The Pregnant Man: And Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist's Couch [Hardcover]

Deirdre Barrett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 21, 1998

A student bound for a prestigious writing program is suddenly and inexplicably incapable of reading a single word. A staid society matron, looking to overcome her anxiety about flying, reveals a daredevil past. A young woman trying to come to terms with her sister's suicide is hampered by a poltergeist's mischievous interventions. A man who sets out to end an addiction to nicotine instead develops a false pregnancy.

Can hypnotherapy heal a troubled mind? Why is it so compelling and controversial? In The Pregnant Man: And Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist's Couch, Dr. Deirdre Barrett describes how she has used the fascinating discipline known as hypnotherapy to treat these patients and many others. Tracing the voyage of seven patients through her practice, she demonstrates how hypnosis can accelerate and magnify the benefits of psychotherapy--and occasionally its dangers. Several of Dr. Barrett's patients evince disquieting symptoms--hallucinations, multiple personalities, and more--that hypnotic explorations reveal as variations on the universal themes of love, bereavement, envy, and shame. Other patients bring to her couch more mundane complaints--a desire to quit smoking, fear of flying--and in the course of their therapy uncover surprising dramas behind them.

The Pregnant Man follows Dr. Barrett's personal evolution as a hypnotherapist, even as it illuminates the art and science of a branch of psychotherapy all too often misunderstood by the general public. She explains how hypnotherapy can offer a deeper window into the workings of the mind and offers expert guidance on deciding whether hypnotherapy is right for you.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Deirdre Barrett doesn't use a gold watch and a cape, but other than that, her daily routine at Harvard Medical School is right out of a carnival sideshow. She puts people into trances, suggests how they might overcome or think differently about their problems, and snaps them back out again. With some people, if her word is to be believed, it works quite dramatically: witness the chronic asthmatic, addicted to smoking, who quit the weed--permanently--after a single session with Dr. Barrett. But, as she admits, not everyone is so lucky. Some people are much easier to hypnotize than others, and even those who go glassy-eyed quite readily don't always end up cured. The range of ailments that hypnotic suggestion can sometimes help, meanwhile, is as broad as their causal stories are obscure. To Barrett's credit, The Pregnant Man isn't much interested in causal theories, preferring to stick close to the details of particular case histories. There are seven of those stories here--and that format, plus the title, make comparisons to Oliver Sacks inevitable. While she writes clearly and engagingly, Barrett doesn't quite match up to Sacks's limpid brilliance and manic erudition. Nevertheless, the subject matter is interesting, and her treatment of it informative. --Richard Farr

From Publishers Weekly

Fans of Oliver Sacks will recognize the narrative strategy in Barrett's exploration of how the seemingly unretrievable past rises to the surface as the patient, guided by the therapist, attempts to recover lost memories?the seeming source of his or her psychic discomfort. With circumspection, detachment and humor, Barrett, a practicing hypnotherapist who teaches at Harvard Medical School, presents seven case studies from her 20-year practice that "unfolded in my office like plays" in which patients, by way of suggestion, strove to break old patterns and develop new strategies for being. They include a man who imagines he is pregnant by a deceased male partner; a young woman who watches a film about Joan of Arc and then "becomes" the martyred maid of Orleans; a mother with multiple-personality disorder; and a young man whose dreams of alien abduction turn out to be something other than space travel. Barrett begins with a brief history of hypnosis and concludes with a summary of her views and advice for those considering such therapy, making measured claims free of moral judgment. Her willingness to discuss her own failings and the limitations of hypnotherapy strengthen the reader's confidence in her objectivity and enrich these thoughtful plumbings of the human psyche.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 238 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (July 21, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812929055
• ISBN-13: 978-0812929058
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,675,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D. is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School's Behavioral Medicine Program. She Past President of both the International Association for the Study of Dreams and the American Psychological Association's Div. 30, The Society for Psychological Hypnosis. Dr. Barrett has written four books: The Committee of Sleep (Random House, 2001) and The Pregnant Man and Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist's Couch (Random House, 1998), Waistland (Norton, 2007) and Supernormal Stimuli (Norton, 2010). She is the editor of four additional books: Trauma and Dreams (Harvard University Press, 1996), The New Science of Dreaming (Praeger/Greenwood, 2007), Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy (Praeger/Greenwood, 2010), and The Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams (Greenwood, 2012). Dr. Barrett has published dozens of academic articles and chapters on health, hypnosis, and dreams. She is Editor-in-Chief of DREAMING: The Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams.
Dr. Barrett's commentary on psychological issues has been featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, Fox, and The Discovery Channel. She has been interviewed for dream articles in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Life, Time, and Newsweek. Her own articles have appeared in Psychology Today and Invention and Technology. Dr. Barrett has lectured at Esalen, the Smithsonian, and at universities around the world.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A deep and enchanting book, yet easy to read, January 6, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pregnant Man: And Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist's Couch (Hardcover)

Hypnotherapy is easy to write badly about, and hard to handle with grace. Deirdre Barrett has done a superb job. Each "case" is thought-provoking; she never oversimplifies what she has seen; and the prose flows beautifully. First-rate.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hypnotic reading!, December 30, 2006

By 

Deb (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pregnant Man: And Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist's Couch (Hardcover)

These stories were just as hypnotic and trance-inducing as the therapies described. Deirdre's amazing talent for writing combined with an equally inspiring talent for genuine and human-centered therapy makes this book a refreshing and captivating treat to say the least. When I closed the book, my automatic reaction was "More please!"

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating cases!, August 21, 2010

By 

Curt Howard - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pregnant Man: And Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist's Couch (Hardcover)

Everything here is real and teaches one a lot about hypnosis. However, it also reads like a detective novel. When I was done with it, I wanted more. Best book on hypnotherapy by far!