Age progression therapy techniques in hypnosis.

The literature of psychotherapy and hypnosis has been dominated by articles and reports on how to best explore the past to better understand, change behavior, and promote healing. Relatively, meager space and attention was given to study and report on using the future to bring about a therapeutic change in behavior and promote healing of illness and recovery of disease. It is indeed an honor and privilege to serve as a guest editor for this special issue of the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis devoted to a future focused approach in using hypnosis-mediated age progression as a therapeutic strategy and achieve good therapeutic outcomes. The following lines provide the readers with a summary of the articles in this special issue of the journal. Dr Michael Yapko opens this special issue with his article titled “Encouraging Hindsight in Advance: Age Progression in Therapy and Life.” Yapko questions the belief of many therapists that “the past is what makes us who we are,” justifying an excessive focus on exploring the past. He points out that even hypnosis practitioners who believe in this idea have built a clinical practice focused on ideomotor questioning to find the hypothetical “root cause” of someone’s problems. He points out how important it is that we question whether a past orientation in therapy is truly the most effective way for achieving best lasting therapeutic outcomes and enhancing people’s life. In this article, Yapko builds a convincing and cogent foundation for the great value in adopting a future orientation to therapy strategies. He makes for us a solid connection to the concept of expectancy and expectations therapists and patients have of treatment interventions reminding us that the well-known placebo effect is in fact a relatively concrete symbol of a positive future orientation. Yapko states convincingly that any suggestive communication strategy that orients the client experientially to future events is an age progression pattern. Yapko provides important knowledge of how important a future orientation is in the treatment of clients with depression emphasizing that “the greater the degree of client hopelessness, the more immediate the use of age progression should be.” Age progression strategies help to build skills of foresight, which create not just treatment but also an avenue of prevention. Yapko concludes his contribution clarifying the concepts of content-oriented versus processoriented approaches in utilizing age progression. Moreover, he provides an example with a transcript of using a process-oriented strategy for promoting foresight. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL HYPNOSIS 2022, VOL. 65, NO. 1, 1–3 https://doi.org/10.1080/00029157.2022.2066430