NOVEMBER 1997, VOLUME 25, NUMBER 2, Abstract 1
HYPNOSIS: THE ELUSIVE RAPPROCHEMENT BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Geraldine Dyer, University of South Australia
Russell Hawkins, University of South Australia
Theory and practice should be closely interlinked, with each informing and supporting the other. There has been a tradition of such links in the hypnosis world, which it has been argued has helped raise the status of hypnosis to that of a mainstream therapy. Nonetheless, on close inspection, our current understandings of theory are not developed well enough to offer sufficiently clear guidelines about clinical practice. Data show that hypnosis has demonstrable clinical efficacy, but the newcomer to the field, filled with expectancies derived from training in the scientist-practitioner mould, will still be dissatisfied with our capacity to explain what hypnosis is or why it works.