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Hypnoanalysis in Dental Practice

a
G. Graham B.D.S.
a
Newcastle upon Tyne , USA
Published online: 20 Sep 2011.

To cite this article: G. Graham B.D.S. (1974) Hypnoanalysis in Dental Practice, American
Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 16:3, 178-187, DOI: 10.1080/00029157.1974.10403674

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 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL HYPNOSIS
Volume 16. Number 3. January 1974
Printed in U.S.A.
Hypnoanalysis in Dental Practice 1
G. GRAHAM 8.D.S.
Newcastle upon Tyne
Four cases illustrating the use of hypnoanalysis in dental practice are presented.
In a paper previously published in this
.Journal I gave you a behaviouristic
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technique for changing the abnormal
behaviour of people. Naturally this
technique does not work with every patient,
although I find that with 60% of my
patients I can alter their behaviour without
having to do any analysis. I believe this
is possible because the psychic reason for
the abnormal behaviour exhibited by a large
number of cases is no longer operative and
the behaviour has just become a bad habit.
I would like to explain how I tackle some
of the patients whom I cannot alter with
behaviour therapy. I might add that without
the training I had at the Oxford Institute
of Psychiatry and many of the psychology
courses which I attended, I would find that
the cases which I am about to describe
would be quite beyond me. I feel that the
average dentist, unless he has had the
opportunity of attending such courses,
should not try to tackle these problems.
Indeed I feel that it is a pity that more den-
tists do not have the opportunity of receiv-
ing similar training.
CAROL
My first case I would like to describe
in full, because I tried just about all the
behaviouristic techniques that I know and
I Previously 'published in the British Journal of
Clinical Hypnosis. 1973. 4. 67-76. Reprinted by
permission.
178
which have indeed cured many patients suf-
fering from the same complaint. Neverthe-
less I had no success at all with Carol until
I did some analysis.
Carol was referred to me from the dental
hospital. She was 21 years of age and a
fairly attractive young lady; her I.Q. was
not very high. She was a key punch
operator. All her teeth had been extracted
under a general anaesthetic as her mouth
had been terribly neglected some two years
previous to coming to see me. On returning
to the dentist for false teeth, he found that
it was quite impossible to get near her with
a tray or any instrument. After many false
attempts to take impressions for her den-
tures, he gave up and sent her to the dental
hospital. At the dental hospital they found
the same difficulty and then gave her a
general anaesthetic and took her impres-
sions. On returning for her bite, the same
thing happened. They could not get near
Carol with the bite blocks and she insisted
that it was impossible for her to put these
in her mouth. Once again they gave her
a general anaesthetic and took her bite. On
her third visit to the dental hospital they
had her teeth on wax bite blocks in order
to try these in and have a look at the appear-
ance but again Carol insisted that it was
quite impossible for her to put them in her
mouth.
At this stage the dental hospital came
to the conclusion that if she couldn't put
the wax try dentures in her mouth, she
wouldn't be able to wear her finished den-
 DENTAL HYPNOANALYSIS
tures, so there would be no point in con-
tinuing unless she was able to do this with-
out a general anaesthetic. After many
attempts to get her to put them in, they
decided that she must be unbalanced and
ought to see a psychiatrist. Somebody at
the hospital suggested that she should come
to see me and she was referred to me on
August 14, 1971. She brought her wax try
dentures and I tried all the techniques
which I normally try with patients unable
to wear dentures or with gagging patients.
The first technique which I find useful in
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a large number of patients who find they
are unable to have impressions done, is to
have what I call a ••sick stick". A sick
stick can be a broom handle or a piece of
copper piping about 2 feet long and about
an inch thick, polished up to look attrac-
tive. You tell the patient to grip this, hold-
ing it out in front of him - "Hold this
at arm's length in both hands and grip it
tight". You then tell the patient very con-
vincingly that so long as they grip this stick
very tightly and fix their gaze at the centre
of it, they cannot retch and they will be
able to have impressions taken. With most
patients I find this succeeds and no further
treatment is necessary to do impressions.
With Carol, however, it was quite impossi-
ble to get near her with the wax try den-
tures.
Although she was gripping the stick and
would open her mouth, the moment I
approached her with the try dentures, she
immediately closed her mouth or dropped
the stick insisting it was impossible to put
her dentures in. A Freudian psychologist
friend of mine agreed in principle with the
sick stick and said there could be nothing
better than a 2-foot-long rigid phallic sym-
bol to grip hard on. However, this was of
no avail to Carol. We then found that she
was a good hypnotic subject, so I put her
into a deep trance and attempted to make
her feel very calm by hallucinating that she
was on a beach feeling very warm and
179
relaxed. While she was lying on the sand
and letting the hot sun make her feel very
sleepy and tired, she would be able to open
her mouth while we tried the dentures in
and would not feel anything at all.
Immediately on approaching Carol, she
broke the trance and woke up, insisting that
it was still quite impossible to put her den-
tures in. At this stage, my time was running
out with Carol for this appointment, so I
sent her away and asked her to return a
week later bringing with her a tape
recorder.
When she returned a week later I asked
her who her favourite female film star was
- at this stage I projected on to her my
favourite film actress - and she said,
Elizabeth Taylor. I was quite unaware of
this projection but feel sure she would not
have picked Elizabeth Taylor who happens
to be my favourite actress. It is quite amaz-
ing what one can project on to the patient
without being aware of it. As she had
picked Elizabeth Taylor for her favourite
actress, Richard Burton would naturally be
her favourite actor.
I then put her in a trance and asked her
to hallucinate that she was in a film studio,
that she was a stand-in for Elizabeth
Taylor, and she was watching a film being
made. We went through many sequences
where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Bur-
ton were having scenes together of various
types and then I slipped in the statement
that in this film Elizabeth Taylor had to
go to the dentist. The dentist was Richard
Burton and since it was only a film, she
would not feel anxious. She was given an
ideomotor finger response to the effect that
her finger would rise if any anxiety were
present. I asked her to watch Elizabeth
Taylor having her teeth done by Richard
Burton who was the dentist. No finger
response was present. The whole of this
film scene was taped and when eventually
Elizabeth Taylor had had her teeth done
with no anxiety, the patient was sent home
 180
with the tape recording and asked to play
it to herself every day. At the end of a
further week, she returned and was again
hypnotized. We then went through all the
scenes again and when it came to the dental
scene, Elizabeth Taylor had a sore throat
and as the patient was her standin she had
to replace her in this scene. Almost
immediately her finger rose showing anxi-
ety with the ideomotor response. She was
reassured that it was just a film and we
were not actually going to do anything ..
Since it was Richard Burton who was the
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dentist, she would think this was terrific
and she wouldn't be frightened and worried
because nobody was actually going to do
anything; it was just a film. She was then
taken through the scene again as the stand-
in for Elizabeth Taylor and the whole of
the dental proceedings were described with
her as the patient.
This again was taped and at the end of
the scene, she was wakened and sent home
with the tape recording, once more with
the request that she played this every day
to herself. At the end of that week when
she returned, she was a lot less anxious
when she came into the surgery and sat in
the chair looking reasonably calm. I
thought that at last I would be able to try
her dentures in. I again hypnotized her, tak-
ing her through the scene once more just
to reassure her, and then said I wanted her
to remain very calm and imagine that I was
Richard Burton and was just going to try
these dentures in. On approaching her with
the dentures, however, she immediately
broke the trance, woke up and said,
"You're not putting those in my mouth,
I can't possibly get them in." I have cured
many with this technique but with Carol
it was quite impossible to get anywhere
near her with these dentures. At this stage
I decided behaviouristic techniques were
not going to work, probably because the
psychic reason for her not wearing her teeth
was still valid, so that I would have to try
to find out why she felt she could not put
GRAHAM
them in. She was given a further appoint-
ment to return in a week. This giving of
further appointments serves two purposes;
it lets them think about it and also gives
you some time to work out how you may
tackle the problem on the next occasion.
On returning she was hypnotized into as
deep a trance as possible and was then told
that in a few seconds time, when I snapped
my fingers, she would dream for one
minute in actual time, although this could
be for as long as was necessary in dream
time, because in dreams you can distort
time. On snapping my fingers her eyes
were watched and R.E.M. was noticed
indicating that she was dreaming. At the
end of one minute, she was asked to
described her dream and she burst into tears
and said, "I'm not a very nice person."
On being asked why, she insisted that she
had been a very unpleasant person all her
life. She had broken off with her fiance
for no reason that she could think of other
than that she didn't feel that she wanted
to have a finance at that stage. She had
escaped from many things which she had
not wanted to do by being sick. I asked
her to dream about some of these and we
went through many occasions where she
had made herself sick in order to get out
of doing what she didn't want to do. At
this stage no clue was given as to what
this meant, so a further appointment was
given to return in one week's time.
On returning she was hypnotized once
more and taken through an age regression.
As she was counted back in age, she was
asked to set up an ideomotor response. Her
finger would rise each time some trouble
had occurred that was relevant to her not
being able to wear her teeth now. On many
occasions her finger arose and on each
occasion it seemed that she had got out of
doing something which she hadn't wanted
to do by being sick. She was taken all the
way down to four years of age when she
burst into tears and sobbed bitterly for a
number of minutes. She was allowed to cry
 DENTAL HYPNOANALYSIS
until she had finished and was then asked
what the problem was. She said that at four
years of age her father had been ill, and
she was sent to her granny's. She didn't
know what was happening and she was
there for about eight weeks. At the end of
this period she returned home and her
father wasn't there. She said, "This is the
first time I have ever been able to cry
about it," so I asked her to explain. She
said that eventually she found out that her
father had died when she had been at her
granny's and her mother had been so upset
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that she had not been able to bring her
daughter back until she had got over the
shock of her husband dying. On asking
where her father was on returning to her
home, she had been told that he had gone
away. Eventually her mother told her that
he had died. By this time she had got so
used to not having her father around that
she could feel no grief at his death and she
felt that she had been wanting to cry about
this all the while and had been choking
back this desire. Now having had a good
cry, she might be able to wear her teeth.
I approached her with her teeth again with-
out much success. I got the bottom set in
at this stage and she was able to wear those
for a few minutes but I couldn't get both
sets in together.
This took me up to October last year
when I went to Chicago for a conference.
I met Calvert Stein and his wife, who gave
me the clue to cure her. I was telling them
about this case and asking how they
thought I might proceed and Mrs. Calvert
Stein said, "Why don't you ask her to
imagine she has got some teeth in and who
would she bite with them?" On returning
home, this is exactly what I did and Carol
answered, her mother. It then became obvi-
ous that her mother was far more worried
about her not wearing false teeth then she
was, and she was actually punishing her
mother for not allowing her to feel grief
over her father's death, and had been doing
so all her life. This is why she had cried
181
about being an unpleasant person and why
she had broken off her engagement with
her fiance. Again she was an only child
and her mother was delighted when she got
engaged because she thought that she was
going to get married and settle down and
be very happy. She was, however, deter-
mined that her mother would not get this
pleasure and broke off her engagement.
She was then asked, in a trance state, if
she had done something very wrong how
long she thought it would be reasonable for
her to be punished. She said she didn't
know. I said, "Well, suppose you had done
something wrong, how long do you think
it would be reasonable for anyone to punish
you." She said she thought five years
would be long enough and I said, "Well,
if it was something very bad, would ten
years be long enough?" She agreed that
this would be quite long enough to be
punished for anything very bad that she had
done. I then explained to her that she had
been punishing her mother for 15 years and
wasn't it about time she forgave her mother
for doing something to try to spare her
grief. She thought this was reasonable and
on waking from the trance, she put both
sets of teeth in. She kept them in for a
few minutes, long enough to be able to get
the necessary corrections and settings
adjusted so that I could now process them
in plastic. She was given a further appoint-
ment when the dentures were processed and
when she returned, the dentures were
inserted, trimmed and appeared reasonable.
She took them away with her and has
reported that at first she was only able to
keep the upper one in but now is able to
wear both dentures and that she is having
no further bother.
GRACE
My next patient was referred to me by
her general medical practitioner. He stated
that she had suffered from a type of mi-
graine for many years. She had been seen
by neurologists and physicians, and always
 182 GRAHAM

diagnosed as neurotic. In his letter he said, pills which I thought were to relieve pain
"This may well be true, but in her case but which I now know were tranquilizers.
it is difficult to know how much pain she They didn't ease the pain at all. I had three
really experiences." Obviously many treatments and he asked me how I felt and
general practitioners believe that neurotic I didn't really feel any different but I said
pain is not real pain. I always tell my I felt much better because I was frightened
patient there is no such thing as an imagi- of the anaesthetic and I didn't feel he was
nary pain and that no symptom is imaginary doing me any good at all. From the
- all symptoms are real. If the patient psychiatrist, I then went to the ear, nose
complains of pain, then she is feeling pain. and throat specialist. He had my sinuses
The pain is both real and indistinguishable washed out. I have good sight but I thought
whether it be neurotic or physical in origin. there might be something the matter with
In fact, neurotic pain is usually more my eyes. I went to the eye infirmary, saw
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unbearable than symptomatic pain. In his the eye specialist who said I had perfect
letter he said: "The amount of anxiety sight, no need for glasses, and he thought
appears to increase as the pain becomes it sounded like migraine. During the years
more constant. All types of analgesics and of taking codeine, sometimes anadin, I had
tranquilizers have been used to little avail. a slight haemorrhage from my stomach.
I wonder if you could help." Actually, this happened on two occasions.
On meeting Grace, I found that she was The first one wasn't very much and I was
married, 37 years of age and had two very frightened of it but strangely enough
children. She was very happy with her fam- I didn't say anything to anyone, I just
ily and her husband. At this stage she was sucked ice. I always felt sick, and thought
taking 100 paracetamol tablets every week it might be an ulcer, so I couldn't eat very
to relieve the pain. She said that unless she well. Two years later, still continuing to
took two tablets every four hours, the pain take two tablets every four hours, I had
was constant. This pain radiated from the quite a big haemorrhage and I felt as though
left side of her cheek bone, going up to I was going to be sick and instead of which
the eye, over the forehead and sometimes I vomited quite a lot of blood. I still felt
even to the back of her head. She had been very frightened and I didn't tell anyone,
examined by neurologists on a number of but many months later, r went to my own
occasions and was told that this was not doctor. He sent me to have a barium meal
trigeminal neuralgia but probably and there was no evidence of stomach
originated from the facial nerve. They sug- ulcers. They said it was the aspirin rubbing
gested cutting the facial nerve but as the the lining of the stomach and never again
cosmetic results of this were so drastic it to take anything containing aspirin. I
should not be done until she was at least attended this specialist for a time. I have
50. The neurologist had told her that this just recently seen a neurologist who has
pain would be constant and she would have said that it is 99% sure that I am producing
to learn to live with it. Following this, she this pain myself and there is no physical
started her rounds of various people and reason for it."
this is what she told me: On further questioning, she stated that
"After I finished seeing the neurologist, her pain started when she was 20 years of
he referred me to a psychiatrist. I didn't age, following a tooth extraction; this is
know he was a psychiatrist and I wasn't probably how I came to be involved in the
told he was. I visited him and had three case. She had been at that time at a Convent
E.C.T. treatments. He gave me some blue Teachers' Training College and had an
 DENTAL HYPNOANALYSIS
attack of toothache, so the Mother Superior
sent her to a dentist near the College. On
entering the surgery, she explained to this
dentist that her own dentist had informed
her that her teeth were very difficult to
extract and that she ought to have an X-ray
before any extractions. At this the dentist
got rather annoyed and suggested that since
he was the dentist he didn't need to be told
by the patient how to extract teeth, so
would she just sit down in the chair and
he would do the job properly. He extracted
the tooth with great difficulty and a certain
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amount of trauma to the socket. Unfor-
tunately, following this she got a dry
socket. The tooth which was extracted was
a lower left molar and she had considerable
post-operative pain. She was sent home
from the College to convalesce and as the
socket healed the pain seemed to move
from the lower jaw to the upper jaw and
then under the eye.
It has been constant under the eye for
the past 17 years. She visited an oral sur-
geon who could find no reason for her pain.
She takes analgesics on going to bed and
awakens during the night and has to take
more. The only time she can remember the
pain not being present was when she had
a general anaesthetic to have her babies.
She had twin babies and they were deliv-
ered by Caesarean section. She had a
number of unfortunate experiences with
medical practitioners during the 17 years,
not all connected with her facial pain and
I think that she had developed the tendency
to disbelieve everything that the doctor was
telling her. The doctor would sense this and
virtually label her as neurotic and take no
interest in her. She was a very difficult
patient with hypnosis and at no time, after
several attempts to hypnotize her, could she
enter more than a very light trance. Each
time she seemed to be rejecting the trance,
and on recognizing this I decided to aban-
don the use of hypnosis at this stage and
to attempt to find out why she needed to
183
reject the trance. I feel it is important to
recognize and respect resistance as a way
the patient has of telling you that they are
not yet ready for hypnosis. It was thought
possible that she unconsciously feared los-
ing her pain. On a number of occasions
she had stated that the pain was helping
her to pull herself together and that without
it, she thought she might well be in a luna-
tic asylum. This was a very strange state-
ment and it suggested that she feared being
hypnotized because if her pain were re-
moved, then she would not have the crutch
which was necessary as a defense mech-
anism.
She was asked to freely associate to her
early childhood days. She explained that
these were not very happy because her
mother and father had not got on. Her
father had been a Sergeant-Major in the
Army during the War and he had come
back from the War and taken a job in the
mines. He disliked the mines very much
and felt very discontented with his wife.
To some extent he sought solace in drink-
ing and had a very violent temper. I
asked her at this stage if he had ever been
violent with her. She said he had on two
occasions. I asked her to explain and she
said that when she was a little girl he had
smacked her on the bottom for doing some-
thing that she shouldn't have done and she
said that when she was 12he had slapped her
on the face. I asked her to explain the situa-
tion in which this had occurred and she said
that she and her mother had been out at
a relative's and they had picked flowers in
the garden without noticing how the time
was passing. Eventually they did notice
and realized they were going to be late,
so they went home. Her father accused her
mother of having been with another man.
Grace, who at this stage was little more
than 12, interjected and said, "Mummy's
been with me," and he said "I'm not talk-
ing to you, don't you interfere with this,
I'm talking to your mother." When once
 184
again she tried to explain, her father struck
her across the face. She was asked how
she felt about it at the time she received
the blow, she said, "I wish he was dead."
About ten minutes later on, when ques-
tioned about other things, she denied that
she had wished her father dead. If we go
back to the time when she visited the den-
tist at the age of 20 and was told to sit
down and mind her own business, that he
was the dentist and he would take her tooth
out, this was the equivalent of giving her
a verbal slap on the face, which might well
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have reminded her of the time her father
had struck her.
In fact looking back now, she could
remember many instances where people
had been aggressive towards her and she
had thought that, perhaps not consciously
but unconsciously, she could connect these
people with her father's aggression towards
her. She stated that it was strange, because
three years ago her father had died and
before he had died he had asked her to
come to him and begged her to forgive him
for striking her when she was 12. I felt
this was very relevant and asked her did
it not seem significant that 23 years after-
wards her father should remember the blow
that he had given his 12-year-old daughter
and ask for her forgiveness. Was it not
obvious that it must have had a great
psychic effect upon both of them to have
remembered so clearly for 23 years? She
thought this probably was reasonable and
correct. She stated that nevertheless she felt
she would rather be a lunatic without the
pain than a lunatic with the pain. On com-
ing to this decision, a trance was attempted
and one of satisfactory medium depth
obtained. She was given suggestions in
trance that she should forgive herself for
wishing her father dead because it appeared
that she would rather feel the pain of the
blow than the guilt of wishing him dead.
Just prior to having her tooth extracted at
the College the Mother Superior had given
GRAHAM
the whole College a lecture about birth
pains and stated that Catholics believe that
the pain at birth is the payment of the guilt
of the original sin of Adam and Eve and
that it is now necessary for people to die
because of this original sin. God had
intended that life should be eternal but
because of the original sin of Adam and
Eve, then people had to die. It is my belief
that this, together with the guilt of wishing
her father dead, was too much and she had
gone back to the time prior to wishing him
dead, that is just before receiving the blow.
This has been discussed, but with Grace
the pain is still there and therapy is still
continuing. I hope I will soon be able to
report that Grace has stopped punishing
herself. I have described this case for two
reasons:
First, to show that no matter how suc-
cessful the therapist thinks he has been in
uncovering the psychic reason for the
behaviour, he himself cannot cure the
patient. It is up to the patient to make the
necessary psychic shift before they are
cured.
Secondly, I believe it is important to rec-
ognize and respect the fact that the patient
may need their symptom no matter how
debilitating it may be and they may uncon-
sciously be unwilling to be hypnotized to
be relieved of it. Once again the therapist
must recognize and respect this behaviour.
CYNTHIA
Cynthia was also referred to me from
the dental hospital. She was a case of brux-
ism (or grinding her teeth). She had ground
her teeth in all four quadrants and was hav-
ing a considerable amount of jaw pain, par-
ticularly on waking in the morning. She
felt that she had been grinding her teeth
all night and every night. The dental hospi-
tal made her a chrome cobalt denture to
gag open her mouth but she ground these
into her gums which were sore and ulcer-
ated.
 DENTAL HYPNOANALYSIS
Cynthia was 26 years of age, single, a
solicitor's secretary, doing some part-time
nursing. She showed signs of general ten-
sion and anxiety and had been having two
or three attacks of migraine a week, for
the last three years. She was afraid of
travelling in cars and particularly in buses
as she had been involved in a bus crash
five years previously and her grinding had
started about a year after the bus crash.
On March 18, 1972, I started hypnotic
treatment with Cynthia. She was a very
good subject and went into a deep trance
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very quickly with my imaginative
technique. I gave her specific instructions
on how she was to relax before she went
to bed. She had stated in her history that
she was having difficulty in getting to sleep
without sleeping pills, and was taking
chlordiazepoxide for her headaches. By
using behaviour therapy with a scrapbook
technique and incorporating into the
clenched-fist technique of Calvert Stein, I
reduced the tension and without any
specific suggestion about the headaches,
the migraine disappeared after the second
visit, which was on March 27, 1972. She
was also sleeping better.
On April 10, 1972, she reported that she
had experienced no headaches since her
second visit. She was, however, still grind-
ing her teeth, so I regressed her to the bus
crash when she showed signs of tension and
anxiety. After reliving the bus crash, a
certain amount of relief was obtained
because of this release of psychic energy
and emotion. She remembered that she had
been flung against the back of the seat in
front of her and she felt she wanted to
scream but was quite unable to do so
because she had been winded. I asked her
to have a good scream in the surgery. After
this she said she felt much better.
On May 8, 1972, she reported that her
grinding had stopped. Her pain had stopped
and she felt very much better. She had gone
back to the dental hospital for a check-up
185
and the consultant with whom she was deal-
ing felt that she was a different person.
He could not remember having seen such
a change in a person over so short a period
of time. He suggested that she carried on
with the treatment. Once again I regressed
her to the bus crash and she again released
more emotion and psychic energy. Follow-
ing this second regression she felt that she
could now behave very much more
efficiently.
I saw her on May 22, 1972, and she
was having driving lessons, a thing which
she had never dared to think about pre-
viously. She was no longer frightened of
travelling on buses. She had been attending
the dental hospital for four years for this
complaint. One of the criticisms of hyp-
nosis is that it takes too long, but it cer-
tainly did not take four years in this case.
I saw her again on July 31, 1972, and
she reported no headaches, no grinding of
the teeth, was about to take her driving test
and felt very happy. Many people had
noted a big change in her and she said that
she felt very much more confident about
everything. She was due to go into hospital
for a minor operation, about which she was
a little nervous, so I gave her some sugges-
tions for this.
She was not seen again until she returned
for a six-monthly check in January 1973.
JOAN
Joan was referred to me and appeared
to be a straightforward case of dental
phobia. She was terrified of dental treat-
ment and because of this had neglected her
teeth for some years. She stated that she
could not stand having anybody touch her
teeth, or even look in her mouth, and it
would be impossible to use the drill. She
said she had always been scared of the den-
tist and as a girl, on each occasion had to
be dragged there. This phobia had got
steadily worse.
She was 35 years old, single, living with
 186
her father, her mother having died some
years previously. She was a quiet, nervous
and intelligent person. Behaviour therapy
was tried, as in Carol's case, by hallucinat-
ing herself taking part in a dental scene
with an actor and actress and herself as the
stand-in, but this did not help her at all.
Analgesia was produced in the hand and
demonstrated to the patient. This still did
not help her fear of dental treatment. I am
deliberately describing this case because I
believe that a number of dentists are
responsible for causing these phobias with-
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out realizing it.
In trance, she was taken through her pre-
vious dental experiences, but in none of
them had she experienced any rough treat-
ment that she could remember. She was
then asked to undergo an age regression
which she agreed to do. In trance, an
ideomotor finger response was set up to rise
whenever any traumatic occurrence hap-
pened with the same type of anxiety that
she experienced with her dental treatment.
When regressed to 11 years of age the
finger rose showing that the same anxiety
was present. When I asked what she was
doing, she said that she had just moved
into the senior section of her boarding
school. She said this was her first day at
this school and she felt very frightened and
worried but she was all right because one
of her friends was there; if her friend hadn 't
been there, she didn't know how she would
have got through this first day. We went
back even further, to the age of 7 when
she first went to the junior part of the board-
ing school; again her finger rose, showing
that she had experienced a considerable
amount of anxiety on her first day at
school. This again had been more tolerable
because a friend had been with her. Had
her friend not been there, she did not know
how she would have been able to stand it.
She was regressed further to the age of 5,
to her first day at ordinary day school and
again the same anxiety was present. The
GRAHAM
one common factor on these three occa-
sions seems to have been a separation from
known surroundings. It was therefore
decided to attempt to take her back to birth
and see how she felt at birth. I know that
a number of people claim that one cannot
communicate with a person at birth because
the person being born is not able to com-
municate and in any case is unable to think
in words. I have, however, used this
technique on a number of patients with con-
siderable success and I find that one can
simulate birth and find out a number of
interesting and relevant factors at the time
of birth. (Ambrose, 1956; Rank, 1924;
Blyth, 1971; Janov, 1970). The birth was
re-enacted with the patient and she claimed
that on being born she felt exactly the same
anxiety that she had had at the ages of 5
and 7 and at 11, and that anxiety was the
same at the dentist's.
At birth she said that she was cold,
something was wrong and she couldn't
breathe very well, the whole situation was
terrifying, that she was being taken some-
where dark and was placed on something
very hard and uncomfortable and that she
was terrified. After a couple of minutes of
going through a severe state of anxiety,
trembling, shaking, quivering, crying and
sobbing, she then stated that it was getting
a little better now and that it was soft and
warm and a little less tense and less
anxious. I brought her back to her present
age, awakened her from trance and asked
her to ask her father if he could remember
what had happened at her birth.
On returning for her next visit, she said
that her father had told her that she had
been born at home, with a midwife in
attendance, and that when she was born
they thought she was not going to survive
and, in fact, thought she had died. As there
was no open fire with a hearth the midwife
had put her in the airing cupboard which
was warm, on the boards next to the boiler.
I think that this is the dark hard place that
 DENTAL HYPNOANALYSIS
she had been experiencing during birth.
After two minutes or so, apparently she had
revived sufficiently to be taken out and she
was then placed in the cot. She claimed
that having re-lived this section of her life,
she felt somehow very different inside and
very much more calm and peaceful. We
then went through the other separation
times, her first day at each of her schools,
asking her to relive the emotion so that it
would no longer play any part in her fear
at the dentist's. She re-lived each occasion
and then regressed to when as a small girl
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she had gone to the dentist's with her
mother. The dentist said her mother must
wait in the waiting-room. She had gone
into the dentist's surgery feeling even more
afraid because her mother had been taken
away from her. She had been given a
general anaesthetic to have an extraction
when she again felt something terrible was
happening to her. She felt that she was los-
ing her life just as she had felt at her birth.
This, therefore, I feel has given rise to her
dental phobia and has connected each sub-
sequent visit with the feeling of being
separated and perhaps dying. After this was
explained and discussed with her, she
thought that this possibly was the case and
perhaps she could now have some dental
treatment. She was given a trance where
she could hallucinate that she was at her
favourite holiday spot on the Orkney Isles
and that she would be fishing, and her dog
and all her friends would be with her; five
fillings were done successfully without any
bother. An X-ray was taken of a front tooth
187
and this was found to be abscessed. A root-
filling was planned to be carried out on this
tooth on two subsequent visits. On her first
visit it was cleaned out and root-filled on
the second visit. She was still mildly
apprehensive but there were no signs of this
dental phobia.
I have discussed with a number of col-
leagues their techniques with children and
asked them if they allow the mothers in
and found that most of my colleagues
remove the mother from the surgery. I feel
this fear of separation may well be a cause
of some of the fear which the children
experience as they grow older. Unless the
mother is hopeless, I feel it is best to have
her in the surgery while the child is being
treated, even with hypnotic treatment.
CONCLUSION
These four cases illustrate that I do not
rely solely on authoritarian symptom
removal and that without using behaviour
therapy or analytical treatment, one cannot
treat every patient. Dentists should be
taught and trained in analytical methods
otherwise some patients will probably
never receive satisfactory treatment.
REFERENCES
AMBROSE, G. Hypnosis with children. London:
Staples Press, 1956.
BLYTH, P. Hypnotism. its power and practice. 1971.
JANOV, A. The primal scream. 1970.
RANK, O. The trauma of birth. New York: Har-
court, Brace, 1929.