Hypnosis has long been recognised as an effective tool for producing behavioural change in the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia. Despite many studies from the latter half of the last century suggesting that hypnosis might also be of value in managing obesity situations, the efficacy of the hypnotherapeutic approach for weight reduction has received surprisingly little formal research attention since 2000.This review presents a brief history of early clinical studies in the use of hypnosis for weight reduction; and describes an hypnotherapeutic approach within which a combination of instructional/pedagogic, and exploratory therapeutic sessions can work together synergistically to maximise the potential for sustained weight loss. Hypnotic modulation of appetite and satiation associated peptides and hormones levels may yield additional physiological benefits in type-1 and type-2 diabetes. Between 1959 and over 40 reports were published specifically describing the use of hypnosis for weight reduction (Table 1). The studies varied in size from >100 participants (Goldstein, 1981;, through smaller trials of 20-75 patients, down to those quoting individual case studies (Hanning, 1975;Munro, 1989, ;. Amongst the earliest descriptions of use of hypnosis in a medical situation to treat obesity was Brodie (1964) who (rather contentiously) would tell his obese patients that they had the equivalent of a "fat cancer" that had been growing inside them for years and which needed removal by their learning to eat properly, through the use of his hypnotic therapy. He claimed great success with this personalised approach to treating over 525 patients, but as was the case with many of the early studies, Brodie did not employ any control group nor did he publish any numerical data to substantiate this claim, which limits severely any assessment of the true efficacy of his non-conformist approach. 2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF CLINICAL HYPNOSIS FOR OBESITYMost of the authors listed in table 1 employed a sociocognitive or authoritarian approach, utilising varying combinations of suggestion, imagery, anxiety reduction, aversion, covert sensitisation and self-directed programming to facilitate changes in eating habits, usually with apparent benefit in reducing weight in their subjects. However a more analytical or exploratory approach was taken by , , Munro (1989) and , with evident success also. Induction approaches were predominantly progressive relaxation or eye gaze fixation, either in groups or individually, with devices such as hand levitation being used to enhance the depth of hypnosis and hence increase the benefits of the hypnosis sessions (Goldstein, 1981). Some studies additionally taught participants self-hypnosis and/or provided hypnosis tapes for home use.It is difficult to accurately evaluate the claims made by many of these reports as only 17 out of the 43 studies listed incorporated a control cohort, and in only 9 studies were patients followed-up after their hypnosis-induced weight loss to monitor for weight regain, ...

Despite the continued debate and lack of a clear consensus about the true nature of the hypnotic phenomenon, hypnosis is increasingly being utilized successfully in many medical, health, and psychological spheres as a research method, motivational tool, and therapeutic modality. Significantly, however, although hypnotherapy is widely advertised, advocated, and employed in the private medical arena for the management and treatment of many physical and emotional disorders, too little appears to be being done to integrate hypnosis into primary care and national health medical services. This article discusses some of the reasons for the apparent reluctance of medical and scientific health professionals to consider incorporating hypnosis into their medical practice, including the practical problems inherent in using hypnosis in a medical context and some possible solutions.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce to sociologists the concept of dissociative hypnosis and to demonstrate the potential that this discipline has for obtaining or deriving biographical narratives in ethnographic and autoethnographic studies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents brief comparative histories of the development of hypnosis and of performance autoethnography to highlight the degree of consonance between these apparently, disparate modalities, in their struggle for acceptance and respectability. The intensely introspective, emotional and experiential nature of hypnosis and self-hypnosis narratives is then compared with the personal descriptions and applications of the autoethnographic process as depicted in the sociological literature, to illustrate the parallels between the two modalities. The paper concludes with a review of the potential problems and limitations inherent in using hypnosis as a memory recall modality in sociological research studies.FindingsThis paper argues that the exploratory and revelatory nature of information accrual during dissociative altered-state hypnosis closely resembles that during performance autoethnography, and that hypnosis could therefore be usefully employed as an additional and novel (ethno-) autobiographical tool in sociological and ethnographic research.Originality/valuePerformative autoethnography has now become a firmly established route to obtaining a valid and intensely personal autobiographical history of individuals or groups of individuals. However this is the first publication to propose hypnosis as an alternative approach to deriving ethnographic and autoethnographic biographical narratives.

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Much has been written about the aetiological role of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in the development of chronic adult physical and emotional health problems but current screening methods utilising questionnaires and formal interviewing often fail to show consensus across populations and surveys. This paper proposes that hypnotic regression might provide an alternative approach to ACE screening through its facility in revealing unsuspected and seemingly minor ACEs, which nevertheless can go on to have long term implications for individuals’ adult health. In this study seven female participants with intractable overweight volunteered to participate in a series of hypnosis sessions designed to explore for possible covert childhood or early adulthood traumatic experiences which might have contributed towards their adult obesity problems. During their hypnosis sessions all participants were seemingly able to recall and to recount, narratives of long-forgotten but intensely painful childhood experiences, traumas and family disharmony, which appeared to have provoked life-changing decisions regarding their weight, body image or eating habits, and which may then have contributed to their developing refractory obesity later in their adult life. This study suggests that current decisions limiting the range of what constitutes ACEs may account for the differing results of previous ACEs surveys and that hypnosis might prove to be a useful tool in screening for otherwise unrecognised ACEs, thus helping to improve the specificity and sensitivity of current ACE screening programmes.