The American journal of clinical hypnosis
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Chronic abdominal pain is a common pediatric condition affecting 20% of the pediatric population worldwide. Most children with this disorder are found to have no specific organic etiology and are given the diagnosis of functional abdominal pain. ⋯ The author discusses 2 contrasting hypnotic approaches to functional abdominal pain and provides implications for further research. These approaches may provide new insights into this common and complex disorder.
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Case Reports
Attending to suggestion and trance in the pediatric history and physical examination: a case study.
Obtaining complete information lies at the heart of accurate diagnosis in all healthcare fields. Extracting information is a time-honored purpose of the history and physical examination. ⋯ Paying attention to language promotes patient self-mastery and helps forge a therapeutic alliance for successful outcomes. Principles taught in hypnosis workshops can also help the practitioner avoid negative, undermining suggestions that could diminish diagnostic and therapeutic effectiveness.
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In the first of two recent papers, Pekala, Kumar, Maurer, Elliot-Carter, Moon and Mullen (2010a) review what they consider to be the relationships between trance or altered state effects, suggestibility, and expectancy, and how they relate to the concepts of hypnosis and hypnotism. They also suggest that these concepts can be assessed with an instrument they term the PCI-HAP (Phenomenology of Consciousness: Inventory-Hypnotic Assessment Procedure). In the second paper (Pekala, Kumar, Elliot-Carter, Moon, & Mullen, 2010b), they set out to determine empirically whether these concepts can predict hypnotic depth scores using the PCI-HAP. ⋯ However, according to their conceptualization, 'hypnosis' itself involves, or consists of, only altered state or trance effects. These papers raise a number of fundamental methodological, semantic and conceptual issues that are discussed in this commentary. Topics discussed include distinctions between concepts such as 'hypnosis', and 'hypnotism,' the role of inductions and suggestion in producing hypnotic phenomena, and the measurement and conceptualization of 'hypnotic depth.' It is concluded that many of the problems relating to the definition and conceptualization of terms associated with hypnosis may be clarified by placing the terms in their historical context, and that difficulties in identifying the origins of the experiences and behaviours associated with hypnosis may stem from insufficient attention to the role of suggestion and expectancies in producing hypnotic phenomena, and an over-reliance on the role of the procedures and mechanics of the induction process.
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Biography Historical Article
Ambroise August Liébeault and psychic phenomena.
Some nineteenth-century hypnosis researchers did not limit their interest to the study of the conventional psychological and behavioral aspects of hypnosis, but also studied and wrote about psychic phenomena such as mental suggestion and clairvoyance. One example, and the topic of this paper, was French physician Ambroise August Liébeault (1823-1904), who influenced the Nancy school of hypnosis. ⋯ Some of his writings provide conventional explanations of the phenomena. Still of interest today, Liébeault's writings about psychic phenomena illustrate the overlap that existed during the nineteenth-century between hypnosis and psychic phenomena--an overlap related to the potentials of the mind and its subconscious activity.
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Biography Historical Article Classical Article
The obstetrician and hypnosis.