Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Guide by Tad James has become a modern classic and the bedrock of initiation into the profession today for many clinical hypnotherapists and NLP practitioners. Tad James views the trance phenomenon as the optimal means of plummeting the depths of the client's intangible unconscious mind in order to promote subliminal learning and to activate the mind-body healing connection.
Tad James primarily examines the work of Milton Erickson and offers the reader an insight into functional working practices as well as allaying many ludicrous misconceptions about hypnotic phenomenon. The author subscribes to Erickson's permissive hypnotic patterns of indirection suggestion and his paradigm of client-preparation, trance induction and utilisation in order to effect therapeutic change. Hypnosis sets out clearly and concisely the technicalities of the Milton Model of Hypnotic Language Patterns, with its key components of ambiguity and utilisation, as the most effective means of gaining rapport and permitting effective communication with the client's unconscious mind. The NLP Meta Model, with its concepts of distortion, generalisation and deletion, is also evaluated as the solution to identifying the client's presenting symptoms and unravelling the information gained from his personal history. In Tad James' tribute to the master, the hypnotic metaphor is, most importantly, portrayed elegantly as if it came directly from Erickson's lips.
The reader of Hypnosis will be guided through the process of understanding trance phenomenon, suggestibility testing, trance-levels and ideomotor questioning as well as an interactive method of hypnotherapy which contains inbuilt client-questioning. This book is admirably packed to gunnels with case-study examples and how-to-do-it guides which can either be followed to the letter or be used as a means of allowing the practitioner's creativity to blossom.
From the work of George Estabrooks, Tad James culls the principles of progressive test-oriented inductions, deepening techniques and post-hypnotic suggestion together with the notion of bypassing the client's conscious critical factor as expounded by Dave Elman. To the work of these pioneers, Tad James then contributes his own special ingredient from his extensive experience of NLP and Timeline Therapy practice. I am personally heartened that Tad James does not hesitate to warn NLP practitioners and clinical hypnotherapists of the limitations and contra-indications of using purely cognitive-behavioural hypnotic techniques for the client with a life-threatening illness or suffering from deep-seated traumatic distress.