Hypnocrisy –
The Essential Manual for Hypnotherapists
Written Purely and Exclusively For Hypnotherapists
As a fellow hypnotherapist, you have probably noticed that the hypnotherapy industry in Britain has a few obvious problems.
Tackiness, for one.
Incompetence, another.
Therapists that don’t really understand the market, and a market that doesn’t really understand the therapy.
A high turnover of practitioners, evidenced by the ads that come and go each year in the Yellow Pages, and the ever changing array of weird and wacky brochures dotted about. A high burnout rate.
A polarity with competent and aware psychotherapists on the one end, and script-readers on the other.
People who studied psychotherapy, and people who sold mobile phones.
People who do relaxo-therapy, and people who do rapid, effective hypnosis.
Professionalism, and utter tackiness.
It’s a minefield. It’s a shame, because there is a lot of good potential at the core of hypnotherapy, but for the most part it is wasted by poor training, people wanting a career change or to make a fast buck, massive egos, and naff, naff marketing. If you think this doesn’t apply to you, then you’re missing the point – it applies to the market, affecting and influencing all of your potential customers.
Hypnocrisy is about:
- the Hypnotherapy industry
- the circular minefield of unreliable training
- being confident about the art of hypnosis
- ironing out the various conflicts that plague most practitioners
- handling the impression that you make on your clients
- getting a grip on marketing
- becoming more aware of how you view yourself as a hypnotherapist in order to avoid the various traps that lead to burn-out
Hypnocrisy is written in a very candid, down-to-earth way – addressing the subtleties that most other books gloss over, answering the “what if” moments that other books miss. Its written from years of experience of handling a varied range of clients, situations and professional decisions. It challenges the reader, stimulates new thought, and will provide enough reframes for you and your practice to get you out of those ruts you may feel from time to time.
I’m aware that most hypnotherapists won’t the purchase the labours of my experiences and efforts – because they are notoriously tight-fisted. Ironically, those mind-sets won’t benefit from the section of the book that addresses it.
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An Extract Follows:
What We Can Learn From a Horse
In the late 1800′s, a German maths teacher believed he had taught a horse, called Clever Hans, to do maths. The horse would spell out answers by tapping his foot. You have to remember that in the 19th century, before the convenience of pocket calculators, it seemed immensely appealing to consult a horse in your desk drawer if your receipt from Tesco didn’t seem to add up.
Clever Hans would lift his hoof the right number of times in response to seeing written numbers, up to 10. The teacher, called Herr Wilhelm von Osten, would write a 7 on a chalk board, the horse would say “oh yes, easy one this” and tap his hoof seven times, much to his masters delight. Then, he would count the answers to simple sums. He was believed to have the maths ability of a 14 year old (probably the equivalent of about 27 in today’s intellectual climate). Eventually, Wilhelm shared the mathematical delights of his horse, creating a buzz all over Germany.
By now, Clever Hans could do all sorts of numerical wizardry. Wilhelm would say “if the first of the month is Wednesday, what date is the following Monday?” and Hans would respond with five lifts of his hoof. He even made the front page of the New York Times.
Germany’s board of education decided to investigate the matter, with the help of two zoologists, a psychologist, a horse trainer, several school teachers, and a circus manager. Wilhelm was fine with this – he welcomed it in fact, because he knew there was no fraud and being a rational man of science was delighted to be tested. They investigated, and all agreed that the horse was indeed bloody clever.
So, all is well! Well done Wilhelm and Hans! You may as well write a book teaching people how to teach their horses to do maths, and maybe even a few equine-math training courses.
Except those people wouldn’t learn to teach their horses maths, because Hans didn’t really have the first bloody clue how to add two and two together.
So what was really going on? Oskar Pfungst, a psychologist (a human one, not another of Wilhelm’s projects), had the intelligence to investigate Hans in a controlled way. He found that the variable that influenced Hans accuracy was the presence of Wilhelm.
Wilhelm was unconsciously giving the answer to Hans, by a subtle body language cue expressed when Hans had tapped the right amount of times. A kind of subtle shift, signifying “yes Hans! That’s right! You clever bastard you!” that Hans picked up on, and then stopped. He had been conditioned to spot this signal, because Wilhelm had rewarded him for right answers in his training. Hans had no idea he was doing this, that he was unconsciously leaking an enthused anticipation that Hans was responding to. He believed his horse could do maths.
So. What does this have to do with hypnotherapy?
To me, Wilhelm represents the modern therapy industry. The idea that it’s believed one thing is going on, when in fact something else is going on. The idea that the practitioner wholeheartedly believes that what he thinks is going on, is true. The tendency to believe such a thing without bothering to actually test it. The ignorance to the subtle dynamics of expectations, conditioning, non-verbal communication and suggestibility.
He is like the EFT practitioners, thinking that their clients are responding to blocked emotions in the energy centres of the body (or whatever the hell it is) without realizing that they are actually responding to suggestive stimuli, unconscious demands and expectations (e.g. the practitioners’ suggestive “Now, how does it feel?” with a big smile).
At least Wilhelm had the decency to have himself investigated in a controlled way.
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