Roger Allen presents a comprehensive and extremely elegantly written collection of scripts for all aspects of hypnotherapy - inductions, deepeners, and scripts for a wide range of specific problems. I particularly like the sections on pain management (including visiting the dentist), smoking cessation, negative emotions, bereavement, and accessing “lost” memories. There's also a small collection of very nice metaphors and a number of short essays on related topics including stage hypnosis, anchoring, parts therapy and others. Personally I would also have liked some essays on the practicalities of running a hypnotherapy practice (I am sure Mr Allen has a lot to share on that) but this, perhaps, is not the book for that. Nevertheless, this is an excellent collection of scripts for all practising hypnotherapists - all of them beautifully written.

Bringing these two volumes together represents an incredible source of reference for the student and experienced practitioner of Hypnotherapy alike. The most commonly encountered subjects are covered offering a variety of approaches in many cases. It is an essential read for anyone starting out in Hypnotherapy and one I will be recommending to my students.

I very much like the structure and organisation of this text. It is so well organised that I would feel comfortable reaching for it in order to discuss options with a client. The learners I have contact with, will find it offers an accessible and pragmatic route into understanding and using scripts. They will be able to use many of those presented here as a basis for weaving words that will be appropriate for themselves and their clients.

Scripts and Strategies in Hypnotherapy by Roger Allen is easy to read, well assembled and contains around 90 scripts of hypnotic induction. The author gives a sentence in the introduction that the book is of interest to beginners; as a recent graduate with an special interest in Ericksonian approaches, I found the book to be of particular interest.

The reader is introduced to a variety of Ericksonian approaches as well as a number of NLP techniques. The well-written scripts furnish students with resources of these methodologies to work with. It is a simple and useful method of learning trance induction.

The book contains a general introduction describing a number of concepts: hypnotic state, the process of induction, conscious and subconscious parts of the mind. Some of the chapters also contain introductions about various themes. The first chapter provides a description of hypnosis and the effect of the hypnotic state on conscious and subconscious processes. Allen's scripts go right into the induction of hypnosis; a variety of techniques from simple to more advanced are included. Among the scripts are -˜Eyes Sealed Shut', 'Ticking Clock Induction', 'Children up to Age Ten', -˜Overload Induction', -˜Self-Hypnosis Training' that the reader is invited to try out. His descriptions are clear, providing the student with what seems to be a useful repertoire to get started.

From there, Allen goes into deepening techniques, giving a batch of ways to deepen the trance once the subject is under hypnosis. However, Allen doesn't explain why you would want to deepen the trance. I feel that he did not give enough information on how to recognize whether the subject is in trance or not, and how to manage unexpected responses.

Allen offers a group of therapeutic scripts designed to work with a wide circle of problems. These include habit control, weight loss, fear and panic management, healing, pain management, sexual issues, loss and bereavement, and smoking cessation. Although they are general scripts, it is very educational to see the many ways in which specific suggestions can be inserted into the trance induction process. In some scripts Allen refers to previous scripts in the book as a starting point. Reading them was very helpful for me. They provide a framework that can easily be modified to meet the particular needs and concerns of clients.

Allen also gives a useful introduction to a number of therapeutic strategies including metaphors, amnesia, memory enhancement and performance improvement. I found the section on Smoking Cessation to be of particular value. The section included a detailed description of how smoking affects different chemical processes within the human body. In the Ukraine, smoking continues to be a pervasive problem, though here smokers rarely seek help Included in the book is a Smoking Questionnaire that facilitates redirecting the clients thoughts on what is important. The comprehensive information, combined with hypnotic induction techniques creates a very promising tool to help clients who have a genuine desire to stop smoking.



As Allen says, Scripts and Strategies in Hypnotherapy provides a starting place for integrating the medium of hypnosis into therapeutic practice. If the reader has some experience he can adapt scripts for cases or use them as is. In my own case, I am not yet ready to use these scripts in my clinical practice, though they did allow me to gain some valuable experience trying out techniques on volunteer colleagues who are interested like I am. This resource has helped me to get past that difficult first step, and I appreciate the clear and useful way in which this information is presented.

Allen collates both his previous volumes of collected Scripts and Strategies in Hypnotherapy together in this work. Many inductions are included and a few deepeners. Rightly, most of the work is concerned with the business of therapy itself. Many situation-specific ego-strengtheners are included, as well as sections on common issues such as pain management and anxiety. The ever-popular smoking-cessation, fear-management and weight-control receive large chapters of their own which I have found invaluable in my Central-Manchester, Wilmslow and Romiley clinics.

Previous reviews of the two separate volumes have always touted the scripts as off-the-peg verbatim scripts and/or frameworks around which to base a bespoke item for the client. However some of the scripts come over as a little too specific for undiluted use, causing me to go through with a pencil making notes.

Part eleven is entitled Therapy Strategies and includes tips for dealing with abreaction, age progression, re-framing, anchors etc. and each of these tactics is dealt with very well. However that is what they are; tactics (or gambits), not strategies. Therapeutic strategy involves various decisions such as “when is it useful to switch from a behaviouristic approach to a classic-dynamic one?” or “should I address the symptom or the cause (or both) in this particular case?” or “how can I most usefully model the direction(s) of causation between the different aspects of this complaint? ” etc.

Necessarily, each particular script must be based on some paradigm or another and for the majority, this is as far as any strategies are addressed per se. The only exception being the smoking cessation pages where the strategy and paradigm are discussed, (i.e. Aversion vs. Coercion?)



Due to the name of the book, I expected to see some alternative potential conceptions of the nature of each presentation along with their respective interventions, but that's not what the book is all about. The formatting decisions of choosing a large font, and starting each new script on a new page, strongly hint at the book's ultimate purpose. It looks cleanly, easily read and allows easy, quick access in the consulting room. After a short introduction to hypnosis it's just cover to cover useful scripts. An index would be welcome, as would a more complete synopsis of each script, but ultimately, the complete re-formatting of the two volumes of “Scripts and Tactics in Hypnotherapy' has made it much more convenient and better value, offering twice as many scripts per pound.

Scripts and Strategies in Hypnotherapy; Complete Works combines Roger Allen's previous books into one accessible volume providing an imaginative source of scripts that cover the most commonly met cases. For the newly qualified therapist, it is a useful addition and for the more experienced it is a source of inspiration.