PART A

The Principles of Hypnosis:

INTRODUCTION

This describes the kind of book you are reading. It is a book which is devoted to presenting a unified theoretical view of
the subject. In this way it is new and unique. It does not present any new facts, but rather arranges the facts in a new
light. It presents a new paradigm for Hypnosis.

WHAT KIND of book is this?

This question is an important one. In order to get the best out of a book we need to approach it with the right mind-set.

This book is a paradigm-changing book: it aims to present a fresh way of looking at the field of Hypnotherapy.

It was in 1962 that Kuhn introduced the notion of a paradigm shift to describe a process that has happened in many
fields of science at many times. The second edition of his book will be found in the list of References under Kuhn
(1970)Bib. It concerns a fundamental change in the way in which the phenomena of the field are viewed, and
consequently in the way things are done. In Kuhn's view such a change has the nature of a revolution. His book itself
introduced a paradigm shift in the field of the theory of scientific ideas. A good survey of his ideas and of those of
others who do not agree with him is given by Casti (1989)Bib.

Since this book presents a paradigm shift it is a book of ideas. It will therefore stand or fall on the success of these
ideas. They will be a success if they help others to make sense of Hypnotherapy.

We may contrast this with some books which it is NOT.

It is NOT a book which claims to present any new FACTS about Hypnosis. If it were it would contain a number of
detailed accounts of specific new experiments and their results: it does not.

It is NOT a compendium or encyclopaedia of known facts about Hypnotherapy. If it were, it would contain thousands
of references to the work of thousands of other workers and what they have discovered: it does not. It would also be a
great deal thicker.

It is NOT a history. If it were it would deal exclusively with ideas and practices from the past. It does not.

It is NOT a handbook of techniques. Although various techniques will be mentioned, they are there only to illustrate
and illuminate the theory. A handbook would aim to give extensive lists of techniques. This does not.

It is NOT a "Teach yourself Hypnotherapy" book. Although you will learn a lot about Hypnotherapy, this book will
not, in itself, qualify you to be a Hypnotherapist. That requires in addition a lot of practical experience and a lot of
detailed information that you would need to acquire from the kinds of books mentioned above.

It is NOT one of those Elixir of Life books which claims to have found some totally new and remarkably simple
method of solving all human ills.

It is none of those things. It IS a book which aims to change in a fundamental and useful way the manner in which we
think about the subjects of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Books of this nature are rare - and they are exciting.

Not only does it give a new perspective, it generates new insights into the processes used. Furthermore it leads to a
clear and original description of the process of diagnosis in Hypnotherapy - something which is notably absent in other
books on the subject.
The association of Hypnosis with therapy is not new. By that name it was first used by the Scottish doctor, James
Braid, then practising in Manchester, in the 1840s. Related practices, under other names, were used in healing by
Mesmer and his followers in the 17th century and by priest and shaman as far back as the dawn of recorded history.

Over the centuries many books have been written about Hypnosis in the context of therapy. The common characteristic
of all these books is that they deal extensively with HOW to create the many phenomena we associate with Hypnotism
but give very little idea of WHY the methods work. There is very little theory. They are therefore of little help when a
method does NOT work, which is a matter of some importance to the practitioner of Hypnotherapy.

The early days of most sciences are marked by this same feature. Early chemistry consisted of a collection of recipes,
"If you add this to that then the following happens..." There was no real understanding of WHY or HOW it happened.
Early medicine was the same. It had a large collection of procedures and treatments, but only vague ideas as to HOW
they worked (when they did). In the light of our present understanding, moreover, we can see that the theoretical ideas
they did have - such as the Hippocratic idea of Humours - were inadequate and faulty in the extreme, leading for
example to quite unnecessary and potentially dangerous bloodletting on a massive scale.

When a science has reached a certain degree of maturity, as a result of the accumulated experiences of many workers,
there comes a stage in which partial, and hard-won, experiences may coalesce to form one uniform picture which
makes sense of a whole field. An example of this was the introduction into chemistry of the atomic theory by Dalton
(1808)Bib, which was a big paradigm shift and the foundation of all subsequent understanding in the field.

It is the contention of this book that Hypnotherapy has come of age, and that it is now possible to describe in
some detail a theoretical framework within which Hypnotic phenomena can be produced and understood in a
systematic way.

This book is written with three classes of readers in mind. The central class consists of students: people who are
learning the skills of Hypnotherapy. There are increasing numbers of these as this form of therapy becomes more
popular. They can expect to find this book a unique aid to understanding what it is that they are learning to do.

On one side of these are individuals who already have an extensive understanding of Hypnotherapy, whether as
practitioners or as experimentalists. For these individuals this book may be seen as a codification of ideas that are
floating in the pool of common consciousness of Hypnotherapists in this day and age: it crystallises these ideas; it
makes them more definite and clear; it unites them in a common pattern. Some of the ideas presented here have already
been published in journals read by professionals and found a ready response. The paradigm shift involved does not
involve the shattering of existing ideas for most professionals. It is more a matter of drawing together all that we know
and do in a systematic way and then building on that foundation a strong new understanding.

On the other side of the centre is the group of intelligent readers who want to know what Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy
are all about, though with no intention of using them in person. This will include students of psychology and medicine,
but also many of the millions of people who like to know "how things work", and in particular "how people work".
Hypnotherapy is intimately involved with the ways in which people's minds and bodies work: arguably the most
fascinating subject for everyone outside their own speciality.

With this readership in mind the language has been kept comparatively simple. A minimum level of specialised
vocabulary is used, and a minimum amount of prior knowledge assumed.

Having said that, it has been my experience that the concepts are grasped most readily by men and women who are
working at the higher levels of many fields such as management, education or consultancy. They seem naturally to
think in terms of systems and processes: an ability that I suppose is correlated with degree of intelligence. It may well
be then that a certain level of intelligence is a prerequisite to grasping the ideas in their abstract form. However, I have
supplied many concrete examples to minimise this problem.

The theoretical framework described here, although proposed as a basis for understanding Hypnotherapy, is in fact rich
and powerful enough also to provide a fresh perspective on a very much wider arena of human behaviour, whether
individual or in groups such as families or organisations. It is hoped that it will open up new ways of thinking to others
as it has to the author.
It will seem to outsiders that the Hypnotherapist does not hold a central position in the world of ideas: I certainly
thought so myself at one time. But I have gradually come to realise that in terms of understanding how people work it
is a position second to none.

This is because it combines the maximum opportunity for observation with the maximum opportunity for making
changes and seeing the results.

The Hypnotherapist sees people from all ranks of life. People open up and disclose their innermost feelings and
thoughts to the Hypnotherapist, so that a full picture emerges of the entire course of people's lives.

The Hypnotherapist is not restricted to working with people in whom there is a severe mental malfunction as are
Psychiatrists for the most part. He or she is instead often working with healthy and typical people who want help with a
single problem in an otherwise satisfactory life or to improve their performance in some way. Consequently the
Hypnotherapist can form a clear idea of the range of ways that people normally deal with life: there is not the
Psychiatrist's exclusive emphasis on severe malfunction.

Compared with many other related fields such as counselling or psychoanalysis, the Hypnotherapist is expected to a far
greater degree actively to change things: a variety of things in a variety of people. This seems to me to be of far-
reaching importance. The scientific revolution which began around the seventeenth century was a result of men who
were not, in the Greek tradition, restricted to contemplation and reflection in the pursuit of truth, but who had hands-on
experience.

There is nothing like trying to make a change and failing, to drive home the fact that you do not understand what you
are doing. When your livelihood depends on making successful changes it concentrates the mind still better. If, on the
other hand, it is possible to take an ivory-tower approach and to build a theory on the basis of what has been merely
read, then there is little chance of any immediate feedback to prove the theory wrong.

Later on in this book we will find much on the importance of feedback loops. In the present context I will observe that
improvement in any skill or ability depends on a feedback loop in which execution is followed by an assessment of
how successful that execution has been, which is followed by an appropriate modification and further executions. That
is how the Wright brothers learned to fly. That is how anyone learns to play golf. That is how babies learn to co-
ordinate their limbs. That is how science has grown.

The Hypnotherapist is in the position of having immediate feedback, perhaps within minutes, quite usually within an
hour and always within days to test how successful he or she has been in effecting a change.

As a matter of contrast, many Psychoanalysts work over periods of years with a Client. The feedback is so slow, I
wonder it can ever have any effect on practice. Research Psychologists are disciplined to work with a very small area of
human psychology; each experiment can take months or years, and can lead only to knowing a lot about very little.
Psychologists who build theories on the results of the work of such painstaking research inevitably spend most of their
lives in libraries and laboratories: they have little chance to get any feedback by putting their ideas into any kind of
practice. Many counsellors are constrained by present conventions to be non-directive: that is to say they are supposed
NOT to make direct changes, but rather to somehow create an environment in which the Clients will make changes for
themselves. Since there is so little action, there is limited scope for feedback also.

In addition, many such professionals are working in salaried positions: which has two drawbacks. One is that they
involve extensive costs in terms of the time that has to be spent on the organisation - the committees, the paperwork,
the administration, etc. - which reduces either or both of the time available for original thought and the time spent
dealing with clients or patients. The second is that since the salary cheque is only very, very loosely connected with
success at helping people as contrasted with making a good impression on the System, there is not the same direct and
immediate incentive to improve at the cutting edge of the work.

The Professional Hypnotherapist - by which I mean an intelligent man or woman who devotes his or her whole life to
the field, not someone who is a professional in some other field like medicine and does a little Hypnosis on the side - is,
by contrast, in a perfect position to devote ALL his or her time to studying and changing the functioning of other
people with ample and immediate feedback available. This is the optimum position to be in in any field. I, personally,
have adopted and then discarded because they failed me in practice, hundreds of different partial theoretical structures
before finally evolving that which is presented in this book, which has passed the hard test of day-to-day work and also
exposure to my professional peers.
My initial training and doctorate were in Mathematics with a strong leaning to Theoretical Physics. These force you to
think clearly and deeply and honestly about the structures and dynamics of things. Ideas must be as crisp as possible:
woolliness of thought is a sin. When I plunged into the world of Hypnotherapy, I found none of the precision of
thought I was used to, no systematic approach, no theory worthy of the name. I also found my ego very badly hit every
time I failed to help someone. Furthermore I had no salary: Clients are not reimbursed by Health Insurance Policies for
Hypnotherapy as yet; neither can they get it free on the National Health Service. When Clients are paying with their
own money, they require evidence that the service is worth it. And this is even more true in Yorkshire. The fact that if
you make no progress then you make no money concentrates the mind wonderfully, I find. If an idea does not work you
reject it at once. Those that survive and evolve in this tough environment are fit and strong and lean and healthy. I hope
you will find these qualities throughout this book.

Finally I come to a small matter of how to refer to the approach to Hypnotherapy which has evolved in this way. In my
first articles for the European Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, I referred to it as a "Systems-oriented Paradigm for
Hypnotic Phenomena". This is a bit of a mouthful, and the Journal used, as a more useful label, the phrase, "the Morgan
Proposition". Neither of these lends itself to the formation of a useful adjective: "systematic" is a possible one, but this
is too general a word.

As you read the book, you will find that central to the approach is the notion of the functioning of complex organic
systems. An alternative adjective could therefore be "organic", but this again is too general. Finally I stumbled on an
adjective which is concise, reminds us of this aspect of the theory, is specific and easily memorable: "Morganic". So
when, from time to time, it is necessary to distinguish between the approach of this book and other approaches I will
use this coined word as a convenient shorthand.