Techniques for hypnosis - Authoritative and direct vs. Permissive and indirect
In this article Glenn M. Johnson og Head-Cleaners.com describes to alternative techniques that hypnotists use to put the subject into a trance. The two techniques are named: Authorative/direct and permissive/indirect. The difference between these two techniques are shown in examples of hypnotic suggestions, along with some hypnosis history about Sigmund Freud and Milton H. Erickson. It is also explained how these techniques are utilized in Head-Cleaners hypnosis tapes.
One of the many ways that one could divide and categorize hypnotic strategies - strategies for getting a person into a hypnotic state of mind and for suggesting things to the person once in that hypnotic state - is to divide them into authoritative and direct or permissive and indirect.
Direct, authoritative hypnotic strategies are, as their label suggests, directds, directing and authority-based. The hypnotist directs the hypnotic subject to do something (e.g., feel a heaviness in the eyelids and let them close). The subject goes along with the directive because the hypnotist is an authority figure and seems to say things with authority. What the hypnotist is suggesting is very straightforward - very directly suggested. The hypnotist is directing the subject like a traffic cop might direct traffic.
Direct, authoritative strategies are what are generally thought of when thinking of hypnosis. These are the traditional means of employing hypnosis. Generally, when watching hypnosis as portrayed in movies, you are most likely to see the authoritative and direct type. It's easier to see what's happening. Direct, authoritative type hypnosis (e.g., "You will now go to sleep but you will continue to hear and obey my voice..." -- or, "You have no choice but to feel your eyes closing...") is much more obviously "hypnotic."
Indirect, permissive hypnotic techniques were devised by Milton Erickson, a psychologist and psychiatrist of the middle twentieth century who "rediscovered" the potentials for hypnosis that had been pronounced too difficult to work with by Sigmund Freud at the beginning of the twentieth century.
As the label indicates, indirect and permissive hypnotic techniques rely much more on the hypnotist suggesting to the hypnotic subject that he or she do this or do that rather than directing him or her to do so. The hypnotic subject is assured - through the structuring of the language used in making a suggestion - that he or she has the right to choose whether or not to comply with the hypnotist's suggestion.
Where an authoritative directive might seem heavy handed, the hypnotic subject is more likely to experience a permissive, indirect suggestion as just that - a suggestion. So, for example, if a hypnotist wants to have the hypnotic subject close his or her eyes and begin the process of deeply relaxing, using an authoritative, direct technique, the hypnotist might say,
"You will feel your eyelids becoming heavier and heavier and you will not be able to keep your eyes from closing. You will find your self slipping deeper and deeper into sleep while still sitting upright and still being able to clearly hear my voice...."
The indirect, permissive alternative, on the other hand, would be to say something like,
"If you like, you might let your self imagine feeling comfortable enough to allow yourself to feel like you're going to sleep while continuing to be able to hear my voice... allowing your self to keep your eyes open as you slip into sleep ... or allowing your self to let your eyelids gently close"
The permissive, indirect suggestion doesn't seem so obviously demanding. It allows the hypnotic subject to feel more in control of his or her experience.
Sigmund Freud versus Milton Erickson
Freud used a hypnotic technique that involved essentially demanding that the hypnotic subject slip into a trance. He found this fairly difficult to get results from. Freud also complained that subjects - when they were significantly helped through the use of hypnosis - did not give him enough credit. He didn't like it that they seemed to think they fixed themselves. He also felt uncomfortable using a technique that seemed to access unconscious thought processes - which he believed were the repository of dark, ugly aspects of the human mind.
Erickson, coming along some decades later, couldn't see the harm in letting people feel in charge of their own improvements. He thought it wonderful that people felt that they fixed themselves. He thought it was only polite - and, ultimately, much more practical - to allow people as much control and permission as possible. Erickson, in contrast to Freud, believed that the unconscious processes accessed by hypnosis were the finest, most helpful part of the human mind. He believed that hypnosis was a means to foster those finer thought processes and believed it was important to word hypnotic suggestions in ways that would permit the hypnotic subject's mind to decide what might be best to do in every instance.
Erickson believed it was polite, politic and practical to use hypnotic techniques in a manner that would permit the individual's mind to make the best use of the relaxation and openness of hypnosis as that mind believed best. This meant wording suggestions in ways that gave permission to interpret suggestions in specifically non-specific ways that left much to interpretation. For example, an Ericksonian turn of phrase might look something like this:
"You might notice or not notice how a certain sensation, there, in a certain muscle, might seem to signal a deepening sense of confidence, gradually, imperceptibly growing, that you might not even realize had begun... or is developing ...until you experience a very pleasant surprise - perhaps not today or perhaps not even tomorrow - a surprise of how confident you actually feel - without having recognized that ...you really can appreciate that... you are so much more capable than you had given your self credit for... for so long..."
The above set of suggestions give the hypnotic subject complete permission to feel or not feel the changes suggested in confidence - and they give permission to feel them when the indidual wants to. This is very different from the heavy-handed demands of the authoritative directive.
The Head-Cleaners hypnosis recordings are devised using these Ericksonian techniques. Indirect techniques present carefully chosen suggestions within carefully crafted wordings that suggest specific ideas in non-specific ways. The purpose of the creation of carefully crafted,specifically non-specific wordings is to capitalize on the human brain's tendency to "fill in the blanks" when trying to make sense of something said.
When an individual is presented ideas in a carefully crafted general manner, he or she tends to process the incoming words on the basis of what he or she expects to hear, wants to hear, needs to hear. Thus, because of indirect techniques, the listener's own mind assures that suggestions are personally "form-fitted" to his or her needs and expectations. And positive, healthy responses to suggestions are assured by additional mini-suggestions threaded throughout each suggestion. These mini-suggestions strongly emphasize doing only those things -- and making only those changes -- that are in the listener's best interests. With indirect techniques the emphasis is on the listener's empowerment in allowing his or her mind to independently utilize it's under-used strengths and abilities.
Direct techniques, in contrast, are powerful and often effective but they are technically more complicated, often more difficult to make effective use of, often very narrow in their impact and they involve an unecessary element of submissiveness, helplessness and aquiescence on the part of the listener.
The Head-Cleaners hypnosis recordings are intended to impact multiple, overlapping issues via indirect, permissive, personally individualized suggestions. The head-cleaners hypnosis recordings are intended to also foster optimal independence and personal power and optimal mental and physical health. By email request, a transcript of any tape or CD can be made available to any potential listener, parent or therapist.