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Here is a compilation of essays on the ‘Forms of Re-Educative Psychotherapy’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on the ‘Forms of Re-Educative Psychotherapy’ especially written for school and college students.
Forms of Re-Educative Psychotherapy
Essay Contents:
- Essay on Client-Centred Psychotherapy
- Essay on Gestalt Therapy
- Essay on Reality Therapy
- Essay on Rational-Emotive Psychotherapy
- Essay on Primal Therapy
- Essay on Existential Therapy
- Essay on Logo Therapy
- Essay on Psychodrama
- Essay on Transactional Analysis
- Essay on Crisis Therapy
- Essay on Interpersonal Psychotherapy
- Essay on Hypnosis
Essay # 1. Client-Centred Psychotherapy:
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It was borrowed from the ideas of Carl Rogers (1951). The term ‘client’ rather than ‘patient’ has been adopted. There is much emphasis on what is termed the self-actualizing quality of the human being as the motivational force in the process of personality change.
The main conditions which should exist for the therapeutic change to occur include:
i. The client is experiencing at least a vague incongruence which causes him to be anxious.
ii. The therapist is congruent (or genuine or real) in the relationship.
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iii. The therapist is experiencing a prizing, caring or acceptable attitude toward the patient.
iv. The client perceives to some minimal degree of realness, the caring and the understanding of the therapist.
The most important and distinctive element is the idea that certain attitudes in the thrapist constitute the necessary and sufficient conditions of effectiveness.
The following attitudes are deemed to be most important for the success of client-centred therapy:
i. Genuineness (or congruence):
It is whereby what the therapist is experiencing at an affective level is clearly present in his awareness and is available for direct communication to his client when appropriate. It means that therapist is being himself, not denying himself.
ii. Unconditional positive regard:
The second important attitude of therapist is the caring attitude, that is to say his complete acceptance of or unconditional positive regard for his client (patient). Rogers has used the term prizing to convey the intensity of the therapeutic regard involved.
iii. Accurate empathy:
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The therapist’s ability, accurately and sensitively, to understand the experiences and feelings of the client and the meanings they have for him.
This empathy refers to the therapist’s ability to enter into the private, inner world of the client rather than merely understanding what he is saying. It thus leads to reduction of the client’s real self/ideal self-discrepancy and permits emotional growth in an atmosphere where the patient feels he is being understood, probably for the first time.
Client-centered psychotherapy has been applied in a number of situations ranging from marital and family disturbances through occupational difficulties to inter-racial tensions (in the USA) and religious rivalries (in Northern Ireland). It has also been found useful in teacher-training institutions.
Essay # 2. Gestalt Therapy:
The evolution of this therapy is closely associated with the work of Frederick Perls (1893-1970).
Principles:
Gestalt theory proposes that the natural course of biological and psychological development of the organism entails a full awareness of physical sensations and psychological needs and the organization of behaviour in manner to lead to aggression.
When a need is satisfactorily met or an emotion satisfactorily expressed, it is essentially destroyed, allowing other needs and sensations to dominate the field of awareness. But when this process is interfered with, it may threaten the healthy survival of the organism e.g., inability to recognize hunger for example, leads to death; persistent inability to recognize and express anger leads to psychopathology.
Repression is considered the most common form of interference with the process of adjusting to the environment i.e., it is said to lead to split in the personality as unmet needs persist while behaviour fails to reflect the demands.
Techniques:
i. Psychological homeostasis:
Gestalt therapy aims at expanding the patient’s self- awareness bring him into close contact with his bodily sensations and repression processes and improve his relationship with the outside world. A variety of sensory-motor and psychological exercises are designed to achieve this aim. The slogan of the therapy is the therapist’s concern with the here-and- now and not the then and there.
ii. Group work:
There is a ‘hot seat’ next to the therapist which the group members occupy in sequence to work closely with him. Acting is encouraged and a variety to techniques to assist the ventilation of feelings are used in bringing about of the desired end state of therapy.
The clients are encouraged to express unresolved feelings, assert views which hitherto have frightened or offended them, role play and examine personal tendencies to detach, project, split and deny feelings and attitudes. The client may thus experience himself as an organized whole (‘Gestalten’).
Essay # 3. Reality Therapy:
It is associated with the work of William Glasser (1925) who devoted significant effort to therapeutic endeavors with delinquent adolescents.
Principles:
Glasser objected to conventional therapies because he believed that:
a) Conventional categories of mental illness and efforts to treat patients in accordance with them are useless.
b) Probing the post for insight into present behaviour is futile.
c) Relieving the past in the context of the transference has scant therapeutic value.
d) Insight and understanding of unconscious conflicts do not lead to behaviour change.
e) Conventional psychiatry actively avoids the problem of morality.
f) Conventional therapy fails to teach the patient better behaviour, resting its hopes on insight and understanding.
According to Glasser the basic needs relevant to psychological health are:
i. The need to love and be loved:
The need to love and be loved and the need to be worthwhile to others and to oneself.
ii. Responsibility:
Responsibility is defined as the ability to fulfill one’s needs in a way that does not deprive others of the ability to fulfill their needs. Mental patients have not learned or have lost the ability to lead responsible lives. Thus “responsible” comes to stand for “mental health” and “irresponsible” for mental illness.
Techniques:
Essentially responsibility is taught through love and discipline. Therapy is a special kind of teaching or training which attempts to accomplish in a relatively short, intense period what should have been established during normal growing up.
According to it, the patient does not suffer from an overly punitive or severe superego hit from one that is overly weak and lenient.
Essay # 4. Rational-Emotive Psychotherapy (RET):
It was developed by Albert Ellis (1913) who believed that emotional disturbances are the end product of irrational or illogical thinking.
Principles:
Many irrational ideas that form the bedrock of neurotic disturbances are embedded in the culture and form the part of the child’s early training.
Examples of such beliefs include:
a) It is essential that the person be loved and approved by everyone.
b) One must be perfectly adequate and competent at all times in order to consider oneself worthwhile.
c) Unhappiness is due to outside circumstances over which the individual has no control.
d) It is easier to avoid difficulties in living than to face them.
e) One must seek an outside authority who is stronger, wiser and more powerful than oneself.
f) There is always a right or perfect solution to every problem in living, and unless it is found, the results will be catastrophic.
If uncritically accepted by the patient, these ideas lead to neurotic conflict and unhappiness.
Techniques:
Ellis approach stresses reason, rationality and logic as the principal therapeutic weapons in ameliorating the patient’s problem in living. The main aim of the therapy is to identify the patient’s irrational ideas and to replace them with more realistic and adaptive ones. Ellis advises independence, autonomy and self-direction as the guides to rational living.
In Rational-emotive therapy (RET), neurotic conflicts are confronted in a straightforward and direct manner thus understanding and uprooting their irrational and illogical bases. RET is most suitable for patients who are not too severely disturbed, who have a fairly high level of intelligence and who have sufficient inner strength to take active steps in directing their destiny.
The other indications include shyness, nonassertiveness in social situations, phobic avoidance reactions, marital problems and fears surrounding sexual situations.
Essay # 5. Primal Therapy:
It is also one of the emotive release therapies developed by Arthur Vivian Janov.
Principles:
In asserts that neurosis is the result of failure to satisfy infantile needs. The crucial events in the development of the infant referred to as the major “primal scene” triggers the complete repression of the real self with its basic needs and the emergence of an unreal self that becomes the neurotic individual’s facade.
Janov claims the newborn infant to experience both psychological and physical pain. Each denial of basic needs results in the physiological accumulation and storage of pain, the sum of all pains being referred to as the “primal poor. Physiological states are claimed to be part of a neurotic defense against the physical experiencing of repressed “primal pain”.
Technique:
Primal therapy represents a patterned, programmed, systematic assault on the so-called unreal self. Therapy is time-consuming and taking up to several months and involves abstinence from alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. Initial sessions are devoted to the ventilation of feelings, the recollection of painful experiences and the re-experiencing of these feelings. The client is encouraged to cry, shout, moan and thrash about as he relieves this pain (called ‘Primal’).
Primal occur throughout an initial three week period during which the client has his own individual therapist after which the individual contacts a post-primal group which meets twice weekly for three or more hours. After 6 to 8 months of experiencing primal in groups the individual is declared by Janov to be healed.
Other emotive release therapies include Catharsis (first systematic attempt given by Breuer and Freud in the 1890’s) which believes that neurosis develops as a consequences of some physical trauma or traumas, evoking fright, shame, pain or anxiety in circumstances in which adequate discharge of affect was impossible thus resulting in symptoms. By catharsis, the cure is obtained by revival of the memory of the traumatic events and the release of the constrained emotion through abreaction (discussed later on with hypnosis).
Another emotive-release therapy is bioenergetic therapy, itself a modification of othodox Reichian therapy (Reich, 1942). Wilhelm Reich argued that the way we stand, walk, gesticulate and express ourselves facially reveals our underlying tensions and conflicts. By combinations of massage, breathing exercises and postural manipulations conscious awareness of painful vegetative (somatic) sensations is said to occur, the flow of psychic energy is facilitated and health is restored.
Essay # 6. Existential Therapy:
Existentialism seems to characterize man through its ‘dynamic’ formulations rather than through its essence. This dynamic has been called essence. Existentialism is the philosophy of being nothing in the nothingness. For a few it supplies the strength to live virtuously in the midst of despair, for a few more it is the way back to God or a substitute but for the mass of the people, it is a pessimistic diagnosis of our time.
Principles:
The following are some of the terms and concepts used:
i. Dasein:
This is used to describe human being (sein-being, da=there). It is primarily a verb form and includes an awareness of self or of being. It is an or phenomenon i.e., a level of experience prior to the dichotomy of subject and object, or differentiation of the ego.
ii. Daseinalyse:
The process of therapy which considers that man not only has a position in place but has a ‘there’ which includes a position in time and is aware of his own existence.
iii. Instantaneous encounter:
The moment when we experience the dasein of another person. The therapist’s capacity to handle the encounter will determine the degree of understanding of the patient and spatial proximity.
iv. Anxiety:
It is something people are rather than have and is the inward state of becoming aware that existence can be lost.
v. Guilt:
This, too, is regarded as ontological and is not to be confused with guilt feelings which depend lately on external influences.
vi. World:
A dynamic pattern in which the individual plays a part:
a. Unwelt (world-around):
The biological world or environment to which one adapts and adjusts.
b. Mitwelt (with-world):
The world of interpersonal relationships with encounter between people, the experience changing the participants.
c. Eigenwelt (Own-world):
The personal relations and interpretation of the real world by the individual and therefore the basis on which he accepts reality.
vii. The classical psychoanalysis is criticized for overemphasizing the unwelt at the expense of other two worlds.
viii. Transcendence:
It is the capacity of the individual to abstract himself from the concrete situation.
ix. Time:
It is related to dasein which is able to relate the very old, and even, the future to the present. The term ‘having been’ is preferred to ‘past’.
Therapy:
Technique is regarded as of less importance than understanding the patient as a ‘being in his world’.
Presence:
The relationship of therapist to patient is one where the former is preoccupied with the existence and is part of the field of relationship of the latter. He must enter this field for successful therapy.
Cure:
The aim of the therapy is for the patient to be able to realize his dasein fully, but awareness is only part of the process and it must be supplemented by action to enable the individual to achieve his full potential. Existentialists do not subscribe to conventional cures.
The Unconsciousness:
This concept is not held in high esteem by the existentialists. The unconscious ideas of the patients are more often than not the conscious theories of the therapist.
Essay # 7. Logo Therapy:
It is one of the increasingly popular existential psychotherapies, developed by Viktor E. Frankl (1905).
Principles:
According to Frankl, the modern psychotherapist is confronted with patients whose basic source of discomfort and unhappiness can be traced to their failure to find meaning in their lives. He described this situation as an existential vacuum; a significant symptom of which is boredom. People often seek to combat emptiness of their lives by frantic search of pleasure through superficial sexual encounters and other means. When these efforts prove useless, they may turn to the psychotherapist.
Although spiritual distress is not considered synonymous with neurosis, existential issues are said to be invariably involved in the difficulties in living that the modern psychotherapist is called on to resolve.
Technique:
Logotherapy stresses on the philosophical or spiritual aspects of men. As the therapy progress, the patient learns that human nature aspires not to pleasure, happiness or enjoyment but to a life of meaning and purpose.
Logotherapy utilizes the specific techniques of Paradoxical intention. (If neurotic individuals deliberately attempt to bring about the events they fear, they will recognize the unrealistic nature of their anxiety as the feared consequences fail to eventuate) and dereflection (referring to change the centre of attention from one’s self to some external goal). As patients overcome anxiety, cease to blame the past, and take charge of their own destiny, they achieve freedom and self-realization.
Logotherapy is not designed to replace psychotherapy in the traditional sense; instead it is described as a supplement stressing the spiritual (geistig) dimension of human existence.
Essay # 8. Psychodrama:
This method of therapy is very old and indeed Moreno (1959), its modern founder, quotes instances when it was used by priests in primitive tribes to cure hysterical and anxiety symptoms.
The ingredients are:
i. The protagonist or subject.
ii. The director or chief therapist.
iii. The ‘auxiliary egos’ or ‘players’.
iv. The group.
Principles:
In psychodrama, some common terms used are:
i. Acting out:
This is the bringing to the surface of important inner experiences giving the therapist and the patient the opportunity to evaluate the situation, the latter being called action insight of which Moreno defines two types-irrational and incalculable (which is found in the ordinary life situation and disturbs the patient’s relationships and indirectly, himself) and therapeutic and controlled.
ii. Tele (distance) relations:
A feeling of people into each other such as patient to therapist and to other members of the group and vice versa. This definition is very close to the existential concept of the encounter.
iii. The cultural conserve:
The accumulation and preservation of creative moments such as books, musical compositions etc.
iv. Spontaneity:
It is regarded as an essential element of the healing process but is not the whole process though it is most important as the mainspring of creativity.
v. Mirror technique:
This permits the patient to see someone else take his place and how another experiences him. Roles can be reversed and the patient takes in the therapist or another patient and there are no limits to the phantasies or even dreams that can be enacted.
vi. The therapeutic community technique:
It permits disputes between patients to be settled ‘under the rule of therapy instead of the rule of laws’.
vii. Other terms:
Such as free association and catharsis have been borrowed from other psychotherapies.
Technique:
This varies according to the theoretical bias of the therapist and the resistances of the subject which may be private, social, ethnic or symbolic.
A number of methods are used to overcome resistance such as:
i. Creating a situation:
Creating a Situation which is superficially far removed from the patient’s problems.
ii. Using an auxilliary ego:
Using an Auxilliary Ego (another patient) to play the role of the patient so that he can see his own problem mirrored and obtain help by identification.
iii. Using group rivalries as:
Using Group Rivalries as material for the drama.
iv. Caricaturizing:
Caricaturizing serious problems.
v. Replacing the therapist:
Replacing the Therapist by an auxiliary to meet the needs of the patient.
Modifications:
i. Hypnodrama:
Introduced by Moreno, the patient is hypnotized on the stage and the drama proceeds as usual with the advantage that inhibitions are freed more quickly and unconscious factors can more readily emerge.
ii. Direct analysis:
The patient is confronted with factual challenge to his delusions and hallucinations. The personality of the therapist may help the patient to overcome situations which some therapists would shrink from creating. Moreno criticized it as too traumatic.
iii. Accessory drug therapy:
Stimulants such as caffeine, LSD, methedrine or depressants like alcohol are used to aid the acting out process of selected episodes or for more general effect. There is danger of drug addiction.
iv. Didactic psychodrama:
Members of staff- medical and nursing-may play the part of the patient and his relatives so that he can see and accept an interpretation to which he was hitherto inaccessible.
v. Rehearsed psychodrama:
This method, was used by Maxwell Jones at Belmont. The patient writes his play and other patients and staff rehearse their parts and it is in the rehearsing the catharsis and improvisation with occasional revelation can occur.
vi. Conditioned psychodrama:
This is based on Pavlovian principles. A traumatic situation which has resulted in a distressing symptom no longer occurs. It is a limited approach to the patient’s problems. A number of modifications have been used in the treatment of children, military neurosis.
vii. Psychodrama combined with videotape playback:
Gonen (1971) distinguishes psychodrama from role-playing. The former is the staging of an actual or fantasied event, emotionally charged for the person involved and never worked through, while the later is the staging of situations which could happen and for which practice can serve as a good preparation. An act which starts as role- playing can become psychodrama if it evokes a sense of intense personal relevance.
Psychodrama and role-playing are used for short term impatient treatment. It serves as tension reliever and also strengthens ego boundaries.
Essay # 9. Transactional Analysis:
It was founded by Eric Berne (1964) who popularized it in a book entitled ‘Games People Play’.
Principles:
Principles where Freud divided mental functions into ego, id and superego. Berne took the ego and modified it in a striking fashion.
Ego states:
Berne observed that sometimes people behave like children, sometimes like adults and sometimes like parents. In analyzing interactions or transactions between people, it is necessary to know in which particular ego state the participants are located. What causes problems in life is a lack of congruence between the respected ego states of participants in interactions.
Strokes:
An individual is motivated in his life by a desire for physical and mental stimulation of various kinds, so called strokes. A stroke is defined as a unit of social interaction and there are positive and negative varieties (a positive stroke is basically a loving, supportive statement whereas a negative stroke is hateful and critical). People seek strokes and if they cannot obtain positive ones they will settle for the negative variety in preference to none at all.
Games:
In order to obtain the desired amount of strokes, people engage in repetitive and recurrent patterns of behaviour or ‘games’. A game is a sequence of transactions with ulterior motive and a ‘pay-off’.
Transactional analysis is an attractive therapy with a sharp, gritty style, a blunt, abrasive approach and a striking ability to make people take a fresh look at the way they manipulate each other. This approach is very popular in counselling services (marital problems, occupational problems, etc.).
Essay # 10. Crisis Therapy:
A crisis may be defined as transitional period which presents an individual with either an opportunity for personality growth and maturation or the risk of adverse effect with increased vulnerability to subsequent stress. Past maladaptive patterns of problem solving may be repeated during crisis.
The crisis theory as evolved by Caplan (1964) consists of the following phases:
Phase I:
When a threatening situation is perceived and habitual coping mechanisms prove unsuccessful within the time span of expected success.
Phase II:
Rising tension and increasing diso Principles organization will result in some interference with functioning. Feeling of anxiety fear, guilt or shame are accompanied by a feeling of helplessness and ineffectually in the face of the apparently insoluble problem. During this phase, the individual is more suggestible.
Phase III:
Rising tension leads to immobilization of internal and external resources when emergency problem-solving techniques are called up and novel solutions may be attempted. A solution which may terminate discomfort and disorganization may still be neurotic or maladaptive and ultimately harmful.
Phase IV:
If normal resolution is not achieved, major disorganization results. The most effect intervention will be during the period of disorganization (Phase II).
Essay # 11. Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT):
It is a short term psychotherapy developed by Klerman et al (1984). It focuses on current interpersonal problems in outpatient non-bipolar, nonpsychotic depressed patients.
Interpersonal psychotherapy derives from the interpersonal school of psychiatry that originated with Adolf Meyer and Harry Stack Sullivan. The understanding of social supports and of attachment provides further theoretical underpinning for this form of psychotherapy. The main characteristics of this form of psychotherapy are given in Table 34.4.
Essay # 12. Hypnosis:
The phenomenon of hypnosis was used by man in the earliest stages of civilization. Hypnosis has been practised by primitive people, mainly for ceremonial purposes. The sound of drums, monotonous songs and movements were used to induce a trance-like state in which the individual was highly suggestible. Paracelsus described the ‘sympathetic system’, according to which the stars and other bodies, especially magnets, influence man by means of a subtle emanation of fluid that pervades all space.
J.B. van Helmont said that a similar magnetic field radiates from men and it can be guided by their wills to influence directly the minds and bodies of others. F. A. Mesmer (1733-1815) gave the theory of ‘Animal magnetism’. In 1841, James Braid coined the term ‘hypnotism’ and placed it on a more national and ethical basis. J.M. Charcot (1825-93) thought that hypnosis was a symptom of hysteria.
The word hypnosis has been derived from a Greek word “hypnos” meaning “sleep” but this is a misnomer as the hypnotized individual is not asleep rather awake and alert. Hypnosis is a state of attentive, receptive concentration with a relative suspension of peripheral awareness.
Hypnotic experience involves the following three factors:
i. Absorption:
Hypnotized individuals are intensely absorbed in their trance experience.
ii. Dissociation:
The intense absorption means that many routine experiences that would ordinarily be conscious occur out of ordinary conscious awareness. Such experiences can be both induced and reversed with the structural use of hypnosis.
iii. Suggestibility:
While hypnotized individuals are not deprived their wall, they do have a tendency to accept uncritical instructions in trance, suspending the usual conscious editing functions.
Measuring hypnotizability:
Because hypnotizability is a stable and measurable trait, a clinical assessment of hypnotizability can become a useful starting point for the use of hypnosis in treatment. There are many scales for this purpose e.g.,
i. Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale (SHSS) (Weitzenhoffer and Hilgard 1959).
ii. Hypnotic Induction Profile (Spiegel and Spiegel, 1978).
iii. Stanford Hypnotic Clinical Scale (Hilgard and Hilgard, 1975).
Indications:
i. Hysterical symptoms
ii. Psychosomatic disorder:
Psychosomatic disorder e.g., asthma, eczema, peptic ulcer, colitis.
iii. Tics and habit spasms:
Tics and habit spasms including stammering.
iv. Anaesthesia:
Anaesthesia (in patients who are apprehensive of anaesthetic or in which it is contra- indicated).
v. Pregnancy and labour:
Pregnancy and labour (to induce anesthesia and for relaxation).
vi. Hypnotherapy:
Hypnotherapy (to recover lost memories).
vii. Children’s functional disorders:
Children’s functional disorders e.g., stammering, tics, nocturnal enuresis and phobias.
viii. Dermatology:
In treating psychodermatological and other dermatological problems e.g., warts, psoriasis, congenital ichthyosis and urticaria.
ix. Habit control:
Habit control e.g., smoking, obesity.
x. Other psychiatric disorders:
Other psychiatric disorders e.g., anxiety neurosis, phobias, insomnia, pain syndromes.
xi. Forensic uses:
Forensic uses e.g., for the purpose of refreshing recollection of witness and victims of crimes.
Contraindications:
i. Hysterical personality:
The patients with hysterical character may go into so called irreversible hypnotic states, false accusations against the hypnotist, litigation and other difficulties.
ii. Schizophrenia:
The pseudoneurotic types, of cases especially with their somatic preoccupations may be mistaken for anxiety or conversion disorder and may precipitate psychosis.
iii. Paranoid states
iv. Psychotic depression
v. Obsessional states
Technique:
The confidence in the therapist and good motivation are favourable factors for hypnosis. Some people prefer to have the patient lying down on a couch; others prefer him to sit in a comfortable chair. A variety of methods are used, the commonest being the use of ‘fixation object’.
The patient is asked to gaze fixedly on a pencil, or a coin or a spot on the wall or ceiling and the therapist makes monotonous suggestions fixedly on a pencil, or a coin or a spot on the wall or ceiling and the therapist makes monotonous suggestions of relaxation and sleep. He tells the patient that his eyes are closing and he is getting sleepy. This suggestion goes on till he gets drowsier and drowsier and that the eyes are closing and he is getting sleepy.
This suggestion goes on till the patient’s eyes flicker, lower and close and breathing takes on the characteristics of a sleeping rhythm. The patient’s eyes flicker, lower and close and breathing takes on the characteristics of a sleeping rhythm. The patient, however, is not asleep and can hear what is being said and answer questions and obey instructions.
Effects of hypnosis:
In the above somnambulistic state, suggestions can be made which can influence the patient’s mental or physical state such as easing of breathing in asthmatics. Anaesthesia can be suggested and this can be localized to one limb or one eye, memories can be reactivated, regression can be induced and the patient brought back to experience again events in his earlier life which had been repressed. Hallucinatory experiences may be induced.
Post hypnotic effects:
After the subject has been brought out of the somnambulist state, suggestions which were given during it can still operate and is exploited in treatment.
Antebi (1963) enunciates the following seven principles, useful in overcoming resistance by suggestion only in patients whose ego- structure is well-integrated:
i. Distortion of the time concept.
ii. Distortion of the space concept.
iii. Dissociation of the personality.
iv. Links are forged in the dissociation process.
v. Induced changes in the emotional state.
vi. Reinforcement of the process of concretization of the object in the patient’s thought process.
vii. Distortion of the body image.
Dangers to:
Subject (Precipitation/Worsening/ Recrudescence/Prolonging illness, Masking effect, Superficial relief, Excessive dependency, Sexual seduction, Criminal activity). Operator (Grandiosity/ Narrowness, Psychopathological disturbance, Lawsuit), Medicine (Failure, Success, Competition) and Hypnosis itself (Ridicule, Cultism, Cannibal snake effect).
Mode of action:
This is still one of the mysteries. EEG changes in trance phase include a decrease of slow and an increase of alpha and beta waves accompanied by an increase in amplitude and decrease in amplitude variability in best hypnotic subjects (the changes are in the opposite direction in poorly hypnotized subjects). These changes have also been reported during other behavioural techniques such as yoga, Zen meditation and autogenic training, suggesting hypnosis has something in common with these states.