The "Whack-a-Mole" Challenge of Hypnosis Research: A Commentary Regarding "Guidelines for the Assessment of Efficacy of Clinical Hypnosis Applications".

Abstract

In this short commentary, the author acknowledges the merits of trying to establish treatment guidelines for the use of hypnosis in treatment and applauds the efforts and intentions of the Task Force for Establishing Efficacy Standards for Clinical Hypnosis. He identifies a few of the complex issues in trying to promote guidelines for conducting research and clinical practice in the domain of hypnosis; these include the difficulties in defining hypnosis and hypnotically-based interventions, the divergent ways hypnosis is applied in actual practice by clinicians who rely on their own understandings and biases in designing and delivering hypnosis, and the inevitable variations in skill level across practitioners. To their credit, the Task Force has considered these and other practical issues in their approach to formulating guidelines.