Dabney Ewen, M.D. has taught: “Fixed ideas will make a person sick, and violating them will make people anxious, so these fixed ideas remain inviolate and fixed in place.” Fixed ideas are often seeded in early trauma, when the solution to a problem held survival value. These deeply entrenched ideas/behaviors/symptoms become “imprinted” and “resistance to change is often an unconscious way of protecting oneself against the anxiety of violating the fixed idea” which was once the source of self-preservation. Hypnoanalysis and clinical hypnosis can augment therapy by offering yet another technique to address resistance to change and psychosomatic symptoms (physical symptoms for which there is no apparent medical cause). Hypnosis can also be used for ego-strengthening, pain control, anxiety reduction, and habit control. It is time efficient without sacrificing depth of experience.
Hypnosis has been called the manifestation of intention. Hypnosis relies on an individual’s innate capacity for dissociation, the state of being here and there at the same time, like when we get absorbed in a movie or book; the ability for focused attention, or absorption; and a degree of suggestibility, like following a guided imagery – believed in imagination.
Hypnosis is never undertaken without a thorough diagnostic interview, and it is always at the psychologist’s discretion.