Hypnotherapy and Scripts
Today’s offering strikes at the heart of one of my greatest irritations with hypnotherapy and hypnotherapists, scripts. Many years ago, I made it clear to a conference that they needed to throw their script books away, only to be told by the organiser to go back out on stage and say that I did not mean that, as this organisation sold its own script book.
I have recently seen an advertisement where a hypnotherapist is praising their method of creating hypnotherapy scripts and pitching it that all hypnotherapists who uses this approach can create their own scripts at will. Hypnotherapists are not actors, scripts are a teaching tool only. By which I mean that scripts are meant to show student therapists how to utilise hypnotic language in the best way for an effective intervention.
Hypnotherapy is not about coming up with scripts. Therapy is about understanding the therapeutic process. This understanding is how we determine how we intervene. Adverts like I have referred to, go a long way to prove that hypnotherapists are not up to “real” therapeutic work. It is essential that hypnotherapists look to expand their knowledge by learning more about psychotherapeutic process and approaches, not about learning how to make a script.
