Recommendations

This book is a straightforward and honest discussion of hypnosis and inductions that provides a good overview of sources and different theories. The author goes into why different inductions work for different people, and even whether inductions are truly needed. The advice is good, and doesn’t get too into the weeds.

Much of this guide would not exist or would have been very different without this book; it changed my thinking and prompted me to go back and revisit assumptions I had made. In particular, the point it makes that Erickson defines confusion as an "uncertainty about reality" led to more emphasis on perception in the suggestions section. This book discusses the trope of "analytical subjects" and discusses the history and background of hypnosis that led to this classification. There is an extensive discussion on the idea of resistance, the hypnotist’s desire to be seen as an expert and "in control" and the importance of co-operation and collaboration. It is also one of the few books to explicitly recognize autism and how autistic people look at the world.

Also see Vreahli’s book notes.

This is just a really solid and well rounded treatment of clinical hypnosis, with good contributors. You’ve got Capafons on Waking Hypnosis. You’ve got Wark on Training Issues. You’ve got Heap on Hypnosis and Memory, you’ve got Gorassini on Enhancing Hypnotizability, you’ve got Gibbons on Hypnotic Inductions. You can’t go wrong with this.

This book goes more into the treatment of various disorders with clinical hypnosis than the Handbook does. I like the academic approach, but some people prefer Cognitive Hypnotherapy (which I don’t like because it’s still stuck on Hilgard’s neo-dissociationist theory). Trancework is also very popular.

This is a clear-eyed book on using hypnosis with cognitive behavioral therapy, and it does all the right things: it talks about hypnosis from a socio-cognitive perspective and is well informed on the science, it understands the shared history and common ground between hypnosis and cogitive-behavioral approaches (for example, calling out systematic desensitization as originally Wolberg’s hypnotic desensitization), and discusses the effects of distancing and "dehypnosis" in dealing with automatic negative thoughts.

This book covers hypnosis from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. It is a groundbreaking book. There’s four sections: functional brain networks, dissociation, states of consciousness, and the psychobiology of trance. The section on states of consciousness effectively demolishes the concept of hypnosis as a state, and the section on psychobiology contains the cold control theory of hypnosis paper.

Also see Vreahli’s book notes.

This book has a number of important papers. It has the Carleton Skills Training Program (CSTP) in Chapter 6, and Gorassini’s Self Deception paper in Chapter 3. It criticizes the hypnosis scales, takes apart Hilgard’s neodissociation theory, and discusses clinical hypnosis as a non-deceptive placebo. And it’s got Emotional Self-Regulation Therapy (ESRT) on top of that.

Also see Vreahli’s book notes.

This book is notable for having multiple papers on alert inductions: it has "Valencia Model of Waking Hypnosis" paper with illustrations and another paper on using alert inductions in emergency situations.

This book came out in 1991, and while it hasn’t aged well, it’s a very important book with just about every notable figure piled in at once. The odds are that if you’ve heard of a theory, it was in this book. It has Hilgard’s neodissociation model, Edmonston’s relaxation model, Barber’s locksmith model, Spanos taking a sociocognitive view of hypnosis, Kirsch talking about social learning…​ all at once!

This paper goes over every single theory of hypnosis and how they all lack something in explaining the evidence.

This paper digs into how some hypnotees are good at some suggestions but bad at others, and discusses how this complicates the simple model of "highs" and "lows" used by suggestibility scales. Also see A Critical Review of Standardized Measures of Hypnotic Suggestibility.

This paper goes into the cognitive neuroscience of hypnosis. Terhune is just a great writer.

This is more of a takedown of older hypnosis theories, but it explicitly goes after the idea of an "unconscious mind."

This is a popular science book on predictive processing and how it works in perception and cogition. The science is solid, and it does a good job at discussing the sensory processing pipeline. It does not go into cognitive schema and learning as much as I would like.

This is a popular science book on emotional processing through interoception. The science is good, but in an attempt to make it more understandable it refers to allostasis as body budgeting — more confusing than helpful.

This is the academic version of How Emotions are Made. It’s a collection of papers on psychological constructionism applied to emotion. Much more satisfying, also more challenging.

This book explains the active inference model of decision making, and walks through the free energy principle and bayesian brains. It’s dense.

This book is an academic textbook that has a series of papers on interoception, allostasis, and ties it together with predictive processing and some shots at how cognition works. It made allostasis into a first class concept and how the mind can and must affect the body and how in turn internal body state affects the mind.

This book describe the attention schema theory which is a compliment to body schema and interoceptive schema. It describes our perception of our own thoughts and beliefs as a simplified model, the same way we perceive the position of our bodies or our internal state as vague impressions. This is a neat definition that prefers the term "awareness" over consciousness, and also implies that our perception of our own thoughts can be modified or mistaken, which dovetails neatly into hypnosis.

This is a popular science book that provides context and background science for why humans find storytelling so compelling. The answer is trouble: human beings are wired to pay attention to trouble and signs of trouble, and storytelling exploits that impulse. The book is a short and focused read, and there are some great tips here for engagement. One caveat: it is inconsistent about citing sources and they tend to be magazine articles and social analysis.

This book has good exercises for engagement. Some of the discussion on male/female interactions are a little dated.

This is a popular science book and is unfortunately replete with anecdotes and just-so stories, but it gets good when it starts talking about the mechanics of finding a good prompt (his word for cue). He also has habit songs for kids, which is very cute.