1 Join Things Together Verbally
4.2 Link Something in Your Behavior or Speaking to Something the
Person is Doing
5. Interspersal
5.1 Emphasizing Through Voice Volume
5.2 Emphasizing Through Voice Location
6. Introduction to the Other Elements
6.1 Description
6.2 Truisms
6.3 Matching
6.4 Guiding Attention and Associations
6.5 The Confusion Technique
The Culture and Territory of Trance Land
7. The Language of Trance
7.1 Use Passive Language
8. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Nature of
Hypnosis But Were Too Deeply in Trance to Ask
8.1 Common Trance Indicators
8.2 Four Doorways Into Altered States
8.3 Why Use Trance?
8.4 When to Use Hypnosis
8.5 Trance Phenomena
8.6 Methods for Evoking Trance Phenomena
9. The $64,000 Question: What Do You Do Once the Person is in
Trance to Get the Clinical Result?
9.1 Goals of Traditional Versus Solution-Oriented Hypnosis
9.2 Class of Problems and Class of Solutions Model
9.3 To Trust Your Unconscious or Not; That Is the Question
9.4 How to Use This Knowledge to Do Hypnotherapy
9.5 Stories in Trance Work
10. Inclusion as Intervention
10.1 Permission
10.2 Inclusion of Opposites
10.3 Identifying Injunctions That Could Yield to Inclusion
11. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Solution-Oriented Hypnosis
12. Bad Trance/Good Trance
Bad Trance/Good Trance Bibliography
13. The Process of Ericksonian Hypnotherapy
Envoi: Leaving Trance Land
Ericksonian Bibliography
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Milton Erickson, for taking me on as his student and
gardener; to Stephen Gilligan, for his friendship, regular hospitality, and
trance logic; and to my editors at W. W. Norton—Deborah Malmud for her
support and encouragement, and Kristen Holt-Browning for her attention to
detail and sunny attitude, which put me in a nice, relaxing editing trance.