The Hypnotic Brain: Hypnotherapy and Social Communication

The Hypnotic Brain: Hypnotherapy and Social Communication

Peter Brown

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 322 pp., 1991

Those with a more serious interest in hypnosis will enjoy this book not only in the first reading, but as a future reference volume. Dr. Peter Brown, a psychiatrist from Toronto, has presented an extensively referenced work with the intention of reviewing”. . . our changing understanding of hypnosis and its clinical use in hypnotherapy in the light of our new knowledge of human behavior and brain function.” Appreciating that hypnosis is a special inherent state of communication of the human mind which has evolved from our pre-verbal ancestors, he begins with an anthropological review of the theories of non-verbal face-to-face communication skills and progresses from prehistoric times to the twentieth century’s renown hypnotherapist, Milton Erikson.

Erikson was master not only of non-verbal hypnotic communication but also of the use of the metaphor in hypnotherapeutic communication. Between the above mentioned wide time span, Brown also makes literary stops with Darwin, Freud, Janet, and then moves to modern day researchers of the psychoneurophysiological aspect of hypnotic/trance communication.

A brief book review cannot do justice to the many stops in Dr. Brown’s communication journey. He studies concepts of hypnosis from such areas as ultradian cycles, cerebral hemispheric inter-relationships, cortical and subcortical pathways in the process of trance production, neurophysiological changes in the application of clinical hypnosis, the relationship to multiple personality and post traumatic stress disorder, and many others.

Readers will probably also be impressed by the wide array of present day authors which are cited along with their contributions which are leading us to a better scientific understanding of the trance state and its application to clinical hypnotherapeutic communication. At times the material is complicated, leading to ‘heavy’ reading, but those who wish to learn the phenomena of trance and trance communication will find this reading a worthwhile endeavor. Hypnosis unlocks a door to the trance state: the hypnotic brain. It behooves us to learn the lessons it can teach about interpersonal communication which is a major part of what this book is all about.