MENTAL CONNECTION, MEMORIES AND VITAL RESOURCES TO REACH OWN'S ONE THERAPEUTIC GOAL

We view hypnotherapy as a process whereby we help people utilize their own mental associations, memories, and life potentials to achieve their own therapeutic goals. Hypnotic suggestion can facilitate the utilization of abilities and potentials that already exist within a person but that remain unused or underdeveloped because of a lack of training or understanding. The hypnotherapist carefully explores a patient's individuality to ascertain what life learnings, experiences, and mental skills are available to deal with the problem. The therapist then facilitates an approach to trance experience wherein the patient may utilize these uniquely personal internal responses to achieve therapeutic goals. Our approach may be viewed as a three-stage process: (1) a period of preparation during which the therapist explores the patients repertory of life experiences and facilitates constructive frames of reference to orient the patient toward therapeutic change; (2) an activation and utilization of the patient's own mental skills during a period of therapeutic trance; (3) a careful recognition, evaluation, and ratification of the therapeutic change that takes place. In this first chapter we will introduce some of the factors contributing to the successful experience of each of these three stages. In the chapters that follow we will illustrate and discuss them in greater detail.
Taken from Milton H. Erickson & Ernest L. Rossi, Hypnotherapy – An Exploratory Casebook, pag. 15, Irvington Publishers Inc.