The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis is the long overdue successor to Fromm and Nash's Contemporary Hypnosis Research (Guilford Press), which has been regarded as the field's authoritative scholarly reference for over 35 years. This new book is a comprehensive summary of where field has been, where it stands today, and its future directions. The volume's lucid and engaging chapters on the scientific background to the field, fully live up to this uncompromising scholarly legacy. In addition, the scope of the book includes 17 clinical chapters which comprehensively describe how hypnosis is best used with patients across a spectrum of disorders and applied settings. Authored by the world's leading practitioners these contributions are sophisticated, inspiring, and richly illustrated with case examples and session transcripts. For postgraduate students, researchers and clinicians, or anyone wanting to understand hypnosis as a form of treatment, this is the starting point. Unequalled in its breadth and quality, The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis is the definitive reference text in the field.

First Published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"...Provides students and professionals with clear examples of the evolution of clinical hypnotic phenomena. Two major innovations in this volume are the utilization theory of hypnosis and indirect forms of suggestion...Each chapter includes an essay by Ernest Rossi which clarifies and elaborates on the relevant issues of Dr. Erickson's work just illustrated. In these essays Dr. Rossi analyzes Dr. Erickson's approach in order to uncover some of the basic variables that can be isolated and tested by future experimental work...A number of graduated exercises are offered as a guide to aid hypnotherapists to develop their own skills in the clinical arts of observation, hypnotic induction, and the formulation of indirect suggestion..."--inside flap.

This text presents a new approach to the use of hypnotic suggestion. For years, hypnotherapists have used scripts which are aimed at a particular problem, like smoking or weight loss, rather than aiming at the client who smokes or has weight issues. Trevor Silvester suggests that it is not the problem that is the problem; it's the client's unique relationship with the problem that's the problem. The book aims to free you from the constraints of scripts and enable you to use your creative skill to weave subtle spells that empower your clients by changing their model of reality. It presents the science behind suggestion, and the means of using that science to create magical ways of influencing others.

Hypnotism is widely accepted today at its proper level - as a legitimate field of scientific inquiry and a useful tool of psychotherapy. Its potential has been recognized by the British Medical Society and the American Medical Association; and courses on the subject are appearing in medical schools and in training programs for psychiatrists. Previously, hypnosis had a chequered career over a period of centuries, going through cycle after cycle of general approval and then total eclipse. Can we be sure that hypnosis will retain the general interest it possesses today? The fate of this book indicates how fragile the reputation of hypnosis is; written nearly a century ago, and translated into English nearly eighty years ago, it has always been acknowledged as a great classic; yet it has been out of print nearly seventy-five years. It was not outmoded. It was not suppressed. It has simply been neglected. Its author was fully respected in medical circles; Bernheim conducted his research at one of those moments in medical history when the fact of hypnotic phenomena was accepted by the medical profession. Bernheim saw that the results he produced involved more than the ability to produce the hypnotic trance; he saw his relation to the patient as a "special relationship." In spontaneous sleep, the sleeper is in relation to himself alone, although he proceeds to hallucinate - to dream. In the "induced sleep" of hypnotism, however, the subject retains the memory of the person who has influenced him to "sleep," and this is the source of the hypnotist's unique power over him. This rapport between hypnotist and patient is the key; Bernheim describes cases in which this rapport does not occur - and therefore there is no therapeutic effect.