Philosophy of the Cambridge College of Hypnotherapy

'The therapist as outsider is capable of providing what the system itself cannot generate - a change of its own rules' (Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jackson, Pragmatics of human communication)

The School's principles of Ericksonian hypno-psychotherapy are founded on the following premises:

1. That it is the client who initiates change, not the therapist.

2. That the therapist assists change by evoking unused schemas.

3. Schemas are learned patterns of thought, emotion, and behaviour that are mainly unconscious.

4. Psychotherapeutic problems arise in part from the use of inappropriate schemas within the problem context.

5. Hypno-psychotherapy is a form of meta-communication; a set of varied responses that have the effect of altering the client's schemas.

6. Hypnosis is the key that serves to secure the client's attention to new possibilities, alternative patterns of thought, emotion, and behaviour. The presuppositions outlined above give rise to a philosophy of psychotherapeutic change that can be summarised in the following way:

In freely opting for hypno-psychotherapy the client has, by that very fact, demonstrated a capacity for change, since dysfunction has already been identified as such by the client. This identification presupposes that the desired state of affairs is possible. Clients are in the position of continually repeating some undesired pattern of thought, emotion, and behaviour. In seeking therapy they employ the therapist to assist them in initiating this process of change. Since these original patterns were themselves learned, then it follows that they can be relearned, unlearned, or replaced.

Clients are, as a rule, highly conscious of the dissatisfactory state of affairs they bring with them to psychotherapy, but much less so of the underlying logic of the problem. This logic is based on the fact that the problem was once a 'solution'; a schematic application of some learned strategy to one situation which has now changed in such a way that the old solution is no longer useful. While this solution was once considered appropriate, changed perceptions, values, and contexts have made it less so, in a way that limits the client's life.

The therapist's task is thus to assist the client to gain insight and uncover some new and satisfactory schema which is more appropriate to these changed perceptions and values. In this sense it can be said that each client already has the resources necessary to make any change; the resources will be invoked within the new schema evoked by the therapist once this is recognised by the client. No more, nor less than this is required to excite change within the client.

Schemas are organisations of embodied knowledge formulated linguistically, iconically, and neurologically. Hypno-psychotherapists utilise their verbal, imaginative, and physical (gestural and other) skills in order to create responses which are qualitatively preferable to those organised by the existing schemas.

Finally, hypnosis (defined as a style of communication by which the client's attention can be narrowed to a perceptual set suggested by the hypnotherapist) can be employed as a pre-eminent means of modifying and replacing existing schemas. Its pre-eminence here, however, arises firstly from the rapport which results from the therapist's valued communications with the client; and secondly from the client's expectation that trustworthy assistance is being provided in new and more desirable patterns of thought, feeling, and behaviour.

The therapist never, at any time, provides assistance which is not consonant with these purposes.

The School recognises that the aims of psychotherapy are:

(a) to reduce suffering and distress;

(b) to facilitate the client's search to find ways to cope more effectively with the demands of everyday living;

(c) to develop the client's insight and strengthen a sense of self-mastery in order to live more constructively.

One of the tenets of the School is that every person has a unique "map of the world" and the teaching on the course reflects this belief. An approach which explores the unique frame of reference of the client is an effective way of evoking relevant mental processes to facilitate the capacity to change.