Book Review: Existential Hypnotherapy

Book Reviews useful guide to non-existential clinicians concerning the relevance of contemporary existential therapy in the UK. The chapter on R D Laing was also extremely clear, although some mention of 'Reason and Violence' with David Cooper would be useful for those who wanted to understand Laing's relationship to Sartre's philosophy. Overall I rate this book highly. To pull together a large and somewhat disparate literature then make sense of it and finally retain the reader's interest is difficult. Cooper has also managed, although this was not one of his aims, to present 'Existential Therapies' not as a disparate set of competing therapies but as a nascent form of social unity. Undoubtedly, every reader of this journal will find particular areas of disagreement and particular areas in which more was required, but Cooper as an ex-journalist knows the importance of writing for his audience – his audience in this case being those readers who require an introduction to existential therapies. **R.G. Hill** Robert Hill is a clinical psychologist working in the field of addictions at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and Senior Lecturer in European Mental Health Research at Middlesex University. He is book review editor of the journal. **Existential Hypnotherapy** Mark E. King and Charles M. Citrenbaum. (1993). New York: The Guildford Press. 'Existential Hypnotherapy' brings together the therapeutic aspects of hypnosis and tries to marry them with existential thinking. What emerges is an integrative model of hypnotherapy rather than an existential approach to therapy. This book will be of much interest to hypnotherapists for it gives hypnotherapy an added dimension. It engages with such existential themes as existential anxiety, our freedom to make choices within our situation, to take responsibility and ownership of our life and to give direction to it, and as therapists to remain open to the client's experience, staying with the personal meaning of the client and the importance of the therapeutic relationship in being with the client. However, in hypnotherapy, this added existential dimension is transformed from an existential approach to becoming another set of techniques in the hypnotherapist's tool box. Certainly as the authors mention, its skill as in psychotherapy is dependent on the skill and the being qualities of the hypnotherapist. However, it is doubtful whether existential therapists will see much in common with existential

Book Reviews hypnotherapy in the approach to therapy. For hypnotherapy focuses heavily on the use of techniques which is at variance with the philosophical underpinnings of existential therapy. In existential therapy, the focus is on being with the client in a reflective dialogue where the therapist engages with, explores and clarifies the lived experience of the client's being-in-the- world with others. It moves away from the use of techniques. King and Citrenbaum use ‘Gestalt techniques’ to let go of unfinished business, 'mock funerals' with rituals to ‘bury’ the past and let go of aspects blocking the client, ‘anchoring’ techniques for increased will power and confidence, regressive techniques for accessing the inner child, and visual imagery for reparenting and for personal empowerment. While the success and relevance of these techniques as well as the techniques employed to | bring on hypnosis/self-hypnosis are not being questioned, for indeed as the authors maintain they may well be very therapeutic. However, the point being made is that in the use of techniques it moves away from the existential approach to therapy. An extract from the text illustrates this point. 'The following excerpt from a hypnotic session with Steve reveals the use of gestalt concepts to empower him: Steve, before you let go into hypnotic trance, we discussed and you seemed to understand, that you have been stuck at the shy and passive ends of the shy-bold and passive-aggressive continuums. That means that the potential to choose to be bold and aggressive exists within you. What I'd like you to do now, Steve, is get a picture or image on one side of your mind of yourself looking shy and passive, and nod your head when you see that image." When the patient indicates that he has found or created the desired image, ask him on what side of his mind he sees it. Then ask him to tell you exactly what he sees. Next ask the patient to become or role-play that image, looking like the image as much as possible, and even feeling how the person in the image feels. The first image we call for portrays the "unwanted" or problematic experience or behavior, since most patients can more easily conjure up this image and then experience it because it has been their more common or habitual way of being-in-the-world. When the patient seems to access the feeling associated with the image, set up an anchor to that feeling state. In Steve's case, a light touch on his right shoulder (he saw the image of himself as shy and passive on the right side of his mind) was used to anchor his shy, passive feelings. We used a light touch because it was congruent with the type of feelings that were being dealt with here. At this point the therapist said: "Steve, now on the left side of your mind, please get an image of yourself as bold and aggressive and nod your head when you see that picture.”

We have discovered that following these steps, of first explaining gestalt polarities and continuum model, and then directing the patient to create an image of the habitual, problematic experience, facilitates the patient's ability to access a desired or more powerful image....' While 'Existential Hypnotherapy' allows itself to be informed by existential ideas and will be of use to hypnotherapists, it's title suggests an existential approach to therapy and could feel prickly for existential therapists. Jyoti Nanda Jyoti has recently completed the course for the MA/Post MA Diploma in Existential Counselling Psychology at Regent's College. She works in private practice and also provides her services within the psychotherapy department of an NHS hospital. Becoming Good Parents An Existential Journey Mufid James Hannush. (2002). Albany: State University of New York Press. For all parents who for years have justified their inexpert and idiosyncratic childcare methods by reference to DW Winnicott (1965), Mufid James Hannush has a shock in store. 'Parenting' he tells us 'needs to be "good" and not simply "good enough"'. This bombshell, tossed into one of the most oft quoted and reassuring observations of parental psychology, is troubling enough, but there is more. Parenting, Hannush argues, is 'an ethical life project', calling for a constant striving towards 'moral vigilance' based on a clear and constant 'idea of goodness'. Any parent who hoped it was enough to ban Buffy and limit McDonalds is in serious trouble. Hannush is a moralist and this book takes an unashamedly moral stand against any sort of fashionable ethical relativism: 'Becoming a good person' Hannush tells us sternly 'requires a constant struggle to overcome the ever-present possibility of wrongdoing or the committing of evilish acts'. And if this sounds a bit like a voice from the pulpit (or indeed from an even higher place), it is not untypical of the book as a whole. Whether it is an existential book is a moot point. Certainly Hannush quotes from Rollo May and also explores Erik Erikson's and Heinz Cohut's work to uncover what they can tell us about psychological growth in the parent, but the book's subtitle: 'an existential journey' is an odd one as no personal experience is aired at all. Rather the book is full of statements, like 'existence... [exerts an] endless call to virtuous action' which seem a long way from the sort of open-ended self-exploration that might be expected on such a journey. Indeed many of his statements sound