Customer Reviews

Hypnotically Enhanced Treatment for Addictions: Alcohol Abuse, Drug Abuse, Gambling, Weight Control and Smoking Cessation

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Joseph Tramontana's Hypnotically Enhanced Treatment for Addictions is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. For example, on p. 60 he alludes to the role of personality "parts" (or subpersonalities) in problem behavior (specifically gambling), but he does not otherwise develop the idea of using ego-state therapy or "parts therapy" to address clients' ambivalence and inner conflicts regarding their addictions and self-defeating habits. He touches briefly (on p. 2) on the potential use of hypnosis as a natural alternative to getting high or experiencing altered states through drugs, but again does not really develop this aspect. (Bart J. Walsh called such use of hypnosis "Utilization Sobriety.") Also, the excerpts from his hypnotic scripts and patter reflect a tendency to impose specific imagery instead of allowing clients to generate their own in what Roy Hunter calls "open-screen imagery". I also wonder if the sessions he devotes to hypnotic reinforcement of the 12 steps of AA (see pp. 27-33) would be better spent training clients in hypnotic relaxation for voluntary tension reduction, effecting therapeutic desensitization to their "triggers," and facilitating inner conflict resolution (i.e. overcoming ambivalence through the aforementioned "parts" or ego-state therapy).

Still, the book has many merits. Dr. Tramontana admits that over time he adapted and expanded his approach to include those clients who were not receptive to 12-step groups or group therapy (see pp. 2-3). His methods draw on the ideodynamic hypnotherapy of Leslie LeCron and David Cheek. Moreover, he deserves credit for recognizing and promoting the value of using hypnosis in addiction treatment at all. It seems strange to me that hypnosis has been so underutilized in this field when several factors make it such a good fit: Aspects of addictive thinking and relapse behavior are themselves functional--or rather dysfunctional--equivalents of trance (see Dennis Wier's work on "Pathological Trance and Addiction."); hypnosis helps clients bypass their intellectualization (and other defenses) to gain access to emotion, imagination and creativity; and hypnosis has a recognized role in addressing many of the issues that complicate addiction recovery, such as anxiety, pain, trauma, ambivalence, and inadequate ego strength. As Tramontana says, ". . . the nature and manifestation of addiction is complex and multifaceted. Fortunately, hypnosis is an approach--used alone or in tandem with other paradigms--that is flexible, permissive, and non-threatening, giving the therapist the power to address a wide range of variables and offer relief" (p. 114).

Other topics Tramontana discusses include using regression and uncovering techniques to identify and release the emotional residue of past experiences that interfere with addiction recovery, and hypnotic behavioral rehearsal (similar to imaginal rehearsal or "future pacing") for practicing new skills. He describes hypnosis as an altered state of consciousness when introducing it to clients, and he outlines its use in addressing "issues that . . . seem intractable to other approaches" (p. 17). This book is definitely not the last word in using hypnotherapy with addicted persons, nor is it even as thorough as I had hoped it would be. However, I would still recommend it as providing a useful starting point and suggestions for hypnotically enhancing addiction treatment.