Product reviews for Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents – Second Edition

Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents, edited by Laurence Sugarman and William Wester, consists of a collection of erudite articles from eminent luminaries, all with highly impressive credentials, in the field of clinical practice with children and young people.

This work must surely rate as the definitive academic text on working with children and young people and be much welcomed by hypnotherapy practitioners, the medical fraternity and academic researchers alike.

The three main sections of Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents cover the scope of hypnotherapy, psychological applications for the hypnotherapist and medical implications for hospital care workers.

The introductory section provides a comprehensive contextual framework for the practitioner and offers the reader insight into the way a permissive approach, judicial parental involvement, together with a sound knowledge of child development stages, can assist the therapeutic process markedly.

The section dealing with the psychological implications considers both simple and complex manifestations of childhood trauma in terms of the effect of family disruption resulting from divorce or separation and suggests appropriate assessment techniques and a phased treatment approach for dealing with the aftermath of such disruptive family upheavals. This part of the title also offers a whole treasure-trove of guidance in treatment strategies for a range of habit disorders, depressive manifestations, anxiety states, obsessive-compulsive disorders, psychosomatic-psychogenic disorders and behavioural disorders. The treatment of adolescents who suffer from developmental problems and social adjustment difficulties has also been well catered for in this work. A very useful chapter on family therapy also provides a unique insight into working with children and minors in the family context.

Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents concludes with a section of great value to medical care workers who are assisting children and young people as hospital patients thereby redressing the balance of this much-neglected topic in the literature to date.



This book should certainly be found on the bookshelf of every serious clinician concerned with this vital area of treatment for children and adolescents.