THE WORKS OF DAVID CHEEK VOL 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. TRIBUTE TO DAVID CHEEK

1
A. RESISTANCES TO INDUCTION OF HYPNOSIS

2
B. DANGERS AND CONTRAINDICATIONS FOR SELF-HYPNOSIS

3
C. PRINCIPLES OF PREPARING PATIENTS FOR SURGERY

4
D. EXCERPTS THE APPLICATIONS OF IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES 5
2. USE OF IMMEDIATE INTERVENTIONS TO UNCOVER EMOTIONAL
FACTORS IN PRE-ABORTION CONDITIONS: DAVID B. CHEEK

6
3. CASE STUDIES: FETAL PERCEPTION AND MEMORY: DAVID B. CHEEK 8
4. ACCESSING AND REFRAMING UNCONSCIOUS FEARS IN
OBSTETRIC PATIENTS: DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI

19
A. CASE 1: FEAR OF BABY NOT SURVIVING DELIVERY

19
B. CASE 2: CONFIDENT PATIENT OF DEATH WHILE IN LABOR

22
C. CASE 3: RELATION OF FEAR IN A GROUP OF PRENATAL PATIENTS 23
5. IDEODYNAMIC APPROACHES WITH HABITUAL ABORTERS:
DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI
 25
6. MALADJUSTMENT PATTERNS APPARENTLY RELATED TO IMPRINTING
AT BIRTH: DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI

31
A. TRANSFORMING A SYMPTOM INTO A SIGNAL

33
B. CASE EXAMPLE: GASTRIC ULCER

34
C. CASE EXAMPLE: SEVERE ANGINA

35
D. VARIOUS HEALTH PROBLEMS

36
7. IDEOMOTOR QUESTIONING REVEALING AN APPARENTLY VALID
TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE PRIOR TO BIRTH: DAVID CHEEK & E. ROSSI

37
8. BRIEF HISTORY OF HYPNOSIS: DAVID B. CHEEK
 41
9. IDEOMOTOR SEARCH METHODS: DAVID B. CHEEK

45
A. SEVEN APPROACHES TO CAUSAL EVENTS

46
B. RETROGRADE SEARCH

47
C. PAST LIFE THERAPY, FACT OR FICTION

53
10. UNCOVERING METHODS: DAVID B. CHEEK

55
A. AUTOMATIC WRITING

57
B. IDEOMOTOR QUESTIONING METHODS

58
11. AN INTRODUCTION TO IDEODYNAMIC METHODS IN HYPNOSIS:
DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI

61
A. JAMES BRAID'S ORIGINAL DEFINITION OF HYPNOSIS

62
B. SPONTANEOUS TRANCE OF EVERYDAY LIFE

63
C. THE UTILIZATION APPROACH TO HYPNOSIS

64
D. IDEOMOTOR SIGNALING

66
E. PARTIAL VERSUS TOTAL AGE REGRESSION

69
12. TWO BASIC IDEODYNAMIC APPROACHES TO PSYCHOSOMATIC
AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS: DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI 73
13. IDEODYNAMIC HEAD, HAND, AND ARM SIGNALING:
DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI

78
14. IDEOMOTOR QUESTIONING FOR INVESTIGATION OF UNCONSCIOUS
 PAIN AND TARGET ORGAN VULNERABILITY: D. CHEEK & E. ROSSI 86
15. IDEODYNAMIC APPROACHES IN GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS:
DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI

98
A. MIND-BODY THERAPY

99
B. "THE LAW OF REVERSED EFFORT"

100
C. SURGICAL AND OBSTETRICAL ANALGESIA

101
D. GYNECOLOGICAL CONDITIONS

108
E. GYNECOLOGICAL STATES ASSOCIATED WITH HYPESTHESIA

111
16. CONCEPTUALIZING HYPNOSIS FRAME OF REFERENCE: DAVID B. CHEEK 112
17. UNCOVERING TECHNIQUES: DAVID B. CHEEK & LESLIE M. LECRON 115
18. SOME OF ERICKSON'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO MEDICINE: DAVID B. CHEEK 117
19. FINGER OF TRUTH: IDEOMOTOR RESPONSE WITH FINGER MOVEMENTS
ON DAVID CHEEK: DR BRYAN KNIGHT
 120
20. SURGERY: DAVID B. CHEEK

127
A. CASE: LITIGATION AGAINST THE WRONG SOURCE OF ANGER 131
B. PREPARATION FOR TROUBLE-FREE SURGERY

135
C. WHAT TO DO WHEN THERE ARE COMPLICATIONS

141
21. FETAL PERCEPTIONS: MATERNAL- FETAL TELEPATHY: DAVID B. CHEEK 143
22. GYNECOLOGY AND FEMALE UROLOGY: DAVID B. CHEEK

145
A URINAL TRACK INFECTION WITH CASE HISTORY

146
B. HERPES GENITALIS INFECTIONS / CASE HISTORY

147
C. DYSMENORRHEA (PAINFUL MENSTRUATION) / CASE HISTORY 149
E. PREMENSTRUAL SYNDROME (PMS) & OTHER MENSTRUATION 151
F. OVARIAN CYSTS AND STEIN-LEVINTHAL SYNDROME

154
23. HEALING OF PRE- & PERINATAL TRAUMA HYPNOSIS:
THE APPLICATION OF IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES: DAVID B. CHEEK 157
24. HYPNOSIS: THE APPLICATION OF IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES:
DAVID B. CHEEK (BOOK REVIEW BY BRYAN KNIGHT)
 158
25. IDEOMOTOR SIGNALS FOR HYPNOTIC EXPLORATION OF SYMPTOMS:
(ADAPTED FROM THE WORK OF DAVID CHEEK, MD): PHYLLIS KLAUS 169
26. DAVID CHEEK'S IDEOMOTOR (IM) APPROACH: DABNEY EWIN & EIMER 162
27. CHEEK’S IMAGERY: DABNEY EWIN & BRUCE EIMER

163
28. CHEEK'S LAW OF PESSIMISTIC INTERPRETATION: D EWIN & B EIMER 169
(DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON: CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE &
STRATTON: NY: CH 1-14: 1968 #29-41)
29. CH 1: HYPNOSIS: ITS VALUES AND THE MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT IT:
DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON

170
A. SPONTANEOUS SELF-HYPNOSIS

170
B. COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS

171
C. THE USES AND VALUES OF HYPNOSIS

173
30. CH 2: WHAT IS HYPNOSIS? DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON

172
31. CH: 3: THE HISTORY OF HYPNOSIS: DAVID CHEEK & LESLIE LECRON 176
32. CH 4: HYPNOTIZABILITY: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON

178
A. RESISTANCES TO INDUCTION OF HYPNOSIS

179
B. TESTS OF HYPNOTIZABILITY

181
33. CH 5: INDUCING HYPNOSIS: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON

182
34. CH 6: TRANCE PHENOMENA: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON

193
A. RAPPORT

193
B. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HYPNOTIC STATE

194
C. AGE REGRESSION

197
D. MORE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HYPNOTIC STATE
 200
35. CH 7: THE PRINCIPLES OF SUGGESTION: DAVID CHEEK & L. LECRON 202
36. CH 8: SELF-HYPNOSIS: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON

204
37. CH 9: IS HYPNOSIS DANGEROUS? DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON 206
38. CH 10: ORIENTATION TO HYPNOSIS: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON 211
39. CH 11: UNCOVERING TECHNIQUES: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON 215
A. ANALYTIC PROCEDURES

216
B. AUTOMATIC WRITING

217
C. IDEOMOTOR QUESTIONING

217
D. HANDLING RESISTANCE DURING THERAPY

220
40. CH 12: THE HYPNOTHERAPY OF PSYCHOSOMATIC ILLNESSES:
DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON
 222
41. CH 13: HYPNOSIS IN GYNECOLOGY: FRIGIDITY:
DAVID B. CHEEK & LESLIE M. LECRON

229
A. DYSMENORRHEA

232
B. LOW BACK PAIN, MUSCLE SPASM, MITTELSCHMERZ, PERITONITIS 233
C. AMENORRHEA

234
D. MENORRHAGIA

235
E. STEPS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR ABNORMAL BLEEDING

236
F. STEPS OF THERAPY
 238

THE WORKS OF DAVID CHEEK VOL 1

1. TRIBUTE TO DAVID CHEEK
EMAIL FROM PAUL B KINCADE: (Email send in response to my request on
information concerning the year of Dr. Cheek's death in preparation for this tribute.) Dear Dr.
Durbin, my very dear friend of many years passed away few years ago (Born May 22, 1912;
Died June 12, 1996) in Santa Barbara, CA, where he lived with his wife, Dolores. David had a
pimple on his jaw and when it got quite inflamed, he went to the doctor, who told him it was an
ingrown hair. Sadly, it turned out to be a fatal cancer and he passed away in a hospice just a
few weeks later. With his death, the world, in general, lost a great humanitarian and hypnosis,
in specific, lost a friend, teacher and pioneer. David was a colleague of the late Milton Erickson
and a past-president of ASCH which denounced him because of his advanced thinking. He and
Leslie LeCron, who passed away years ago, made many discoveries, including the use of
ideomotor signals and the fact an unconscious person continues to hear and respond at at
subconscious level... I learned much at his knee and even had honor of hypnotizing him at at
Texas conference when he was suffering from a painful hip problem. I miss him sorely and
often feel his guidance when working with clients. I treasure his many letters over the years and
when he died, I sent them, along with copies of audiotapes, to his widow. Paul B. Kincade, MA,
SWA, DAPA, CMH, Reno, Nevada
I (Durbin) make this Tribute to David Cheek and Leslie LeCorn together as they often
co-authored works on hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
 I admire Dr. David Cheek M.D., (died in September 1996 at the age of 84.) for his open
mindedness concerning hypnotherapist who did not fit into the mindset of some of his peers. He
worked closely with Leslie LeCron in writing the book Clinical Hypnotherapy and several
refers to LeCron in his book Hypnosis: The Application of Ideomotor Techniques: (Note Leslie
LeCron had a B.A. not a Doctor’s degrees. He would be excluded by those who would restrict
the practice of hypnotherapy.)
TRIBUTE TO DOCTOR DAVID B. CHEEK BY PAUL B. KINCADE, MA, SWA,
DAPA, CMH: This Tribute was sent to me in an email response to a question if anyone knew
if Dr. Cheek was still alive: Dear Dr. Durbin: Doctor David B. Cheek, my very dear friend of
many years, passed away three years ago in Santa Barbara, California, where he lived with his
wife, Dolores. David had a pimple on his jaw and went it got quite inflamed, he went to a
doctor, who told him it was an ingrown hair. Sadly, it turned out to be a fatal cancer and he
passed away in a hospice just weeks later. With his death, the world, in general, lost a great
humanitarian and hypnosis, in specific, lost a friend, teacher and pioneer. David was a colleague
of the late Milton Erickson and a past-president of ASCH, which denounced him because of his
advanced thinking. He and Leslie LeCron, who passed away many years ago, made many
discoveries, including the use of ideomotor signals and the fact an unconscious person continues
to hear and respond at a subconscious level. Despite criticism, David was fascinated with past
life regression and spirits (not the liquid type). I learned much at his knee and even had the
honor of hypnotizing him at a Texas conference when he was suffering from a painful hip
problem. I miss him sorely and often feel his guidance when working with clients.I treasured his
many letters over the years and when he died, I sent them, along with copies of audiotapes, to
his widow. Incidentally, in case you were unaware, David and LeCron co-authored "Clinical
Hypnotherapy", published in 1968. David wrote an inscription in my copy, dated May 9, 1987.
That book first introduced ideomotor signals. Paul B. Kincade, MA, SWA, DAPA, CMH Reno,
Nevada
NOTES FROM CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: David Cheek, M.D. and Leslie M.
LeCron, B.A. To the best of my knowledge, this book is no longer in print.) It should be
stressed here that the state of hypnosis with its increased suggestibility, literalness of
understanding and willingness to comply with optimistic suggestions is a quality of behavior
that appears spontaneously in human beings at critical times of fear, illness and
unconsciousness. Studies on hypnotizability made with volunteers can valid only for volunteers
under the test circumstances of the laboratory. They have nothing to do with the hypnotizability
of patients when the therapist feels that hypnosis could prove valuable. The most
unhypnotizable volunteer student will enter hypnosis at an adequate level if the therapist
presents hypnosis to him with honest conviction that hypnosis will work and will work with this
immediate indication. The experienced hypnotherapist approaches an untested patient with the
philosophy that all people are in hypnosis.
With this attitude, one can hypnotize essentially 90 per cent of his patients on the first
visit. After uncovering and correcting resistances, it should be possible to use hypnosis
successfully in nearly 100 per cent of the patients on the second office visit. This is not to be
misunderstood as meaning that hypnotherapy will achieve its goal in nearly 100 per cent of
one's patients, merely that it will be possible to help a patient achieve at least a light state of
hypnosis and be appreciate some of the phenomena of hypnosis by the second visit in nearly all
the patients. The stages of hypnosis are usually considered as light, medium, or deep, the latter
often called the somnambulistic state. Fortunately only (p 20) a light state is needed for most
purposes. In some situations it may even be better than a deep one where lethargy may be so
great that communication is difficult. (p 20)
RESISTANCES TO INDUCTION OF HYPNOSIS:
1. Unconscious resistance is often an obstacle even though the individual may be consciously
eager to be hypnotized. Fears may be present though unrecognized. These are usually based on
the common misconceptions about hypnosis. Therefore, it is for the operator to explain away
these mistaken ideas before an induction is attempted.
2. Previous frightening experiences may cause resistance, seemingly because the human mind
has retreated into a hypnotic-like state and the (p 21) induction of hypnosis later reminds him of
the unpleasant cause of the earlier spontaneous state. This speculation is supported bp repeated
observations of subjects who have uncovered their reasons for feeling uncomfortable and
wanting to avoid initial experiences with formally induced hypnosis. Such subjects quickly lose
their feelings of Fear and are able to enter hypnosis as soon as they learn they need not be
reminded of the unpleasant experience again.
3. Fear of loss of control is another reason for initial resistance. There never is such a loss, for
the subject is fully aware and, indeed, can awaken himself at anytime if he desires to do so. Fear
of talking too much and telling "state secrets" is a misconception quickly dispelled by
explanation that it is hard to talk in hypnosis anyway and protective forces within the subject are
to be respected by the hypnotherapist.
4. Personality factors may interfere with induction. The methods of talking and presenting ideas
by the operator may irritate the subject and interfere with results which could easily be obtained
by another, more relaxed therapist. Unpleasant personality traits in the operator could lead to
distrust and failure to achieve the necessary rapport.
5. Motivation, mentioned last but of greatest importance, has to be considered in relation to
hypnotizeability as it does with therapy in general. Primary motivation must come with the
therapist. Even an enthusiastic patient can be cooled by . therapist who is uninterested in the
task at hand. In contrast, an uninitiated and scoffing patient may slip right into hypnosis as he
picks up the convictions and positive motivations of an interested therapist. Dentists and
anesthesiologists are fortunate in having a high percentage of their subjects very highly
motivated toward using hypnosis. Fear of pain and fear of the unknown are strong forces on the
side of permitting easy induction into hypnosis.
It must also be remembered that symptoms may be unconscious mechanisms of defense
or may serve some other purpose. Wile the patient may consciously wish to he helped,
unconsciously the need for a that resistance develops m fear that the symptom may be so strong
symptom may be taken away. Actually the purpose of therapy is not to eliminate the symptom
when it is needed but to make it unnecessary through a revision of viewpoints and better insight.
(p 22)
DANGERS AND CONTRAINDICATIONS FOR SELF-HYPNOSIS: Our
symposium instructors have taught thousands of patients and hundreds of professional men and
women how to hypnotize themselves. We know of no one who has ever had a bad result or
found any danger in self-hypnosis. Freedom from any possible danger should be emphasized to
the patient who is learning it, because some psychiatrists have claimed that self-hypnosis is
always dangerous (Rosen). We emphatically do not agree with this dictum.
A few psychiatrists have warned that a patient might form too many fantasies with self-hypnosis
and tend to withdraw from reality. There have been no reports of this ever happening. Theory
here is based on clinical experience with psychotic patients who can do this without any
training. Such an argument fails to consider that daydreaming is self-hypnosis and that everyone
is spontaneously self-hypnotized many times.
There are very few contraindications to the teaching of self-hypnosis. They are as to
anyone who is retreating from reality, who is detached, or who tends too much toward
introspection and daydreaming. (p 62)
Is Hypnosis Dangerous? WHAT DANGERS does hypnosis involve? Can it be used
safely by the practitioner? These are pertinent questions. The answer is that there are some
dangers. However, they are minimal and are readily avoided when their possibilities are
understood and simple precautions are taken. Many physicians and dentists who have considered
attending courses or otherwise learning hypnotic techniques have feared to do so after reading
or hearing some psychiatric criticisms and statements about the great dangers they envision with
hypnosis. It can be said emphatically that these are very greatly exaggerated. The title of
psychiatrist does not qualify one as an authority on hypnosis in the absence of experience any
more than the corner grocer can offer himself as an authority on nutrition.
Harold Rosen, a psychiatrist, has exaggerated the idea of hypnosis being dangerous. He
has lectured throughout the country speaking to medical, dental and lay groups, warning that
hypnosis should be used only by those who have had extensive training in psychiatry. If this
were true, all physicians should also have such training before practicing medicine for much
medical practice is concerned with psychosomatic, emotional illnesses. Fortunately psychiatrists
with long experience using hypnosis disagree completely. Erickson, undoubtedly the greatest
authority on this subject, has said that hypnosis itself is not dangerous in any way, although it
can be misused. He feels that hypnotherapists can learn much psychiatry from their patients as
long as they respect the needs of these patients and refrain from coercing them in hypnosis. The
best indication that dangers are minimal is the fact that thousands of lay hypnotists and many
stage hypnotists who know little about hypnosis other than how to induce it use it
indiscriminately, yet bad results are rarely reported. Another important point is that the
professional man is fully covered by malpractice insurance carriers when using hypnosis in the
field of work for which he is qualified. No insurance company writing (p 63) malpractice
insurance has had any claims because of the use of hypnosis by physicians or dentists. This was
reported at a meeting of the Professional Liability Underwriters. No company knew of ally
difficulties having developed and no company plans restrictions on the use of hypnosis. (p 63)
Psychoanalysts state that a patient undergoing hypnotherapy becomes extremely
dependent on the therapist, with a greater transference developing. It is true that there may be a
great dependence initially, but this is of advantage to both the patient and the therapist. As
progress is made and the illness or condition responds to treatment, dependence dwindles away.
A large part of hypnotherapy is the building of ego strength in the patient. Hypnosis facilitates
this and then dependency needs are ended or modified. It could be pointed out that anyone
continuing in analysis for three or four years with little progress certainly is displaying great
dependence on the analyst.
It is true that there may be a strong need for a symptom and it may serve some purpose, such as
being a defense mechanism. It is very doubtful if a greatly needed symptom could ever be
removed by suggestion. Suggestions are only effective if they are acceptable.
In actual practice, symptom removal by hypnotic suggestion is seldom attempted. In the
old days of hypnosis, that was the only method of psychotherapy known, yet it was very rare for
a new symptom to form, and the method was often successful. When a situation calls for an
attempt at symptom removal by suggestion, there is a safeguard which would prevent any
danger: that is to make the suggestions permissive rather than commanding If there is a strong
need for the symptom, the suggestion would not be carried out and no possible harm would
result.
Another safeguard should also be applied. With the questioning technique it should be asked of
the patient, "Is it all right for you to lose this symptom?" If the answer given by the
subconscious mind is affirmative, there is not the slightest danger. If negative, no attempt at
removal should be made at that time. (p 68)
PRINCIPLES OF PREPARING PATIENTS FOR SURGERY: In the light of our
understanding as offered by experienced patients, we can state the following: 1. Keep all
statements phrased in optimistic terms, stating as well as implying your faith in the patient's
ability to do very well.
2. Avoid statements which could be interpreted pessimistically, such as directions associated
with words like "if," as in "You can go home in five days if all goes as expected."
3. Tell the patient what you plan to do, even at the risk of a malpractice suit, without
equivocation. If unexpected reasons for doing otherwise occur at the operating table and you
discuss the reasons at that time, there will be little cause to fear litigation. Few things are more
disturbing to a patient on the eve of surgery than feeling the surgeon does not know what will
be done the next day.
4. Outline the sequence of events after admission to the hospital, including the steps before an
incision is made.
5. Teach the patient how to relax, how to make one part of the body numb, and how to transfer
that numbness to other parts of the body such as the intended site for operation.
6. Place the patient in deeper hypnosis and ask for hallucination of rapid recovery of
consciousness after surgery, early desire to move about in order to improve circulation in the
incision area, and immediate feelings of hunger to insure early ability to take food, prevent
nausea and eliminate gas. Suggestions can also be made as to normal body functions and
elimination postoperatively, thus preventing urine retention.
7. Terminate the rehearsal by hallucination with request for the patient to visualize on a
blackboard the date or day when he is very well recovered and ready to go home from the
hospital. This is the most important part of the preparation and should be left until this point
because many unrecognized fears will have disappeared. Unwillingness to hallucinate a
discharge date is a danger signal that must not be passed over lightly. Cheek asks for an
ideomotor response when the date is clear at a subconscious level. The number or date is to pop
into the patient's conscious mind as the finger lifts. This method, which developed from work
with habitual abortion patients, uncovers fear without suggesting it.
8. Ask the patient to orient to the origin of a reason for not selecting a date for discharge or for
indicating "I don't want to answer" if either of these has happened. Be sure to check the
nighttime ideation during the night before admission to the hospital when you suspect a fearful
or pessimistic attitude. (p 164)
9. Ask the patient to select some very pleasant experience of a vacation trip. Ask for an
ideomotor signal when the best experience has been selected and ask for a verbal report when
this comes into conscious awareness. Tell the patient to remember t2lis in detail, starting with
the preoperative hypodermic injection. This is to be the ticket for the excursion. Tell the patient
there will be noises in the operating room but you want them to be associated with sounds on
the vacation. Explain that you will keep him posted on all important things but will always
address him by his first name. Everything else is to be ignored. You want your patient to make
the detailed review stretch from the time of the hypodermic until return to the regular room.
Explain that the purpose of this exercise in memory is to keep the appetite and all the normal
vegetative processes ready for resumption of duty on awakening from the anesthetic instead of
carrying the worries and alarms of surgery as a pattern of behavior on awakening. This makes
sense to patients and keeps you from sounding mentally deranged
10. Either keep the patient informed of each new action yourself after induction of anesthesia or
be sure it is done by your anesthesiologist. We are not yet past the time of skepticism on
continued hearing ability, and you must be prepared for laughter and derisive remarks from
associates. Important events to be announced: intubation, positioning, cleanup, catheterization,
transfers to carriage and thence to bed. (p 165)
EXCERPTS FROM THE APPLICATIONS OF IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES:
While the client is in hypnosis, the therapist ask question for the subconscious mind to answer.
The questions can usually be answered by "yes", "no", "I do not know", "I do not want to
answer". The method of soliciting the answer is usual down with a finger response or by us of a
pendulum. For the finger response: There are some questions which I would like to ask you.
Now, these questions can be answered "yes", "no", "I don’t want to answer". "I don’t know".
Your subconscious mind is able to answer each question I ask you. Your subconscious mind is
controlling the fingers of your hand. I request that your subconscious mind is pick out a "yes"
finger, and that finger is becoming very light. In fact, it is lighter than air and just wants to float
up. Don't resist it, don't assist it, just let it drift up. The "yes" finger is beginning to rise. That's
good, your finger of your hand is the "yes" finger. Now just let your finger float back down, and
as it does, you become twice as relaxed. Now, allow your subconscious mind to pick out a "no"
finger. Now, just let the "no" finger began to rise. Your subconscious mind is causing your "no"
finger to rise. That's good. Your finger of your hand is the "no" finger. Now, just let your
finger float back down, and as it does, you become twice as relaxed. Now, allow your
subconscious mind to pick out a "I don’t want to answer" finger. Now, just let the "I don’t want
to answer" finger began to rise. Your subconscious mind is causing your "I don’t want to
answer" finger to rise. That's good. Your finger of your hand is the "I don’t want to answer"
finger. Now, just let your finger float back down, and as it does, you become twice as relaxed.
Your subconscious mind is controlling your fingers so let us begin with the questions
and just let your subconscious answer. The same instructions can be given with the pendulum. A
pendulum can be a ring hinging on a string, or a specially made pendulum. By holding the
string between the finger and thumb, the pendulum will began to swing. It may go in a circle
clockwise or counter clockwise, or it may go back and forth or swing right to left. In a similar
manner to the finger response, the therapist get the pendulum to swing with one of the direction
for "yes", another for "no" and "I don’t know" The process that is involved in "ideomotor"
response is that "thoughts cause a physical action." When the therapist ask questions, the
relevant finger lifts in response or the pendulum swings in response: even when the patient
consciously thinks otherwise, or had no conscious awareness of the answer. I have seen clients
nod their had "no", while finger or pendulum responded with "no".
By the use of ideomotor response, Dr Cheek discovered that babies are influenced by the
emotions of the mother. "If a fetus mistakenly interprets to a mother’s worries as rejection the
felling will be imprinted and permanent, subsequent love and nurturing by the mother will not
alter the earlier assumption." In working with couples using hypnosis in preparation for
childbirth. I tell them of the importance of their emotions on their unborn child.
2. USE OF IMMEDIATE INTERVENTIONS TO UNCOVER EMOTIONAL FACTORS IN
PRE-ABORTION CONDITIONS: DAVID B. CHEEK, M.D.
In a retrograde study of abortion sequences some years ago, I found that more than half
of the women started their bleeding and expulsive contractions during the night, usually between
one and four in the morning. The majority of those who started during the day revealed, during
age regression, their belief that the process really originated with troubled dreams repeated for
several nights prior to the abortion.
Fortunately, thought sequences capable of causing abortion very rarely do so the first
time around. They occur on repeated cycles of sleep and on successive nights of sleep. This
gives the (299) patient an opportunity to recognize that her sleep has been disturbed and to
report this change in behavior to her doctor or midwife. Early intervention can prevent loss of a
normal conceptus. The physician should know how to act at once during the first telephone call
of alarm. In the case of a woman with a history of habitual abortion, it is far better to check out
the emotional background before the patient begins the pregnancy.
Even if the process of bleeding and consciously perceived uterine contractions has
already begun, there is usually time to expose the emotional cause and help the patient stop the
progress toward abortion or delivery of a dangerously premature infant. But intervention must
begin at once and should not be delayed by admission of the patient to a hospital. It can be
handled over the telephone, any time, at home or even long distance when the patient is on a
vacation trip.
All pregnant women, regardless of previous history, should know how to recognize that
their sleep has been troubled and be shown how to check their own unconscious reactions to
threatening dreams and deep sleep ideation. Their first line of correction is to ask for an
ideomotor response to the question, "Is there an emotional cause for this?" If the answer is a yes
with a finger signal or movement of a Chevruel pendulum, they can ask, "Now that I know this,
can I stop my bleeding (or cramps) and go on with this pregnancy?"
If the answer suggests an organic beginning or inability to stop the process, there is still
time to make a telephone call to the doctor or midwife who is capable of inducing hypnosis over
the telephone, searching for the causal experience, and permitting the patient to make her
corrections for the sake of her baby.
Consider this example: A woman who has not been to your office but has been referred
to you for obstetrical care calls at 3 p.m. on Sunday to say that she has an appointment next
week but started to bleed slightly this morning and is now having cramps. She would have called
earlier but she did not want to bother you. She reports that her last period started ten weeks ago,
that this is a planned pregnancy but she has had five previous miscarriages of planned
pregnancies, and she hopes that she might be able to carry this one. She is 30 years old and has
been happily married for six years.
This is an emergency and you must act quickly if you are to be of help to her . You need
not be concerned about her past history. She is frightened and is therefore already in a hypnoidal
state. This enables her to respond strongly to positive, hopeful suggestions given honestly and
authoritatively. We should use hypnosis permissively under peaceful circumstances, but
authoritative commands are necessary during an emergency.
Explain that you will show her how to stop this process but that you need to know what
has started this trouble. Say to her, "Let the unconscious part of your mind go back to the
moment you are starting the bleeding. When you are there, you will feel a twitching sensation in
your right index finger. Don't try to recall what is going on. Just say 'now' when you feel that
finger lifting up from where it is resting."
There is a double reason for this approach. Your words tell the patient that something
can be done right now to prevent what has happened regularly before. The request for an
unconscious gesture when reaching the moment that bleeding started centers her attention on
what her finger might do and diminishes her acute attention to the contractions of her uterus and
the fact that she is bleeding. It may take less than 30 seconds before she says, "Now." You will
probably notice that her voice is subdued, indicating that she has slipped into a deeper trance
state. Say to her, "Let a thought come to you about what your unconscious knows has started
your bleeding. When you know it, your yes finger will lift again, and when it does please tell me
what comes to your mind."
There may be another 30-second pause before she responds. Be quiet until she reports
something such as: "I'm asleep after lunch. I'm dreaming that the doctor is saying he doesn't
think I will be able to carry my baby because of all the other ones I have lost. He says we can try
some hormones to see if that will help."
You answer, "That index finger can represent a yes answer to a question. Your middle
finger on the same hand can represent a no answer. This is like nodding your head unconsciously
when you agree with someone or shaking your head if you disagree. I want to know, is the
dream occurring after you have started bleeding?" She answers, "My no finger is lifting." "All
right. This is a dream and your unconscious knows the dream is the cause of your bleeding.
Sadness and fear can make a uterus bleed even when a woman is not pregnant. Is your inner
mind willing now to stop the bleeding and let your baby go on developing normally?"
The patient will usually find her yes finger lifting for this question, but if she gets a no,
or some other finger, that might mean she does not want to answer; then you must ask her yes
finger to lift when she knows why she feels this way. It is usually some feeling of guilt or
defeatist belief system at work. Simple recognition permits her to remove that factor.
You conclude the telephone call with a deepening series of suggestions and directions to
relax her abdomen, stop the irritability of her uterus, and fall asleep for about 10 minutes after
hanging up. You ask her to call you back in one hour with a report. Do not say any more about
bleeding. Just ask her to call you in one hour. The statement often used by doctors is, "Give me a
call if your bleeding continues or gets worse." Such a statement is interpreted as meaning the
doctor expects her to bleed, and she will do so. She has shown five previous times how well she
can bleed and abort.
You explain that this does not mean she has to miscarry again. Bleeding occurs in 30%
of pregnant women at some time during their pregnancy and has nothing to do with prognosis
unless they become frightened.
This presentation is easily understood by a frightened patient. The statement of a way for
communicating unconscious information is also telling the patient tacitly that discovery of the
cause will permit correction of the problem. This diverts her total attention from the bleeding
and uterine cramps to the more constructive area of what she can do to stop the trouble and get
on with the pregnancy.
The questions and the unconscious review of significant events have led the patient
further away from the thought that she might lose this pregnancy. A marvelous protective action
takes place by virtue of entering a hypnotic state at a time of crisis. Coagulation mechanisms
return to a normal balance and all vegetative behavior is improved. There is no need to
command bleeding to stop or the uterus to remain quiet, but it helps the patient to make better
use of these protective functions when you show respect for this phenomenon by saying: "Now
this is something you dreamed. Would you agree that this dream does not need to threaten the
life of your baby, and that you have a right to stop your bleeding and get on with your
pregnancy?"

3. CASE STUDIES: FETAL PERCEPTION AND MEMORY: DAVID B. CHEEK, M.D.

[Transcript of 1992 IRM Conference Plenary Address. Excerpted from the Summer 1992 issue
of the Institute for Research in Metapsychology Newsletter. Foreword by Gerald French]
This issue of the Newsletter is devoted to a talk given by David Cheek, M.D. on Sunday,
April 5th, 1992, to a plenary session of the Sixth Annual Conference of the Institute for
Research in Metapsychology in San Francisco. As noted in an earlier Newsletter, Cheek, in the
1950's, wrote the first academic paper ever to address the phenomenon of fetal perception in
utero. In his talk, he describes some of his experiences as a therapist in using an ideomotor
technique [see description in text] that often allows his patients to realize life-transforming
insights.
Though the reader will probably notice major differences in technique, it is both
fascinating and validative to see so many philosophical parallels between our two approaches to
the common goal of human betterment.
While I was listening to your beautiful and wonderful wife Beatriz, Gerald, I was
thinking of an animal model for communication. I was in Honolulu some years ago with Leslie
LeCron, giving a workshop for some doctors on the uses of hypnosis. We hadn't had the group
do enough practicing during the meeting, so we had them doing it right at the end. One of the
doctors had a wife who was sort of floating free and had nothing to do while her husband was
practicing, so I asked her to come up on the stage where we had a nice chair, and I asked her if
there was anything that she would like to work on. She thought for a moment, and said, "We
have two pedigreed show dogs at home, and they've been vomiting for six weeks. We've taken
them to all the veterinarians on Oahu, and nobody has helped them."
So I said, "Why don't you 'tune in' to those dogs for a few minutes here." And we set up
signals with her - sort of like, "when we nod our head it's a 'yes', and if we shake our head, it's a
'no'", only I had her use her fingers. (The further away from the head you get, the more
unconscious is the information that you can tap into.) So I asked her to let herself go into
hypnosis for a few moments. I told her that when she knew what she could do with those dogs,
her "yes" finger would lift, and when it lifted, I wanted to hear what she had to say. About
thirty seconds later, she began to laugh uproariously. I said, "What's that?" She said, "Well, I
feel that I'm going to go home and tell them that they don't need to be show dogs; that we love
them."
"Well," I said, "that sounds fine."
After the workshop, my wife and I went around to a couple of the other islands. When
we got back, I called this woman's husband. He was a man that I had wanted to talk with more
about his experiences because he had been an adopted child who thought he hated his adoptive
parents but actually hated the mother that didn't want him. (This happens a lot.) So I called him.
At some point in our talk, I said, "Your wife really had some interesting ideas, and I would like
to know what happened when she got home." He said, "She went right out to the backyard
where the dogs were vomiting. She called them over, put her arms around them, looked into
their eyes, and said, 'Look, we love you. You don't have to be show dogs.'' "And," he said, "they
haven't vomited since."
I remember going up to the place in Mexico where those pyramids are - that wonderful
city; I never can pronounce its name. We went out in taxicabs. When we got there and had
walked around for a long time, we had lunch that was brought in boxes for us. When we opened
those boxes, about thirty very hungry-looking dogs came around wagging their tails and
begging for food. Well, the Mexican cab driver told them to leave in a very loud, emphatic, and
authoritative voice. Which they did. Then he had to go to the bathroom and he left us, and the
dogs all came back, wagging their tails and looking up at us. A woman who spoke Spanish very
well repeated his words exactly, and the dogs just stayed there and wagged their tails and looked
up at her. When the cab driver came back, she told him about this failure, and he said, "Well,
when you do this you've got to mean what you say." All she had said were the words. He said,
"They look at your eyes; they look at your mouth...," but I think there's much more that dogs
look for: they want to "join the club".
Well, my subject is what goes on in the uterus, and I think it must be something about
these planets getting together that Bia mentioned in her talk, because most of what I've been
learning that is really meaningful to me has come within the last five years when I began to
push back the boundaries of my biases. I used to think, as Freud did, that it was impossible for
babies to know anything until they were either 3 or 4 years old. I had known about Otto Rank,
who felt that babies knew a lot at birth. Rank found that psychotherapy was greatly shortened
when he allowed his patients, in hypnosis, to talk about what they remembered at birth. He felt
that birth was always traumatic. It isn't. It can be very wonderful for some babies, but it is
rough, and it's rough enough on them, mainly because the mother puts out adrenal hormones -
epinephrine - in labor. This seems to make memory permanent. The baby will pick up what is
going on at that time, whether it's good or bad, and will remember that. The impact of the
adrenal hormone overrides nice, left-brain, left-hemisphere type of information, like, "I love
you; you're a wonderful kid," if the baby has felt that mother was not awake in the delivery
room and didn't care enough to say "hello". Because of what we obstetricians do to mothers and
babies, her baby may never forgive her for having been "somewhere else" when she should have
been right there, saying, "What a beautiful baby I've got!"
These are things I've been awakened to. I've found that it isn't just what goes on in the delivery
room that is important. It's what's gone on for the previous nine months, and maybe ... even ...
longer! I woke up to the possibility - suggested to me by a psychic - that we do a lot of thinking
before we arrive in a physical body. When we're in a holding pattern out there, waiting to come
on in for a landing, we do choose. We don't always choose the right person, but we choose
them in terms of what we have known about them before. This was kind of wild for me. I don't
talk about this very often except in a nice group like this. I was telling Sarge [Dr. Gerbode] that
this is the one group that I've met within the last year where I have felt as though everyone was
open and receptive. Though they might not really totally believe, they were willing to listen and
to think about what we talked about. Beatriz has already opened up a whole bunch of other
channels for me, and I'm sorry for that, because there's a limit to how much - at 79 years old -
you can take in. Anyhow, I was in Hamburg, Germany two years ago, and one of the
psychologists in the group asked me to work with her as a demonstration. She said, "My mother
and I have never gotten along, although I love her very much. She lives in Berlin. I try to avoid
talking to her, but she calls me and we always get into arguments on the telephone. I'd like to
know what can go on that might help in my relation to her, because she's getting old; she needs
me. I would like to be helpful, but I always find myself uncomfortable around her." So I invited
her to come up for a demonstration.
We set up ideomotor - thought/muscle movement - ways of signaling unconscious
information, and I simply asked her to go back to when she was just emerging out into the
world.
(You don't have to go through a long induction technique. That is so surprising for someone to
try to conjure with: that they could remember their birth. It's the confusion technique of
inducing hypnosis.)
She didn't have to be in a trance to begin with, but she went right in, to be there at the
time of her birth. Her head turned to indicate the way her back was in relation to her mother. An
arm came out when I asked, "Which arm is delivering first?" (This is a physiological memory
that was imprinted by the adrenal hormones that were present, added to a lot because she was
born in Berlin in 1943 when there were a lot of stimulating things happening - like bombs
arriving.)
She said, "My mother is so happy she almost screams with pleasure to see this daughter of hers,
this beautiful child."
I said, "Well, that sounds pretty good. How does the child feel?" She shrugged her
shoulders and said, "Na-ah", as though it were nothing. To me, that meant there must have been
something that had gone on earlier that had set the stage for her to reject her mother's joyful
acceptance of her. So I asked her to go back to the time when her mother learned she was
pregnant. (I have found that this is an important moment: women are happy, or they're scared,
or they're mad. This emotion seems to make the memory lasting.) She signaled that she'd done
so.
I said, "How does your mother feel?" She said, "Scared", and then there was a pause. I
was trying to think of what else to say, and in the pause, she said, "She doesn't want me." That
was her interpretation of her mother's being scared. Being scared has to do with survival. This is
a right hemisphere type of impression. It's the psychic, spiritual side. It's very important for
animals to know where the danger is, and to remember how they got out of danger before.
Tremendously important. So "scared" meant, "She doesn't want me". Korzybski - the father of
General Semantics, you know - said "The map is not the territory." The way you understand the
territory is very different. The map only gives you colors, and maybe some lines of topography.
What we hear and what we pick up in other ways, we filter out in accordance with our
background of knowledge. Asking about the background of knowledge of a little spirit that has
selected a mother is very helpful.... I found out that she had selected her mother. I always ask
about this. It helps so much psychiatrically if someone who hates his or her mother discovers
that he chose her, or she chose her, in the first place. It lets them look at the possibility that
there might be something else wrong, and they might be willing to reframe their impressions of
their mother. So I asked about that.
"Is there another part of your mother that does want a little baby?" I knew it would be
"Yes", because I've found, as a gynecologist/obstetrician who has been concerned with fertility
for 45 years, that women do not get pregnant unless there's a biological readiness for pregnancy.
Now that's at a physiological level, way down deep. At a higher level, one which has to do with
the environment, they might not be ready for pregnancy. And for years, I've enthusiastically
supported the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, because, all during pregnancy, the little
baby inside is picking up the feelings of its mother as to whether she really is accepting of what
she's carrying, or rejecting it. It's very hard - it's almost impossible - to change a baby's attitude
towards women if it has felt unwanted all during pregnancy. Sometimes I have wondered how
many of my colleagues in obstetrics had mothers like this themselves. I talked with Frederick
LeBoyer about this. I asked, "Do you get the impression in France that obstetricians do not like
woman?" He said, "Oh, ho, mon Dieu! That was why I gave up obstetrics!"
And that same year - 1968 - was when I gave up obstetrics. I just didn't feel comfortable
in an environment where nobody thought the way I did. In California, it's legally dangerous to
have feelings that are different from your colleagues'. I had thought I could work - sort of like
the communists used to work - "from the inside". But instead, I've been working from the
outside, educating woman to stand up for their rights and their choice of having babies, and
hoping that they're going to educate their obstetricians. It's a hard job, I warn you. Have you
tried?
Anyhow, this woman discovered that the reason for her mother's being scared was not
that she didn't want a baby. I said, "Move forward to when your mother tells your dad that she's
pregnant." Right away, she said, "He isn't there," in a flat tone of voice. She was seeing his
absence as another abandonment. "Well", I said, "What's going on that keeps him away?" And
then she used her later knowledge. People can do this. She was able to say, "He's on the eastern
front, fighting the Russians."
I said, "Well, this is a rather bad time in the world in general, and certainly for your
mother. How does she know that he's ever coming back? Couldn't it be that she's afraid for the
future? For what's going to happen in Germany? Isn't she possibly afraid that your father may
not come back?" And she had to admit that all these things were true, and that helped her to
reframe her attitude towards her mother.
Then I asked her to come forward to when her mother was going into labor. I wanted
this to be a different thing. People can hallucinate - imagine - the right kind of labor and the
right kind of delivery. They know all about that! That's built-in genetic learning: babies ought to
be delivered in about 21/2 to 3 hours. Ugandan babies are, and so are the babies of all the
women that I've trained who have practiced doing the thing with their power - of turning pain
on and off - so that they can be relaxed and don't have reflex tension of their muscles and their
pelvis. They will have 21/2 to 3 hour labors, just the way the Creator intended it to be. So I
asked her to "walk into cold water". In my session later this afternoon, I'll have you practice
with this, because it's really important to know how simply, how easily, you can recall the
familiar experience of standing in cold water until you get used to the coldness. That
"used-to-the-coldness" is essentialy a partial analgesia. That's all you need. You can stub your
toe or bark your shin in cold water and it doesn't hurt until you get out and get warm.
Everybody seems to know what this is like. So you have them "go in" [mentally] up to their
knees. and then when they signal that they're numb, ask them to go in further, up to their waist.
With women who are going to deliver, you have them "get in" up to the lower part of their
breast, which is high enough over the top of the uterus to allow them to be able to turn on that
numbness anytime they want to. You have to "program" them, and it's very easy to do. We all
have computers between our ears. You can ask them to squeeze their finger, or to pull an ear -
or use any kind of "anchor of action," as neurolinguistic enthusiasts call it. It's really the
associative process. You have them squeeze the fingers together and have a finger lift to
promise that forever after this, anytime they want to become instantly numb, all they have to do
is to squeeze their fingers together. You don't want to take 10 minutes to get numb when you're
having contractions every 5 minutes. It has to be an instant thing.
So she did this; she played with it. She was a little old for having babies herself, but I
wanted her to see what her mother could have learned, and she was able to do this. I asked her
to go through the delivery with her mother squatting on the floor - as woman have done for
thousands of years - instead of being on a table with her legs up in the air in a most
unphysiological position. And I said, "The sheets don't have to be sterile because you've got all
the immune capabilities that your mother has. Bugs don't mean a thing to you. And instead of a
doctor, let's have a midwife, who's thoughtful enough to catch you and put you on your mother's
abdomen, skin to skin, to feel the warmth of her body ... and right to her breast."
All mother mammals - except humans - nurse their young. They lick them and nurse
them right away in the delivery room. She was able to imagine this, and I asked her to hear
what her mother would have said. She didn't have to use imagination. Her mother's welcoming
joy was already there. She heard it again, only this time there was adequate preparation in her
mind. She could accept her mother's acceptance of her. She went home that night, called her
mother, had a wonderful conversation, and came back in the next day feeling really good about
the change in the relationship. What she did impressed me so much with what seems to me to
be a fact: we have to consider all the aspects of the beginning of a pregnancy, of the beginning
of an embryo on through the rest of the pregnancy, and to help that little being get a really good,
and open, and fair impression of itself and of the world around it.
Now it is possible to work with people who are very badly mangled by what's happened
in their lives. This is what you folks are doing all the time. You're doing it in your way. I do it
using communications that do the same thing. I don't know enough about your ways of doing it,
but you're doing it. I have a terrible curiosity: I like to know exactly - at least, what seems to be
exactly - what allows people to bring about the changes in their lives. I think often, with any
kind of therapy, they will have some sort of idea of it, But, you know, we've been struggling for
over 150 years to use techniques to help patients find out what has caused their neurosis.
Neurosis used to be thought of as only "in the mind", but now neurosis also includes the body,
and as Buddy Braun - a psychiatrist in Chicago - has said, the only way we were ever able to
separate mind and body was with the guillotine during the French Revolution. Whatever
happens with the mind can also happen with the body. There has to be a change from normal
physiological and emotional development to something different. Curiously, the human mind is
capable of knowing exactly when there's a change. That knowledge seems to come from the
reticular activating system - the "RAS".
The RAS is a network of nerve fibers that seems to think for itself. Every axon, every
cell that starts the axon off, seems to have some knowledge of what to do. It's amazing. This is
the sort of thing that Candace Pert and others have been working on for a long time: the
messenger molecules and neuropeptides that go through the body turning keys and getting cells
to do things. This reticular activating system surrounds the whole spinal cord all the way on up
into the forebrain. Around the brain stem, the most primitive part of the brain, is where it is
most highly developed. This is where all of the twelve cranial nerves come in. The impact of
what they bring in is then decided upon by the reticular activating system. The front part of it -
the upper part, the cephalic part - will decide "What do we send up higher? and what do we
suppress?" It's an amazing capability. It isn't always correct. It doesn't always do the right
thing, but it tries.
In about 1956, there were three people who were working with cats to find out about
their attention. (Two of them I knew previously - Raul Hernandez-Peon and Michel Jouvet, a
neurophysiologist, a wonderful person from Leon, France.) They were particularly interested in
hearing, and so they trefined [drilled a hole into the skull] over the same part of the brain of
each of their cats - I think there were 27 of them - to have access to the cochlear nucleus, the
first relay system of hearing. They put a little stainless steel filament into the cochlear nucleus -
got it fixed in position with beeswax or whatever they were using at that time - and then they let
the animals recover health, recover from the anesthetic. They wanted them as normal as cats can
be with a piece of steel in their brain.
Then they brought them into a room, one at a time. They were pretty careful not to let
the ones that they first experimented with get back and talk to the others; they separated them
after the tests were done.
They had amplifiers in the room and they had a sound-producing machine that would
make beeps. They attached the steel wire to an electroencephalogram and then they made a
"beep" sound. The side of the cat's brain that had the thread in the cochlear nucleus sent out an
electrical potential that made the machine make a little blip, up and down, like an
electrocardiogram. This had its full impact - reached its highest level - when the cats first heard
the sound. But if they kept that sound going at the same interval, the cats began to lose interest
in that sound. Physiologically, they toned down the response. It didn't disappear, but it became
very hard to see. On the other hand, if they made the intervals shorter or larger, the cat paid full
attention again. See: if you're an animal, it's really important that you respond with all of your
energies and do whatever is needed if something new - like a lion - comes into your field. So
they got the full arousal response each time they changed the interval of time.
That was important. The cats were using what we have learned to use. For instance, we
struggle with anxiety to drive a car correctly when we first begin. Then, after about a year of
driving, we can talk to somebody rather intelligently while we do all the right things with the
car. Most of our driving has become ideomotor - at a lower level of awareness than speech.
Now we can do that. We have learned to do that only because we'd go nuts if we had to pay
conscious attention to everything we do. The cats had learned to do this. They had the full
impact of the sound going, and then they brought in something that they thought would be
would be really meaningful to a cat. They chose to use two white mice, sealed into a jar so that
there would be no noticeable odor that would say "mouse" to a cat. It was just a single stimulus.
Immediately, the cat suppressed totally the beep sound. They took the mice away and brought in
something else meaningful: fish oil on a piece of cotton. They put it under the nose of each cat.
Again, the cat immediately suppressed the impact of the sound.
That's the reticular activating system and it is really an impressive thing. If you want to
read a little bit about it, Harold Magoun wrote a book that's old but very good. Magoun was
really the one who controlled this experiment. He and Moruzzi were among the first to point out
the importance of the reticular activating system in controlling not just reactions to the
environment but also endocrines and everything else. It has much more control than the
pituitary alone has. It tells the pituitary and the hypothalamus what to do. Magoun's book is
called, "The Waking Brain", and it's a neat little book. If you ever can get a hold of it, it's a
classic.
While Beatrice was talking, I was thinking about a lecture that William James gave in
Scotland back in 1901. One of his lectures was on saintliness. Towards the end of the talk, he
commented that, to be saintly, you really have to be among saints. He said that an actor has to
have several things going for him: the audience has to be right, what he says has to be right, and
so on. He said, "There's no worse lie than the truth - misunderstood by those who hear it."
Everywhere else where I talk, I have to think about that, and it's such a joy to be "among saints"
here....
You can use thoughts and muscles to get at unconscious information. Police inspectors
and FBI agents have known for a long time what to do if you want to get details about what
really happened when the bank was robbed, or the person was a hit by a car in front of them, or
somebody got shot. You ask the witness (a volunteer witness; you don't do this with criminals
because you can't depend on what they say) to tell you what they did from the time they got up
in the morning to when they went home or whatever it was they did afterwards. You do not
interrupt them. I've been working with the FBI for about 15 years now, and I sit with Bob
Goldman and watch the witnesses who are instructed to do this. They start off with
bright-looking faces, and their voices inflect their words with quite a range of tone. As they go
on talking, wondering what comes next, they begin to diminish the modulations of their voice.
Their words become slower, their facial expression irons out. When they come to a blank place
and they're wondering, "What next?", they may look up about 20 degrees above the horizon -
just like little kids when they're telling you about a movie and they forget what came next. And
they go into a beautiful trance state while they're doing this "narrative", as they call it. And then
I come along and the inspector introduces me - "He's going to hypnotize you and improve your
memory." - and the witnesses come right out of trance because now they're challenged by
somebody. So I have to ask them to do the same sort of thing, but not try to remember a thing.
I'll say, "This index finger (I'll identify the finger with them at first; later I ask them to choose)
is going to lift when you're getting up in the morning. This finger" - and I identify it, touch it
for them so they hook it up in their brain - "will lift every time you come to something you feel
might be helpful for us in this situation, and when you're going home at the end of it, your
thumb will lift." (I usually use a thumb for that.) And they sit there and do the same thing. They
go right back into the same trance - only usually a little deeper - and I ask them to "keep going
over it, and when you get to the end and your thumb lifts, go back to the beginning and please
keep on doing that until you feel that you have given us enough worthwhile details."
This is basically what we do in psychotherapy, often without really realizing what we're
doing. We're helping a person in a narrative to go into a trance while they're telling us what they
think we ought to know. And we should avoid asking questions during that time. We should
really let them do it. It's hard to do it when you've only got a certain length of time to see
somebody. But if you are retired - as I have been, sort of - when you have a little more time to
do it, it is very interesting to notice how easily people go in. Milton Erickson was the first one,
to my knowledge, to point out that whenever people recall sequences of action, they go into a
hypnotic state to do it.
You can also see this in the case of post-hypnotic suggestion. I have said to a person
under hypnosis, "When I remove my glasses, I'd like to have you go over to the door there and
open it up ... and have menstrual cramps" (I used to do this with people who had
dysmenorrehea), "and when you come back and sit in the chair, you'll feel instantly
comfortable. This doesn't mean that doorknobs are going to induce cramps with you; it's just
that I'd like to have you know that there are all sorts of signals that we set up for ourselves to
have trouble with." I then continue, "When you know you can do that - and maybe not
remember what I've been talking about - your 'yes' finger will lift." Then I'll ask her to awaken,
and before she's had a chance to catch on to what I've just told her - I learned this also from
Milton Erickson - I'll pick up something like this water glass and say, "This is very interesting. I
wonder if it's cut glass, or just molded that way...", to get her attention onto the glass. And
while I'm talking with her about the water glass, I'll notice that every once in a while she's
looking at that door, even though she has amnesia for the original stimulus of what's going to do
it and I haven't removed my glasses yet. But when I do remove my glasses, it's even harder for
her to keep her attention on the water glass. She's going to keep thinking about that door, but
she can't just get up and open a door when a doctor's talking to her, so she has to rig up some
way of getting there. And she'll say, "It's kind of hot in here. Would you mind if I open the
door?" And I ask her to do that. But she's going to have a cramp! She knows that,
physiologically. So she'll get to the door and ... maybe get to the aura of the doorknob, and I'll
say, "Please, put your hand on that door knob because I don't want you to get hemorrhoids or
something later on just because you haven't followed through with what you think you ought to
do."
So she does it, and then she looks off into space, wondering "What next?" ... and then
she looks a little uncomfortable. I'll say, "Where do you feel them when you first get those
cramps?", and then she starts talking about it, reminds herself of it, and that's enough. I ask her
to come back and sit in the chair. She's already accepted suggestion, and she's comfortable.
Actually, this is basically what happens with most illnesses, whether physical or emotional:
something happens that sets a memory pattern, and there's amnesia for it, and a compulsion to
carry it out. Herb Spiegel wrote a paper about this many years ago.
I put down epinephrine and amnesia together on this blackboard because they seem to be
vitally related to what we call imprinting, and for birds and mammals, imprinting is very
important for the young ones that have to be cared for by their mother or their father. They have
to pay attention, to know who their parents are, because - particularly with birds like the
goslings that Conrad Lorenz was working with - if they go to the wrong mother, they'll be
drowned. So knowing who their mother is has survival value for them.
Now, how do you suppose they set up the communication system that tells them who
their mother is? We used to think it was just the first thing that they see, or the first thing that
happens to them. It isn't. It's gone on a long time before. Telepathic communication is the secret
for survival among warm-blooded animals. The other ones just lay their eggs and go off and
leave them, and the young have to depend on genetic learning to survive. But warm-blooded
animals - birds and mammals - have to know who is in control, and who to go to when there's
danger. They can't just learn this after they are hatched out or born. It's got to be in place long
before then.
So if you can open up your channels of understanding and acceptance enough to realize
this, then you can see why a psychologist can go back and tell me how her mother feels at the
time the doctor tells her she's pregnant. This is telepathic communication - the hearing sense is
not there yet. It takes four and a half to five months for the hearing mechanisms to develop in
the nervous system of an embryo. I used to think that they couldn't see, either, but yesterday a
women told me what her father was wearing when he learned - happily - that her mother was
pregnant. I asked her, "How big are you?", and slowly she brought one hand up and she put her
thumb and forefinger about that far [several centimeters] apart. Theres a proprioceptive
knowledge of size. Usually, in the early months of pregnancy, they double the space, but you
would expect them to say, "How the hell do I know how big I am?" But it's very definite. You
argue with her and say, "I think you're bigger than that. Don't you think so?", and her "no"
finger will lift. Try it; you'll see.
These are communications - unconscious communications - not only telepathy, but
clairvoyance as well. So think about that. Think hard, because if you're dealing with somebody
that you think is a kook and you're going to do the best you can but you don't really think much
is going to happen, you're very much like the owners of pedigree dogs that expect them to be
show dogs but don't know how to give love.
[Here, Dr. Cheek gave a demonstration of hypnotic induction and the ideomotor
technique described above. Though for reasons of brevity, that activity has not been transcribed
here, a number of parenthetical comments he made during the session have been. See
paragraphs below, followed by ellipses. - Ed.] Remember what I said: sequences are important.
As an obstetrician, I found that most of the complications that can happen with surgery occur
during the nights after surgery when there's a "reviewing" of something that was possibly
misunderstood - or heard as it really was said by a surgeon who didn't know that people are
listening. Most of the complications in obstetrics occur because of statements that her
mother-in-law may have made to the mother ... or words said by some friend who had a terrible
time having a baby....
With the use of ideomotor response, you're opening up channels of communication that,
for me, have been the only way I've been able to get at the origins - the really traumatic
experiences. It isn't enough to get a later one; it isn't enough to get a satellite trauma. All of the
earlier hypnotists - Joseph Breuer, Freud, Jung, Ferenczi - were looking for a trauma. They
thought that when they got it and somebody starting screaming, that was the whole thing. It
wasn't. People didn't get better, and all of them gave up hypnosis - particularly Jung, because
he found people inventing trauma that had never actually occurred. He wrote about it.
Then came all these other things - researching dreams. But dreams are worthless unless
you can get what went just before the dream. Sometimes people can be asked to interpret their
dreams over and over again, and can go into hypnosis deep enough to have the access to what
went before. But it's so much quicker to go right to the original thing by having them learn to go
over their night of sleep and to pick up whatever seems to them in some way related to why
you're talking with them. It's as simple as that....
Hypnosis is a state-dependent process. We go into hypnosis when we're in danger; we go
into it when we lose consciousness; we go into it when we're lulled, when we're mesmerized - as
babies are mesmerized by nursing. And when you go into hypnosis - even just relaxing - you
may suddenly find yourself flashing back to a tonsillectomy ... or falling out of a tree ... or just
before the car hit yours, when you go into a different state.
In that state, your tolerance for pain goes way up. People who have been injured in
accidents don't feel any pain until they realize what's wrong with them. It's a curious thing:
when you go into hypnosis, something else goes into action, too. It was discovered by James
Esdaile, a Scottish surgeon who went to India in 1845 to work in a little prison hospital outside
Calcutta. He was appalled at the mortality rate with surgeries - even superficial skin operations.
People would go into shock, hemorrhage, or die of infection. There was a 50% mortality with
any kind of surgery ... and this was only slightly above the level everywhere else in the world
where people were in better shape - in better physical condition and better nourished than these
prisoners were. This was before anesthetics were available in India.
Esdaile read a newspaper article about mesmerism being used in France by several
surgeons. Cloquet wrote about it. The article said that the "operator" sits in front of the person
he's working with, with his knees outside of the patient's, and that he passes his hands down
over the patient's face and over his arms and shoulders and down to the hands. And these
patients would go into a state that allowed surgery to be done painlessly.
Esdaile thought, "What a wonderful idea!" He was really tired of having attendants hold
screaming patients down while he operated on them, so he worked with it. He didn't dare do it
with a surgical patient at first. He was a doctor. He got somebody that had an abscessed eye first
- a retrobulbar abscess [behind the eyeball] - and he began doing this. In his wonderful little
book about mesmerism in India, he describes how he kept it up for 45 minutes and nothing
happened. So he sat down. His back was bothering him and that it was very hot and humid.
While he was sitting there, the patient said, in a low voice, "You are my mother, my father, my
sisters and brothers." The only way Esdaile could interpret that was as a compliment, and it
gave him strength. So he got up again and started to mesmerize some more, and the man went
into a deep state. Esdaile didn't know what it was; it looked as though the man was in a coma.
Now the newspaper article didn't say how you wake people up, and Esdaile didn't know what to
do next. So, like all doctors, he went and saw the patients he did know something about - he
made rounds. When he came back, he noticed a very wonderful thing: the redness around that
eye had gone away, and the swelling had diminished. That gave him enthusiasm to go on further
and he recognized within a very short time that when you remove pain at an unconscious level,
the other three cardinal signs of inflammation - redness, swelling, and heat - will disappear.
He didn't really think in terms of "conscious", or "unconscious", but what he was really
dealing with was the unconscious element of pain, which doesn't appear in our dictionaries -
even our medical ones. We think that pain is only what a person says "Ouch!" to. But
subconscious pain is the important kind. It can smolder for years, unrecognized, and then light
up later with a back problem or shoulder problem that may have started in the delivery room
with the way the baby was born.
In 1947, Hench, of the Mayo Clinic, found that when you give cortisone to people who
have rheumatoid arthritis, the swelling, redness, and heat will disappear and they will get more
mobility in their joints. It was a wonderful discovery - except that a few of them began dying
from miliary tuberculosis. They had had the tuberculosis "walled off", and the tuberculosis
spread, got into the blood stream, and they died. Cortisone had other side effects as well, like
depression, and suicidal attitudes. Cortisone can remove inflammation, but it does not improve
healing, and it can cause a lot of other troubles. The key to hypnosis was well known to Mesmer
but he didn't describe it very fully. Esdaile discovered that hypnosis stops the redness, swelling,
and local heat. When you remove the pain and there is no pain, the interference with the
immune system that cortisone causes doesn't occur. In fact, the system is enhanced, so he also
found that his patients stopped dying of infection. And all of his surgical patients were infected.
Doctors washed their hands when they got through surgery. They never washed their
instruments afterwards to get the blood off, so their hands and all their instruments were
contaminated with bacteria that were greatly enhanced in their capability of causing disease,
because they had passed through other patients who had died or been infected in the hospital.
We know that if you pass a pathogenic organism through a person or an animal and then culture
it and give it to somebody else, its potential for doing damage is increased. So all his patients
were very much at risk, yet his mortality dropped from 50% to 5% in three thousand operations
- some of them major ones, like leg amputations.
Nobody listened to this. The poor guy died depressed after he returned to England. He'd
been promised that somebody would publish his papers, and nobody was interested. They all
had chloroform, ether, and nitrous oxide to use, so why waste time doing this sort of thing in
front of somebody? You see, the receptiveness of people has to be right. You have to have the
right audience, and he didn't have it. Well, I wanted to touch on some of those things - not to
convince you, but to add, I hope, to your curiosity.
In Memoriam by Victor R. Volkman: October 1996: David B. Cheek, M.D., passed
away in September 1996 at the age of 84. I had the honor of hearing Dr. Cheek at two past IRM
conferences. With his warm heart, friendly demeanor, and total candor, he was an immediate hit
with everyone. Though not a metapsychology practitioner by training, I feel that he embodied
all of the best traits that a practitioner could have: an open mind and complete respect and
empathy for his clients.
Dr. Cheek's legacy lives on through the work of his students. Rev. Gerry Bongard and
his book "The Near Birth Experience" provides another intriguing look into life before birth.
Other materials available on the WWW: Comments on "Ideomotor Exploration for Rapid
Resolution of Symptoms" by Dr. David Cheek. Review of Dr. Cheek's book Mind-Body
Therapy: Methods of Ideodynamic Healing in Hypnosis Mind-Body Therapy: Methods of
Ideodynamic Healing in Hypnosis Hypnosis: The Application of Ideomotor Techniques From
the newsletter of the Association for Past-Life Research and Therapies (Obituaries) David B.
Cheek, M.D., a physician and surgeon in Santa Barbara, CA. Diplomate of the American Board
of Obstetricians and Gynecology, he was also Fellow and Past-President of the American
Society of Clinical Hypnosis. In later years his practice was limited to psychosomatic medicine
and infertility. He was a noted lecturer and author of six books and 41 papers on hypnosis,
clinical hypnotherapy and mind-body therapy.

4. ACCESSING AND REFRAMING UNCONSCIOUS FEARS IN OBSTETRIC PATIENTS:

DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI: FROM “MIND-BODY THERAPY”: WW NORTON &
CO. NEW YORK: 1988
The concept that pregnant women have an extrasensory premonition regarding the gender
of their unborn children has grown out of the limbo of folklore. LeCron (1959) has reported that
approximately 850/0 of pregnant women guess correctly. Whether a larger group, now being
carefully studied, will match the first one in accuracy is doubtful. But an interesting and valuable
by-product of these observations has been the discovery that unconsciously frightened women
are unable to commit themselves with ideomotor responses regarding the sex of the baby. By
using a simple questioning method aimed at the relatively unimportant investigation of fetal sex,
it is possible to expose and resolve unconscious fear. The method can be incorporated easily into
the training program of an obstetrical patient, and it uncovers fear without asking about fear
directly. All obstetrical patients are curious about the sex of their unborn child.
Utilizing Ideomotor Questioning Methods to Determine Sex of Unborn Child and
Uncover Unconscious Fears: Ideomotor questioning depends upon the psychobiological
principle that unconscious gestures and facial movements indicate deeper levels of attitude than
are reflected by speech (Cheek, 1959). For example, one sterility patient, when asked if she had
wanted children during the first year of her marriage, answered, "Oh, yes, doctor, I have always
wanted children." As her mouth expressed this thought, her head moved from side to side in
contradiction. She was surprised when this was reported to her. By using definitive muscle
movements, it was then possible to show this patient that she had some unconscious conflicts
which needed resolution before she could expect her body to accept and carry a pregnancy.
Following seven years' extensive fertility regimens, she became pregnant after one hour of
psychological exploration and rearrangement of attitude. She now has three children. (300)
CASE 1: FEAR OF BABY NOT SURVIVING DELIVERY: A surprising experience
with a search for unconscious predelivery knowledge of sex determination occurred in May,
1956. M. W., a 26-year-old Chinese woman, was being interviewed during a prenatal visit. I had
tried vainly to present hypnosis to her a year previously because I had wanted to explore her
attitudes towards herself. She had contracted pulmonary tuberculosis at 17 years of age, had
undergone extensive therapy, and had been hospitalized twice for recurrence. Finally, after a
radical thoracoplasty, she had maintained a remission and had married. Her first pregnancy had
ended at seven months with an abruptio and intrauterine death of one twin. The second twin had
expired a few hours after delivery. She was pregnant again a year later. I had withheld efforts to
approach the subject of hypnosis until she had reached the stage of pregnancy comparable to that
of the previous obstetrical emergency. I had reasoned that, although she seemed outwardly
happy and confident, there might be a potentially dangerous unconscious fear of another
accident about this time. This is a report of the interview:
Doctor: Mary, have you thought how nice it would be to know about putting yourself to sleep
and resting with hypnosis after this baby is home? You know that the mothers who are able to
use hypnosis are the marvels of their neighborhood, because they always look fresh and rested
when the other women with babies are haggard and tired. (This was a planned gambit. She knew
the dangers of fatigue in tuberculosis.) The reaction to this presentation was favorable. She had
not been interested the previous year when I had presented hypnosis as a means of having a baby
painlessly. She responded well to the imagined downward pull of a heavy weight on her right
arm and entered a light hypnotic state as she experienced this sensation. I asked her to keep her
lids closed, and then went on to ask for a relaxed behavior such as she might have if she were on
a vacation up in the mountains on a pleasantly warm, summer day. She entered a medium trance
during the course of about five minutes. She was then asked to awaken completely as I counted
from ten down to zero, but was told she could open her eyes at the count of five. I stopped
counting at five and began questioning her. There is a transition from a hypnotized state to that
of normal alertness. Stopping half-way interrupted the process. Doctor: Are you wide awake
now, Mary?
Patient: Why, yes, doctor, why do you ask?
Doctor: Let me ask your unconscious mind to answer that question. Patient: (Finger signal) No.
The patient laughed as she noticed that the finger would not stay down.
Her interest was excited by the discovery that her unconscious muscle response seemed to
contradict her spoken answer.
I felt it might be possible to use LeCron's technique of questioning to see if she might
have some hidden fears. I did not want to challenge her by (301) asking about fear when she had
already assured me, at a conscious level, that there were no fears. I believed I might find some
clues to her unconscious feelings by asking about her baby. If she had a normal amount of
unconscious fear under the circumstances, she should disclose this somehow in talking about
what kind of baby she would have. I had been probing when I talked of being able to rest "after
this baby is home." Her reaction of accepting hypnosis at this time when she had rejected it
during the first pregnancy was apparently an indication that she had some motivation for this
acceptance, as has been stated elsewhere (Cheek, 1957).
Doctor: Do you have an idea, consciously, whether you will have a boy or a girl?
Patient: Yes, it's going to be a girl.
Doctor: Let's let your unconscious mind answer that question.
Patient: (Looking down at her hands. The right thumb rose slowly to indicate, I don't know.)
Doctor: Is it going to be a boy?
Patient: (The left thumb rose slowly to indicate, I don't want to answer.)
This answer did not seem to trouble the patient. Her expression was calm, yet the unconscious
lifting of that finger reflected a feeling at variance with those consciously experienced. Refusal
to respond under these circumstances suggested that she had some doubts as to whether her baby
would survive in order to have a sex. Subsequent careful questioning with other patients giving
this type of response has shown this to be the reason. It now seemed time to confront the patient
with the evidence given by her ideomotor response. There had been no manifestation of trouble
during this pregnancy. There had been no nausea, no illness of any kind. I felt that I might shift
her unconscious fears into a healthier atmosphere of optimism if I now assumed she were afraid
and showed, by my questioning, that I felt positive she could have a normal baby at term.
Doctor: Let your fingers answer this question, Mary. Are you afraid?
Patient: (Verbal) Why, no, doctor, I have confidence in you. You have told me everything is all
right. I am not afraid.
As she was addressing this to me with her eyes directed at mine, I could see that her right index
finger was pulling up with a grossly contradictory yes answer. At this moment she was able to
feel the movement of the finger and looked down, laughing. Not only had the finger gone up but
it was trembling.
Patient: I can't make it stay down!
Doctor: [Laughing] You see, Mary, how you must pay respect to what your unconscious mind is
thinking. Do you know unconsciously why you are scared?
Patient: (ES.) I don't know. (Verbal) My aunt said I should not have lifted that heavy laundry
basket the day I started bleeding. (I ignored this (302) indication of guilt assumption.)
Doctor: If you could be no longer scared, will you have a nice baby?
Patient: (ES.) Yes. (This was a steady motion of the usual delayed type without the trembling
which had accentuated the earlier answer.)
Doctor: Then you will have a nice baby?
This question was slanted with the tacit meaning that I felt she could get over her fear and that 1
expected her to have a normal child. This is an acceptable form of reassurance obliquely applied.
The unconscious mind tends to reject direct reassurance. She had already demonstrated this by
her earlier remarks and ideomotor responses.
Patient: (ES.) Yes.
Doctor: Does your unconscious mind know what kind of a baby you will have?
Patient: (ES.) I don't know.
Doctor: Will it be a girl? [Here again was a positive slant to the question.]
Patient: (ES.) No.
Doctor: Will it be a boy?
Patient: (ES.) Yes.
The unfolding of this case demonstrated an overlay of conscious attitudes in relation to
those of the unconscious level. An initial, apparently deep, conviction that she would not have a
live baby was shown by the "I don't want to answer" response when answering about the sex of
her unborn child. Following this initial pessimistic answer, the subsequent contradiction to her
consciously spoken words about fear apparently helped her recognize her fear and accept the
probability of a happy outcome.
The point of asking these questions and getting the patient to express finger movements
was not to determine the truth or falsity of her knowledge regarding the sex of her baby, but
rather to help her to acknowledge her fears and realize that they could be overcome. Further
questioning was used to help her bracket a time for delivery. The purpose of this was to
reinforce her concept of labor as occurring at term instead of prematurely. It is always helpful to
obtain this kind of commitment. Negative or doubtful answers indicate significance of
unconscious fears. Discussion regarding the implication of her aunt's remark showed her normal
acceptance of guilt. This was followed with later conversation, and she was found to have lost
her guilt feelings.
Actually, this patient delivered four days after the date she had selected. She had a girl
instead of a boy.
CASE 2: PREVIOUSLY CONFIDENT PATIENT INDICATING UNCONSCIOUS
FEAR OF DEATH WHILE IN LABOR: C. L., a 27-year-old Catholic nullipara had been
married for two years when first seen for sterility workup. A 6 em. para-ovarian cyst was
removed July 2 at Hospital "A." She became pregnant three months later and attributed this
(303) to the operation. She seemed very happy and perfectly confident throughout her
pregnancy. She was trained with hypnosis to develop anesthesia of her abdomen and was given
the usual instructions about relaxation.
On July 16, 1957, she was admitted to Hospital "B" after spontaneous rupture of
membranes. She was placed in hypnosis as a demonstration for the nurse. The following
ideomotor questioning was conducted:
Doctor: Does your unconscious know the sex of the baby?
Patient: (No).
Doctor: Will it be a girl?
Patient: (I don't want to answer.)
Doctor: Are you afraid?
Patient: (Yes) [Note: Patient had signaled no fears during an interview in my office the previous
week.]
Doctor: Does your unconscious know what this fear is?
Patient: (I don't want to answer.)
Doctor: Will you be able to tell me next month at the time of your checkup?
Patient: (I don't want to answer.) [Note: This suggested possible fear of dying before that time.]
Doctor: [I turned to the nurse in the room and explained as though the patient were not
listening] When they enter the hospital, patients often are afraid that they might have an
abnormal baby or that they might die. They are often ashamed of admitting such fears lest they
hurt the feelings of the obstetrician, or appear superstitious. [Turning to the patient 1 continued]
Are you afraid for the baby?
Patient: (No.)
Doctor: [I then asked the nurse to get some medication, and while alone said,] Come now,
Catherine, you'd better confess what has been worrying you. It will make your labor so much
smoother for us both.
Patient: [She smiled as she said] Last week 1 saw a report in the newspaper that a prominent
Peninsula woman at Hospital "A" died having a baby.
Doctor: Isn't it a sort of foolish thing to worry about, just because she had been at the same
hospital? Is there anything really important that you are worrying about?
Patient: (No.)
Doctor: Is your unconscious still worried about something that you have not told be yet?
Patient: (No.)
The husband was now asked to come in. I explained to him what had happened and told him
about her identification of herself with the woman at Hospital "A." 1 had heard that the other
patient had been suffering from ample causes for trouble. I said:
Doctor: It is really amazing how many nice, conscientious people will seem to latch on to
reasons for punishing themselves for real or imagined sins when they came to the hospital in
labor. (304)
Now I asked the patient to demonstrate for her husband how well she could perform putting
herself into hypnosis. When she was in a medium trance, I asked, Does your unconscious mind
know the sex of your baby?
Patient: (Yes.)
Doctor: Is it a boy?
Patient: Yes.
Doctor: Now go forward in time. See yourself after an easy labor with your normal little boy
over there. Signal, when you are there, with your right index finger, and tell me the time you
will see written up on a blackboard. Patient: [Signals, and says complacently] It's 7:00 P.M.
She had a boy but was wrong by three hours. Her appearance and actions were relaxed after
discovery and resolution of her fear.
When it is sensed that a patient is afraid of dying during surgery or delivery, it is helpful
to talk positively about actions she is expected to perform at some future time. Tacitly she will
pick up the reassurance that you feel she will survive. Direct reassurance will be rejected by the
unconscious mind as being given to all patients without regard to the individual needs. For this
reason, I asked the patient if she could tell me about her fears "next month at the time of your
checkup." Her answer indicated an unwillingness to consider the future. All the remaining
conversations were aimed at letting her know other surviving patients had entertained similar
fears.
CASE 3: RELATION OF FEAR IN A GROUP OF PRENATAL PATIENTS:
When I was guest lecturer at the University of North Carolina in 1959, 26 pregnant women were
being rehearsed with hypnosis for delivery. It occurred to me that it would be interesting to the
physicians on the other side of the one-way viewer to see the responses with questioning about
the sex of unborn children in this group. These were all good hypnotic subjects who had been
trained previously. All were able to develop finger signals. The question was asked:
"Does your unconscious know the sex of your baby?" Twelve answered yes, eleven
answered no, and three gave a signal, I don't want to answer. The 14 women with negative
answers were asked to hold up their hands for identification. All of the group were then asked:
"Are you afraid either for yourself or for the baby?" Fourteen patients signaling yes were the
ones who had indicated either no or I don't want to answer to the first question. I made the
general suggestion to them that they talk over whatever fears they might discover in order to
have a short and easy labor. I said: "Obviously God did not intend for more than half of you to
die or have dead babies, but an unconscious fear on your part could slow you down and make
having a baby an unpleasant experience for you."
I then asked them to awaken. As they did so, one of the patients who had signaled, I don't
want to answer, burst into tears and said: (305) "I know this is foolish, but my best friend died
two years ago having a baby and everyone has been telling me I look like her."
This is a typical example of unconscious, unreasoning pessimistic identification. The
only related fact was that her dead friend had been pregnant. Their hair, eyes, and other qualities
were all different. I have found such pessimism to be a cogent cause for late pregnancy toxemia,
hemorrhage, and delayed labor.
Scientific Validity Versus Pragmatic Outcome in the Use of Ideomotor Techniques:
It is not possible to prove that all answers given by muscular action with the Chevreul pendulum
while awake, or by gross movements while in hypnosis, are reflections of pure unconscious
attitude, free of relationship with direct or implied demands from the therapist. It would be
interesting to investigate how much is spontaneous and how much is evoked by the operator.
From the standpoint of effective therapy, however, this is really of little importance. It is amply
clear from the arrangement of my questions that definite reactions were expected. This is not
really scientific, or so it seems. The searcher after truth in psychology will have a restless and
unhappy time because there are infinitely more variables in behavior of the central nervous
system than there are even in the shifting variables of neuro-endocrineorgan function.
Weitzenhoffer (1960a, b) has wondered if it is justifiable to think of material released during
hypnosis with the aid of ideomotor questioning methods as representing true unconscious
thought. This is beside the point. Let us keep a clear eye on the goal. The goal is health. If this
goal seems scientifically distasteful to the sophisticated, let them carefully search their souls as
they re-read Freud, Morton Prince, William James, and Janet. These great men were searching.
They were capable of changing their own concepts. We do them a disservice if we freeze them
into niches and measure all subsequent thought according to the horizons of their time.
We might think of the interplay of stimulus and response in hypnotherapyas comparable
to the relationship between a good athlete and his seasoned coach. The athlete may have too
great respect for a well-established competitor, and may unconsciously have lost the battle
before the race is begun. The coach who can see no hidden qualities in his man may force his
athlete to perform only in accordance with previous performance. The good coach is able to
recognize promise and get his athlete to compete for victory instead of performance. The result
depends upon the expectancy of victory as presented to the athlete by his coach.
Comparable relationships exist between patient and therapist when ideomotor techniques
are used. The therapist stimulates helpful forces by presenting questions in optimistic terms.
There is a curious, deeply-lying potential for victory and fro survival which seems ever-present
when we remove (306) the more superficial confusions of pessimism, guilt, and self-punishment.
When hypnotic methods of approach seem insistent, unscientific, and slanted with intent for a
specific answer, we could reflect upon the results of such efforts and whether the end justifies
the means.
There is yet another problem. Some patients may, like the athlete with a good coach, do
better than expected, yet lose the race. What of them? Is it justifiable to treat them with
expectation of a happy result even though the end apparently cannot be a happy one? Karl
Menninger (1959) has written a stimulating paper on "Hope." It seems to me that the therapist
with an honest faith in the unbounded potential of the human organism in the struggle for
survival can never do harm in pointing constantly to hope just around the corner. We have come
a long way in the last century. Brilliant breakthroughs against disease are appearing with great
frequency. Our patients are capable of responding to the philosophy of hope. We should not fail
them even if we seem to do an injustice to scientific thought. Scientific thought in terms of
illness may tomorrow rest strongly on the capacity of the individual to fight hopefully. We can
no longer argue that results with human vegetables in controlled experiments are the true
measurement by which we judge results in the art of healing.
For ten years, it has been a custom of mine to ask patients to tell me of their plans about
babies, the clothes, and what space will be available for the baby when it comes home. Even
without hypnotic uncovering techniques, it had been clear to me that women with sterility or
abortion problems seemed unwilling to purchase baby clothes or even to talk about the
developing fetus, lest something would happen to justify the folklore advice against counting
chickens before they were hatched. Another possible mechanism for this reaction is the, "This is
too good to last" phenomenon. Women may precipitate catastrophes in subsequent pregnancies
as a result of unconscious conditioned pessimism during the period when all seems to be going
well.
The technique of questioning into the sex of an unborn child is readily incorporated into
routine prenatal training of obstetrical patients. It seems to be a valuable way of uncovering
unconscious fears and it paves the way for definitive rapid psychotherapy.
An objection has been raised by psychiatrists with whom I have communicated about this
report. They have wondered whether obstetricians and general practitioners should be
encouraged to delve into psychiatric matters with their patients. There could be extensive
discussion of this question, but it seems reasonable to weigh the evidence from personal
experience. Permissive use of the methods described here have shown no indications of being
dangerous. The results in fetal salvage indicate that ignorance of, or avoidance of, the
psychological factors would be difficult to defend. (307)

5. IDEODYNAMIC APPROACHES WITH HABITUAL ABORTERS: DAVID CHEEK &

ERNEST ROSSI: FROM “MIND-BODY THERAPY”: WW NORTON & CO. NEW YORK:
1988
We have known for many years that emotional factors playa major part in the
physiological sequences terminating in a spontaneous abortion. Stallworthy, in England (1959),
wrote a classic paper on the fact that almost any form of treatment for repeated abortions will be
successful if the physician is enthusiastic about a certain treatment regimen and conveys
confidence that this will work.
Hypnosis combined with use of unconscious skeletal muscle responses (ideomotor
signals) gives access to unconscious factors causing some abortions, particularly those occurring
repeatedly. Recognition of the origins permits the pregnant woman to become her own
psychotherapist in preventing the loss of a desired pregnancy.
There are definite organic factors that can cause abortions, and most promineilt among
those would be: congenital anomalies of the uterus, lethal genes in the embryo, viral infections
causing severe defects in the conceptus, nutritional deficiencies, and chemical toxins affecting
the embryo during the first eight weeks of gestation. If obvious organic factors have been ruled
out, then careful attention must be given to the remaining psychological factors.
A woman who has had even one spontaneous or induced abortion will approach the next
pregnancy with some trepidation. It is hard for her to plan for the birth of a healthy child. She
may feel that she is not worthy of having a healthy normal child or that she lacks some quality of
motherhood. She does not shop for baby clothes or a bassinet, for she is afraid of "counting her
chickens before they hatch."
An Overview of Emotional Factors in Spontaneous Abortion: A thorough emotional
history should be obtained in these patients. There are a number of factors that can have a crucial
bearing on the success of a pregnancy; those that I have found to be particularly significant are:
(308)
1. A history of the patient's mother having had a serious illness or major emotional problem
during or immediately after her pregnancy with the patient. There is a tendency for the daughter
of such a pregnancy to assume guilt for her mother's difficulties.
2. Starting life feeling unwanted as an infant, or later, feeling unwanted as a girl. I believe that
the understandings of babies at birth are imprinted and remain fixed, and that delivery room
conversations, often misinterpreted, can form the bases of powerful, negative impressions.
3. A history of a serious illness during childhood, leaving the patient feeling inadequate because
she was out of school or could not play like other children.
4. The death of a parent or parental divorce before the patient was 10 years old. This may cause
the patient to feel responsible for what happened.
5. Parental concern if the beginning of menstruation is delayed past the age of 15 can make the
child feel she is not normal and therefore cannot be sure she will have a normal child at term.
6. A history of abdominal surgery through a transverse or midline incision can make women
overly concerned with their female organs.
7. Being sexually molested as a child can cause a woman to reject her femininity and feel
hostility toward all males. Both forces mitigate against childbearing.
8. There may be unconscious guilt arising from an induced or spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, or
delivery of an abnormal infant in the previous pregnancy.
9. Unconscious hostility toward the husband or any member of his family during the present
pregnancy may cause the woman to unconsciously identify her baby with his family and may
cause her to abort "his baby."
10. A history of severe menstrual cramps leading to the remark by parents or friends, "If you
think that this is bad, just wait until you have a baby."
Use of Immediate Interventions to Uncover Emotional Factors in Pre-Abortion
Conditions: In a retrograde study of abortion sequences some years ago, I found that more than
half of the women started their bleeding and expulsive contractions during the night, usually
between one and four in the morning. The majority of those who started during the day revealed,
during age regression, their belief that the process really originated with troubled dreams
repeated for several nights prior to the abortion.
Fortunately, thought sequences capable of causing abortion very rarely (309) do so the
first time around. They occur on repeated cycles of sleep and on successive nights of sleep. This
gives the patient an opportunity to recognize that her sleep has been disturbed and to report this
change in behavior to her doctor or midwife. Early intervention can prevent loss of a normal
conceptus. The physician should know how to act at once during the first telephone call of
alarm. In the case of a woman with a history of habitual abortion, it is far better to check out the
emotional background before the patient begins the pregnancy.
Even if the process of bleeding and consciously perceived uterine contractions has
already begun, there is usually time to expose the emotional cause and help the patient stop the
progress toward abortion or delivery of a dangerously premature infant. But intervention must
begin at once and should not be delayed by admission of the patient to a hospital. It can be
handled over the telephone, any time, at home or even long distance when the patient is on a
vacation trip.
All pregnant women, regardless of previous history, should know how to recognize that
their sleep has been troubled and be shown how to check their own unconscious reactions to
threatening dreams and deep sleep ideation. Their first line of correction is to ask for an
ideomotor response to the question, "Is there an emotional cause for this?" If the answer is a yes
with a finger signal or movement of a Chevreul pendulum, they can ask, "Now that I know this,
can I stop my bleeding (or cramps) and go on with this pregnancy?"
If the answer suggests an organic beginning or inability to stop the process, there is still
time to make a telephone call to the doctor or midwife who is capable of inducing hypnosis over
the telephone, searching for the causal experience, and permitting the patient to make her
corrections for the sake of her baby.
Consider this example: A woman who has not been to your office but has been referred
to you for obstetrical care calls at 3 p.m. on Sunday to say that she has an appointment next
week but started to bleed slightly this morning and is now having cramps. She would have called
earlier but she did not want to bother you. She reports that her last period started ten weeks ago,
that this is a planned pregnancy but she has had five previous miscarriages of planned
pregnancies, and she hopes that she might be able to carry this one. She is 30 years old and has
been happily married for six years.
This is an emergency and you must act quickly if you are to be of help to her. You need
not be concerned about her past history. She is frightened and is therefore already in a hypnoidal
state. This enables her to respond strongly to positive, hopeful suggestions given honestly and
authoritatively. We should use hypnosis permissively under peaceful circumstances, but
authoritative commands are necessary during an emergency.
Explain that you will show her how to stop this process but that you need (311) to know
what has started this trouble. Say to her, "Let the unconscious part of your mind go back to the
moment you are starting the bleeding. When you are there, you will feel a twitching sensation in
your right index finger. Don't try to recall what is going on. Just say 'now' when you feel that
finger lifting up from where it is resting."
There is a double reason for this approach. Your words tell the patient that something can
be done right now to prevent what has happened regularly before. The request for an
unconscious gesture when reaching the moment that bleeding started centers her attention on
what her finger might do and diminishes her acute attention to the contractions of her uterus and
the fact that she is bleeding.
It may take less than 30 seconds before she says, "Now." You will probably notice that
her voice is subdued, indicating that she has slipped into a deeper trance state. Say to her, "Let a
thought come to you about what your unconscious knows has started your bleeding. When you
know it, your yes finger will lift again, and when it does please tell me what comes to your
mind."
There may be another 30-second pause before she responds. Be quiet until she reports
something such as: "I'm asleep after lunch. I'm dreaming that the doctor is saying he doesn't
think I will be able to carry my baby because of all the other ones I have lost. He says we can try
some hormones to see if that will help."
You answer, "That index finger can represent a yes answer to a question. Your middle
finger on the same hand can represent a no answer. This is like nodding your head unconsciously
when you agree with someone or shaking your head if you disagree. I want to know, is the
dream occurring after you have started bleeding?" She answers, "My no finger is lifting." "All
right. This is a dream and your unconscious knows the dream is the cause of your bleeding.
Sadness and fear can make a uterus bleed even when a woman is not pregnant. Is your inner
mind willing now to stop the bleeding and let your baby go on developing normally?"
The patient will usually find her yes finger lifting for this question, but if she gets a no,
or some other finger, that might mean she does not want to answer; then you must ask her yes
finger to lift when she knows why she feels this way. It is usually some feeling of guilt or
defeatist belief system at work. Simple recognition permits her to remove that factor.
You conclude the telephone call with a deepening series of suggestions and directions to
relax her abdomen, stop the irritability of her uterus, and fall asleep for about 10 minutes after
hanging up. You ask her to call you back in one hour with a report. Do not say any more about
bleeding. Just ask her to call you in one hour. The statement often used by doctors is, "Give me a
call if your bleeding continues or gets worse." Such a statement is interpreted as meaning the
doctor expects her to bleed, and she will do so. She has shown five previous times how well she
can bleed and abort. (311)
You explain that this does not mean she has to miscarry again. Bleeding occurs in 30%
of pregnant women at some time during their pregnancy and has nothing to do with prognosis
unless they become frightened.
This presentation is easily understood by a frightened patient. The statement of a way for
communicating unconscious information is also telling the patient tacitly that discovery of the
cause will permit correction of the problem. This diverts her total attention from the bleeding
and uterine cramps to the more constructive area of what she can do to stop the trouble and get
on with the pregnancy.
The questions and the unconscious review of significant events have led the patient
further away from the thought that she might lose this pregnancy. A marvelous protective action
takes place by virtue of entering a hypnotic state at a time of crisis. Coagulation mechanisms
return to a normal balance and all vegetative behavior is improved. There is no need to
command bleeding to stop or the uterus to remain quiet, but it helps the patient to make better
use of these protective functions when you show respect for this phenomenon by saying: "Now
this is something you dreamed. Would you agree that this dream does not need to threaten the
life of your baby, and that you have a right to stop your bleeding and get on with your
pregnancy?"
Treating Habitual Aborters: Now let us turn to the special situation of habitually
aborting women. Women who have had six or more successive abortions with birth of a living
child at term generally consider themselves hopeless cases. Their chances of having a full-term
child are thought to be less than 10%. By the time there have been six miscarriages, a woman
may have become so discouraged that she submits to a hysterectomy, which is often preceded by
severe pelvic complaints.
I have had the privilege of working with five such women, one of whom was pregnant
with her tenth trial. She was aborting when I first saw her. She had been molested by her
grandfather when she was four years old, had wished she could be a boy, and had become fat
and developed excess body hair. She had married a man she knew to be homosexual. After the
seventh abortion she divorced her husband and shortly thereafter married a delightfully
masculine and thoughtful man. The early life imprinting, however, was not corrected. She
moved away from San Francisco, lost the next four pregnancies, and finally had a hysterectomy
and removal of an enlarged ovary. Thereafter she adopted a child, returned to her normal weight,
and lost the excess hair on her body.
The remaining five all had living, normal infants at term, although they all had
frightening experiences with bleeding one or more times during the first successful pregnancy.
Each was taught how to obtain ideomotor (312) responses to questions. They called at the first
sign of bleeding or cramping. They were able to discover the source of their trouble and were
able to stop their bleeding within minutes of our telephone questioning. All were eventually able
to hallucinate delivery of their infant as they reached their sixth month of pregnancy. This is a
very good prognostic sign. Three of the four who were able to have a living child were unable to
hallucinate a successful ending at the time of their first pregnancy under my care. (See Table 9)
When caring for women who have had multiple abortions, the physician must be
prepared for emergency calls at any time. It is important that such women know they can call on
their doctor or midwife at any time. The knowledge that they are expected to telephone if they
are frightened is often enough for them to solve their own problem without calling. But it is also
of utmost importance to recognize that delay in offering help may result in enough damage to
the circulation to the fetus to cause abortion in spite of therapy, as happened in three of these
cases.
 When a distressed, frightened patient calls, your first question should be, "What finger
lifts for a yes answer?" This takes the patient's attention briefly away from concentration on the
bleeding or cramping. It also shifts her time perception to the last time you were using hypnosis
and ideomotor questioning with her in the safety of your office. The next question should be,
"Does your inner mind know that your baby is OK?" If the answer is "yes," the bleeding and
cramps may stop without any further intervention. If the answer is "no," you must ask your
patient to go back to whatever gave her that silly idea that the baby is not OK, and to bring the
thought up to where she can tell you about it. The cause is usually constructed out of dream
material or residual pessimism about the pregnancy being too good to be true.
Patients seem to know what they are able to do in a constructive way when they are
pregnant. It is up to us who care for them to listen to their remarks and to know how to search
for troubled dreams and unconscious sources of pessimism. The results are rewarding when we
are able to project our faith in our patients' being able to find solutions to their challenges. (313)
A Stress-Reduction Program During Pregnancy: In response to the continuing
problems of unconscious fears during pregnancy, habitual abortion, and the new research
suggesting that sexual orientation (particularly in males) may be related to the amount of stress
the mother experiences during pregnancy (Ellis & Ames, 1987; see also Section VII of this
volume), I have outlined a stress reduction program for pregnant women, with suggestions for
both the woman and her doctor at the different stages of pregnancy. A woman usually learns that
she is pregnant between the fifth and seventh week. At this time, her first counseling session
with her doctor should review the global issues of pregnancy and her attitudes toward the
forthcoming child on a normal, waking, conversational level. The doctor then teaches the
process of ideomotor signaling and reviews any problem areas that may have arisen during the
initial interview. (314)
STRESS-REDUCTION ACTIVITIES FOR PREGNANT WOMEN AND THEIR
PHYSICIANS.
WEEKS 5-7:
PREGNANT WOMAN: Review conscious attitudes toward her pregnancy and forthcoming
baby.
HER DOCTOR: Counseling at normal conversational level; teaching ideomotor signaling;
asking about any problem areas.
WEEKS 8
PREGNANT WOMAN: Establish ideodynamic communication:
I. Learn to use ultradian rest periods before lunch and dinner (this helps overcome nausea and
diminishes risk of "storing food" leading to unnecessary weight gain).
2. Ask yourself if your dreams have been restful and pleasant. If not, check with your doctor.
HER DOCTOR: 1. "Is your inner mind willing to give this child the best possible start in life?"
(If not, orient to cause of doubts, which can usually be easily removed.)
2. "Does your inner mind know the sex of your baby?" (Answer often reveals unconscious
fears.)
3. Check last night's sleep for trouble.
WEEKS 12
PREGNANT WOMAN:
1. Continue ultradian rest periods three or four times per day.
2. Search for origin of any symptom before calling doctor by orienting to first moment symptom
is beginning; say to yourself, "My yes finger will lift when 1 am there, and as it lifts, 1 will
know what is causing the problem."
3. If angry or disappointed, pat your abdomen and say, for example, "1 am mad at your dad, but
it has nothing to do with you in there" (purpose: to keep yourself aware that your feelings and
hormones affect your baby).
HER DOCTOR:
1. Search early life impressions and attitudes of mother toward delivery and reframe if
necessary.
2. Briefly rehearse mother in inducing self-hypnosis.
3. Encourage her with stress-reduction exercises.
WEEKS 18-20
PREGNANT WOMAN: First fetal movement:
1. Pat abdomen and talk out loud to your baby during the day, as you would to another adult
(your baby is now much more receptive).
2. If possible, keep soft, classical music or folk songs playing for an hour or two each day.
3. Continue ultradian self-hypnosis exercise three or four times per day.
HER DOCTOR: I. Explain about fetal activity: babies hiccup when mothers are nervous, and
that near to term they will "walk" around into a head-down position if they feel everything is
comfortable with mother. (315)
WEEKS 24-32: Exercises:
1. Ultradian self-hypnosis three or four times per day reviewing hallucinated labor process,
making delivery non-stressful for the baby.
2. Exercise turning "on" numbness from chest to knees with pressure at left thumb and index
finger.
3. Bringing back sensations to normal with right thumb index to pressure.
4. Get ideodynamic-level commitment to a short, easy labor so that the baby will emerge feeling
welcome and free of guilt.
Blackboard Viewing: -Sex of baby -Weight of baby -Length of labor -Time of day
HER DOCTOR:
1. Check finger signals to see if baby is feeling happy.
2. Explain how unconscious fear blocks expulsive contractions when patients are in hospital.
3. Ask if mother has any questions.
WEEKS 36-40:
1. Continue daily conversations with the baby and include husband's participation.
2. Continue daily ultradian self-hypnosis.
3. Brief daily unconscious review at finger signal level:
a. yes finger to lift at onset of labor;
b. no finger to lift as the baby is being held up for your welcome; c. I-don't-want-to-answer
finger to lift as you feel baby placed on your abdomen and at your breast.
(This is an important transition in contracting your uterus and offering the nurturing, oral
gratification, and fuII acceptance of your baby into its new world so valuable for later sexual
learning.)
HER DOCTOR: Weekly Visits:
1. Check mother's unconscious feelings about welfare of her baby (communication is very strong
between mother and infant during this period).
2. Reinforce confidence of mother.
3. Assure mother that she will have fuII control over the way her labor wiII be conducted; avoid
any overt or implied coercion on your part or the hospital staff.
DELIVERY: This is now a familiar process that can simply "flow."
HER DOCTOR: Be present if possible; however, it will not be a threat if your medical associate
is present instead. The mother knows that she is in charge. (316)

6. MALADJUSTMENT PATTERNS APPARENTLY RELATED TO IMPRINTING AT

BIRTH: DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI: FROM “MIND-BODY THERAPY”: WW
NORTON & CO. NEW YORK: 1988
There is no single path to our understanding and correction of disease origins. We keep
moving in our medical attitudes. Even the computer cannot diminish the humility we are forced
to maintain as we consider various fancies of bygone years, the amputations of breasts to
mitigate the effects f eclampsia, the marching of tuberculous patients up mountains to enlarge
their hearts, the enthusiasm on finding "laudable pus" in a surgical incision.
I (DBC) offer the following with full respect for the possibility that the ideas here
presented may now seem or will eventually be as wrong as these examples of our past ignorance.
It has long been my belief that the basic factors in healing include willingness on the part of a
sick person and optimism in the end result as communicated by the "healer." Sometimes the
optimism springs from within in rebellion to depressing medical opinion, and the healer is the
patient. Most of the time, the potentiating forces for healing come from faith shown by the
doctor either in a mode of treatment r in the deep unconscious drive for survival that can be
released by a doctor who recognizes this force.
The matter of disturbed response to environmental stimuli has been my concern since
interning in obstetrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1942. There I witnessed an exsanguinating
hemorrhage at delivery of a red-headed ish woman who had been prepared for this trouble by
our concern over er history of a "bleeding tendency." Subsequently I learned that bleeding
tenndencies are created by the alarms of doctors and can be prevented or terminated in
midstream by attendants who believe in the capacity of people conserve blood with delivery or
injury.
After joining the panel of instructors in hypnosis symposiums formed by Leslie M.
LeCron in September 1956, I learned that unconscious symbol movements of a Chevreul
pendulum could indicate information about the beginnings of an illness (LeCron 1954). This
could occur while the patient as consciously wondering why the pendulum was apparently
swinging to ve answers that were not expected. Fascination with the ideomotor (423) responses
permitted rapid entrance of the subject into hypnosis, if there were a need. If this happened,
LeCron switched to using unconscious movement of designated fingers for the answers yes, no,
and I don't want to answer.
LeCron was of the opinion that most physical illnesses stemmed from some sort of initial
preparation associated with a dramatic aura or with great emotional stress.
His "20 questions" method of approach to a problem would go something like this:
Q. Does the inner part of your mind feel your trouble came from some past experience?
A. Yes [given by the pendulum].
Q. Was this before you were 20 years old? A. Yes.
Q. Was it before you were 10 years old?
The questions and affirmative answers would continue until the answer was a no. Knowing that
hypnotized people are economical in energy output and will try to stop an inquisitor from going
too close to a troublesome event, LeCron would then ask, "Is there a deeper part of your mind
that knows about something earlier than this age?"
Sometimes it would not be necessary to narrow the site of origin beyond the initial
bracketing. The patient might suddenly look surprised, put the pendulum down, and say
something like, "I know what it was!" Then he would explain some early life experience. When
he was finished LeCron would ask, "Is there some event before this that might have prepared the
way for your trouble to begin?" Frequently, this revealed an otherwise suppressed birth
experience.
This apparent nagging of the hypnotized subject into admitting something earlier
bothered me very much at first. My training from the authorities on neurological development
made the idea of a birth trauma unacceptable. I already knew from prior biased explorations with
hypnosis that patients under general anesthesia could not hear or be troubled by noises in the
operating room. LeCron and Milton Erickson had both told me they knew that anesthetized
patients can hear and be harmfully affected, but one was a psychologist and the other a
psychiatrist. They seemed pretty bold to make such ridiculous assertions.
At a symposium in Houston in October 1957, a hypnotized doctor proved to me that he
had heard his surgeons talking (1959). Two months later during a cruise back from a workshop
in Honolulu, LeCron was investigating the origins of severe headache with one member of our
group. In the course of pursuing the "past event" that might have some bearing on the headache,
the physician recalled a severe eye infection caused by some dirt accidentally kicked into his eye
by playmates. When asked if there might (424) be some earlier related event, he went into a deep
trance and described his very difficult delivery. He could hear his mother's cries, and in addition
to feeling very nervous, he was aware also of head pain as forceps were being applied to his
head. The blades were not applied to the sides of his face, as is usual with a low forceps
delivery, but were misplaced as might have been the case with a high forceps delivery. One
blade pressed very hard just above the eye that had later been infected; the other blade pressed
against his occiput.
LeCron now asked the doctor to review some of his headaches to see what connection
there might be between these two events. The eye infection was not important beyond the fact
that this eye, perhaps, had a heightened vulnerability to injury or infection. What was
immediately clear was that headaches always occurred when this very conscientious doctor
became worried abouta patient or felt upset over some personal trouble. It seemed that this might
be a conditioned type of response associating his head pain at birth with the influence of his
mother's adrenal hormones passing through the placenta into his circulation.
Any doubts I had about the validity of traumatic birth memory were dispersed on our
arrival at San Pedro. The physician was met at the dock by his mother. She verified the difficulty
of his birth and the fact that high forceps had been applied in an effort to preserve his life. That
the search was productive was established by the doctor's subsequent relief from headaches.
When one would start at a time of pressure, he would recognize the cause and stop the headache.
Further investigations by LeCron and myself established, to our satisfaction, that migraine and
ordinary tension headaches are related to pain experienced by the baby at birth in the majority of
instances. Box 29 provides an ideodynamic approach to transforming a symptom into a signal.
When we observed that a handclasp with interdigitated fingers revealed primal
handedness in relation to which thumb was uppermost, there was an interesting byproduct of
research that seemed to warrant mention. In testing more than 2,000 individuals in groups
ranging from 50 to 500 people, we found that an average of 50070 would find their left thumb
uppermost. Of these, roughly 7% remained left-handed. The remaining 43% were functionally
right handed and usually did not know when they had converted. About 1 % found their right
thumb uppermost but were functionally lefthanded. When they were age-regressed to about six
months of age, I found a consistent correlation between the thumb-uppermost test and the hand
that wants to reach out for a coveted object when the patient is remembering the child sitting up
and is able to use either hand in grasping. This is a matter needing careful research with
consideration of factors we could not study. The feature of interest to me was that patients with
true migraine or one-sided headache often change sides. When reliving a headache, they indicate
awareness of unconscious pain on the consciously painless side. Better than 90% of patients I
have studied have been converted (425) left-handers. The obvious possibility here might be that
converted left-handers are more vulnerable to insult and might be more sensitive to laterality
than a child maintaining its original laterality.
Another possible area for research would be the significance of early conversion from
left- to right-handedness in terms of learning ability. Converted males seem to have a difficulty
with spelling and reading that I have not found in females, probably because they are more
readily able in grade school to make the adjustment in recognizing differences between printed b
and d, p and q, m and w. Freeway intersection dividers frequently attest to confusions some
drivers experience on suddenly being told a direction to follow at the last moment. At a time of
crisis, there is spontaneous regression to the earlier dominant handedness.
[TRANSFORMING A SYMPTOM INTO A SIGNAL:
1. Scaling to transform symptoms into signals
a. "On a scale of 1 to 100, where 100 is the worst, what number expresses the degree to which
you are experiencing that symptom right now?"
b. "Your yes finger can lift when you recognize that symptom intensity is actually a signal of
just how strong another deeper part of you needs to be recognized and understood right now."
2. Accessing and inquiry into symptom meaning
a. "When your inner mind (creative unconscious, etc.) is ready to help you access the deeper
meanings of your symptoms, you'll find yourself getting quiet and comfortable with your eyes
eventually closing." (Pause)
b. "Your yes finger can lift when you review the original sources of that symptom [pause], you
can ask your symptom what it is saying to you [pause], you can discuss with your symptom what
changes are needed in your life."
3. Ratifying the significance and value of new meaning
a. "How will you now use your symptom as an important signal?" [The significance of whatever
new meanings come up usually can be recognized intuitively by the subject. New meaning is
invariably accompanied by affects (tears, enthusiasm, thankfulness). A rescaling of symptom
intensity at this time will usually ratify the value of this form of inner work with a lower
number.]
b. "When your inner mind knows it can cooperate with your consciousness in resolving that
problem, your yes finger will lift." (426)] Search for earlier and earlier experiences relating to
maladjustment problems often leads to birth as the causal stimulus in the following classes of
problc;I1s.
Birth Sources of Various Disorders: Here there is a frequent history of a painful and
difficult delivery for the mother. She may be so heavily drugged that she is unable to speak to
the baby. The baby's assumed responsibility for maternal difficulty in labor may be immediate,
but usually is accumulated later from hearsay or when punished by mother for misdeeds. There
is a tremendous feeling of rejection that occurs when a newborn baby is not able to hear its
mother talk. This is variously described as "lost," "I feel confused," "everything seems dead."
In every instance of gastrointestinal pathology that I have explored, the mother has either been
unwilling or unable to nurse her baby at her breast. This seems to be the steering factor that
makes the gastrointestinal tract vulnerable to subsequent emotional stress effects.
CASE EXAMPLE: GASTRIC ULCER: A physician who was consciously aware of a
deepseated resentment toward all women had suffered from gastrointestinal upsets since
childhood. He was operated upon for gastric ulcer shortly after learning that his wife was
interested in another man. Without any request to do so, he spontaneously regressed to his
premature birth on a farm. His mother was very ill during the first weeks of his life and was
unable to nurse him. He felt not only very hungry during this time, but resentful of the fact that
his grandmother was the one trying to get him to nurse a bottle. Although there were many
demonstrations of love when his mother was able to care for him, he refused to believe her
sincerity. During his adult life he recognized his need to attract pretty women, but he could not
allow himself any firm attachment to a woman he believed could be loving and loyal to him. It
was better not to reach out for something lest he be hurt again.
[GASTROINTESTINAL DISORDERS:
1. Accessing source of problem
a. "Orient time horizon before birth when your body is totally comfortable. You are warm,
well-nourished, protected. When you are there, your yes finger will lift."
b. "Now come forward in time to the first moment food was important in some way. When
you_are there, your yes finger will lift."
2. Therapeutic reframing
a. "Now come forward in time to the first moment your symptoms begin. When you are there,
your yes finger will lift. Pay attention to what is happening and what happens in your body. This
is the original model for what has troubled you. When you know the problem, you can do
something about it."
b. "Shift back in time to the most recent trouble you have had. When you are there, your yes
finger will lift. Notice whether you are awake or asleep." [Encourage the patient to reexperience
that moment. If asleep, get the dream or thought sequence that triggers the symptom.]
c. Transform the symptom into a signal, as in Box 29.
3. Ratifying therapeutic gain
a. Get a commitment on a future date of complete freedom from symptoms. A hallucinated date
on an imaginary blackboard tells you that the patient is willing and ready for change and
confidence. b. Follow-up with weekly review and checking to rule out unrecognized negative
trigger experiences. (428)]
BREATHING PROBLEMS: The feeling of physiological alarm involving a sense of
not getting enough air, combined with a feeling of being responsible for maternal difficulty, are
augmented when the mother has been put to sleep for the actual delivery. A woman who has
been worried about the outcome of her pregnancy will mobilize all her fears if she is rendered
unconscious before she has had a chance to see her baby. Her catecholamines profoundly affect
the baby. (427)
Long ago, Joseph DeLee pointed out that general anesthesia for delivery of a baby carries
the highest morbidity and morality for both mother and baby. I am sure the reason relates to the
emotional stress added to the physical pain that is always greatest when a mother has been
unhappily pregnant or has had fears that her child will be abnormal.
Rehearsal of the original stress, coupled with explanations about the right of babies to be born
with a feeling of freedom from guilt, are very helpful in the corrective training program. [This is
an unusually clear statement of Cheek's essential approach of accessing a stressencoded
state-dependent problem and reframing it for "corrective training."] (428)
CASE EXAMPLE: SEVERE ANGINA PECTORIS OF THREE MONTHS'
DURATION: An executive for a large producer of farm seed sat next to me on a flight from
Omaha to Denver. He announced to the stewardess that he could not eat the cheese sandwich
because he was on special medicine for his heart. He had looked uncomfortable and pale as he
got into his seat. Shortly after the sandwich exchange, the pilot announced that the weather in
Denver was bad and we would have to hold a while. I learned that this gentleman was on his
way to tell a subordinate that his field of sales activity would have to be shared with another man
because results had not been up to expectations. He was troubled over the way this man would
take the news. Chest pain with radiation down his left arm had been getting worse since he had
been out of bed that morning.
Although I do not usually hypnotize people on airplane trips, this seemed an appropriate
moment to do so, particularly after the gentleman had reported to me that his cardiologist had
found nothing wrong with his heart but had prophesied that he would be dead within six months.
I prepared the way by saying I had had the opportunity of working one time with a man who had
been discharged from the navy as a cardiac cripple and was confined to his house until a friend
brought him to a course we were giving in Carmel. After learning that a "silly" early life
experience was a reason for his heart trouble, this man had been hiking several miles a day and
was free of angina three years later when I met him at a wedding.
I showed my plane mate how to get his fingers moving to answer questions, and then
asked if he might be using the chest pain in some way to punish himself or someone else. He
was surprised that self-punishment was involved, that it involved concern over hurting other
people, and that the origin of the angina was long before he was consciously aware of the chest
pain and dyspnea. The real symptoms began a short time after his mother had died but the
conditioning for this was his birth. He could feel the tight constriction of his chest before he was
born. He could hear the screams and protestations of his mother. There was the typical hierarchy
of response as he relived this event giving signals of beginning labor, hearing voices, and ending
with the comfort of a warm blanket after birth. First he began breathing more rapidly, neck
pulsations became faster, and perspiration appeared on the fingertips of the designated fingers.
The physiological expression of stress came before the finger signals and both occurred before
he was able to tell me what he was recalling.
He observed that the feeling he had with his recently acquired angina was exactly the
same feeling he had experienced during the birth, and that it had become sharper when he could
hear his mother crying out. After coming out of hypnosis, he recalled that his mother had always
been an emotional and very verbal person. I asked his fingers to answer the question,
"Would you agree that a mother's trouble in labor is related to her (429) attitudes and her
choice of an obstetrician, who does not help her to have aI: easy labor?" His finger answered
yes. I asked, "Wouldn't your mother want you to be well and comfortable now?" He went right
back into hypnosis. I continued, "When you know you have wiped out every sense of guilt you
had, ane have recognized that you had a right to be born free of responsibility for your mother's
trouble, your yes finger will lift."
The finger lifted. He then turned his angina pain on and off four times 0:-_ his own
initiative and was delighted with his accomplishment. As we prepared to leave the plane he said,
"You know, I feel much better about my man in Denver. By dividing his work, he will be much
more productive ane. he will probably live a lot longer. I am going to present this idea to him.
instead of making him feel he is being demoted." This man wrote me a thank-you letter several
weeks later and reported that all had gone well and he had been surprisingly free of discomfort.
GENITOURINARY PROBLEMS: Cases relating to this class of problems have been
discussed elsewhere (Cheek & LeCron, 1968). They are mentioned to alert the investigator to the
fact that problems seeming to originate later in life may have their preparation at birth, with a
long intervening latent period. It would be logical to speculate that some genitourinary system
problems in men - particularly premature ejaculation and impotence-might have similar origins.
Myexperience as an obstetrician has been restricted in dealing with men. I have found, however,
that males who believed they had caused great distress to their mothers during birth were overly
apprehensive when their wives approached the time of labor. It was urgently necessary to check
their guilt feeling and their identifications of their wives with their mothers.
OB-GYN PROBLEMS: Obstetrical and gynecological problems including leukorrhea,
recurrent vaginitis, failure to tolerate contraceptive pills, severe acne, and repeated postcoital
cystitis can frequently be traced to a sense of feeling unwanted as a female at the time of birth. It
does not matter how much love and acceptance is shown later. The child will imprint on such
remarks as, "We wanted a boy this time" or, "We did not select a name for a gir1." Such children
distrust subsequent shows of appreciation and always have trouble accepting compliments
graciously.
HYPERACHIEVING: Hypnotized people often feel subjectively that their drive stems
from a feeling of not amounting to much at birth, or feeling that they must prove (430) their
worth to a parent who was either unconscious or seemed disinterested in them. One such was a
physician in my section of an American Society of Clinical Hypnosis workshop at an annual
convention. As I was working with another physician in a demonstration of age regression, this
doctor asked if a tremendous need to succeed could be traced to attitudes at birth. His pendulum
swings indicated this to be a fact. He went into hypnosis and I quote his words:
"During the session I was hypnotized and regressed back to the time of birth. I could see
very vividly the conditions that existed at that time. I was in the bedroom of my grandmother's
house, my mother was lying there on the bed, the doctor was standing on the right side of the
bed, and the nurse at the foot of the bed, to the lefthand side. She was holding me in some towels
and rubbing me briskly while the doctor was wiping his hands and putting some things away. As
she worked with me the doctor remarked, 'Don't waste too much time, I don't think he is worth
saving.' I was a seven-and-one-half-month premie, weighing three and a half pounds, delivered
at home."
In a letter the doctor explained that he had run his father's ranch at age 16. At 30 he had
expanded operations into five counties. He decided to become a physician at age 40 and obtained
his degree at 44, after which he practiced as a family doctor, but this was not enough. He built
and organized one of the most popular ski resorts in Utah. The doctor added in his letter, "You
have asked if the hypnosis has made any difference in the way that I have been living. The
answer is unequivocally 'yes.' I find myself with a better understanding of why I do things.
However, I have to fight to keep myself from getting too involved."
Discussion: The purpose of this report is not to itemize personal experiences or to
classify disease entities according to their relation to birth experience. I want only to suggest
therapeutic possibilities. After earlier approaches via the "20 questions" route, it is my custom
now to explore birth memory and the subjective feelings of patients immediately when I start
therapy. The reasoning here is twofold. Experience has shown that many hours can be wasted by
letting patients climb around the branches of memory and getting nowhere at the top of the tree
of life. I now feel that it is possible to trust the subjective reports about birth memory if
physiological and ideomotor responses appear before the subject is able to know and talk about
the memory at a higher level of thought association.
A second value is discovery that attack on a primary conditioning process may allow
rapid dissipation of unfavorable responses that occurred with the initial experience. Approaching
from the top of the "tree" is not as satisfactory. By that later time, more rigidly fixed patterns of
disturbed behavior have developed. (431)

7. IDEOMOTOR QUESTIONING REVEALING AN APPARENTLY VALID TRAUMATIC

EXPERIENCE PRIOR TO BIRTH: DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI: FROM “MIND-
BODY THERAPY”: WW NORTON & CO. NEW YORK: 1988
There is no doubt that maternal poisoning, infection, and disability can influence growth
and development of the unborn embryo and fetus (Montague, 1962). Sontag and his associates
(1935, 1938, 1962) have shown that the fetus reacts physiologically to sounds transmitted
through the maternal abdominal wall, and that the fetus reacts when its mother is smoking
cigarettes. Is it possible that traumatic events coupled with strong emotional and physiological
reactions of a mother can influence her unborn baby to the extent that physical and emotional
behavior in later life are modified?
The case to be presented suggests the possibility that a critical event during the sixth
month of gestation prepared a mental set of unworthiness and expectation of rejection that lasted
through 41 years of pain, guilt, and multiple surgeries.
A 35-year-old, married registered nurse was first seen in my office asking for hypnotherapy in
the hope it might relieve her almost constant back pain. In addition to the pain, she was suffering
from clinical periods of depression and was constantly fatigued. She had a lovely two-year-old
child and she loved her husband. But she felt was ruining her marriage because of her lack of
libido and sexual responsiveness.
At the first visit, most of the time available was used in taking a history of major medical
and surgical events. She was born on July 4, 1923, into a Catholic family. Her father was an
alcoholic and usually out of work. When she was three years old, her parents divorced. Two
years later her mother remarried. The patient's physical problems started at the age of seven,
when she was hospitalized for three months because of pneumonia. At 13 she underwent her first
of 11 surgeries with an emergency appendectomy. Later she had two illegal abortions while in
training as a nurse. At 23 she married her present husband. At 26 she had emergency surgery for
an ectopic pregnancy. Two years later she started a planned pregnancy that was terminated by
abortion after emergency surgery for a twisted myoma of the uterus. At about this time she
began her long history of back pain, which started as (432) though it might be a herniated disc.
A mylogram was negative. She was hospitalized for traction and then wore a body cast for nine
months before the first of two unsuccessful spinal fusions. A few months later she was back
having her eighth surgery, this time for an empyema of the gall bladder. There were no
gallstones found. Two years later, in 1955, she had her second spinal fusion. Then she became
pregnant and went through an uneventful pregnancy to deliver a healthy ten-pound female child.
Back pain continued, and because her uterus was not prolapsed, a vaginal hysterectomy was
done in the hope it might be the answer to her back problem. It was not.
At her first visit on June 18, 1958, I pointed out that there were a number of problems
and asked what she would select as the number one priority in working with hypnosis. It was a
surprise to hear her say she wanted immediate help with her weight. She was an excellent
hypnotic subject. Finger signals were easily set up, but I noticed that they moved very quickly
and without the trustworthy trembling repetitiveness of good ideomotor responses. She gave a no
signal when I asked if there might be some connection between her weight, her sexual feelings,
and her back pain. She kept interrupting to question me about my methods of using hypnosis.
Often she came out of hypnosis to say something not germane to the subject at hand.
Another appointment was set for three weeks later. At this visit she was asked to orient
her memory to some important event having something to do with her lack of libido. This time
her signals were typical. She found herself thinking about her grandfather. He had enticed her
into the basement when she was five and had licked her vulva with his tongue. They both heard
her mother coming down the stairs. Grandfather escaped to the back yard, leaving Dorothy to be
discovered in the act of buttoning up the sides of her underpants. Her mother scolded her for
masturbating. Six years later, this grandfather hanged himself in the garage. Dorothy discovered
him and ran for help. The newspaper report announced that she might have saved his life if she
had immediately cut him down.
Another month passed before she revealed that, beginning when she was seven, her
stepfather had made numerous sexual advances to her, each time threatening her with physical
harm if she ever told anyone. She was afraid to confide in her mother and was terrified whenever
alone in the house with him.
Finger signals repeatedly indicated a close relationship now between sexual guilt
feelings, her weight, and her back troubles, but she would always evade my efforts toward
getting her to accept a target day for relief. Now she began to have trouble entering hypnosis.
She did not return until February of 1962, when pain in her back and neck was very severe. She
was able to turn off the pain, but again I had the feeling she was asking for help on something
she was unaware of consciously, and that she was unconsciously blocking every effort on my
part to search it out. While talking about this (433) with her toward the end of the interview she
blurted out, "When will 1 sto;: punishing myself?" 1 asked her then to go back into hypnosis,
back tc whatever it was that seemed the most cogent reason for her self-punishment.
She described vividly a scene in the kitchen. She was two years old, hearing her father
screaming, "I hate you!" Her mother had just told him they could not go to a dance adding, "We
have no money and there's Dorothy." This seemed to be a powerful event, but there had been
still earlier experiences paving the way. My time had run out. It was three months before she
returned. Two visits were wasted searching her anesthetic experiences. She had felt insulted over
her surgeon's caustic comments about her excess weight, but finger signals indicated these were
not important matters. 1 asked her to do some searching with autohypnosis at home.
On May 27, 1962 she wrote, "I was very depressed with the use of autohypnosis. 1
discovered my mother did not want to have me. She tried aborting by the use of a button hook. 1
could see this clearly and also my trying to escape this hook. After having me, she loved and
protected me. At the age of a few months my father was saying, 'I'll kill her.' The word
strangling appears. He didn't touch me or attempt this, however. 1 questioned myself as to the
person to whom he was referring. It was myself. My mother was standing close by. There was a
basket of some sort that 1 was in." She went on to write, "My mind is wound up like an
eight-day clock. 1 feel the need to talk and talk to get the whole situation out in the open."
She was seen three times, however, without anything being revealed. She was now
enthusiastic about her painting. On May 29, 1963, a year after her revealing letter, she came into
the office on an emergency visit because of pain so severe she could barely walk. She was
hypnotized quickly and asked to orient at an ideomotor level to the origin of this episode of pain.
She had given a show of her paintings, had sold two, and had been receiving a number of
compliments on her work. Her art teacher, however, in spite of all this success of her pupil,
seemed angry. She recognized that her teacher was jealous. With a few suggestions of relaxation
and some congratulation about her painting, she indicated that all the pain was gone. 1 asked her
fingers if there was anything else we should do before 1 sent her home. There was something.
She wanted more help with her lack of libido and sexual responsiveness. She was asked to go a
little deeper, and to give a signal with her yes finger when she was deep enough to accept
suggestions about these matters. She gave the signal and 1 proceeded to suggest that she would
be increasingly responsive to her husband, that she would have sexual dreams to orgasm, that
she would lose weight from the rest of her body but would put on some flesh in her breasts,
about whose lack of development she had always been self-conscious. At the mention of
enlarging her breasts, she came out of hypnosis expressing irritation. 1 responded by asking her
to go to whatever it was that made the thought of breasts repulsive to her. (434)
At this point she burst into convulsive sobs. After several minutes of uncontrolled
sobbing she said, "She tried to kill me, she tried to kill me, 1 know it now. 1 see breasts
everywhere, filling the whole room. She tried to smother me under her breasts, then I'm
unconscious and she is shaking me saying, 'What have 1 done?'" 1 said that to me this did not
sound like a genuine effort on the part of a mother to kill her baby. It seemed much more likely
to me that her mother had fallen asleep after nursing and had accidentally rolled over. Was there
not something earlier than this that set the stage for her reaction?
After a few seconds she became very agitated. Her finger lifted to indicate another
occurrence. She said, "It's before I'm born. My father is telling mother, 'I'm going to kill you.
You can't have this baby'." Shortly after this she began screaming as she pulled her legs up to her
chest. When she quieted enough to talk, she recapitulated what had been in her letter a year
earlier. 1 asked what had happened, saying that as an obstetrician it was hard for me to believe
her mother could possibly have pushed a button hook into the uterine cavity through her cervix.
The patient said, "Nothing happenedonly a little bleeding." 1 asked how she knew this. Her
answer: "I know it the same way 1 have known other things about real people and what is going
to happen to them." We terminated the interview after 1 had pointed out that her mother had
already expressed concern about her in the breast scene, and this had been reinforced by the fact
that her father's remark had demonstrated that her mother wanted to have a baby. This brought
about a change in her appearance. She began to smile. 1 asked her to have her mother confirm or
reject this account. A week later 1 received a letter from her mother dated June 3, 1963.1 quote
it exactly.
Dear Dr. Cheek:
This is to verify that the statements made by Dorothy ..... are true. There is one exception - when
she was smothered under my breast, 1 was not trying to kill her. 1 had fallen asleep while
nursing her. The statement made about her father screaming "I'll kill you" is true and happened
in the early stage of my pregnancy. Dorothy had no way of knowing about these incidents:
1. Trying to abort with button hook.
2. Smothering under breast.
3. Her father saying he would kill me.
Knowing this information will be handled with discretion, 1 will do my upmost [sic] to assist
Dorothy in any way possible.
The problem was not yet resolved. It would be a pleasure to be able to say that from that
moment on this patient was a different person. She was, in fact, much happier in her relation to
her mother, but she gained more weight to 201 pounds. 1 felt this reflected a continued
identification of her husband with the other males who had traumatized her early life, but 1 was
(435)unable to get her to separate him from the others. My note of October 24, 1964 states:
"Suddenly patient discovers that she does not need to be punishing herself, that her father was a
sick man, that her mother was frightened by her father, and that neither had really great intent
against her as an individual, that she doesn't need to go on gaining weight or punishing herself
further as she has done all her life. Whether or not this is a turning point, I cannot guess. She
seems greatly relieved."
The patient attended a lecture of mine at a local hospital a year later. She was still about 20
pounds overweight, but stated that her life was great now. She had no more back pain, had been
painting well, and was better sexually.
Discussion: "Merry-Go-Round"-like Retrieval of Early Traumatic Events: I have
given much thought to this case before deciding to report it for others to consider. In 22 years of
analyzing the information supplied through the use of ideomotor questioning techniques, it has
been my experience that events responsible for fixed behavioral characteristics have been easy to
work with when they have occurred at birth or later. Here was a woman, highly motivated
consciously to accept help, yet struggling constantly to impede the process of therapeutic
assistance. She had gone through at least three life-threatening experiences, one before her birth
and at least two within her first three years of postnatal life. On several occasions I had belittled
her conviction that she was clairvoyant. This accounted for her refusal to return to my office for
two years between 1960 and 1962. From the perspective of 1965, it seemed clear that her
submission to her grandfather's enticements, the coercions of her stepfather, and the placing of
herself in the position of getting pregnant twice during the time of training as a nurse were all
related to her feeling of nonentity, of being the source of trouble to her mother. This was
reinforced by her mother's tirade on catching her buttoning her panties after the molestation by
her grandfather, and again reinforced by the newspaper criticism after her grandfather had
hanged himself in the garage. If anyone of these events, including the advances made by her
stepfather, had been the main reason for her multiple surgeries, her lack of libido, and her
overweight, I believe the work done during her many visits to the office would have made it
possible for her to have become free of the self-punitive fugue that continued during her
treatment period from 1958 until 1965. There had to be something else much earlier, but she
steadfastly refused to face it until she had a chance to do her own searching with autohypnosis in
1963. Even then she covered it up for another year.
It has been my experience that truly significant experiences tend to make themselves
known repeatedly like the posters around a merry-go-round. At first they are ignored or their
message misunderstood. After many (436) repetitions, whether in hypnosis or in repeated dream
sequences, they take on meaning, and finally the most important "poster" is recognized with
therapeutically positive results.
I am reporting this case with no intent to prove that prenatal memories are valid but
rather that we must keep an open mind about the possibility. When therapy is lagging, when
patients seem to put up unreasonable resistances to reassurance and seemingly appropriate
therapy, we should consider the possibility that something very important has happened at birth
or prior to birth. In some instances the problem may even have taken place either in an earlier
life experience or been picked up from what the followers of Jung call the "collective
unconscious." When we use ideomotor questioning methods, we can search out the subjective
impressions of our patients. We must never denigrate them, as I did at first with this patient. We
must observe the subjective evidence and prevent our biases from interfering with a constructive
therapeutic end result. (437)

8. BRIEF HISTORY OF HYPNOSIS: DAVID B. CHEEK: HYPNOSIS: THE APPLICATION

OF IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES: ALLYN & BACON: BOSTON: 1994
Historical Notes on Hypnosis: I will consider here material that I believe is related to
modem uses of hypnosis. The interested reader is referred to an excellent chapter by George
Rosen in the second edition of Hypnosis in Modern Medicine by Jerome M. Schneck (1959) and
to the more extensive history offered by J. Milne Bramwell,(1930) in the third edition of
Hypnotism, Its History, Practice and Theory.
Most historians limit discussion to the human uses of hypnosis. We need to be aware that
hypnotic phenomena can be found throughout the animal kingdom. Many animals are capable of
getting their food by a form of fascination, as told by Volgyesi in observing a captured owl.
The mythological Perseus used his bright shield as a mirror when he killed the Gorgon
Medusa, for it was known that a glimpse of her would turn men and animals into stone. This
myth must have had its origin in the observations of nature.
The cobra is an example of an animal that mesmerizes its prey. One of its enemies, the
mongoose, is usually the victor, however, when they meet in battle. Like Perseus, the mongoose
never looks directly at the cobra. It presents the side of its body, scratching the dirt as though
looking for food but repeatedly jumping just beyond reach of the cobra's striking distance ..
Gradually the cobra's agility decreases with repetitive, frustrated efforts to bite the mongoose.
Finally the little ferret-like animal turns and bites into the back of the cobra's neck, just behind
its expanded hood, as it reaches the end of its strike. That is the end for the cobra. (11)
Volgyesi points out in his book Hypnosis in Man and Animals (1966) that Daniel
Schwenter, a professor of mathematical and oriental studies at the University of Altdorf,
described in 1636 the "bewitchment" of a fowl by attaching a wood shaving to the beak of a hen.
This was ten years before Father Kircher wrote about the marvelous imagination of hens,
reporting experiments in which a hen's head was pushed down to the floor and a chalk line
drawn outward from the tip of its beak. In his case, as with Schwenter's, the fowl was first
immobilized by a firm grasp that did not permit escape, but the immobilization that occurs with
physical confinement of birds was continued by the unusual fixation of vision on the wooden
twig on its beak or the chalk line.
Hudson (1893) in The Law of Psychic Phenomena in a chapter on mesmerism tells of
European animal trainers who would stare into the eyes of a horse, elephant, dog, or other
animal with their eyes rolled upward and slightly crossed. He said that apparently this type of
gaze was so unusual that the animal would go into an altered state and accept any kind of
suggestion of thought or words.
Deer, cattle, and humans on railroad tracks at night will become victims of locomotives,
transfixed by fascination as they look into the headlight. Modern trains, to prevent this from
occurring, have headlights that move from side to side. Folklore suggests using a light at night to
fascinate frogs and fish. Humans have only picked up and used the lore of lower animals.
Hibernation: Hibernation, one facet of hypnotic-like behavior, occurs throughout the
plant and animal kingdoms to permit survival when food is scarce and the climate unfavorable.
Humans have discovered the value of brief hibernating states in emergencies. Travelers
overtaken by blizzards in northern Europe know they can survive by digging into the snow and
maintaining an airway with their upturned skis. I have been told by a Norwegian patient that her
brother slept for four days in this way and came out of his resting state when the storm was over.
He was not hungry and had not urinated or defecated during that period of time.
The healing power of continued, hibernation-like states was first observed by James
Esdaile (1851/1902) after he learned to mesmerize his patients in an effort to help them bear the
pain of surgery. He noted that bleeding was diminished and healing was by "first intention"
(direct healing where sutures had been placed) instead of in the time honored way associated
with "laudable pus" (meaning the patient had the capability to produce pus and might survive
infection). Although all of his patients in India in 1845 and 1846 were subject to infection, his
surgical mortality dropped from 50 percent to 5 percent after he trained his assistants to '
mesmerize all of his surgical patients.
(12)
No surgeon equaled this low mortality figure until Josef Lister in 1863 began using
antiseptic methods of cleaning hands, instruments and the skin of surgical patients.
In his beautiful little book, Mesmerism in India, Esdaile tells of learning that the
medicine men of the mountains in Assam had, from time immemorial, been using passes and
breathing on the heads of sick people in just the ways that Esdaile had found described in the
writings of the French mesmerist Deleuze. It is not always possible to be sure if something
apparently new is really new.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Wetterstrand (1897) in Sweden found that
prolonged periods of hypnosis permitted improved recovery from psychiatric problems and
infection with tuberculosis. His patients were awakened once during the day to eat and go to the
bathroom.
Hypnosis, with its accompanying openness to accepting suggestions, was used during the
eighteen and nineteenth centuries mainly to coerce troubled people into good health. Hypnosis
was used by physicians in major cities throughout Europe from 1880 until the first decade of the
twentieth century. The reasons for this wide use and rather abrupt abandonment are not clear, but
one of the reasons could have been that doctors were using authoritative techniques that left no
way for the hypnotized subject to decide whether or not the suggestions were acceptable. Some
people object to being ordered in hypnosis to get well; they may not be ready for that process.
Symptom removal and positive assurances work for simple problems only.
The use of hypnosis to search for possible emotional factors in human illness seems to
have originated with Josef Breuer (1957), a family doctor in Vienna in his work with the famous
"Anna A" from 1880 to 1882. Breuer noted that there seemed to be some relationship between a
traumatic experience and a state that he believed was much like, if not identical to, hypnosis. He
called the traumatic causal experience "hypnoid" and was possibly the first to recognize what has
later been called "state-dependent learning." He initiated the trauma theory for hysteria. He felt
that artificially induced hypnosis might give access to causal events in psychological illnesses.
He interested Freud in the possibilities of using hypnosis in the treatment of hysteria.
He visited Bernheim in Nancy, France, and observed the work of Charcot in Paris. He
went to Stockholm to visit Wetterstrand. He interested Carl Jung and Ferenczi in the possibilities
of using hypnosis as an analytic tool.
Unfortunately, both Freud in 1909 (1957) and Jung in 1913 (1975) decided to give up the
use of hypnosis. Both were using authoritative techniques and ordinary conversational hypnosis.
Both found patients reporting traumas that proved to be fabricated rather than factual. They felt
hypnosis was an (13) unreliable tool. Their stance set the cause of hypnosis back more than half
a century because of their great influence within the field of psychiatry. Both of these gifted men
searched for other, "more reliable" ways of learning about repressed or suppressed traumatic
events. Freud invented psychoanalysis requiring one hour per day, five days a week; Jung
searched for dream content in accessing amnesic material. His students continue searching for
ways of getting through the cloud of amnesia for early life trauma. Playing in sand with various
figures to represent meaningful people is one such method. Drawing pictures and modelling with
clay are variants, as are tests of word association and Rorschach ink blot evaluations. Behavior
modification and cognitive therapy are efforts to produce new adaptations instead of removing
old maladaptive patterns of behavior. Then came the widespread use of mind-influencing drugs,
based on the concept that disturbed mental behavior is chemical in nature.
Successes with any of the modalities now in use may be attributed largely to the placebo
effects of trust and the therapists' enthusiasm for whatever is in style. We needed trustworthy
methods of breaking the amnesia masking primary traumatic events. We needed better tools to
work with.
Hypnosis came back into favor during World War II for the treatment of war neuroses
near the front lines, but those capable of using hypnosis were few, and most of the psychiatrists
used barbiturates such as sodium amy tal and thiopental sodium to help soldiers relive a causal
traumatic experience, to talk about it, and then to continue with ordinary conversational' therapy.
Many dentists were using hypnosis after World War II (Moss 1952) for relaxing nervous
patients. They found it helpful for treating abnormal gagging reflexes, for painless removal of
teeth, and for controlling damage to teeth caused by bruxism (the clenching of jaws in
association with troubled dreams at night).
Interest faded as dentists experimented with "white sound" and various combinations of
short-acting inhalation anesthetics. Some dentists have continued its use for the purposes
previously mentioned but have also demonstrated its great value in controlling hemorrhage in
hemophilia patients. Harold Golan, D.M.D. of the Tufts University Dental School; Karen
Olness, M.D., a pediatrician at Case Western Reserve Medical School in Cleveland; and Lillian
Fredericks, M.D., Director of the Department of Anesthesiology at Albert Einstein Medical
Center in Philadelphia have successfully treated hemophilia patients prior to surgery and at the
time of already active hemorrhage. The hemorrhagic tendency due to absence of the special
blood factor can be blocked by hypnotic relaxation. These doctors also taught such patients self
hypnosis to protect them against emergencies when a qualified hypnotist might not be available.
Fear and expectation of bleeding can precipitate life-threatening hemorrhage in patients with
hemophilia. The appearance of a frightening epidemic of AIDS and hepatitis "B" in patients with
hemophilia makes the need for safer methods of controlling hemorrhage even greater. The
human mind is capable of controlling hemorrhage of all sorts, including that caused by
emotional stress in combination with lack of the hemophilia factor.
Erickson (1901-1980): The late Milton H. Erickson of Phoenix, Arizona, became
interested in hypnosis when he was a student majoring in psychology at the University of
Wisconsin. One of his professors was Clark Hull, the first person to try experimental studies to
document what hypnosis can or cannot do. Hull asked Erickson to continue his research on
hypnotic phenomena during the summer of 1923 and to report his findings in a workshop on
hypnosis in September of that year. This was the beginning of Erickson's series of contributions
to our knowledge of hypnosis. I believe these have been his major contributions:
1. He learned that people go into hypnosis when they are trying to remember sequential events
(Erickson 1961).
2. He broke the amnesia of a comatose state caused by drugs and head trauma by repeated
subconscious review of the experience (Erickson 1937). His patient had been beaten and left for
dead two years before the interview.
3. He demonstrated the use of dissociative methods for pain relief. He would help a pregnant
woman to leave her physical body in the process of childbirth while the astral self was across the
room watching. He would have denied originality in the concept because it is a naturally
occurring process when children are injured, but his many methods of accomplishing this were
varied and unique.
4. He studied the variants of time distortion and stimulated others to continue research on this
phenomenon (Leeron 1952b, Erickson and Erickson 1958).
5. He recognized that general anesthesia does not block the hearing sense.
6. He and his wife recognized that patients return to a hypnotic state when they carry out a
posthypnotic suggestion (Erickson and Erickson 1941-1980).
7. He recognized that body image can be the cause of endocrine disturbances and that hypnotic
techniques can be therapeutic in improving endocrine balance. August Forel (1907) and others
had worked with abnormal uterine bleeding, but Erickson has gone beyond influencing
endocrine function. He had impressive results with two women concerned about lack of breast
development (Erickson 1960). These observations (15) deserve further research because of the
recently discovered dangers from uses of foreign materials in breast augmentation surgery.
9. Erickson's great faith in the ability of his patients to tap personal resources was one of his
greatest attributes.
LeCron (1892-1972): Leslie M.LeCron attended the graduate school at the University
of California in Los Angeles after a long career in business. He studied psychology under the
direction of Prof. Roy Dorcus, one of the American pioneers in uses of hypnotism. He met Jean
Bordeaux there and co-authored an excellent short book, Hypnotism Today (1949). He became a
licensed California psychologist at the age of 52, began teaching uses of hypnosis to dentists,
and in 1956 started the monthly Symposiums of Hypnosis, for which he co-authored the first
edition of Clinical Hypnotherapy with me in 1968.
LeCron deserves a major place in the history of medical and dental hypnosis because he
developed simple, safe, and rapid methods of uncovering causal events in psychosomatic
problems. It seems reasonable that the cause of hypnotism would not have faltered at the
beginning of the twentieth century if LeCron had been doing his investigations with ideomotor
techniques in the 1880s. Freud and Jung would probably have continued to use hypnosis.
LeCron told me that he had learned about the use of a Chevreul pendulum for
discovering unconscious information around 1929, but only after the beginning of the 1950s did
he realize that the combination of light hypnosis with unconscious muscular gestures could break
through the amnesia that masks memory of birth, the first years of life, and the experiences of
people under general anesthesia (LeCron 1954). This was the beginning of his truly major
contribution to our knowledge about cause-and-effect relationships in human illness as revealed
by ideomotor or ideo dynamic signaling. The techniques of searching are easily learned and are
safely used by people in the healing arts who need not be psychiatrists. Therapists can do no
harm as long as they maintain respect for the needs of the people they work with and obtain
permission from their patients for each step of the search and reframing process.
It was LeCron's dream at the time of his death in 1972 that ideomotor techniques would
gain general acceptance by psychologists, physicians and dentists. In 1993, I believe it is safe to
say that his methods have gained wide acceptance in the United States and Canada, largely
because of Ernest Rossi (1986, 1988), who pointed out the power of messenger proteins and the
variations of their influence on cellular receptors throughout the body. (16) Rossi's, influence has
extended the interest in ideodynamic techniques to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Because
of Lecron's contributions, we now can explore the perceptions of infants during intrauterine
development, the perceptions of anesthetized people, and the thoughts and reactions to thoughts
when humans are in deep sleep states as well as when normally dreaming. We can discover and
correct many sources of resistance that previously had interfered with successful psychotherapy.
The entire process of psychotherapy has been accelerated, and the cost of psychotherapy has,
therefore, been reduced. (17)

9. IDEOMOTOR SEARCH METHODS: DAVID B. CHEEK: THE APPLICATION OF

IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES: ALLYN & BACON: BOSTON: 1994
My introduction to the effectiveness of ideomotor questioning techniques occurred
during the first Hypnosis Symposium in September of 1956 when Leslie LeCron helped a doctor
locate the cause and realize his ability to stop the embarrassment of a severe gagging reflex that
prevented him from having x-rays made of his molar teeth. He would sometimes vomit when he
brushed his teeth.
The total experience lasted about 20 minutes and was effected with the help of a
Chevreul pendulum. Yes, no, and I-don't-want-to-answer signals were set up. The doctor quickly
became so interested in the answers that he slipped easily into a light hypnotic state. LeCron
asked the doctor if he knew the cause. While he was shaking his head and saying, "No," his
pendulum was saying "yes." The problem had been there for as long as the doctor could
remember, so LeCron asked if the cause was an experience in the past. The answer was "yes."
The questioning continued:
Q: Was it something that happened before you were 40 years old? A: (Pendulum) Yes.
Yes was the answer to before 30,20, 10 years of age but a "no" occurred at "before 5 years of
age."
Q: Were you 5 years old?
A: No.
Q: Six years old? (85)
A: No.
Q: Seven years old?
As the pendulum began swinging to say "yes," the doctor put the pendulum down. Each
question had required a subconscious search of the causal experience. As the questioning
continued, the doctor was successively raising the information toward higher levels of perception
where it could be reported verbally.
The causal experience he believed was a complication of his tonsillectomy at the age of
7. An arteriole in the tonsil fossa had begun bleeding during the night. The intern on duty put
some sort of clamp against the bleeding area that was held in place until the surgeon could arrive
and control the bleeding.
At the moment of completing his account, the doctor shrugged his shoulders to indicate
that there was nothing more to report. LeCron asked him to hold up the pendulum to let his
subconscious mind answer this question:
"Now that you know this, can you be free of this problem?" The pendulum gave a big
"yes" answer. A tongue blade was produced by a member of the class. It was moved around in
the back of the doctor's throat without any gagging. Skeptical about the result, the doctor took
the tongue blade himself and wiggled it all around his throat without any discomfort.
At another meeting several months later, the doctor told us that he had started to gag the
next time he went to his dentist. It started as the dentist used a mirror to examine a molar tooth.
The reflex stopped when the doctor recalled that he really did not need to do that any more. That
was the last of his problem.
SEVEN APPROACHES TO CAUSAL EVENTS:
1. LeCron's "seven keys"
2. Retrograde search, as outlined in the gagging case
3. Chronological search, moving from prenatal time toward the experience to be recognized by
the patient as causal
4. A direct approach, going immediately to what has been thought to be
a significant experience and then looking earlier for a sensitizing event
5. An indirect approach with "Christmas tree lights" and "auras"
6. Past life therapy
7. Spirit depossession therapy
These are the major approaches to causal events as they evolved after (86) that first
Symposium on Medical and Dental Hypnosis in San Diego. The latter two are controversial and
may not seem usable by you nor acceptable by your patients. I will discuss them in this chapter
and refer to them with examples in the chapter on resistance because they have proven their
value when therapy has failed to bring about constructive change. Past life therapy and spirit
depossession are still considered rather wild ideas in the Western world but can be valuable aids
when used with a friendly patient who is open to the possibilities.
Here are the methods that will be discussed briefly before we move on to the applications
of ideomotor techniques in psychosomatic problems:
The Seven Keys:
LeCron identified the "seven keys" as
(1) conflict,
(2) motivation,
(3) identification,
(4) masochism,
(5) imprints,
(6) organ language, and
(7) past experience.
1. Conflict: A conflict occurs when there is a wish to have something that is not to be had,
something that is taboo. Life's prohibitions start soon after birth. Opposing forces are responsible
for many human problems, "I want" collides with "you can't." Infants have many frustrations in
not having their desires fulfilled. There are many sources of conflict. One of the most common
concerns sex. Conflict may be a source of strong guilt feelings, particularly if the person acts
against moral codes. A conflict may originally be at a conscious level but later may be repressed
and the person then is consciously unaware of it. Often there is no repression and the conflict is
consciously recognized but is not resolved. Patients, while in hypnosis, can more easily talk of
their conflicts and problems than they can in ordinary conversation. They can more easily bring
to consciousness a repressed conflict.
2. Motivation: Does an illness or symptom serve some purpose? Here there can be much
variance. A simple motive would be if the ailment or symptom gained sympathy and attention.
This would be immature behavior but might be entirely at a subconscious level of awareness.
Most of us have immaturities along some lines.
A motive in hysterical blindness could be that the condition prevents the person from
seeing something unpleasant or could serve as punishment for having seen something about
which the person feels guilty. As an unconscious means of escaping from hated housework, a
person might develop an allergy to detergents. These are merely possible motivations, the
condition thus serving some purpose. (87)
The motive behind a symptom or illness frequently is defensive, the condition acting as a
protection. An example would be migraine headaches that are used as a defense against
unacceptable feelings of hostility and aggression, emotions that are almost invariably found in
migraine patients.
Motivations are sometimes deeply hidden but much more often can be located through
the questioning technique. Often insight alone is enough to overcome the condition. In other
words, the origin is reframed in the light of more mature understandings.
3. Identification: Anyone who has children in the family has noticed how a child tends to copy
the parents and at times tries to be like them. In early childhood we all identify with those close
to us, and this can be carried over into adult life.
Identification means dramatization. It may be difficult to know whether some trait or
even illness is inherited or is merely a result of identification. If a mother, or perhaps the father,
is greatly overweight, the children probably will tend to be overweight for their age. There may
be some hereditary tendency for obesity, but certainly identification plays a role.
Children identify with parents or other loved ones for several reasons. Love for the
person is a strong motive but even a hated parent may be the object of subconscious
identification. Children may wish to be like a parent because they want to be big and strong and
powerful, as the parent seems to be. They have a need for power. Children may be told
repeatedly that they are just like one of their parents, that they take after that side of the family.
This acts like a posthypnotic suggestion.
We should keep in mind the rather strange fact that when there is a choice between
identifying with a good quality or a bad one involving habit, characteristic, or illness, the
unfavorable trait will take priority.
4. Masochism: Self-punishment due to strong guilt feelings is a very common form of
unconsciously damaging behavior. Most of us will exhibit masochism at times in minor ways,
but it may be so exaggerated that it includes self-destruction.
Some people have such an exaggerated conscience that they will punish themselves
severely over minor transgressions or unacceptable thoughts. Sometimes one part of the
subconscious mind will compel a person to behave in an unacceptable way while another part is
simultaneously demanding punishment for the offense.
Extreme masochism can lead to suicide or fatal illness. The alcoholic frequently uses his
drinking as a means of self-destruction. While there is an instinctive need for self-preservation,
sometimes the will to die will win.
When self-punishment is located as a cause, insight is seldom enough to end the problem.
The reasons for guilt feelings should be explored. These (88) often center on sex and may
originate long before birth. The therapist needs to reassure the patient and explain that feelings
of guilt are probably unwarranted. No one wears a halo and everyone does things they regret but
now it is time to reframe the causal experience, leave its negative imprints behind, and move
forward.
Sometimes we can appeal to the patient's willingness to get well for the sake of a loved
one. We can point out that we punish the people who love us when we punish ourselves. People
will often do nice things for other people that they would not do for themselves.
5. Imprints: Psychotherapists unfamiliar with hypnosis and the effects of suggestion are rarely
aware of single-impact imprints, which often seem to explain the cause of a problem. An
imprinted experience may seem consciously trivial yet may prove to be of great importance. An
imprint is an idea that has become fixed in the subconscious part of the mind and then is carried
out in exactly the same way as a posthypnotic suggestion. Spiegel (1960) has pointed out that
many neuroses may be of this origin, with compulsion to act out behavior for which the causal
stimulus has been forgotten.
Moebius (1957), Breuer (1957) and Estabrooks (1948) each recognized that great
emotion produces a state very similar, if not identical to hypnosis. Bernheim (1895) describes
hypnotic-like behavior of very sick patients with typhoid fever. There is similarity in thinking
between hypnotized people and those who are unconscious during general anesthesia (Cheek
1962b). Something said at the time may register in the subconscious mind and it is as though a
posthypnotic suggestion has been given.
Thought processes become childlike and literal, just as in hypnosis. There is no doubt
that everyone is subconsciously affected by emotionally charged imprints, or "engrams." These
engrams may be helpful or very damaging.
We are concerned here with semantics. Words used by a surgeon in the operating room
may not be understood by the patient as they would be by a nurse or an assistant. LeCron called
powerful words "command statements." They can be worded something like this: "You'll never
get over this," "It can't be helped." If such an idea is set up, therapy will be unsuccessful until the
imprint is removed. Of course such phrases would have no effect if the person were not
emotionally distressed at the time of hearing it.
6. Organ Language: Organ language is an interesting source of physical difficulty. We often
speak of something unpleasant, saying something like: "That's a headache to me," "That makes
me sick at my stomach," "I can't swallow that," "It's a pain (89) in the neck to me," "I'm itching
to get out of this." The actual physical condition mentioned may develop from such an idea.
Many a chronic headache, nausea, back pain, oesophageal spasm and dermatitis may have its
origin in organ language. The repeated thought creates the problem.
7. Past Experience: Experiences of the past may be involved with some or all of the Seven
Keys. Essentially they are imprint memories.
Comment: The Seven Keys used by LeCron are helpful for beginners in the uses of
hypnosis and ideomotor techniques. It has been my experience, however, that most of the events
that are located as the beginnings of a problem have been preceded by earlier events that made
the patient vulnerable or sensitized in preparation for what is brought out during the questioning.
Often this is not a matter of concern as long as a problem clears in the process. A
recurrence of the problem, however, at a later time demands a more exhaustive search. For this
reason, I gave up the use of these keys in my practice and worked with the remaining four major
strategies.
RETROGRADE SEARCH: The retrograde search method, also devised by LeCron,
immediately permits distancing from a potentially disturbing primary trauma. The patient using
a pendulum or finger signals has no conscious awareness of the causal event in the beginning but
each "yes" ideomotor response (to indicate the event occurred before each designated age)
requires a subconscious review of the primary event.
This way of searching is protective because the patient is remaining in the present and is
not forced to confront a traumatic event as though it were just happening. He can be
subconsciously using present-day knowledge and perspective on life events to reframe initial
impressions before the information is raised to conscious levels of awareness for discussion.
Questioning continues until the answer is either "no" or "I don't want to answer," to
indicate that the event was either during that specific age or at some time between that age and
the next older bracket, as is shown in the case of the doctor and his troublesome gag reflex.
An "I don't want to answer" really means "yes but I am not ready yet to know what it is."
It usually will change to show willingness if again we remind the patient to remain at the time of
the interview while looking back at the time of the incident.
A very important question should be asked following discovery of the (90) first reported
incident. Always ask, "Is there an earlier experience that could have made you vulnerable or
sensitive to what you have just told me?" Failure to ask this question may lead to a mistaken
conclusion and failure of the therapeutic process. Discovery and treatment of a peripheral or
satellite trauma will probably require a follow-up, more exhaustive search into the past.
This retrograde search is safe for the beginner in uses of hypnotherapy because the
patient is going through a form of desensitization while subconsciously answering each question.
The questions are permissive rather than coercive. We have not encountered sudden abreactions
with the retrograde search. Abreactions can be very disturbing to an inexperienced
hypnotherapist.
After locating the earliest source of trouble, we can then ask, "Now that you know about
this, does your inner mind know that you can be well and stay wel1?/1 This question will reveal
possible sources of resistance to therapy that will need removal.
Chronological Search: Searching by moving forward in time has evolved from our
recognizing that patients will frequently have trouble when they are doing the retrograde search
going back in stages of time from the present. A particularly stressful experience will lead to
formation of screen memories that will interfere with reaching the key experience.
I noticed during explorations of traumatic surgical experiences under general anesthesia
(Cheek 1959a) that screen interference is avoided by going to the moment the patient loses
consciousness and moving forward to the moment something important is happening. The
patient may suddenly react with a great display of anguish in an abreaction when this abrupt
meeting with trauma occurs. You must be prepared for this or else do not use this technique until
you are comfortable handling abreactions.
The starting point for a chronological search was extended eventually back to the first
emotional experience a pregnant woman encounters. This is usually when she is being told she is
pregnant. My studies have convinced me that this moment of maternal emotion is observed and
recorded by the embryo. Hypnotized persons can very quickly orient themselves to that time and
sense their mother's reaction to the news (Cheek 1990). Her reaction, positive or negative, sets a
permanent world view that may last a lifetime.
Here, as with the surgical experiences, the hypnotized patient, arriving at a possibly
stressful moment, has had no time to set up screen memories for defense. The result can be a
disconcerting abreaction that could discourage beginners. For them, we recommend the
retrograde exploration until they have learned how to handle abreactions. (91) How do you
handle an abreaction? Abreacting patients are usually willing to move past the event to a time of
comfort and can then look back and reevaluate the situation. Sometimes, however, they
adamantly continue their reaction.
Keep your poise when this occurs. The patient is very attentive to the way the therapist is
reacting. Keep your voice sounding calm, even if you do not feel calm yourself. Tell your
sobbing patient to keep reviewing the event. Ask for a "yes" finger when it starts and a "no"
finger each time the event is concluded. By designating an end to the traumatic part, there is tacit
communication that there will be an end to the effect of the trauma. Ask for the review to
continue until "the experience is no longer a source of distress."
Direct Approach: Time is often a matter of importance in the constraints of teaching
physicians, dentists, and psychologists how to use hypnosis in their work. LeCron and I found
that it saved much time during a demonstration if we moved beyond the safe, gradual approaches
to traumatic events and told the volunteer to go immediately to something we had learned might
be important. The subject was asked to have his "yes" finger lift involuntarily when he was on
the scene but to know about what was happening as though looking from the time of interview.
This "bifocal" view was chosen in order to diminish the chance of a spontaneous abreaction that
might happen if the regression were a revivification (a total age-regression) of the event.
During a few experiments with this direct approach, it became clear that we had
previously been underestimating the resources of our hypnotized patients and volunteer subjects.
We had assumed that it would take time and a gradual approach. Several subjects reported after
an interview that they were bored by our method because they had immediately oriented to the
key moment while we were droning on with our routine.
With a direct approach it is still necessary, however, to ask if there might be some earlier
experience that could have set the stage or created the vulnerability to the initially selected
trauma.
A "yes" response to this question always requires a retrograde further search until the original,
sensitizing trauma is discovered. We feel that beginners in the uses of hypnosis, no matter how
experienced in dealing with psychiatric and physical problems, should work with the slower
methods: the Seven Keys and retrograde searching. The reasoning involved here is two-fold:
First, if you are tentative and not sure that a patient can go directly to a traumatic event, this
message transmits to your patient. You will be disappointed with the result. Second, your patient
may start abreacting in a disturbing way. (92)
I take the opening comments of my patients as clues to the direct orientation when I am
working in my office with patients having psychosomatic problems. I shift my initial approach
depending on the behavior of my patient while I am taking a routine history. The patient who
says, "I've wondered if something way back is hindering me in relationships to men" will
perhaps be directed immediately to the moment her mother knows she is pregnant. From there
we will move chronologically with, ''Please let your subconscious mind go to the first moment in
your life that had to do with a boy or a man. When you are there your 'yes' finger will lift." This
sequence of questioning will frequently reveal a sexual molestation for which there had been
amnesia or an imprinted impression of having been abandoned by a father or an attractive but
aloof male.
An Indirect Approach ("Christmas Tree Lights" and Auras): Hypnotized subjects
using ideomotor level access to physiological memory are able to use imagery of lights and of
auras to diagnose problems in their own body (Cheek, 1989).
The method for learning about and experimenting with this method is simple.
Hypnotized subjects are asked to "see" themselves standing in front of a full-length mirror. Their
"yes" finger is to lift when the image is subconsciously clear. They are asked to imagine tiny
Christmas tree lights of different colors to represent feelings. They are to see one in their
forehead to reflect the feelings of their head, meaning the surface and all of its contents, that is,
their brain and their impressions of themselves. After reporting the color and intensity of this
light, they are told to shift attention to each of their extremities and eventually to look into
deeper structures, lungs, heart, and so on.
Subjective meaning of each light is reported and noted on a line drawing of the body
marked for left and right sides. If some light reflects pain or some other indication of
abnormality, the patient is asked to go directly to a time before that light changed from a
"normal and healthy" color to the moment some other colored light is put there. When the signal
for this is given, the color of the light is again noted because it may have been different from the
one initially reported to you. Other ~xperiences may have modified the first abnormal light. The
patient is asked to "look around" and tell me what might have caused that new light to appear in
place of the old one. With this method I have learned about an unruptured tubal pregnancy that I
had failed to notice during a pelvic examination. I have learned (Cheek 1962d) about the
persistence of subconscious pain caused by an injury that happened at an early age but had been
forgotten. A woman who saw a ''black light" in the area of her left ovary recognized that a
suppressed memory (93) of a sexual molestation by her father was responsible for development
of an endometrial cyst on that side, the side he was on when he put his finger into her vagina.
Seers have for years been able to read auras and diagnose various types of illness,
physical and emotional. I have found that hypnotized people in front of the full-length mirror
will report the color of the aura they see around the reflection of their head and shoulders. They
will know, at a level reflected by finger signals, whether this color is healthy or unhealthy. The
shade of color closest to their skin seems to be the most important. I let them assess the meaning
of the colors because subjective impressions of colors vary with the individual who owns them.
We have no right to use our personal criterie for this evaluation. It is helpful to learn what these
personal aura colors are at birth and at various times during life.
Most of my knowledge about Christmas tree lights and auras have come from children
who have been my patients. Children are great teachers when we pay attention to their
spontaneous observations. James Hixson, the dentist who was a permanent member of the
Hypnosis Symposiums faculty, had learned, from a young patient's observation, a simple way of
developing effective anesthesia for dental work. This youngster said he could get the idea of
numbness by thinking of turning off electricity to his hand. He visualized wires from his brain
going down to his hand, a different color for each finger. He imagined a little Christmas tree
light of the same color as the wire for each of his fingers. He had a switch that he could turn off
for each finger. The finger would get numb when he turned off the light; the sensation would
come right back when he turned the light on again.
When Doctor Hixson asked the child to make his jaw numb the same way, this little
patient moved his hand up to the side of his face and "ran" the numbness out of his hand and into
the area he was touching. It was easier to do this with touch than it would be to just "think" it
being there.
LeCron had also learned another way of using imagery from a child he was hypnotizing.
He had considered using a television as a projective approach to learning something about the
child's relationship to a sibling. His little client could not "see" his brother there in the television
picture. After a few moments he said, "I have to turn it on first." With that, he reached out and
turned an imaginary knob before offering comments about his brother.
Children talking among themselves will use colors to describe feelings they have about
people. Lyall Watson in his delightful book Gifts of Unknown Things tells of a Malay child
using colors to describe the calls of birds and the sound of thunder and lightning.
 It occurred to me that the colors children use to describe people might reflect their ability
to see the electromagnetic fields of life (Burr 1972), the etherial energy surrounding all living
things. Auras have been known about (94) for thousands of years. Harold Saxton Burr observed
from his largely ignored classic observations with trees, various animals, and eventually wi
humans during the 1940s that measurable differences in voltage and pol, ity of these fields
would occur with circadian rhythms, with changes weather, with disease and even with
malignant tumors. The electrodes us' for this were not in contact with the skin or organs. They
were placed a distance, just as the electrodes for evaluating heart action and brain wav with the
electrocardiogram and the electroencephalogram are distant frc the heart or the brain.
Leonard Ravitz, a psychiatrist and founding member of the Americ Society of Clinical
Hypnosis, was a student and a colleague in the resear done by Burr, who was then professor of
anatomy at the Yale Univers School of Medicine. Ravitz (1959) measured the force fields of
subjects w were sleeping, were under anesthesia, and who were in varying levels hypnosis. His
findings demonstrated that there were similarities in all thl conditions and that the depths of
hypnosis could be quantified with the VI sensitive equipment he used. Ravitz's pioneer
observations need recog tion and further testing.
Robert Becker (1985) an orthopedic surgeon, has studied the electri forces involved in
regeneration of limbs in salamanders and in the heali processes of fractured bones and has been
able to accelerate healing w direct current energy. During the 1980s it became clear that the enel
around the step-down transformers from high power electric lines can causal in the development
of leukemia in children and connective to tumors in adults.
All these observations lend credence to the possibility that the imagl of children may be
tuning in to energies that are invisible in the ordinary sense. I have learned that children can see
auras around people and se to associate the colors of the auras with personality. We can hear
child] say, "Oh, Aunt Susie is a pink person but sometimes she is gray.' psychically endowed
people can diagnose illness by looking at human but could it be that all children have a similar
potential that can be enhanced?
PAST LIFE THERAPY, FACT OR FICTION? LeCron, James Hixson, and I agreed
that we should keep an open m about the matter of reincarnation. We believed anyone who
sincerely lieved that past life traumas had recurred and caused trouble in the pres life should
have a chance to evaluate the data and decide for himself/herself.
In our symposiums between 1956 and 1972, roughly 50 percent of physicians, dentists,
and psychologists said they believed in reincarnation. (95) We explained to the nonbelievers that
children had convinced Ian Stevenson, professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia,
enough to investigate possibilities of reincarnation among the Eskimos and the people of Egypt,
Sri Lanka, and India. His first book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, is worthy of
study. One of his cases seemed to have a very brief interval between the sudden death of a
20-year-old man and the appearance of his spirit in a child who was comatose. (This case might
qualify for consideration in the next category, spirit attachment, to be discussed.)
Stevenson has found that children under 4 years of age in the cultures he studied would
spontaneously blurt out that they are not the child that is being scolded or physically abused.
They give their name, tell about where they lived, and can recognize people they have known in
the life before their death. Apparently epinephrine frees the memory.
We wanted to know more facts about the patients who were sure about their past lives, so
we went along with exploring their memories. Sometimes their report and reframing of their
disturbed impressions were followed by an improvement in health. Often, however, their reports,
given in most convincing and detailed manner, were little more than a ventilation of emotions.
I have searched for past life traumas when I have run out of pathways in trying to help a
patient and have met with continuing resistance to my treatment strategies. A therapist can spend
many hours discovering one sad or exciting life time after another. At one time, during my
initial excitement about this subject, I was dictating exhaustive notes that ran on, page after page.
My secretary asked in a plaintive voice, "I wonder if it could be possible for your patients to
decide to leave their past experiences, to cut the strings that attach them to the past?"
This was a most attractive idea. I tried it and have found that patients do very well
without having to dig up terrible details from the past. I explain to them that past lives are really
not "past" at all. Time is circular or globular. It is not linear, like a railroad track. We do not
need to be wrapped up in the strings that connect us to those "past" lives when we have the
opportunity to make the most of the one we are presently living.
My advice to clinicians is to reserve the idea of searching past lives for those patients
who ask for it. When you are concerned because a patient is not progressing in therapy or is
dramatically improved for a day or two and then suddenly reverts back to old difficulties, you
can try this question: "Is it possible that some experience in another lifetime could be interfering
with what you and I are trying to do in this lifetime?"
This question does not condemn you as a "kook." You are only considering the
unconscious convictions of a colleague in your therapeutic process. The answer is a finger signal
indicating "yes" or "no." (96)
Spirit Depossession Therapy: Is spirit depossession possible? Is it a metaphor? Can the
concept have treatment value? In 1985 I went with a team of professional people to visit the
healers in Brazil. At the Spiritist Center in Sao Paulo I watched teams of volunteer mediums
who have worked for four years to learn their skills. There are usually three trance mediums
with one specially trained medium who is able to take on a spirit from the patient and verbally
report the spirit's feelings and wishes. This special medium knows how to protect himself or
herself from serving as a new host in case the dialogue carried on by the other three is
unsuccessful in releasing the "earthbound" spirit.
At the Center there is a working hypothesis that people who are killed suddenly will be
unable to move on toward another incarnation. They are earthbound. They will try to enter a
living person who is sick, unconscious, or under the influence of chemicals. It is believed that
the protective energy field, or aura, of such people is shrunken or cracked in some way and it
permits entrance by these lost, often frightened, spirits.
The job of the mediums is to remove invading spirits that have carried over their
problems to the new host.
They feel this type of treatment has a two-fold value:
(1) It gives the spirit of the dead person permission to move "into the light" and toward a new
life; and
(2) it also relieves the troubled spirit host. The belief is that invading spirits will drain strength
and immune capability of the host and that many diseases can stem from spirit attachment.
Convincing cures from emotional and physical diseases appear to follow successful
removal of earthbound spirits. Of course, we must keep in mind the power of belief, the power
of the placebo. On the other hand, the voice of the spirits, their accounts of how they died, how
old they were, in what part of the world they lived is pretty impressive.
Edith Fiore (1987), a psychologist in Saratoga, California, has discovered that the
subconscious mind of a hypnotized subject can do the same sort of channeling that a special
medium does. Using ideomotor questioning, she has found that her resistant clients can reveal
the presence of a spirit and that the spirit seems able to express its understandings and feelings
through the voice of her hypnotized client.
Although she has natural doubts about the validity of such revelations by her patients, she
has found that progress in therapy can follow the release of spirits. Her book and her methods
make interesting reading. She uses this technique only when all else has failed to produce results
or physicians have referred patients specifically for this sort of therapy. It will probably not be
successful as a treatment modality if offered to someone whose cultural and religious beliefs are
negatively biased. (97)
Temporary Out-of-Body, Surgical, and Near Death Variants: Moody (1975), Ring
(1982), Ritchie (1978), and many others have written about out-of-body experiences. Their
writings do not prove that this spirit attachment could follow if the owner's body actually died
and its spirit was unable to get back. There are some curious facts, however, that might lend
some credence to the Brazilian work being done at the Spiritist's Center and to Fiore's
experiences.
Many reports have come to us from people who have survived drowning, electrocution,
cardiac arrest, and life-threatening illness. Their descriptions are peculiarly similar. Crile (1947)
tells in his autobiography about a patient who had survived a cardiac arrest. She had not been
told about the event. At hospital rounds one morning she wanted to know about a dream she had
been having since her operation. She said that at some point she rose upward from her body and
looked down from the ceiling and watched while he and his assistants were doing something to
her chest. She said that she got back into her body at the time her doctors stopped what they
were doing and continued with the operation.
Comments: Some of the ideas presented here, such as considering the perceptions and
understandings of the infant at birth, were being explored during our workshops and our private
practice. LeCron and I felt, however, that we should refrain from writing about these matters
until their therapeutic value had been established by other observers. I believe this time has
come.
I accept responsibility for the section on spirits and their possible impact on the people
they target for attachment. I will state, however, that consideration of past life experience and
earthbound spirit attachment should be limited. We need to understand and respect the cultural
and personal beliefs of the people we treat. We need to avoid presenting ideas that may seem
bizarre and unusual to our clients and patients.
I will give one summarized case example of work with a past life and one of spirit
attachment in the chapter on resistance to show how the presentation is made to a patient. The
ideas are offered as a means of helping patients feel less troubled by their unconscious sources of
resistance.
There would be few problems with communications about past life experience or spirit
involvement in South America. In North America we must be careful if we want to avoid having
our patients complain about us to authorities. Members of licensing boards could also be biased
if they were (98) unaware of our reasons for considering these matters. Here is some sage advice
by William James (1958) from his book The Varieties of Religious Experience:
Perfect conduct is a relation between three terms; the actor, the objects for which he acts, and the
recipient of the action. In order that conduct should be abstractly perfect all three terms:
intention, execution, and reception, should be suited to one another. The best intention will fail if
it either work by false means or address itself to the wrong recipient. There is no worse lie than a
truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity,
and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and
boaconstrictors. [pp 275-276] (99)

10. UNCOVERING METHODS: DAVID B. CHEEK: THE APPLICATION OF IDEOMOTOR

TECHNIQUES: ALLYN & BACON: BOSTON: 1994
Carl Jung has said in reference to the ideas of Freud, "We know that in the mind of a
creator of new ideas, things are much more fluid and flexible than they are in the minds of his
followers." This is a thought we should hold.
Methods of treating psychosomatic illness, neurosis, and other emotionally caused
conditions are by no means standardized, nor can they be claimed to be as successful as
therapists wish. We have close to 200 methods available to us, each with its own language, each
with its gifted originator. The followers may not be as gifted or as aware that all people have the
resources to heal themselves and that psychotherapists are there to offer encouragement and to
help remove obstacles. They cannot always remove the obstacles. The number of therapeutic
successes will diminish, therefore, with any new formula of treatment. Every conscientious
therapist will be more depressingly influenced by failures than by the grateful patients who
improve. This fact will have a dampening influence on the unconscious messages a therapist
transmits to new patients while using someone else's method of treatment.
For many years, since the beginning of this century, Freudian concepts have been
accepted, mainly in English-speaking countries. Eventually some of Freud's ideas have been
modified and some discarded. Many therapists do not believe, as Freud did, that everything is
based on childhood conditioning, with emphasis on sex. They look more to present happenings
as the genesis of many conditions, and they attempt to modify troubled behavior in various
ways. Some of these efforts to work with the "here and now/' such as operant conditioning,
cognitive therapy, behavior modification, reciprocal inhibition, and psychodrama, have been
widely used.
Freud, Otto Rank, and Nandor Fodor seemed to be aware of the importance of birth
trauma in subsequent human behavior, but conversational (75) hypnotic techniques of search and
the analysis of dreams were not adequate for the job of discovery and the consistent reframing of
birth memories.
LeCron's contribution, the use of unconscious gestures to permit scanning of information
available below conscious awareness, has reopened the idea of trauma as causal in production of
human maladaptive behavior and will, I believe, greatly simplify the treatment of human
dis-ease. Before enlarging on this point and the methods of therapy derived from the work of
LeCron, we need to look at some other avenues of information.
Projective Techniques: Hypnotized patients will sometimes reveal valuable
information when they are asked to imagine sitting in a theater watching actors in a meaningful
scene from the viewer's life. The mechanism has eventually shifted to watching scenes on a
television screen, but a lighted stage with living actors seems to have a more powerful effect.
The hypnotized subject is safely watching the action with the audience in a darkened theater.
Revelations and their effect are subjective. There is no adequate means of learning about
their validity. Are they fabricated to please the therapist? Are they screen memories to obscure
the real sources of trouble?
Projection into the Future: Hypnotized patients who may be blocking efforts to
discover an initial imprint experience can sometimes hallucinate a future time when they have
been perfectly well and free of fears that an illness might return. They can signal when this time
orientation has occurred and then look back at how it happened. LeCron used this
pseudo-orientation with an excellent hypnotic patient who was anxious and depressed. Therapy
was not progressing.
At the next visit, LeCron shifted him forward 10 years and said, "It's been a long time. I
don't have your record here with me. What was it I did to help you become completely wel1?"
His patient rattled off a number of comments about the progress of his therapy while
LeCron wrote them down in his record. He gave the man an appointment for the next week. His
patient had total amnesia for having talked to LeCron about this. When the patient came back,
LeCron helped him get into hypnosis and then gave back to the man the detailed statements he
had committed to notes in this man's chart. The man's recovery was rapid and permanent, but the
value came from the patient's sifting and reorganizing what LeCron had been doing; it did not
reveal causal events in the man's life. (76)
AUTOMATIC WRITING: Automatic writing can be useful in gaining access to
otherwise inaccessible information, but it is a skill that is not readily learned. It is a most
interesting phenomenon, consisting of placing a ballpoint or fine felt-tip pen in the hand of a
hypnotized subject while his mind is diverted from the hand. This allows his subconscious mind
to take control of the hand. In automatic writing the subject may not consciously know what is
being written until he reads it later. He may read something while the hand busily writes.
Automatic writing may be very rapid, with the hand racing across the paper, or it may be
very slow. The handwriting never looks like the person's normal writing. Rarely are words
separated. They will be run together. Further economy of action involves omission of dotted i's
and crossing of t's. This makes the writing difficult to read. Sometimes the letters are not clearly
formed. The subconscious mind takes shortcuts and may write cryptically. The word before
might be written "B41f; a figure 2 or the word to may appear for any of its three meanings. The
writing may be performed in a normal way from left to right or might be upside down,
backward, mirror writing, or a combination of all these styles.
Anita Miihl (LeCron 1952), a psychiatrist, was the leading authority on automatic
writing and used it continually in her therapy. She claimed to be able to teach it successfully to
80 percent of her patients, though this might require 20 or 30 hours of practice. Others have not
had such good results or have felt the time and effort involved in the training were not justified.
In our workshop demonstrations, we started with the development of arm levitation and a
graduated series of directions of subconscious energy from the mind, down the arm to the hand
and fingers. The process started with first writing in the air and watching the after-image as
though writing with a sparkler on a Fourth of July night. When this was successful we placed the
subject at a table with a large piece of paper held in place with masking tape. The subject was
given a felt-tip pen to hold in his normal writing hand. He was asked to initiate the process by
making an x, leaving the pen at that spot and allowing subconscious energy to flow down the
arm and eventually move his hand to write something about a subject such as "mother.”
We asked the subject to imagine the sensation he might have had in school practicing
penmanship exercises when the teacher is gently guiding his wrist. Very good hypnotic subjects
do well with automatic writing. I have found only a third of my patients able to learn, and some
who learn are not motivated enough to work with this skill at home.
Automatic writing at home can be done at an optimum time for the subject and costs him
nothing. In addition, each period of 10 or 15 minutes devoted to the process allows the patient to
relax and mobilize information that can be used at the next office visit. I instruct the patient to
start with (77) a brief auto hypnotic relaxation period of a minute or two and the suggestion "1
would like my subconscious mind to write something helpful about (name the topic) after I make
a mark on this paper. I will awaken from hypnosis at the end of (x number of minutes) feeling
comfortable and relaxed."
Even under the best of circumstances, however, automatic writing can have the same
pitfalls as the time-honored conversational techniques of psychotherapy. The patient in hypnosis
at home may block on accessing significant material and may spend hours writing about
nonsense or may spend the time writing depressing or self-deprecating thoughts.
Group Hypnotherapy: Hypnodrama: J. L. Moreno developed the use of group
therapy into what is now called hypnodrama (1950). Moreno, a psychiatrist trained in Europe
before World War I, was a master of the techniques he developed for having troubled people
witness their actions and feelings as they were acted out by another member of the group trying
to play their part. He would turn the situation around to have the patient play the part of himself
or herself, interacting with other members of the family, who would trade positions. Hypnosis
occurs spontaneously without any formal method of induction during these sessions. Remarkable
insights would occur. Other members of the group also enter hypnosis while watching the action.
I remember being oblivious to the fact that Moreno's wife, a consummate actress, was without
one of her arms as she took on the part of an adolescent son of the demonstration father.
Ira Greenberg (1977) has put together an excellent book about hypnodrama. This form of
searching for causal events in life, however, is the province of gifted, psychically endowed
people. Even under the best of circumstances, I believe, the primal causes of maladaptive
behavior will escape discovery. The value of the modality appears to lie in helping people deal
with interpersonal communications and interpretations of the present time.
IDEOMOTOR QUESTIONING METHODS: Leeron (1954) believed that ideation
reflected by unconscious gestures, or ideomotor responses, was the most valuable means of
rapidly uncovering significant causal experiences in emotional and psychosomatic problems.
Sources of resistance can be discovered and corrected during the firs't interview. The
persistently resistant patient can be spared continued unproductive and costly therapeutic efforts.
The technique consists of wording questions in such a way that they (78) can be answered with
simple, "yes" or "no" unconscious symbol answers with a pendulum or fingers. LeCron
explained that this mechanism is similar to the ordinary way we nod or shake our heads when we
agree or disagree with someone. The movements of our head in this instance are always
repetitive and we are consciously unaware that we are using this means of communication.
There are differing levels of perception and response that can be observed when we talk
to unhypnotized people during a friendly visit. For example, "Will you have lunch with me next
Wednesday?" may evoke a verbal "Yes" while your friend is unconsciously moving his head
from side to side in contradiction. In such an instance you will usually find that "something has
come up" and there will be no friend there on Wednesday. Another form of differing
communication is the verbal one of saying, "I will try to get to that meeting of the Tiger Lodge
tomorrow." Any secretary trying to improve attendance will know immediately that this person
will fail to appear. We do not use the word try when we honestly agree to be present at a
meeting.
A level of response is shifted deeper into subconscious zones when we move away from
the head and depend on hand and arm movements with a pendulum or finger movements. We
trust the pendulum when it disagrees with head movements or verbal communications. We trust
finger signals if they contradict the pendulum.
 A light object such as a finger ring, an iron washer or a paper clip on an 8-inch-Iong
thread can be used as a pendulum. The thread is held lightly between the thumb and index finger
of either hand. The elbow is allowed to rest on the arm of a chair or on a table top. It does not
matter which hand holds the object because the response is an imperceptible movement of the
total body. The pendulum picks up direction because responsive body movements are always
repetitive.
Four basic movements of the pendulum are possible. These are clockwise,
counterclockwise, and straight movements at right angles to each other. Straight movements
shifting like points of the compass are too hard to remember so we need to have them at right
angles, like north and south, east and west on a map.
LeCron initially had his subjects select four separate movements for "yes," "no," "I don't
know," and "I don't want to answer." After induction of hypnosis he would have the subject use
the right index finger for "yes," the left index finger for "no," and the thumbs for the other two
answers. When we watched each other during workshops we soon recognized that polite subjects
too frequently would subconsciously give an "I don't know" response rather than seeming
difficult with an "I don't want to answer" signal.
This could be readily revealed if we asked, "Is your inner mind willing (79) to tell me
what you don't know? We eventually eliminated the "I don't know" signal with the pendulum
and finger movements. We did not want our subjects to get away with an "I don't know" if they
really were afraid of confronting an unpleasant experience. "I don't want to answer" basically
means "yes-but- I -am-not-ready-yet-to-know."
Initial Subconscious Total Age-Regression to a Traumatic Event: An initial "I don't
want to answer" signal with a pendulum or finger movement may mean that the patient is
initially unwilling to confront an unpleasant event. Repeated experiences with this evasive action
suggested to us that the patient's subconscious mind had instant access to a stressful experience
as a total age-regression or "revivification." The patient was on the scene as though it were just
happening. This called on the natural defense of not wanting to talk about it or know about it.
We found during demonstrations that the wave-off signal often changed to a "yes" while we
were pausing to decide what to do next. Here is an example:
Q: Does this happen before you are two years old?
A: (Pendulum or finger signal) I don't want to answer (IDWA). After 20 seconds): Yes (Y).
We learned to recognize this emotionally protective response and to soften its impact by
changing the time viewpoint into a more distant perspective. Using did for does and were for are
could avoid the "IDW A" signal. Distancing could also occur if we just waited. To save time,
however, the questioning could immediately shift to something like this:
Q: Would it be all right if you look back at that experience from today, here in my office?
A: (Immediate) Y.
Shifting Hand Dominance Can Confuse Interpretation of Responses: It was
frequently evident that signals with the pendulum and fingers would reverse themselves. We
found that this could be very confusing until we learned that all signals should either be checked
frequently for their meaning or, as in the case of using finger signals, be limited to one hand. If a
shift occurs to the opposite hand, the signals will retain the same meaning.
Nearly half the population of American people are born left handed but (80) only about 7
percent remain stubbornly left-handed. Gentle, repeated coercions in the kitchen before the
origin of conscious memory convert the rest (Cheek 1978). The primordial handedness
orientation is usually revealed by the thumb that is uppermost in a handclasp test where fingers
are interdigitated. The 2 or 3 percent of people who have shifted from original right handedness
to use of the left hand are exceptions to the rule, as are those who are truly ambidextrous at birth.
I have found that subjects will shift to their pristine handedness orientation as they enter
hypnosis. It is wise to ask for a handclasp test and avoid confusion when you use the Chevreul
pendulum. Time is wasted when the pendulum is used with a converted left-handed person
because the unhypnotized person holding the pendulum can slip in and out of hypnosis without
having this be apparent to the therapist. A circle swing will be one way when the subject is in a
normal state; it will go in the opposite direction when he or she slips into a light hypnotic state.
Answers will always be consistent, however, when finger signals are used as described
here. For these reasons, most workers who are experienced in use of ideomotor questioning
techniques will limit use of a Chevreul pendulum to the first interview and will shift to use of
finger signals as soon as they can be obtained during the first visit.
The pendulum has great value when a therapist wishes to use hypnosis with a patient who
has no knowledge of hypnosis and has come for an ordinary consultation or who might have
reservations if you mention hypnosis. A brief explanation can be given that our unconscious
mind often has information that is not consciously known about a problem. The patient will
quickly recognize that she nods or shakes her head when she agrees or disagrees during a
conversation. The therapist can show how the pendulum picks up tiny body movements in
response to the word "yes" before handing it to the patient.
As the pendulum starts moving involuntarily, it will usually interest the patient and evoke
exclamations of surprise. Try this technique yourself. You will find your responses are quickly
established. It is not necessary for the questions to be stated audibly. The patient is told to think
them in her mind.
Differentiating Voluntary from Subconscious Movements: In trying to be
cooperative, a patient may lift a finger or move the pendulum voluntarily. Close observation will
quickly detect this. Movement of the hand holding the pendulum is hardly perceptible when the
pendulum swings in response to a subconscious thought; hand movement is obvious when the
person is consciously thinking what the answer should be. A conscious thought will override the
unconscious movement of the pendulum. This (81) confusion can be avoided if the subject
pretends that someone else is holding the pendulum and that he is curious to know what will
happen.
Unconsciously activated finger signals are usually slow to appear and are always
vibratory and repetitive. In contrast, voluntary responses are quick to appear, may be large or
small but are given only once.
Should the Eyes Be Open or Closed During Questioning? With the pendulum, we
have found that answers are more quickly obtained and are less likely to change in direction
when the subject is looking at the weight on the chain or string. The subject's mind may wander
when the eyes are closed.
Finger signals can be obtained while the subject's eyes are open but will tend to appear
more readily if the eyes are closed. It is also easier for the subject to deepen a hypnotic state
when the eyes are closed.
What If a Patient Cannot Get Finger Signals? An inability to get finger signals may
simply reflect initial resistance to the use of hypnosis, but more commonly it is the result of
critical thoughts such as "I don't think I can do this."
Martin Reiser (1980), psychologist for the Los Angeles Police Department has found it
helpful to designate the index finger to lift when the subconscious answer is "yes," the middle
finger on the same hand to lift to answer "no," and the thumb to lift for "I don't want to answer."
Reiser then ties in a conscious reaction of lifting the finger meaning "yes" every time he says
"Yes." The key words are spoken in a rather loud, authoritative voice in order to impress them
on the memory of his subject. The consciously directed symbol responses will soon move
unconsciously when Reiser then asks the subject to think the words but refrain from consciously
moving the fingers.
Assignment Versus the Patient's Unconscious Selection of Fingers: The Reiser
technique for obtaining responses works very well to start the process of questioning. The
patient may continue to use the assigned fingers. It is wise, however, to say later, "I have given
you these signals but you might prefer to select your own answers. Please think 'yes,' and so on."
Cooperation is usually better if we offer options to our patients. (82)
Our Mental Makeup: The workings of the human mind are complicated. We will
probably never fully understand what is happening and what part of the brain is functioning at
any time. The research of Karl Lashley with rats during the 1920s revealed the interesting
evidence that every cell in the rat brain seemed to have some information regarding the pathway
to food in a maze. Lashley removed various parts of the brain of an educated rat. After recovery,
the action became progressively slower but the result was the same. Karl Pibram (1971)
extended this concept of the holographic brain.
Enormous interest has been drawn to the functions of the brain since ways have been
discovered for recognizing the sources of releasing substances and messenger molecules or
"information substances" and then sites of action within the nervous system and throughout the
body (Perl 1981, 1985; Rossi 1986; Rossi and Cheek 1988).
Clinical experience has been teaching us how much our emotions can influence labor,
lactation, digestion, renal function, circulation and coagulation mechanisms. I want to share my
experiences as an obstetrician/ gynecologist in the hope that the reader will extend the
possibilities in his or her sphere of work. It is apparent now, from the work of Candace Pert and
many others, that our mental makeup must comprise every cell of our body as well as our brain
and that Mind and Body must be considered as one. (83)

11. AN INTRODUCTION TO IDEODYNAMIC METHODS IN HYPNOSIS: DAVID CHEEK

& ERNEST ROSSI: FROM “MIND-BODY THERAPY”: WW NORTON & CO. NEW YORK:
1988
The ideodynamic finger signaling method of mind-body communication and healing in
hypnosis has evolved into a safe and flexible general approach to psychotherapy. This method is
of value in providing a standardized clinical setting wherein the beginning therapist can learn to
recognize the subtle behavioral signs of light, therapeutic hypnosis. It is also an ideal way of
introducing patients to a modern, permissive, psychobiologically oriented form of hypnotherapy.
THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOTHERAPY: AMNESIA AND DISSOCIATION AS
THE CRITERIA OF TRANCE AND HYPNOSIS: BRAID, BREUER, FREUD, JUNG,
ERICKSON: People often do not recognize the source of their problems. The history of
psychotherapy, in fact, could be summarized as an effort to understand the amnesia surrounding
the origins of psychological problems. The fascinating story of how such psychological
"dissociation" is at the source of the ordinary amnesias of everyday life, as well as the
psychopathology of neurosis, can be traced back to ancient times (Ellenberger, 1970). The
beginnings of hypnosis over 200 years ago in the ideas of Mesmer, and continuing through the
work of the fathers of hypnosis such as Braid (1795-1860) (see Box 2), Esdaile (1808-1859),
and Bernheim (1837-1919), contain continual references to amnesia and dissociation as the
criteria of trance and hypnosis -(Tinterow, 1970).
The origins of psychoanalysis can be found in the detailed case studies of the same basic
phenomenon: There is usually an amnesia for the source of psychological problems and
neurosis. Psychoanalysis can be said to have begun with the publication of "On the Psychical
Mechanisms of Hysterical Phenomena" in 1893 by Breuer and Freud. This paper was used by
them again later as the first chapter of their classic Studies on Hysteria (1895), (9) where it was
presented as a "preliminary communication." They wrote (Breuer & Freud, 1895/1955, pp.
11-12):
We have stated the conditions which, as our experience shows, are responsible for the
development of hysterical phenomena from psychical traumas. In so doing, we have already
been obliged to speak of abnormal states of consciousness in which these pathogenic ideas arise,
and to emphasize the fact that the recollection of the operative psychical trauma is not to be
found in the patient's normal memory but in his memory when he is hypnotized. The longer we
have been occupied with these phenomena the more we have become convinced that the splitting
of (10) consciousness which is so striking in the well-known classical cases under the form of
'double conscience' is present to a rudimentary degree in every hysteria, and that a tendency to
such a dissociation, and with it the emergence of abnormal states of consciousness (which we
shall bring together under the term 'hypnoid') is the basic phenomenon of this neurosis. In these
views we concur with Binet and the two Janets, though we have had no experience of the
remarkable findings they have made on anaesthetic patients.
We should like to balance the familiar thesis that hypnosis is an artificial hysteria by
another - the basis and sine qua non of hysteria is the existence of hypnoid states. These hypnoid
states share with one another and with hypnosis, however much they may differ in other
respects, one common feature: the ideas which emerge in them are very intense but are cut off
from associative communication with the rest of the content of consciousness. Associations may
take place between these hypnoid states, and their ideational content can in this way reach a
more or less high degree of psychical organization. Moreover, the nature of these states and the
extent to which they are cut off from the remaining conscious processes must be supposed to
vary just as happens in hypnosis, which ranges from a light drowsiness to somnambulism, from
complete recollection to total amnesia. (11)
[JAMES BRAID'S ORIGINAL DEFINITION OF HYPNOSIS: James Braid
(1795-1860), a Scottish physician generally regarded as one of the founders of hypnotism,
recommended that it be defined as follows: Let the term hypnotism be restricted to those cases
alone in which ... the subject has no remembrance on awakening of what occurred during his
sleep, but of which he shall have the most perfect recollection as passing into a similar stage of
hypnotism thereafter. In this mode, hypnotism will comprise those cases only in which what has
hitherto been called the double-conscious state occurs. And, finally, as a generic term,
comprising the whole of these phenomena which result from the reciprocal actions of mind and
matter upon each other, I think no term could be more appropriate than psychophysiology.
(Tinterow, 1970, pp. 370-372)
In the first part of the quotation, Braid defines hypnotism as a process that modern researchers
would term state-dependent memory and learning: What is learned and remembered is
dependent on one's psychophysiological state at the time of the experience. Memories acquired
during the state of hypnosis are forgotten in the awake state but are available once more when
hypnosis is reinduced. In actual clinical practice today, patients rarely have a complete amnesia
for their experience of therapeutic hypnosis; they tend to have partial amnesias that are
associated with their personal complexes.
In the second part of the quotation, Braid's use of the generic term psychophysiological
to denote all the phenomena of "the reciprocal actions of the mind and matter upon each other"
was another prescience of our current psychobiological approach. (10)]
In the final chapter of Studies on Hysteria, Freud summarized his early view of
psychotherapy as follows (p. 255): In our 'Preliminary Communication' we reported how, in the
course of our investigation into the aetiology of hysterical symptoms, we also came upon a
therapeutic method which seemed to us of practical importance. For 'we found, to our great
surprise at first, that each hysterical symptom immediately and permanently disappeared when
we had succeeded in bringing clearly to light the memory of the event by which it was provoked
and in arousing its accompanying affect, and when the patient had described that event in the
greatest possible detail and had put the affect into words'.
We further endeavored to explain the way in which our psychotherapeutic method works.
'It brings to an end the operative force of the idea which was not abreacted in the first instance,
by allowing its strangulated affect to find a way out through speech; and it subjects it to
associative correction by introducing it into normal consciousness (under light hypnosis) or by
removing it through the physician's suggestion, as is done in somnambulism accompanied by
amnesia.'
Unfortunately, it was often found that the initial problem started at birth or during the
first two years of life. Since conscious memory does not begin (11) until age two or three, it
seemed impossible to access such early experience. Breuer initially had some success using
hypnosis to access such amnesic experience; however, neither Breuer nor Freud was able to
break through the traumatic amnesias and repressions of their hypnotized patients in a reliable
manner.
Indeed, they found that their patients sometimes fabricated traumatic memories as the
source of their current problems (Ellenberger, 1970). Jung (1975) also relinquished the trauma
concept and the practice of hypnosis. He was a forceful hypnotist who used the traditional,
authoritarian approach characteristic of his time. His patients remembered traumatic experiences
that probably had some factual basis, but under the stress of the authoritarian approach they were
unable to convert these memories into a valid form of verbal communication. It is reasonable to
infer that under this pressure, they, too, fabricated experiences. From our modern perspective we
can recognize that lung, like many other psychotherapists, demonstrated only the unreliability of
the authoritarian approach to hypnosis when he said, "I gave up hypnotic treatment for this very
reason, because I did not want to impose my will on others. I wanted the healing process to grow
out of the patient's own personality, not from suggestions by me that would have only a passing
effect" (Jung, 1964). (12)
[SPONTANEOUS TRANCE IN THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY
LIFE: The experience of "spontaneous trance" or hypnoid states in the normal stream of
everyday life was called an abaissement du niveau mental (a lowering of mental energy) by Janet
(1907), who believed it was the source of mental dissociation and psychopathology. Jung noted
that any stimulus or emotion that alters consciousness evokes "a disturbance of attention
resembling hypnosis" (1957, pp. 234-235):
Earlier writers maintain that [excessive stimulation] has a deleterious effect on the mental
state. Allowing for diagnostic errors, the impairment will probably be confined to a disturbance
of attention resembling hypnosis; this may offer a plausible explanation of our case. It should
not be forgotten, however, that an alteration of this kind never occurs as a result of a mere
decision: a certain predisposition is needed (what Forel would call a "dissociation"). And this is
where, in my view, the decisive importance of affects comes in. As we have already explained at
some length, affects have a dissociating (distracting) effect on consciousness, probably because
they put a one-sided and excessive emphasis on a particular idea, so that too little attention is left
over for investment in other conscious psychic activities. In this way all the more mechanical,
more automatic processes are liberated and gradually attain to independence at the cost of
consciousness.
Jung recognized that if spontaneous hypnosis was associated with the induction of
psychological problems, then therapeutic hypnosis could be used to access and resolve these
problems (1960a, pp.234-235): If you study the association tests of neurotics, you will find that
their normal associations are disturbed by the spontaneous intervention of complex contents
typical of an abasement. The dissociation can even go so far as to create one or more secondary
personalities, each apparently with a separate consciousness of its own. But the fundamental
difference between neurosis and schizophrenia lies in the maintenance of the potential unity of
the personality. Despite the fact that consciousness can be split up into several personal
consciousnesses, the unity of all the dissociated fragments is not only visible to the professional
eye but can be re-established by means of hypnosis.
The importance of recognizing the ease with which spontaneous trance can inadvertently
lead to the transference or iatrogenic induction of psychological problems has been described by
Haberman (1986, 1987). Erickson and Rossi (1976/1980) have outlined two dozen behavioral
signs of spontaneous trance (relaxation, body immobility, eye changes, etc.) that can be utilized
in a naturalistic approach to therapeutic hypnosis. (13)]
A REVOLUTIONARY SHIFT: THE UTILIZATION APPROACH TO HYPNOSIS
AND THERAPEUTIC SUGGESTION: ERICKSON, FREUD, JUNG, ROGERS: The
permissive, exploratory, and ideodynamic approach to therapeutic hypnosis pioneered by Milton
Erickson eliminates the types of emotional pressure that encourages patients to fabricate
(Erickson, 1980a). Freud, lung, and most others in the psychoanalytic traditions would probably
approve of Erickson's utilization approach to therapeutic suggestion, which he outlined as
follows (1948/1980, p. 38):
The next consideration concerns the general role of suggestion in hypnosis. Too often the
unwarranted and unsound assumption is made that, since a trance state is induced and
maintained by suggestion, and since hypnotic manifestations can be elicited by suggestion,
whatever develops from hypnosis must necessarily be completely a result of suggestion and
primarily an expression of it.
Contrary to such misconceptions, the hypnotized person remains the same person. His or
her behavior is altered by the trance state, but even so, that altered behavior derives from the life
experience of the patient and not from the therapist. At the most the therapist can influence only
(12) the manner of self-expression. The induction and maintenance of a trance serve to provide a
special psychological state in which patients can reassociate and reorganize their inner
psychological complexities and utilize their own capacities in a manner in accord with their own
experiential life. Hypnosis does not change people nor does it alter their past experiential life. It
serves to permit them to learn more about themselves and to express themselves more
adequately.
Direct suggestion [authoritarian] is based primarily, if unwittingly, upon the assumption
that whatever develops in hypnosis derives from the suggestions given. It implies that the
therapist has the miraculous power of effecting therapeutic changes in the patient, and disregards
the fact that therapy results from an inner resynthesis of the patient's behavior achieved by the
patient himself. It is true that direct suggestion can effect alteration in the patient's behavior and
result in a symptomatic cure, at least temporarily. However, such a "cure" is simply a response to
the suggestion and does not entail that reassociation and reorganization of ideas, understandings,
and memories so essential for an actual cure. It is this experience of reassociating and
reorganizing his own experiential life that eventuates in a cure, not the manifestation of
responsive behavior which can, at best, satisfy only the observer.
Erickson later noted how his utilization approach to therapeutic suggestion is particularly
appropriate in stress situations (1959/1980, pp. 204205): These methods are based upon the
utilization of the subject's own attitudes, thinking, feeling, and behavior, and aspects of the
reality situation, variously employed, as the essential components of the trance induction
procedure. In this way they differ from the more commonly used techniques which are based
upon the suggestion of the subjects of some form of operator-selected responsive behavior.
These special techniques, while readily adaptable to subjects in general, demonstrate particularly
the applicability of hypnosis under various conditions of stress and to subjects seemingly not
amenable to its use. They also serve to illustrate in part some of the fundamental psychological
principles underlying hypnosis and its induction.
From this perspective we can now understand how Freud's development of "free
association" and Jung's "active imagination" are both "utilization approaches" to accessing
state-dependent memory and reframing problems. All the utilization approaches to therapy are in
striking contrast to those behavior therapies and traditional styles of hypnosis that involve overt
or covert conditioning, suggestion, and programming in the conventional sense of attempting to
put an idea into the patient's mind. Gunnison (1985) (14) has noted how the utilization approach
is the common denominator between the seemingly different approaches of Erickson and Carl
Rogers (p. 562): Erickson expressed his understanding of the inner world of his patients in a way
different from Rogers. It was "through the use of the client's own vocabulary and frames of
reference, pacing, and matching, a powerful kind of empathy developed that forms the
interpersonal connection." He recognized that this was similar to the approach Rogers took to
therapy.
Rogers has recently commented on the fundamental similarities behind the superficial
differences between his approach and that of Erickson and Kohut (1978, 1981) in utilizing and
reframing a patient's self-understanding (1987, p. 184): Erickson used different words, but it is
clear that these changes in perception were also important to him. He spoke of the process of
therapyas a loosening of the cognitive maps of the patient's experience, "helping them break
through the limitations of their conscious attitudes to free their unconscious potential for
problem-solving" (Erickson, Rossi, & Rossi, 1976, p. 18). This is very similar to my view that in
a sound therapeutic relationship "all the ways in which the self has been experienced can be
viewed openly, and organized into a complex unity" (Rogers, 1947, p. 366). Kohut is in general
agreement. The restructuring of the self is central to his whole concept of therapy, and we share
many common ideas.
Breaking through the limitations of conscious attitudes to free unconscious potentials for
problem-solving often involves accessing state-dependent memories that remain cloaked
(dissociated) under a traumatic amnesia. In one particularly dramatic case, for example, Erickson
(1937/1980) learned how to break a traumatic amnesia by the repetitive, recursive, and
sequential reviewing of the original experience during four hours of deep hypnosis. No
authoritarian commands were given. Rather, Erickson ideo dynamically facilitated the recovery
of the traumatic memories by utilizing the patient's own sensory-perceptual processes and
natural mental mechanisms. The patient was then able to use the recovered memories to better
organize his life.
We believe that it is this simple but revolutionary shift from the early, error-prone
authoritarian technique to Erickson's permissive and naturalistic approaches to accessing and
creatively utilizing state-dependent memory, learning, and behavior (the essence of the patient's
"inner resources") that accounts for the renaissance we are currently witnessing in the
professional use of therapeutic hypnosis. (15)
IDEOMOTOR SIGNALING: A UTILIZATION APPROACH: DEVELOPMENT
OF LECRON AND CHEEK'S METHOD: USE OF THE CHEVREUL PENDULUM;
RESOLUTION OF A GAGGING PROBLEM: LeCron (1954) and Cheek and LeCron
(1968) gradually built upon Erickson's work by developing ideodynamic signaling as a
utilization approach that was consistently productive, easily taught and learned. Moreover,
although this method eventually led to varying depths of hypnosis, it could be initiated and
utilized with an apparently un hypnotized person. The therapist introduces the method as
follows: "We can use this little pendulum to find out about things that you cannot consciously
remember. Notice that there are four major directions it can take that are easy to recognize and
remember. It can circle clockwise or in the opposite direction; it can go transversely, or at right
angles in a straight line. Your inner mind can select one of these swings for four different ideas:
yes, no, I'm not ready to answer consciously yet, I don't know."
Either by thinking these words or by asking themselves questions to which the answer
was an obvious yes or no, most subjects quickly learned ideo dynamic signaling (see Box 4).
LeCron then shifted into therapeutic work by asking his subjects to pretend they were observers
in responding to questions about their problem. They were to avoid consciously thinking what
the answer should be; rather, they could wonder what answer the pendulum would be giving.
This observer attitude is an indirect approach to facilitating a light state of hypnotic dissociation.
At a hypnosis symposium given in 1956 in San Diego, 1 (DBC) watched LeCron help
one of the participants solve a gagging problem of approximately 45 years' duration. This man
would start to vomit whenever he brushed his back molars, and he was unable to tolerate
placement of the little x-ray films in the back of his mouth. The total treatment time from
introduction to the pendulum until resolution took less than 20 minutes. 1 have seen this subject
many times in subsequent years; the problem recurred briefly in his dentist's office a few weeks
later, but since that time he has remained free of his gagging difficulty.
This subject was not in hypnosis at the beginning of his treatment with LeCron, but he
slipped into a light state as he saw the pendulum signaling yes to the question: "Does the inner
part of your mind know of some past event that could have caused this gagging problem?" He
then came out of hypnosis and turned toward the panel saying, "1 have no idea of any past event
like that." He turned back to watch the pendulum. His facial expression ironed out as he waited
for the response to the next question, (17)
"Would that event have taken place before you were 30 years old?" He was back in
hypnosis again by the time he saw the pendulum signaling yes. The pendulum continued to
signal yes when he was asked if the event took place before he was 20, and then ten years old.
The next question was,
"Could it have taken place before you were five years old?" At this stage the subject
came out of hypnosis as the pendulum changed its swing to indicate no. He put the pendulum
down in his lap and launched into a series of statements connected by several ands, until his
concluding shrug and slight movement of his right hand told us that he had finished. In essence
he said:
"Now I remember what it was. When I was a little boy in Chicago they worried about
me, and I was put in an open air school because they thought I might have tuberculosis, and
because I was underweight my mother forced me to eat eggnog and extra amounts of milk until I
felt constantly stuffed, and then I began having sore throats and they took out my tonsils, and I
remembered that I hemorrhaged after the operation, and the house doctor put a clamp in my
throat and left it there all night."
This type of personal, spontaneous insight that is expressed in one rush of free
association is highly characteristic of the ideo dynamic approach. LeCron now asked his subject
to hold the pendulum again and to let his inner mind answer this question:
"Now that you have remembered these things, can you be free of your overactive
gag reflex?" The pendulum answered yes. LeCron invited a dentist to come up to the platform
and test the subject's tongue and throat. There was no gag response. The subject took the tongue
blade from the dentist and wiggled it around the back of his throat without any discomfort. (10)
[FACILITATING IDEO DYNAMIC SIGNALS WITH THE CHEVREUL PENDULUM:
This approach is useful for introducing patients to hypnosis and ideo dynamic signaling,
particularly those who fear they cannot use hypnosis satisfactorily.
1. Introduction to Chevreul Pendulum
"The pendulum simply reflects very slight body movement in response to thoughts of yes, no,
and I'm not ready to know the answer consciously yet."
2. Experiencing Ideodynamic Signals
"Hold the pendulum and think and feel, yes-yes-yes. Watch the pendulum carefully and let's see
whether it will follow a repetitive circular or straight swing that will symbolize the yes answer."
[Pause. If movements are not evident within a minute or so, continue as follows.]
a. "At first you may help it with your repeated conscious thought of yes-yes-yes! But soon the
movement will happen all by itself on an unconscious level." [Pause until both therapist and
patient can identify the yes signal.]
b. "Now think and feel, no-no-no, and let's see which movement it makes." [Pause until there is
agreement about the no signal.]
c. Now let's see what kind of movement it makes to signal, I'm not ready to know the answer
consciously yet. [Pause until this signal is identified.]
3. Ratification of Ideodynamic Pendulum Signaling
a. "Ask yourself a question with an obvious yes answer. For example, "Is the sun shining?"
[Pause to verify that the pendulum signals with the agreed upon movement for yes.]
b. "Now ask yourself a question with an obvious no answer." [Pause to verify that the pendulum
signals with the agreed upon movement for no.]
c. When you are not sure the response is valid ask, "Does your inner mind agree with what you
have just told me?" (17)]
THE EVOLUTION OF IDEOMOTOR QUESTIONING: With further experience,
LeCron and I learned that the signal I don't know rarely reflected precisely that, but was rather
being used as a polite way of signaling, I don't want to answer. This was equally true of both
finger signals and pendulum responses. It seemed undesirable to let subjects get away with an I
don't know when they could be recognizing that something was too stressful for them to face at
the moment. If the question is poorly constructed or confusing, the subject will look troubled.
The question can then be restated.
With the more recent recognition of the state-dependent encoding of traumatic memories
(Rossi, 1986d; Rossi & Ryan, 1986), we now know that it may take time and adroit questioning
to access the meaningful emotional and mental sets associated with the amnesic material. Hence
it is entirely appropriate to allow the inner mind the option to signal, Pm not ready to know the
answer consciously yet. This is particularly true during the early (18) stages of questioning,
when neither therapist nor patient has any idea about the source and psychodynamics of a
problem. The yet, of course, frames a powerful implication and expectation that a satisfactory
understanding will be forthcoming.
It was observed that signals given partly on the right hand and partly on the left hand
frequently were reversed as subjects went deeper into hypnosis. When tested after arousal, a
hypnotic anesthesia might be found on the opposite arm. A suggestion that the right arm would
eventually lift to indicate a certain achievement might be accepted in a light hypnotic state, but
later the left arm lifted instead. Eventually I did a study of the chronological development of
handedness (Cheek, 1978), and found that about half of the population begins life with a
preference for using the left hand to explore and grasp.
Reversal of finger signals was no longer a problem when we took the suggestion of
Doctor Ralph Stolzheise, a psychiatrist from Seattle, to have our subjects keep all the signals on
one hand. Then if the subject reversed hand dominance later, it would make no difference
because the finger movements would retain their original meanings.
It was less easy to determine what to do with pendulum swings that began shifting their
meaning. We would stop the questioning when this happened and start the selection of responses
again. Usually, however, it was easier to simply shift from using the pendulum to finger signals.
The changed meaning of pendulum movements usually meant that the subject was in a hypnotic
state that was already deep enough to use ideomotor finger signals. (19)
[FACILITATING IDEODYNAMIC FINGER SIGNALS: Useful for resolving traumatic,
emotional, and psychological problems associated with amnesia.
1. Introduction to finger signaling
"The inner part of your mind often knows what you have forgotten, or never even knew
consciously. You can let your fingers do the talking for you."
2. Experiencing finger signals
a. "Think and feel, yes-yes-yes, and wonder which finger your inner mind will lift to signal yes."
[Pause. If a definite movement is not evident within a minute, continue with: "Sometimes it feels
as if an invisible string was pulling it up."]
b. "Now think and feel, no-no-no, until another finger on the same hand lifts to signal no."
[Pause. If a definite movement is not evident within a minute, continue with: "Really review
deeply inside yourself something you definitely know you do not want."]
c. "Sometimes the inner mind is just not ready to let your conscious mind know something. So
let yourself wonder for a moment until your inner mind signals, I'm not ready to know
consciously yet, with another finger on the same hand."
3. Ratification of ideodynamic finger signals
"Go back now to the beginning of last night's sleep. As you are fallings asleep, your yes finger
will lift. Each time you are dreaming, your unconscious will let your no finger lift. When you
awaken, your I'm not ready to know consciously yet finger will lift."]
PARTIAL VERSUS TOTAL AGE REGRESSION: In the early symposiums, endless
hours were spent demonstrating deep trance phenomena and total age regressions to childhood.
The methods often utilized visual imagery to "get on a magic carpet and float back up the river
of life ... further and further, younger and younger ... and now you are just a little boy."
Sometimes it was suggested that subjects look at an imaginary clock that was going backwards,
"faster and faster and now it is 1940 ... getting younger and younger ... now 1930 " After a few
months, however, we realized that much of this procedure was a waste of time; our subjects were
usually ahead of us and impatient with our lengthy tactics. By adhering to preconceptions about
the need for total age regression, we had mistakenly assumed that our hypnotized subjects
needed to be able to talk, see, feel, and behave as if they were really reexperiencing an earlier
age level. Such a process of total age regression takes a long time and is not necessary for most
therapeutic work.
Indeed, a therapeutically useful partial age regression can occur within a moment or two
when a very important incident of an individual's emotional (19) life is accessed. Behavioral and
physiological indicators of partial age regression to a significant life event are sought. The most
obvious of these indicators are emotional reactions such as tears, frowning or smiling, facial and
neck color alterations, sweating, sighing, and so forth. The more subtle behavioral indications
that meaningful material is being accessed include changes in breathing patterns and heart rate,
and the appearance of perspiration on the hand used for signaling. In the right light, the
accumulation of perspiration before a finger lifts to signal can be noted. Similarly, muscle
twitches on the back of the hand may be visible before a finger signal becomes manifest.
Careful observation of many old-fashioned efforts at total age regressions indicated that
the significant memories could be accessed rapidly (20) within a moment or two at this initial
emotional and physiological level. We speculated that this affective response accessed the
limbic-hypothalamic and reticular activating systems. It took longer for such memories to be
expressed by action potentials moving skeletal muscles at the ideodynamic finger signaling
level. Finally, at the highest integrative, cortical level, the memory could be expressed within
cognitive frames of reference as a verbal communication. The time required for each step
apparently depended on the degree of stress associated with the memory.
Thus we have developed a series of three observable steps to indicate the successful
retrieval of forgotten or repressed experiences. This ideo dynamic approach is fail-safe in that it
places the responsibility of creative therapeutic work within the patient where it belongs, rather
than on the therapist. The therapist is able to focus his or her efforts on helping patients access
their own creative inner resources for resolving their problems in their own way. Successful
experiences in therapy can then be more easily generalized to other life situations by the patients.
IS IDEOMOTOR INFORMATION VALID? Clinicians can be fooled by using ideo
dynamic questioning techniques, just as they can be fooled by the hallucinations and fabricated
verbal reports of hypnotized subjects. We must always be wary of memories that are verbalized
before or at the same time as an ideo dynamic signal. We must also be concerned about the
validity of reports that follow a single strong movement of a designated finger. These are
initiated consciously and are not the best path for the accessing of statebound information that
may never have been registered at the conscious level. Rapid verbal responses' before an
appropriate ideo dynamic signal may be fabricated to please the hypnotist.
True unconscious ideodynamic signals are always repetitive and often barely visible.
Sometimes we must rely on the slight vibratory movements shown by the tendon leading to a
designated finger. With recall of stressful experiences, it is sometimes possible to see an
accelerated release of droplets of perspiration around the tip of the finger that eventually will lift.
This is a physiological response preceding the skeletal muscle lifting that finger. My basic
clinical hypothesis is that there is a definite three-stage sequence involved in the valid recall of
meaningful material.
[THREE-STAGE CRITERIA FOR ASSESSING VALIDITY OF IDEODYNAMIC
SIGNALING:
1. Emotional and physiological memory can be seen first through changes in respiration, pulse
rate, and emotional reactions. These occur very rapidly and must appear before a designated
finger lifts to show an inner orientation to the time of an important experience.
2. Ideodynamic signals indicate the accessing of memory at an unconscious level. They usually
occur a few seconds after the appearance of physiological memory. At the moment the finger
lifts signaling this second, higher level of memory, the patient still does not have a verbal level
of awareness of the experience; there are only feelings of anticipation, vague unrest, or
discomfort.
3. Verbal reporting of the experience follows these physiological and ideomotor indications of
the inner accessing of meaningful material. To reach this conscious horizon of verbal thought,
the entire experience may have to be reviewed repeatedly. The patient is told that one finger will
lift to signal the beginning of an experience and another finger to signal its ending. The number
of required repetitions to elevate the memory from deep unconscious zones of memory storage
depends upon the gravity of the experience. (22)]
We use the many special approaches outlined in the instructional boxes of this book to
access the more stressful statebound memories. The three stage process of accessing highly
meaningful but amnesic memory is a clinical art that requires careful observation and sensitivity
to the demand characteristics of the social setting and the transference situation, as well as to the
personal, behavioral patterns of the patient. It proceeds best in an open and supportive
atmosphere of positive therapeutic expectation that engages a sense of curiosity and wonder in
both therapist and patient.
(21)
PROBLEMS WITH IDEOMOTOR QUESTIONING METHODS: No Signals.
Some individuals cannot or will not develop either pendulum swings or definite finger signals.
Such behavior is most often seen with patients who have had a series of failures with other
modes of treatment at the hands of highly competent physicians. No signals may be an
unconscious defense against the possibility of another failure. Obviously, the hypnotherapist
needs to access and correct this problem.
A practical psychological approach that I typically use involves a training procedure to
heighten a patient's sensitivity to his or her own ideo dynamic processes with postural
suggestions. A number of authors have described a variety of these procedures as methods of
assessing and facilitating suggestibility (Erickson & Rossi, 1981; Weitzenhoffer, 1953, 1957). A
flexible routine I call "postural suggestion training" is used in a variety of therapeutic situations
is illustrated throughout this volume.
Individuals unable to allow ideomotor responses may be the ones most in need of help. If
their initial difficulty persists even after the postural suggestion training, we would not persist in
the search for causes but rather teach (22) the patient self-hypnosis and do what is possible in the
way of symptom alleviation and ego strengthening.
Substitutions of Unimportant Events. This is common in any form of psychotherapy.
Individuals in hypnosis are economical in their energy output; they will try to "get away with"
the least amount of work. The therapist can be led astray. When ideomotor methods are used and
a patient has released what seems important, we ask further: "Could there have been some
earlier experience that set the stage for the one you have just reported?" We continue to
regress in time until the patient is emotionally satisfied and the problem is resolved.
This process has often led to birth as a source of a number of maladjustment problems:
feelings of rejection at not hearing a mother's voice; headaches conditioned by pressure on the
head during a labor that was painful or frightening for the mother; respiratory difficulties
stemming from exhaustion of the baby's resources during a long labor with the mother heavily
sedated; gastrointestinal problems with babies that were not nursed by their mothers after a
difficult labor. LeCron (1963) wrote about his observations in a cautious paper; we explore these
birth trauma issues in Section IX of this volume.
Signals Given but Refusal to Answer Verbally, or Signals that Change or Become
Multiple and Unreadable. This gives the therapist immediate knowledge about resistances.
Recognition of this fact can save time and cost to the patient and can also stimulate the patient
into thinking about the necessity to continue resisting. There may be a resolution of the problem
between visits. The reader will find a discussion of these factors in Section II, which deals with
motivation and resistance.
Two major classes of typical resistance are:
1. Intrinsic factors arising within the patient:
* "flashback" to a previous unpleasant spontaneous hypnoidal state;
* previous frightening association (e.g., watching demonstrations); · unresolved need for
symptom or problem.
2. Extrinsic factors arising from the environment:
* unfavorable reaction to therapist;
* rebellion against request for therapy by someone else;
* association with critical or resistant people.
The first of these, the "flashback" to a previous unpleasant spontaneous hypnoidal state,
is of special theoretical interest, since it is a clear manifestation of the type of state-dependent
memory, learning and behavior that is the basis of many dissociative, hypnotic, and
psychosomatic phenomena (Rossi & Ryan, 1986). Ways of dealing with this source of
"resistance" are described in Section II of this volume. The other sources of resistance listed (23)
above usually can be dealt with by a combination of traditional verbal level therapy and further
exploratory efforts using ideo dynamic signaling.
Initial Inability to Signal No. Another form of resistance that is usually associated with
cultural, religious, or family training in passivity is seen with the patient who is easily able to
give a yes signal but initially cannot give a no signal. This is an important psychodiagnostic clue.
These people simply don't know how to say no at an inner ideo dynamic level. It is likely that
many of their life problems stem from this difficulty. Training them to give the no signal then
becomes a very effective initial approach to ego strengthening. A variety of ideomotor postural
training experiences usually will heighten patients' sensitivity sufficiently for them to learn to
make the ideomotor no response. Once it is achieved, ego strengthening can proceed by asking a
number of simple and obvious questions that enable patients to rehearse the no response (e.g.,
"Are you standing up? Is it raining outside?").
Persistent Inability to Signal. A persistent inability to give any apparent ideomotor
signal may indicate a difficulty in the transference situation between therapist and patient. The
therapist's attitude, approach, or frames of reference may not be appropriate for this particular
patient. Therapist and patient may need to take a fresh look at the problem and/or the dynamics
of their interaction. Both may need to feel more secure before they can proceed successfully.
 Ideosensory Signals. Occasionally, very sensitive subjects will experience such vivid
sensory responses (the finger may feel a shock, tingle, or jolt of energy; it may become warm or
cool, and so forth) that they may be reluctant to actually move it. Their fingers and/or their
entire hand and arm can remain stiff (cataleptic), even while a strong sensory response is
experienced. The therapist can utilize these ideosensory responses just as well as the ideomotor
responses. With the ideosensory responses, however, the patient must verbalize whether a yes or
no response is being experienced. Alternatively, the therapist can suggest that the patient's
unconscious can translate the ideo sensory response into a slow, repetitive head nodding for yes,
or a slow head shaking from side to side to signal no.
Summary:
The ideo dynamic approach to healing in hypnosis has the following characteristics:
1. It is a fail-safe procedure that places the locus of therapy within the patient, where it belongs.
The patient is treated as a colleague in the therapeutic process.
2. Pendulum and finger signaling accesses state bound information that (24) may not be
available to the patient's typical conscious verbal levels of functioning.
3. Approaching the significant life experience in a progression of steps often facilitates a rapid
desensitization of the original traumatic or stressful experience.
4. The method of ideodynamic questioning is simple and easy to learn. It rapidly facilitates the
therapist's sophistication in accessing and therapeutically reframing a wide range of
psychological and psychosomatic problems.
5. Resistance to constructive change is immediately evident. An accessing and therapeutic
reframing of the sources of such resistance is immediately possible.
6. The unknown psychological needs of the patient are respected at all times. The patient's own
unconscious inner repertory of creative resources is continually accessed to facilitate healing.
7. Troublesome abreactions and negative iatrogenic reactions to therapy can be avoided easily.
8. Ideodynamic signaling can be initiated with the patient in an unhypnotized state and therefore
is of special value to the beginner in hypnotherapy.
9. The introduction of the Chevreul pendulum and finger signaling sets up an inherently
interesting and absorbing clinical situation that focuses the patient's attention and facilitates the
experience of mild, carefully controlled therapeutic dissociations.
10. This safe ideodynamic approach provides both therapist and patient with a relaxed setting in
which they can learn to observe and use altered states and clinical hypnosis in a therapeutic
manner. (25)

12. TWO BASIC IDEODYNAMIC APPROACHES TO PSYCHOSOMATIC AND

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS: DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI: FROM “MIND-
BODY THERAPY”: WW NORTON & CO. NEW YORK: 1988
The usual approach to stressful life events that are responsible for symptomatic and
maladaptive behavior is to hypnotize a subject and ask for a verbal report. The desired outcome
may not be reached in this way, however; ordinary conversational hypnosis may fall short of its
goal. In this chapter, I (DBC) will discuss the reasons for the failures of ordinary conversational
methods of hypnoanalysis and the reasons for using ideomotor methods. Then I will present two
general approaches to ideomotor signaling that are appropriate for most psychobiological and
psychosomatic problems. Each approach has its values and its limitations.
Talking depends on associative pathways within the cortex of the brain. The ability to
report verbally on visual, auditory, olfactory, tactual, and positional stimuli depends on the
highest levels of cortical activity. Unless the original stressful experience has also reached the
highest levels of the central nervous system integration, the therapist may witness a patient's
emotional distress and physical discomfort but be unable to help the person talk about the causal
experience. Rarely will experiences prior to two years of age be registered at conscious levels of
awareness. Rarely will they be reached in a hypnotic state light enough to permit easy,
conversational communication. They may be accessed by the subject in very deep hypnosis, but
this frequently inhibits the ability to talk. The same observation applies to experiences under
general anesthesia, unconsciousness due to trauma, the ideation of deep, natural sleep, and
experiences too stressful to be allowed into conscious recognition.
Although the brain stem and limbic-hypothalamic paths of sensory input usually remain
functional during these stressful experiences, they may be encoded in a statebound form so that
they are not available to consciousness. Retrieval with ordinary conversational hypnotic methods
is seldom possible (Cheek, 1959, 1962c,d). (26)
RESISTANCE AND EMOTIONAL CATHARSIS: TWIN PROBLEMS FOR THE
BEGINNING THERAPIST: An authoritarian and forceful approach to such experiences with
conversational hypnosis may result in defensive action by the subject. There may be initial
refusal to confront the event followed by refusal to enter hypnosis again. The pressured subject
may substitute an earlier or later unimportant "trauma" in the hope of escaping further
discomfort. As a last resort, if pressed too hard, the subject may invent an experience that never
happened. As noted earlier, it was this inventiveness of the unconscious mind that led to lung's
abandonment of hypnosis as an untrustworthy tool (1975).
A coercive approach to a traumatic experience may lead to an outpouring of emotional
distress. Some authorities believe this to be a requirement for successful therapy. All too often,
however, an authoritarian approach may lead to further entrenchment of troubled behavior.
Emotional catharsis offers no problem for the experienced hypnotist but it can have a devastating
effect on the beginner. Any expression of fear or confusion from the therapist is quickly
perceived by the hypnotized subject and can eliminate any benefits that might have come from
the revivification of the traumatic event. It may so shake the therapist that he or she abandons
hypnosis entirely.
RAPID ACCESSING VIA IDEOMOTOR METHODS: These unsettling problems
can be avoided with the ideodynamic approach. Ideodynamic signaling with the Chevreul
pendulum or the fingers allows a rapid accessing of the sources of psychosomatic symptoms and
psychological problems. The mild, dissociative reaction that usually takes place during
ideodynamic signaling permits the patient to be an onlooker or "objective witness" to the
process. One patient illustrated this mild, dissociative, and therapeutic reaction by saying, "I'm
not to blame. It's my fingers that are talking." Resistance due to guilt, self-punishment,
unfavorable identifications, fear of facing unknown threats and unconscious manipulative needs
are quickly revealed at the start of therapy and are usually obvious to both patient and therapist.
The therapist can then deal with all these therapeutic issues with a systematic "20 questions"
method.
THE RETROSPECTIVE APPROACH: 20 QUESTIONS METHOD: LeCron
developed a very useful retrospective approach going from the present moment back to earlier
life experiences for exploring the traumatic source of problems; this is particularly valuable for
the beginner in the uses of hypnosis. The method sometimes meets with obstruction as the
patient gets closer to a very traumatic event, but there are ways of dealing with such (27) a
temporary resistance. The retrospective approach has two major virtues. The first is that patients
are led to review their primary traumatic events at an unconscious level each time they give an
ideodynamic response to questions about the events. In so doing, the impact of the original
traumas tends to become desensitized. A second virtue is that this unconscious desensitization
process eliminates the risk of patients' suddenly abreacting and disrupting the therapeutic process
in a way that the therapist is unable to deal with effectively.
First, the patient is asked if there is some past event responsible for a problem. After
getting a yes response, the therapist determines when the event took place, keeping in mind that
an unconscious economy of effort may lead a patient toward an event that is relatively
unimportant. Discussion of this event may make the therapist believe the solution has been
found. It is important to ask, "Is there some earlier event that might have set the stage for what
you have just told me?"
When the goal seems to have been reached the therapist asks,
"Knowing this, does the inner part of your mind feel you can now be well?" If the answer is
affirmative, it is helpful to ask for an orientation into the future when the patient knows he is
well and unafraid of the trouble returning. Inability or refusal to access such a time is an
indication of previously unrecognized resistance. (See Box 7.)
The "20 questions" technique moves rapidly. It is best to start with a Chevreul pendulum.
There is no need to induce hypnosis formally because it will occur spontaneously as the patient
becomes interested in the unconscious responses.
AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE RETROSPECTIVE APPROACH:
PSEUDOCYESIS WITH AMENORRHEA OF 18 MONTHS: (Total interview time is 60
minutes.)
An intelligent, healthy woman was referred by the resident in obstetrics because she wanted very
much to have children. Her last menstrual period had occurred 18 months earlier. There had
been eight negative pregnancy tests contradicting evidence of "milk" in her breasts, nausea,
weight gain, and protuberance of her abdomen. Her answers to the following questions were
given with the Chevreul pendulum. (28)
[THE RETROSPECTIVE APPROACH TO IDEODYNAMIC SIGNALING: This
approach is useful for the beginning therapist as a safe approach to desensitizing traumatic
problems.
1. Accessing a problem
a. "Is there some past event responsible for your trouble?" (If answer is no, ask if there could be
a group of events.)
b. "Was it before you were 20 years old? Ten years old? Eight years old?" Etc.
c. "Review what is happening at that time. When you know what it is, your yes finger will lift.
As it lifts, the memory will come up and you will be able to talk about it."
2. Therapeutic reframing
a. "Is it all right to tell me about it?" (Allow the patient to verbalize the memories and facilitate
therapeutic reframing as needed.)
b. "Is there an earlier experience that might have set the stage, or made you vulnerable to what
you have just told me?" (If answer is yes, proceed as in Step 1 above.)
3. Ratifying therapeutic gains
a. "Now that you know this, can you be well?" (A no response means that further insight and
reframing is required, as in Steps 1 and 2 above.)
b. "Is there anything else we need to know before you can be free of this problem?" (If it is
evident that the patient's symptom, habit, or problematic behavior cannot be resolved completely
at that time, find a date for a more complete cure, as follows:)
c. "Let your inner mind give a yes signal when it is ready to pop the date of a completely
satisfactory resolution of that problem into your conscious mind." (If there is no satisfactory
response, more therapeutic work is required, as in Step 2 above.) (29)]
Q: Does the inner part of your mind know you can have babies? A: (No.) [All nonverbal
pendulum-ideomotor answers are indicated by parentheses.] (28)
Q: Would it be all right for you to know why you feel this way? A: (No.)
Q: Would it be all right for me to know? A: (I don't want to answer.)
Q: Would it be all right for your husband to know why you feel you cannot have children?
A: (Yes.)
Q: Is there some past event that has made you feel this way? A: (Yes.)
Q: Was it before you were 20 years old? A: (Yes.)
Q: Before you were 10 years old? A: (Yes.)
Q: Before you were five years old? A: (Yes.)
Q: Before you were two? A: (Yes.)
At this point the patient put the pendulum down on her lap and said, "How could I be so
stupid?" She then went on to say, "My father died of pneumonia when I was three months old
and I guess I have been afraid that if I had a child my husband would die." I asked her to hold
the pendulum up again and let it answer this question:
"Is this the whole answer?" The pendulum said yes. I then asked her to go forward to
the time when she could start her next period. She visualized a date on an imaginary blackboard
about two weeks from the time of my interview. Her breast swelling and secretion stopped in a
few days. The nausea disappeared at the end of the interview. She missed the selected day for
menstruation by 24 hours and continued then on schedule. At a second interview her fingers
indicated that she would be ready to begin a pregnancy without fear in a few months.
The Progressive Chronological Approach to Traumatic Life Experience: In
searching for the traumatic sources of a problem via the retrospective approach, patients often
block on unpleasant memories. It seems that later reliving of a troublesome experience at
unconscious levels of awareness tends to put up resistances to retrieving the memory at the upper
levels of thought associated with speech. Two tactics are useful in dealing with such (30)
resistance. One is to ask the patient to go over the experience as it might have been, if all the
right things had been said and done to have made it a pleasant memory. The patient then
fabricates an idealized experience. For example, a patient might say, "The surgeon is saying that
I do not have cancer."
The second approach is to go back to a time before the event could possibly have
occurred. In the case of an operation, it would be the time of admission to the hospital. By
advancing in a progressive, chronological manner, it is easy to have the patient observe what is
happening. I have found that it is possible to obtain traumatic information previously
inaccessible with the retrospective approach by using this progressive, chronological method
(see Box 8).
AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE PROGRESSIVE CHRONOLOGICAL
APPROACH: HEMORRHAGING TWO WEEKS AFTER DELIVERY: An obstetrical
patient calls on the telephone for an emergency consultation. She is home with her two-week-old
baby boy. She had just started nursing him when she began profuse vaginal bleeding. Her voice
is tense and fearful as she envisions having to return to the hospital.
Doctor (Dr): There probably is an emotional reason for your bleeding now. You are an
excellent hypnotic subject, so let's find out why this happened. Let me see, which is your
yes finger? Think yes, and tell me which finger goes up. [The reason for asking this question
was to dissociate the patient from the immediate problem of hemorrhage. Later she reported that
she had felt the bleeding stop as soon as she shifted her attention to communications that in the
past had been associated with comfort in the doctor's office.]
Patient (Pt): My index finger is lifting.
Dr: Now let you inner mind go back to the moment when you were sitting down to nurse
your son, just before you began bleeding. When you are there, your yes finger will lift.
When it lifts, just say "Now," so I can keep up with you.
Pt: [After about 10 seconds] Now.
Dr. Now come up to the moment when you know you have started bleeding. "'oen you are
there, your yes finger will lift again. As it lifts, please tell me what is going on around you
in your home that might have something to do with triggering your bleeding.
Pt: It's lifting! Oh, my! My daughter has been with her grandmother for the ( 31) past two
weeks. She has just come home. She opened the door as I began nursing. I saw that look in her
eyes. It reminded me of my own return home to find my mother nursing my little sister. The
thought I had was, Will I have enough love to give her, too?
Dr: Let me ask your finger. Now that you have discovered this, can you stop your
bleeding?
Pt: My finger signals yes, and I can feel that the bleeding has stopped already.
Dr: You are great! Now finish this nursing, but when you are through, please sit down and
explain to your daughter what you have just discovered. She needs to know that she is an
important part of the family. Call me back in about half an hour and let me know how you
are doing.
Pt: [Thirty minutes later] The bleeding has stopped completely, and I spoke with my daughter.
She told me that she felt that her visit with her grandmother was arranged because we wanted to
spend all our time with the baby.
The ease and simplicity of using this progressive chronological approach are well
illustrated by this emergency case. The healing emotional response and insight the woman
experienced came as a spontaneous accompaniment to the ideo dynamic signaling process. Overt
psychoanalysis or direct suggestion by the therapist was not required. The therapist simply set in
motion an ideodynamic search that allowed the patient's own unconscious process to access the
traumatic source of her problem. The seemingly spontaneous insight that followed is a natural
consequent of the successful accessing of the state bound memory that triggered her bleeding.
(33)
[THE PROGRESSIVE CHRONOLOGICAL APPROACH TO IDEO DYNAMIC
SIGNALING: This approach is useful for the more experienced therapist to access significant
but forgotten life events.
1. Accessing a problem
b. "When you are there at the time before there was any trouble, your yes finger will lift. Let that
picture develop and tell me where you are and what is happening."
c. "Now come forward in time to the very first moment you are feeling that something important
is happening in relation to this problem. When you are there, your yes finger will lift."
2. Therapeutic reframing
a. "As it lifts, please tell me the first thing that comes into your mind. Don't edit it. Just say it,
even if it seems ridiculous." [Allow time for emotional catharsis and/or spontaneous insights.]
b. "Now come forward in time to the next thing that makes that first experience important in
causing the problem you have had." [Allow patients to verbalize spontaneous insights and
facilitate therapeutic reframing as needed.]
c. "Is there any other experience we should know about?"
3. Ratifying therapeutic gains
a. "Please come forward in time to the moment you know you are completely well. When you
are there, your yes finger will lift."
b. "Look over to one side and see a blackboard with the date written on it in chalk. When you
see that at an unconscious level, your yes finger will lift. As it lifts, tell me the date." [Any
difficulty in verbalizing this date of "cure" means that more work is needed in Steps 1 and 2
above.]
c. "When your inner mind knows that it can continue with that curative process all by itself
-letting your conscious mind have whatever insights it needs to facilitate it-your yes finger will
lift again." (32)]
Recursion, Healing, and the Creation of Meaning: It may have been noticed that the
retrospective and progressive approaches to ideo dynamic signaling are repetitive, iterative, and
recursive. That is, they are circular processes; if a satisfactory therapeutic gain cannot be ratified
by the third step, then we return to step one and repeat the entire process again. Each time we
repeat the process anew, however, we begin with whatever therapeutic gain we have already
achieved. Each repetition builds on what preceded it. A final satisfactory therapeutic gain often
proceeds by this iterative process of successive approximations. Cybernetic theory describes this
circular feedback process wherein the output becomes me input as a recursive function
(Hofstadter, 1979).
Recursive functions are built into our nervous system; it is found, for example, that the
output of a nerve cell often feeds back to the same cell to modulate its further activity. This
recursive function is found to be a fundamental feature of virtually all of our sensory and motor
processes at the cellular and molecular levels (Segal, 1986; von Foerster, 1984). A series of (33)
theoretical developments and experimental findings in the cybernetics of living systems, from
Schrodinger's 1947 classic What is Life? to Maturana's (1970, 1971) "Biology of Cognition,"
and Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach (1979), implicate the recursive function as the essential
operation that allows for the generation of ever new forms of complexity from the molecular,
genetic, and cellular levels to that of the whole organism.
More recently, Watzlawick (1984) and the constructivist philosophers have described
how the recursive function is the essence of all processes of self-reflexivity, self-awareness, and
self-reflection. Ultimately, the recursive function leads to the creation of meaning and identity
for society as a whole, as well as for individuals. We will explore the fuller implications of the
recursive function for the "invention of reality" (Watzlawick, 1984) in Section IX of this
volume. For now, it is enough to recognize that much of the efficacy of the ideo dynamic
signaling methods we summarize in our boxed outlines probably comes from the utilization of
this recursive function to generate new therapeutic frames of reference for facilitating healing.
(34)

13. IDEODYNAMIC HEAD, HAND, AND ARM SIGNALING: DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST
ROSSI: FROM “MIND-BODY THERAPY”: WW NORTON & CO. NEW YORK: 1988
In teaching ideo dynamic signaling to psychotherapists with many different theoretical
backgrounds, the author (Rossi) has discovered its useful generalizability to almost any
therapeutic situation. One need not describe ideodynamic signaling as a form of hypnosis
because there is no valid empirical method for assessing whether or not an altered state is
involved. When used by hypnotherapists, these ideo dynamic approaches can facilitate states of
dissociation and hypnotic phenomena because the hypnotist knows how to facilitate such
experiences. When used by Gestalt, Rogerian, psychoanalytic, behavioral, cognitive, movement
practitioners or family therapists, however, these same ideodynamic approaches can be usefully
employed within their frameworks without calling it "hypnosis." The most useful common
denominator that ideodynamic signaling provides for healers of all persuasions is that a
convincing, overt behavioral signal is generated by the patient whenever a useful bit of
therapeutic progress has been experienced.
New approaches to the ideodynamic accessing of therapeutic states and the resolution of
mind-body problems utilize a variety of ingenious head, hand and arm signaling procedures
(Erickson, 1961/1980). These approaches are especially useful because they can be experienced
so easily by most people as a mildly dissociated or state-dependent expression of their creative
unconscious. The "double bind induction with the moving hands approach to ideomotor
signaling," for example, was originally developed as a fail-safe approach to therapeutic hypnosis
(Erickson & Rossi, 1981, pp. 126-142). Between 70 to 81070 of the subjects tested are
successful in experiencing the '"moving hands" and the "hand lowering" items when they are
presented as an ideomotor suggestion on the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale (Hilgard,
1965). When head, hand, and arm signaling is used in a flexible manner with the implied
directive and the conscious-unconscious therapeutic double bind, almost all patients can
experience a fascinating and enjoyable approach to accessing their own creative resources. (35)
The implied directive (see Box 9) and the conscious-unconscious double bind (see Box
10) (Erickson & Rossi, 1979, 1981; Rossi & Ryan, in preparation) can be utilized either
separately or together, with infinite variations for facilitating the experiencing of ideo dynamic
signals by the fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, head, mouth, eyelids, or any other part of the
body that can move. Whenever spontaneous tics or apparently involuntary movements are made
during therapeutic hypnosis, they can be utilized as an approach to initiating ideodynamic
signaling with a question such as: "And you can simply wonder if that movement was a signal
from your unconscious. Was it a yes or no response to something I have said? ... Or was it an
expression of your own private experience?"
[THE IMPLIED DIRECTIVE: The implied directive is a means of accessing and facilitating
the expression of inner resources that are not normally under voluntary control. The implied
directive can be regarded as a general, permissive and nondirective means of helping patients
explore and realize their healing potentials. It has three recognizable parts:
1. A time-binding introduction:
As soon as
2. The implied suggestion initiating an unconscious search taking place within the patient:
your unconscious has reached the source of that problem,
3. The behavioral response that signals when the implied suggestion has been accomplished:
your finger can lift [head can nod, arm can lower, etc.].
Useful Alternative Implied Directives:
"When you have found a feeling of relaxation and comfort, your eyes will close all by
themselves."
"As that comfort deepens, your conscious mind can relax while your unconscious reviews the
problem."
"And when a relevant and interesting thought reaches your conscious mind, your eyes will open
as you carefully consider it and share only as much with me as I need to know to help you
further."
As can be seen from these examples, the patient's own unconscious processes actually solve
the problem that the conscious mind could not handle. (36)]
[THERAPEUTIC BINDS FACILITATING CREATIVE CHOICE: The therapeutic double
bind is a permissive, non-authoritarian approach to facilitating creative choice that is in tune
with the humanistic, existential, and transpersonally oriented psychotherapies. These permissive
approaches are ideally suited for facilitating personality development, mind-body healing, and
the nondirective exploration of human potentials. As can be seen in the following general
format, the therapeutic double bind consists of a series of implied directives presented in such a
manner that all possibilities of response are covered; the subject is channeled in a healing,
creative direction regardless of what choices are made. The "conscious-unconscious double
bind" is involved because inner healing is facilitated even if the conscious mind is not aware of
how, when, or what is done on an unconscious level.
1. An implied directive ...
"When your unconscious is ready to let you go into a state of inner healing (or therapeutic
trance), you'll find yourself growing quiet, with your eyes closing all by themselves."
[If eyes do not close within 30 seconds or so, continue:]
2. Becomes a therapeutic double bind ...
"If the unconscious first needs to review another important issue, you'll find yourself discussing
an interesting question that will prepare you for deeper healing (trance) work."
[If there is no apparent effort to speak within 30 seconds or so, continue with another
double-binding alternative:]
3. Covering all possibilities of response.
"If you find yourself reluctant to speak, you can continue just as you are, allowing the
unconscious to do what it needs to do, with your head slowly nodding yes all by itself as you go
deeper into healing (trance)."
[If there is no visible head nodding, continue:]
"Unless you are already so comfortable that your unconscious can allow you to remain perfectly
still as it resolves all the important issues by itself ....
And you mayor may not be aware of all the healing, constructive inner work that is being done
all by itself, with each breath you take."]
(A) STANDARD POSITION FOR HAND AND ARM SIGNALING:
FACILITATING AN OPTIMAL BALANCE OF WITNESSING AND EXPERIENCING:
A standard format for presenting the "moving hands accessing of creative resources" is outlined
in Box 11. As always, this outline needs to be adapted in a flexible manner to the language and
frames of reference that are most suitable for the individual patient. Most people with whom
Rossi has worked, for example, find it agreeably fascinating to experience their head, hands, or
arms moving "all by themselves" under the real or imagined "natural magnetic forces" of their
bodies. When the therapeutic process is conceptualized as an accessing of their "creative
resources for growth and healing," the seemingly autonomous ideomotor movements of their
head, hands, and arms are taken as a signal of the positive and constructive cooperation of their
"inner mind." Patients feel supported by their own inner resources and are quickly oriented to
exploring their autonomy and strength in coping with their problems. Their own ideomotor
signals are interpreted as "objective proof" that they can call upon the help of their creative
sources whenever they need to.
With a comfortable standard initial position, the following open-ended suggestions,
phrases, and questions tend to structure ide 0 dynamic processes for problem-solving.
"Review a happy or deeply satisfying memory and notice how those hands will move
together all by themselves to signal yes." Pause as hands move together with the slow,
hesitant, sometimes jerky movements. "Now review an unhappy situation to which you wish
to say no, and experience how those hands move apart." If there is no apparent movement,
the hypnotherapist can shift this situation into a double bind by continuing with: "Or is the
unconscious already so deeply involved that it is more important to allow those hands to
remain just as they are, as the inner work continues all by itself in a way that you mayor
may not be aware of? [Pause] And will one of those hands drift down to your lap to signal
that the inner work is progressing as well as possible at this time?" Occasionally the hands
will slowly oscillate back and forth a centimeter or two (or a few inches), as if the inner mind is
shifting back and forth, sorting things out. The therapist can then comment: "That's right, that
interesting process can continue just as it is, and when your unconscious has resolved that
issue satisfactorily, I wonder which hand will drift down all by itself, just to let me know."
If the patient seems stuck or excessively uncomfortable, the therapist can simply ask for a
verbal report of what is being experienced. The patient is encouraged to make whatever physical
adjustments or shifts in inner attitude that may be necessary to facilitate optimal balance of
conscious and (38 ) unconscious activity. The patient usually operates on two levels or parts: (1)
There is a witnessing consciousness that watches what is being experienced, and (2) there is a
receptive, experiencing part that is surprised by the autonomous ideo dynamic movements that
seem to have a life of their own. If the patient seems to be getting too fearful, the therapist can
help restore equanimity by structuring a carefully controlled therapeutic dissociation, somewhat
as follows: "You can simply watch what is happening calmly and objectively .... You can
experience that, and simply witness it as an inner drama .... You can watch what is
happening as if you were seeing it in a movie .... One part of you can experience that very
deeply while another part of you can talk to me about it, as you learn to relate to your own
emotions with clarity and understanding."
This type of "partial regression in the service of inner development" is ideal for ideo
dynamic therapy. As patients witness the autonomy of their ideomotor movements, unusual
sensations, perceptions, and inner emotional processes, they learn that they can be experienced
safely in an informative and creative manner. This process may become cathartic and lead to
insight in the Freudian sense, but much more is involved: The patient is encouraged to acquire
new skills by turning on, turning off, and relating to his own inner process in new ways. The
patient learns to develop a fuller and richer inner life wherein there is a more optimal interaction
between conscious and unconscious processes. Mind and consciousness are experienced as a
creative process of self-reflective information transduction (Rossi, 1986d).
Sometimes the hands will drift off into unusual positions and other kinds of spontaneous
movements. The therapist and patient mayor may not be aware of the metaphorical or symbolic
significance of these movements. The therapist can facilitate whatever is involved, somewhat as
follows: "And we can wonder just what is involved with this interesting development.
Sometimes the unconscious can tell a story with movement ... sometimes it becomes clear
what that is about .·.. There mayor may not be images, memories, thoughts, voices, or
feelings associated with those movements .... As that continues, you may begin to
experience certain feelings more (or less) strongly ... simply allowing that to continue all by
itself until you know .... Allowing the creative healing forces (inner mind, higher self, etc.)
to continue in just that way, until the inner work is completed for now .... And as those
hands finally come to rest [when it is obvious that they are], your unconscious can make
available just one or two thoughts that we need to understand so that we can further
facilitate the healing next time."
As is obvious from the above, the therapist can easily facilitate the inner accessing and
resolution of problems with very general, nondirective suggestions. When more specific
focusing is required for dealing with an issue, the therapist may proceed with whatever style of
questioning is most appropriate for the particular dynamics of the patient. (40)
[Ideodynamic Head, Hand, and Arm Signaling
[MOVING HANDS ACCESSING OF CREATIVE RESOURCES:
1. Readiness signal for inner work
a. "Place your hands about six to eight inches apart, and with great sensitivity, tune into the real
or imagined magnetic field developing between them [therapist demonstrates]. If your creative
(healing) unconscious is ready to begin therapeutic work, you will experience those hands
moving together all by themselves to signal yes." [Pause. If hands do not move together,
continue with the following.]
b. "But if there is another issue that you need to explore first, you will feel those hands being
pushed apart to signal no. In that case, a question will come up in your mind that we can deal
with."
2. Accessing and resolving problems
a. "As your unconscious explores the sources and important memories about [whatever
problem], one of those arms will begin drifting down very slowly."
[Pause. When one arm does begin drifting down, continue.]
"That arm can continue drifting down very slowly so that it will finally come to rest on your lap
only when you have completed a satisfactory inner review of that problem."
[Pause after arm has come to rest on lap]
b."And now your other arm will begin drifting down all by itself as your unconscious explores
all the therapeutic possibilities for resolving that problem in an ideal manner that is most suitable
for you at this time."
c. "When your unconscious has resolved that problem in a satisfactory manner, that arm will
come to rest on your lap."
3. Ratifying problem-solving
a. "Does your unconscious want to let your head nod yes all by itself to verify the value of your
therapeutic progress?"
b. "When your unconscious and conscious minds know they can continue to deal with that
problem in a satisfactory way, you will find yourself stretching and coming completely awake as
you open your eyes." (39)]
(B) MONITORING POSITION FOR MEASURING AND MODULATING
INTENSITY OF EXPERIENCE: An optimal balance of witnessing consciousness and
experiential being can be further facilitated by using one hand and arm as a gauge to measure the
depth of trance or emotional involvement. With one arm held at a comfortable, neutral level, the
patient is encouraged to experiment with raising or lowering the arm as a measure of inner
experience. One could say the patient is learning to measure the right cerebral hemisphere's more
unconscious processes with the left hemisphere's more linear, alphanumeric processes. The
possibilities are endless. In general, the therapist encourages the patient to allow an arm to
carefully gauge or modulate the degree to which any feared emotional process or inner
experience is expressed.
In one workshop, for example, a woman described how a previous hypnotic experience
with another therapist had left her in a strange state for hours afterwards - she could only cry
without knowing the reason. She was afraid to go back into trance lest she go out of control
again. Obviously, she needed to learn how to relate to her own inner processes with more ego
control. I asked if she were willing to learn how to do this. She agreed that would be most
desirable.
She was shown how to extend one arm at a neutral level to indicate her current level of
consciousness. She was then asked to "Wake yourself up now, even more than you usually
are. As you feel yourself waking up, let that arm move slowly up like a lever measuring
how much more aware you are becoming. Wake up more and more .... As your arm goes
up, tell me how you can tell that you are becoming more and more alert!"
She opened her eyes widely and began to note how she could see things in greater
detail-she was more acutely aware of sounds, colors, sights, etc. "Now let yourself go back down
to your normal state of awareness as your arm lowers to the neutral position."
When her arm returned to the neutral position, she was encouraged to wake up again
even more, as the arm slowly raised again. She was given this exercise of waking up and
returning back to normal several more times, with her arm measuring her level of consciousness.
She was finally permitted to experiment with trance as follows: "Now, if your unconscious
feels it's perfectly safe to allow yourself to go into trance just a little bit, your arm will let
you know by drifting down below the neutral level all by itself ... but not too low ... not too
deep, yet! ... Now return to normal wakefulness and tell me what it was like . . . Now if
your unconscious feels it is okay to let yourself go back into trance a little deeper this time,
then that arm can go down again .... And with each noticeable change in your awareness,
you can tell me what is happening. Keep your eyes open for now, so that you can
accurately verbalize the process of going into trance." (42) " ... Now return to normal
wakefulness and tell me what it was like .... Now if your unconscious feels it is okay to let
yourself go back into trance a little deeper this time, then that arm can go down again ....
And with each noticeable change in your awareness, you can tell me what is happening.
Keep your eyes open for now, so that you can accurately verbalize the process of going into
trance."
She did, in fact, describe carefully the process by which her peripheral vision gradually
became more and more constricted until she was experiencing a classical "tunnel vision" that is
characteristic of trance experience (Erickson, 1980a, Volumes I and II). At that point she was
returned again to her normal state of awareness and again asked if her unconscious was willing
to let her go even deeper next time. In this manner, alternating between normal, super-awake,
and trance states of various depths, the woman was supported in exploring her obviously great
talent for experiencing altered states of awareness.
This ideomotor gauging approach can be used to modulate practically any subjective
dimension of human experience. A natural consequent of this process is that patients learn to
relate to their own inner experience in a safe, flexible, and creative fashion. Anxiety, fear, anger,
depression, energy level, and psychosomatic symptoms of all varieties can be modulated,
transformed, and resolved with insight and a growing sense of self-guided development.
(C) CHANNELING POSITION FOR CONSTELLATING AND RESOLVING
CONFLICTS: Problems are often expressed as conflicts between the polarities of human
experience: approach and avoidance, love and hate, strength and weakness, male and female,
instinct and spirit, elation and depression, child and adult, good-me and bad-me, conscious ego
and unconscious self, the individual and society, and so forth. The so-called "channeling
position," with arms extended comfortably and palms facing downward, is an interesting way to
experience and express inner conflicts in an outer, behaviorally observable form. The therapist
can facilitate the situation as follows. "Let yourself become very aware of what's happening
in those arms and hands, and let's see what happens all by itself .... You can wonder
whether one side or the other can experience and express [whatever polarity or conflict with
which the patient is dealing]." [pause to note what minimal behavioral responses become
evident. Comment and query any observable response somewhat as follows.] "That left arm
seems to be moving up .... Can you tell me what part of your conflict that arm expresses -
for example, is it the child-you or the adult-you? Does the arm moving up mean that the
child is becoming more expressive at this moment? ... What does the child seem to be
saying? ... [etc.]"
In a workshop demonstration being given by David Cheek, a psychiatrist (43) in his
forties seemed to freeze helplessly when his arms expressed a dream he had had about the
conflict between himself and the demands of society. It soon became evident that his left arm
represented himself feeling helpless and hurt. And, in fact, his left arm began to ache more and
more, while his right arm that represented society became increasingly "numb."
At that point he was asked if his right arm could be tested since Cheek happened to be
seated on his right side. He slowly nodded his assent. When Cheek tried to move his right arm, it
was rigid and immovable. Cheek asked if another workshop participant seated to his left would
test his other arm. This, too, was found to be rigidly fixed in a cataleptic position. A series of
suggestions for the various ways the arms might move to express and resolve the conflict were
without any apparent effect. The subject began to sweat profusely; he alternately blushed and
blanched; tics and twitches popped up spontaneously across his face, to his helpless amazement.
The situation appeared to be getting out of his control. His observing and witnessing
consciousness was not able to help him maintain a therapeutic level of equanimity or further
insight.
In this stressfully worsening situation, Cheek continued as follows. "This extreme state
of tension is as adequate an expression of the conflict as can be experienced at this time. As
soon as your unconscious and conscious mind realize this, those arms will begin to relax ...
[pause as relaxation does begin to take place]. And when the conscious and unconscious parts
of your mind know they can continue the inner work of resolving this conflict in your
future dreams and with yourself and others [pause], it will be interesting to see which of
those arms begins to drift down to your lap first .... And when your unconscious is ready to
allow you to wake up and return to your usual awareness, feeling refreshed and alert, that
other arm will drift down. And you mayor may not wish to share any more of this
experience with the group."
During the next two days of the workshop, this psychiatrist reported a sense of inner
work being done but felt he was still too "stubborn" to do any more ideodynamic channeling of
the conflict. Finally, on the last day of the workshop, he felt ready to deal with the "unfinished
business" and experienced a process of ideo dynamic conflict resolution, with his arms and
hands moving easily as he gained a profound insight into how his so-called negative trait of
stubbornness was actually his only defense against an authoritarian father now projected onto
society.
 The important point of this case is that patients are not always ready to resolve an issue
when it is first constellated and channeled into ideodynamic movement. They may need more
time for inner work on their own before problem resolution can take place. The therapist's
"suggestions" do not have the power to force the premature resolution of inner issues. Often, the
most significant value of these ideodynamic approaches is focusing the patient on the significant
issues. This focusing may take place on a conscious or (44) unconscious level; sometimes it is a
combination of both. The initial work with this workshop participant, for example, simply
accessed a state-dependent conflict that he could only express as a stubborn and rigid catalepsy.
Over the next few days, he had a sense of "inner work being done." A conscious resolution was
finally possible only after the unconscious had done its share of the inner work privately, on its
own.
(D) THE EVALUATION POSITION FOR EXPRESSING CREATIVE OPTIONS:
Having the palms face upward is an appropriately symbolic position for evaluating the various
possibilities and creative options that are pressing for expression in one's life. For example,
patients can be asked to simply tune into those palms with great sensitivity to determine whether
"energy" is being received from the universe, or whether they are transmitting energy outward.
Their response to such questions is often of diagnostic value. A very dedicated but depressed
professional person, for example, admitted that energy was being "drained out and there wasn't
much left."
Another patient who was concerned about sorting out all the positive and negative
aspects of a marriage was facilitated as follows. "Let us see which of those hands expresses
the positive and which expresses the negative aspects of your marriage." [Pause as patient
makes slight postural adjustment and replies that the right hand holds the stronger and better
aspects, while the left hand contains those weaker features that need help.] "Fine. Now, to
prepare for the work that needs to be done to help the weaker features, it will be of value
to first explore all the stronger aspects of your marriage. As you review them
appreciatively, you will find that right arm moving expressively." [Pause as patient's right
arm moves downward as he outlines the strong features of his marriage. This prepares a
constructive context and hints about how he will later be able to use these strong features to help
the weaker. As the right arm continues downward and finally comes to rest in his lap, the
"weaker" arm drifts aimlessly about.] "Now, with all those strong features activated within
you, let's see how they can help those weaker aspects that seem to be drifting so aimlessly
about. Let me know when it happens."
The patient's left arm now comes to an abrupt halt as he verbalizes how his wife's faithful
attentiveness to his every need is a feature that has aroused an ambiguous response in him. He
suddenly realizes that he had been holding back on his sexual assertiveness with her because he
felt her faithful solicitousness implied that she was too weak to take too much sex. He now
visualizes a satisfactory sexual fantasy with her, and with a broad smile he says, "This is
probably enough therapy for today!"
(E) UTILIZING THE PATIENT'S CHARACTERISTIC POSITIONS AND
MOVEMENTS FOR ACCESSING STATE-DEPENDENT MEMORY, LEARNING, AND
BEHAVIOR: All the above positions for initiating ideo dynamic signaling are somewhat
arbitrary, although the therapist attempts to explore those that seem most appropriate for a
particular patient. With increasing skill in observing the patient's individuality and characteristic
positions and movements, however, the therapist can learn to select those behaviors that are most
suitable as starting points for accessing and facilitating a state-dependent inner process.
 An obvious example is when one patient spontaneously assumed a classical lotus posture
for meditation when she volunteered for "ideodynamic work." The therapist took that cue and
utilized it as follows. "That's right. You've had experience in meditation, so it would be best
to begin with that for your inner work. Continue with your favorite form of meditation;
stay with it in a pure manner for as long as you can. [Pause] And when your unconscious is
ready to explore those issues that sometimes interfere with your meditative practice, you
will notice something happening with your hands."
Within a few minutes, her fingers began to make a series of minimal involuntary
movements that were channeled into ideodynamic signals by the therapist as follows. "Now, if
your unconscious is willing to let that finger signal yes, it will move up again all by itself.
[Pause as the finger does so.] Now let's see what other finger on that hand moves up all by
itself to signal no. [Pause as another finger does so.]
A series of questions that could be answered with yes and no finger signals were then
asked about the way her meditation practice could be facilitated in the future. It was learned, for
example, that unfinished daily problems typically intruded. In response to a few nondirective
questions, she was able to conclude that in the future she could allow her spontaneous finger
signals to determine whether she needed to spend some time writing and clearing her mind of
"practical issues" before she practiced her formal meditation.
This experience led the author, in cooperation with Charles Tart and Shinzen Young of
the Community Meditation Center of Los Angeles, to explore the use of ideodynamic signaling
with a group of meditators who had a wide range of experience (between six months and 15
years). In this previously unpublished study, it was found that an unusually high proportion
(about 35%) of this population (N =70) scored on the high end of the Standard Hypnotic
Susceptibility Scale, Form C (scores of 10 to 12). A variety of exploratory approaches
combining classical methods of Buddhist Vipassana meditation (Goldstein, 1983) with
ideodynamic hypnotic accessing was experienced by most meditators in this group as a very
fruitful harmony in integrating the goals and methods of East and West for facilitating
mind-body healing and the evolution of consciousness (von Franz, 1987).
(46)

14. IDEOMOTOR QUESTIONING FOR INVESTIGATION OF UNCONSCIOUS PAIN AND

TARGET ORGAN VULNERABILITY: DAVID CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI: WW NORTON
& CO. NEW YORK: 1988
The combination of ideomotor questioning methods with rapid scanning of unconscious
experience makes possible some tentative explorations into areas of disturbed adaptation which
so far have been closed to all but the most superficial of surveys. Work along these lines may be
castigated by the organicists of medical research, who say that psychological factors are too
difficult to evaluate. The skeptics could be reminded that no objective study of human behavior
in health or disease can be acceptable if the personal "weltanschauung" and the subjective
responses of the individual are excluded from consideration.
The organicists will point out that exclusion of this factor is necessary because there is no
way of communicating with the levels of subjective reaction that relate directly with
physiological adaptation. If we counter by saying that the nearest thing to this level can be
reached by combining ideomotor questioning methods with hypnosis, the organicists may say
that although that is possible, it is a waste of time because only a small fraction of human beings
can be deeply hypnotized. This is what Freud said in his widely publicized lectures at Clark
University in 1909.
The objection that few can be deeply hypnotized is untrue but it is not important
anyway. The 20% figure usually quoted applies to volunteers and is not valid for those who are
highly motivated by fear or severe illness (Cheek, 1957). Ideomotor questioning can be used for
the induction of hypnosis, and it can be used to uncover unconscious ideation with nearly all
people who have the capacity for understanding and communicating thoughts. Unconscious
resistance to entering a hypnotic state or cooperating with investigation can be circumvented
(Cheek & Davis, 1961).
Although most of us would agree that the brain has evolved as a central clearing house
for the scanning of incoming sensations and the selection of appropriate outgoing messages
directed toward adaptation, we have been handicapped in our search for knowledge about these
adaptations. Environmental threats mean different things to each individual. Conscious (221)
understandings of a threat may be greatly deranged by unconscious feelings about the
significance of a stress. Let us consider the areas of human adaptation which seem most in need
of clarification.
Complexities of Human Immunological Responses: The immune responses are most
complex and seem to have evolved with the increasing complexities of vertebrate life. In
mammals, they develop after birth, although some of the mother's immune antibodies may get
into the baby through the placenta or the amniotic membranes. Women may develop immune
responses against the homotransplants of their husband's genetic characteristics to cause habitual
abortion in some women. Erythroblastosis occurring with Rh incompatibility or AB-O
incompatibility is of this type. The problem of autoimmune reaction is also hard to comprehend
unless it relates in some way to self-destructive forces centering on target organs. Hashimoto
disease of the thyroid reflects this type of autoimmune response directed against thyroid tissue.
All of the collagen diseases seem to relate in some way to autoimmune processes. We have
learned that homologous tissue grafts from adult human mammals of the same species are
rejected after a time, and that repeat grafting from the same individual causes an accelerated
rejection because of reinforced immune reactions to the foreign tissue. Only recently have we
discovered that the grafted tissues themselves are competent to develop immune responses
against the tissues of the host. We are now beginning to realize in a general way that some of the
factors bearing on the abnormal growth characteristics of cancer cells and the capacity of the
host to recover from cancer depend on which way the battle is turned. Removal of a majority of
the cancer cells by surgery may throw the battle in favor of the host. Irradiation and the effect of
radio-mimetic drugs may favor the host by interfering more with the immune responses of the
cancer cells than with those of the mature host cells in the area of cancer growth. We now have
knowledge of how despair and passive acceptance of cancer can shape the battle (Locke, Power,
& Cabot, 1986).
Since we know there have been verified spontaneous cures without treatment in a variety
of malignancies including neuroblastoma, choriocarcinoma, carcinoma of the kidney, malignant
melanoma, cancer of the bladder, breast, stomach, lower bowel and uterus (Everson & Cole,
1959), we might wonder whether the victors could help us understand more about possible
subjective attitudes and the course of battle.
We know that a shift from despair to hope may bring about an amazing shift from illness
to health under many circumstances, but we have not explored the unconscious mechanisms
responsible for this change. There is evidence that some individuals can decide to die and do so
at an appointed time in the absence of disease. We have known that death may occur
unreasonably soon in the aged after a stroke or disabling injury. Only since the (222) Korean
War have we realized that American prisoners in their teens and early twenties could lose the
will to live, enter a comatose state, and be dead within 48 hours if left alone by their associates.
We do not know how these phenomena occur, but we do know that all of the Thrkish soldiers
who were exposed to the same stresses in captivity that killed 50% of our U.S. soldiers in Korea
came through their trials without loss of a single soldier (Mayer, 1958).
Hypesthesia and Tissue Reaction With Scratches: Let us consider some of the
possibilities for control of physiologic mechanisms of adaptation. Do we know anything about
the relationship between perception and tissue reaction? The evidence is scanty but stimulating.
CASE 1: In 1952, while attempting to prove to an obstetrical patient that she was better
able to anesthetize her arm hypnotically than she thought possible, I ran the point of a
hypodermic needle upward from the supposedly anesthetized lower forearm to a point several
inches above the antecubital space. The patient winced as the needle reached the antecubital
space. The same linear scratch was made along the ventral surface of the sensitive opposite arm.
The patient was convinced that there was a difference between the feeling of the arms with this
stimulus. Normal sensation was suggested then and the patient discharged. When she was seen a
week later at a regular prenatal visit, there was a scratch still visible along the entire length of the
arm used as a control, but only the skin above the sensitive antecubital space of the previously
anesthetized arm showed a scratch mark comparable to that of the unanesthetized arm. At that
time, I did not know anything about the inflammatory enzyme "neurokinin," but the accidental
discovery that tissues which were even partially anesthetized seemed to heal more quickly and
show less immediate edema and wheal formation proved to be an asset in convincing patients
that hypnosis was worthy of investigation.
At first it seemed to me that the difference in tissue behavior might be due to the
increased elasticity of the skin on the "numb" side, making it yield more readily before the
needle and thereby suffering less injury. There certainly was a demonstrable tensing of the
muscles during injury to the sensitive skin. This could expose the skin to more trauma; the
needle would encounter a more resistant bed under the skin. It was probable, too, that the dermal
myofibrils contract reflexly when pain is experienced. I could devise no satisfactory way of
proving to myself that tissues anesthetized by suggestion reacted less energetically than sensitive
tissues. In the meantime, it was interesting and encouraging for surgical, obstetrical, and cancer
therapy patients to discover that their mind could alter tissue reactions to injury in (223) some
way. I have repeated the test with better than 99% positive response in more than 1,000 personal
patients since then. Box 19 summarizes the scratch demonstration of hypnotic analgesia and
healing.
Pain Perception and Physiological Response: CASE 2: Use of these theoretical
principles derived from accidental observation made it possible for me to speak with enough
confidence to a discouraged obstetrical patient to help her change her behavior dramatically in
the course of an overwhelming puerperal sepsis. The patient had been doing well after delivery
of a Down's syndrome child. She hemorrhaged profusely on the third day postpartum,
immediately after being told that she could go home but would have to leave her baby at the
hospital for a few days. Her temperature jumped from 98 to 105 degrees after a transfusion.
There was a pure growth of E. coli on urine culture and a continued septic course. Pyelitis was
ruled out by absence of microscopic evidence of infection in the urine. In spite of adequate doses
of penicillin and gantrisin initially, followed by chloromycetin, she went on to develop
abdominal rigidity and rebound tenderness on the third day of her illness. This patient, reported
elsewhere (Cheek, 1957), had been a nonresponsive subject for hypnosis. Under the
circumstances of her downhill course, she either had an increased motivation for responding or
else she was already in hypnosis when I began talking to her about it. I said that muscle spasm
was interfering with blood supply in the uterus, that the drugs were fine drugs but that they were
useless if they could not get into the area where the bacteria were causing trouble. Evidence to
corroborate my fabricated theory was demonstrated to her by pressing again on her rigid
abdomen. I said that the pain was tightening all the muscles in that area and blocking off the
blood supply.
Within the space of time that it took to explain these matters, it became apparent that she
was already in hypnosis without a formal induction. I asked her to press on her abdomen when
she knew that all the pain was gone. After she carried out this suggestion, with the usual slow
motion of a hypnotized subject, I asked her to go even deeper and stay in hypnosis just as she
was for the next 24 hours in order to let her body best use the medication and best use the rest to
rebuild her resistance to infection.
Her pulse rate, temperature, and respiration remained normal after the initial 24 hours of
continued hypnotic state. It seemed noteworthy that she had lost the rigidity and rebound
tenderness within five minutes of signaling that the pain was gone. Rebound tenderness and
reflex abdominal rigidity are supposedly controlled through sympathetic innervation from the
peritoneum through the spinal cord. I decided that I must learn more about the mediating factors
in pain perception and physiological response.
[SCRATCH DEMONSTRATION OF HYPNOTIC ANALGESIA AND HEALING: "You
need to know how much you can alter the way your body reacts to injury. It is easy to learn that
once you can see how you can make one arm unable to feel an irritation while keeping the other
arm normally sensitive."
1. Accessing hypnotic analgesia
a. "As I touch your right arm, I would like you to experience it getting less sensitive, about the
way it would feel if you had been lying on that arm for a couple of hours while you were
asleep."
b. "When your arm begins feeling heavy and kind of numb, your yes finger will lift. Notice how
long it takes between the time your finger lifts and the time the message gets to your conscious
mind so that you could say, 'It's numb.'"
2. Self-testing of hypnotic analgesia
a. "When your arm feels kind of numb and about half as sensitive as your left arm, your no
finger will lift. Say 'now' when you have done that, and then please check it yourself. Pinch the
arm. Each time you notice a little difference, your confidence will grow in what you are able to
do."
b. "With your eyes closed, please notice the feeling as I touch your numb arm with the tip of a
needle (or knife point). As I go up your arm, please tell me when it begins to feel sharper. [This
is usually just below the elbow.] Now compare that with the sharpness as I touch your normally
sensitive arm." [This reinforces the difference in feeling.]
3. Scratch test of hypnotic healing
a. "I'll now make a harmless scratch on both arms so you can see the effects of hypnotic healing.
Please don't move, because I want to make the scratches in the same way for you to compare, in
about 20 minutes, to see the difference."
b. In about 20 minutes, the patient will be able to see that the "hypnotized" arm has little or no
redness or swelling around the scratch area, while the normal arm does.
c. "Now your inner healing mind can let that yes finger lift again as both arms return to normal."
d. Discuss the implications of this demonstration of hypnotic analgesia and healing in relation to
the particular problem the patient is encountering. (225)]
Three years after this experience, it was possible to obtain a subjective report from this
patient in a medium-trance state. Asked to orient to the time of the hospitalization and signal if
she recognized some factor that might have been responsible for the bleeding, she gave a signal
and said, "You did not tell me, but 1 knew something was wrong with my baby by the way you
said you wanted to keep her for a few days until she could gain a little weight. 1 did not want to
leave her alone there."
The patient went on to teach me a lesson about ideomotor communication by saying,
"When you did not tell me the truth about my little girl, 1 knew there must be something very
seriously wrong." I then asked the patient to call to mind something that might have helped her
make the dramatic improvement in her condition. After giving an ideomotor signal from her
designated finger, she said, "I could tell by your face that you meant what you said about my
being very sick and that you wanted me to use hypnosis to let the medicine start working. 1 had
not wanted to live because 1 had done so much vomiting. 1 thought that must have made my
baby abnormal. Then 1 realized she would need me to take care of her. 1 had to get well."
Conscious and Unconscious Pain: During the course of exploring various means of
helping patients control or ignore pain, it has gradually become clear that there are two forms of
pain and that these share the same potential for disturbing tissue resistance and the rate of
healing. Pain is commonly described as a consciously perceived unpleasant response to noxious
stimuli.
CASE 3: That there could be an awareness of pain at an unconscious level, and that this
could cause as much physiologic disturbance as the conscious pain, had not occurred to me until
1 encountered a patient several years ago who had diffuse lesions of poison oak dermatitis. She
had healed all her weeping, blistered areas of skin within 48 hours of signaling with an
ideomotor response that she had made all the lesions numb and that she could keep them numb
for 24 hours. She had been consciously aware of the painful lesions on her face, neck, and vulva,
but had not been aware of any other discomfort. This led me to wonder whether edema, vascular
stasis, and limitation of motion could be caused by unconscious pain.
CASE 4: A patient with a history of rheumatoid arthritis that had occurred 20 years
earlier during a time of emotional stress was now asked to perform an experiment for which she
would have no conscious recollection. She was (226) asked to awaken one day two weeks hence
feeling exactly as she had felt during her illness 20 years ago. She was to have troublesome
dreams the preceding night, and all of her unconscious attention was to be centered upon her left
wrist. She had never had trouble with this wrist. I wanted her to focus all the physiologic
responses stored in her memory upon that one wrist. She was asked to find some pretext for
calling me and coming in to the office on that day to report.
On the appointed day this patient awakened after a troubled sleep. She decided her car
needed a check-up. This would require her coming to the city where I was then practicing. While
preparing breakfast she noticed a swelling of her left hand. Her fingers and wrist were stiff. She
came to the office to inquire whether or not this might be a recurrence of her arthritis. Within an
hour of being reminded that she had agreed to contribute to an experiment, she lost the edema
and limitation of motion.
CASE 5: The brother of a patient under treatment with hypnosis for dysmenorrhea was
permitted to sit in during the induction and preparation for therapy. He entered a deep trance
while I was talking to his sister. He had undergone surgery on the previous day under local
anesthesia for removal of all his third molars. Both sides of his face were symmetrically swollen.
He had no conscious pain but his fingers indicated yes to the question, "Is there any pain?" I
asked him to recall the feeling of the novocaine injection as it was made on the left side, to
signal when it had been put in, and to signal again when the numbness was complete. He had
indicated with an ideomotor response that there was awareness of pain, although there had been
a verbal level denial of it. After his signal for completion of the task, a designated no finger
signal was given to the question, "Is there any pain now on the left side?" A yes signal answered
the same question about pain on the right side. He verbally reiterated that the right side was only
painful if he opened his jaw more than an inch. Within 20 minutes of the signal for unconscious
rejection of pain, there was a return of normal contour to the left side of his face. He had been
reading in an adjoining room and was unaware of the changes until his sister remarked on the
change in his face. He was so pleased with what he had done that he sat down in the waiting
room and "put the anesthetic" into his right jaw. A telephone call from his sister the next day
reported loss of all edema and return of full jaw motion within an hour of leaving the office.
CASE 6: Another example derived from these chance observations relates to pain, but
also clearly shows that the brain is charged with monitoring the body situations at all times. An
excellent hypnotic subject admitted to the hospital for (227) treatment of hyperemesis of
pregnancy was being rehearsed with development of anesthesia to recapture her self-confidence
in being able to use hypnosis. She signaled with a finger that she had achieved an absolute
anesthesia of her right arm. She gave no verbal indication of feeling pain of a needle puncture
and, in fact, denied any awareness of any sort from that arm. Anesthetic effect was then
augmented by a maneuver attributed to Milton Erickson, who had developed it to a high point.
She was asked to hallucinate the right arm as remaining in one position after I had moved it to a
new position. The brain perceives expected sensations, and the patient effecting this type of
dissociation when no suggestions of anesthesia have been accepted will report pain from an
imagined needle prick in the space where the arm is supposed to be but will have no awareness
from the real, displaced arm. The patient adding this dissociation by hallucination to her
complete anesthesia was now asked to have the index finger of her normal hand move every
time she felt the needle touch her skin. She was asked also to say "Now" whenever she could
feel the touch. She reported verbally every time I touched "normal" skin, and this was
accompanied by a simultaneous movement of the index finger. When the displaced real arm was
touched, she gave no verbal indication of awareness, but her index finger signaled even though
every precaution had been taken to prevent her from knowing just where the needle was being
applied.
During the past decade it has been possible to corroborate the observation of Esdaile that
rejection of pain awareness at an unconscious level improves host resistance to infection and
speeds the recovery from localized infection. My first glimpse of the possibility that this
increased potential for combat might make the difference between life and death was offered by
a patient with a spreading puerperal peritonitis which had not responded to chemotherapy
(Cheek, 1957). Observations with herpes simplex, persistent urinary tract infections, skin
abscesses, perirectal abscess, and acute vaginitis of several types have convinced me that this is
more than a cortisollike response which could dangerously remove the barriers to spread of
infection. There has been no spread of infection in any case on which hypnosis has been used.
Some research in Japan suggests that the human being in hypnosis may produce more effective
immune responses to infection than is possible when energy is wasted in responses to pain and
fear (Ikemi, 1959). We need to know more.
What is the Physiological Meaning of Pain? These observations and others which have
been reported elsewhere (Cheek, 1960a,b; 1961 a, b) have suggested that our concepts of pain
must be altered to incorporate the evidence. Pain is usually defined as a consciously perceived
sensation in response to a noxious stimulus, but this sort of definition seems worthless. George
Crile (Crile & Lower, 1914) has pointed out that we (229) cannot feel damaging stimuli in parts
of the body which have not been phylogenetic ally conditioned for expectancy of potentially
pain-producing damage. We feel pain with slow, tearing forces on the bowel or mesentery but
we do not feel slow, cutting trauma with a scalpel. Attention to the stimulus, expectancy of pain,
and speed of initial trauma all playa part in what we call pain. Authorities on pain such as
Judovich and Bates (1949), Wolff and Wolf (1948), and Thomas Lewis (1942), make no
mention of the spontaneous loss of pain perception in time of great danger or on entering a deep
hypnotic state. Authorities writing on the subject of obstetrical analgesia have been unable to
correlate the evaluations of patients. They have all been forced to lean on such artificial
structures as the capacity of the patient to remember furniture in the labor or delivery room. We
have seen that the capacity for consciously remembering something has no relationship to the
fact.
Use of amnesia to measure the quality or intensity of pain is scientifically disrespectful to
the truth. We should have some other way of recognizing the effects of trauma and
inflammation. We should have some way also of understanding how these effects can be altered
by expectancy, recognition, and emotion. Each of these may have conscious and unconscious
components. Perhaps we should consider the unconscious as well as the conscious perceptions of
pain. This will require a change in definition and some definite changes in scientific thought.
Damaging stimuli of surgery may be painless by virtue of the chemical anesthesia. Preoperative
anticipations of great pain, however, might lead a well-anesthetized patient to develop the same
postoperative edema, vascular stasis, and muscular guarding that would have occurred in the
old-fashioned way without anesthesia. A surgical team talking in an alarming way over a
previously calm, sleeping patient might produce results which are even worse than those which
could have been produced with anticipation and no general anesthesia (Cheek, 1959, 1960b).
What, then, is pain and how can we learn more about it? For answers to these questions, we must
turn to the best authorities-the patients. We must ask each individual patient about expectancy,
about the feeling, and about what that feeling means. Conscious reporting is limited. We need to
know more.
Thermal Burns and Tissue Reaction in Relation to Pain: CASE 7: During
preliminary discussion of hypnosis prior to a demonstration of phenomena, a subject was asked
whether the blister on her finger was painful. She immediately said "No," as she reached over
with the other hand to rub it. After pressing on it, she corroborated the initial statement. A few
minutes later she was learning how to give symbol answers with her fingers. I (229) touched the
blister and asked, "Does the unconscious part of your mind feel any discomfort as I rub this
blister?" Verbally she repeated the "no" answer but her "yes" finger was slowly rising in the
typical trembling response of an unconscious answer. The subject was then asked to make the
blister area numb as though novocaine had been injected into it. An ideomotor signal was
requested for this recognition and for the promise that the anesthetic would continue during the
next 12 hours. At the end of two hours, the blister exudate had resorbed. What was responsible
for this? Could it be better circulation, or something else?
CASE 8: In 1959, I was asked to see the wife of a physician for the purpose of using
hypnosis to relieve the pain of second- and third-degree burns extending from her buttocks to
her neck. There were large keloids encircling most of the second-degree burns. Although five
weeks had elapsed since her accident, she was requiring demerol every two hours. There had
been very little spontaneous epithelialization. The patient had been adamant in prohibiting
attempts at skin grafting because she could not stand the thought of adding to her pain by
trimming donor sites. She was afraid to take an anesthetic. With the help of a Chevreul
pendulum initially, and then finger signals as she went more deeply into hypnosis, it took twenty
minutes to discover that she had been punishing herself severely. When she was 17 her mother
had caught her smoking a cigarette. Pointing a finger at her, the mother had exclaimed, "Some
day God will punish you for this, you are not a good Mormon." The patient came out of
hypnosis to tell me the burns had occurred while she was resting on a sofa in front of the
television. She had finished a highball and had taken a sleeping pill to relax her after a strenuous
day helping her husband in the office. She had fallen asleep, and the cigarette in the ashtray on
her lap had rolled down behind her nylon dressing gown. The smoldering heat awakened her
with a start. As she pulled away from the sofa, the air rushed in exploding the robe. Her back
was burned as she ran along the hall to her husband.
Recovery of the memory about her mother came as a surprise. I had asked her "to orient
to some reason for feeling so guilty as to suffer for five weeks like this." The thought entered her
mind a few seconds after the signaling finger lifted.
After superimposing her conscious reasoning upon the unconscious one - that God was
punishing her for being a bad Mormon - she was able to accept a feeling of coolness and
numbness of all burned areas and to acknowledge the promise to keep the anesthesia for 24
hours. A second session reinforced and continued the anesthesia. Seventy-two hours after the
initial interview, there was an interesting change in the appearance of the lesions. Where there
had been keloids elevated 6 to 10 millimeters above the level of (230) the surrounding skin,
there were now depressions. This is the type of reaction which one finds after injecting cortisol
derivatives beneath keloids. The response must be different in some way from the cortisol
anti-inflammatory effect, however, because I have never seen spread of infection after this type
of anti-inflammatory pseudo-cortisol response (Cheek, 1 960a). We know that cortisol
derivatives allow the spread of infections when the fibrin and vascular barriers are broken down.
This patient needed no demerol after the first interview. She permitted skin grafting a
few days later. She even did better than heal: three years after the injury, there are only two
small patches of scarred skin under each axilla. All the rest of her back is of uniform color and
the skin is of uniform texture and mobility! This was her doing. She had sufficient pride to work
at maintaining the imagery of normal skin on her back. This result is not supposed to happen
after skin grafting for third-degree burns. It would be helpful to know just how guilt interfered
with healing. We could reason that guilt feelings intensified the awareness of supposedly just
punishment, that pain led to spasm of local muscles and stasis of blood. These are suppositions.
It makes me wonder if more effort should be made to search out fears and guilt feelings with all
human beings who are victims of trauma. Box 20 summarizes an ideodynamic approach to the
healing of burn injuries.
Body Image and Body Awareness: Patients in hypnosis give vivid and often helpful
verbal impressions of what their bodies look like and how they feel. Their unconscious idea of
anatomy may be childlike and very different from the idea they render on awakening from
hypnosis. Their impressions may give valuable clues to target organ vulnerability to stress.
CASE 9: While watching a demonstration of a method for teaching a child how to
imagine an electric wire running from a part of his body up to the brain and then turning off a
light that represented the feeling from that part, I was amused at the choice of colors used by the
youngster. The color of the light was so emphatically and quickly stated that it seemed
meaningful to the child. I wondered if this dissociative method of inquiry might be helpful for
understanding body image and awareness in adults. It seemed reasonable to ask the subject to
hallucinate a sort of telephone switchboard in the shape of a body with Christmas tree lights to
symbolize the feelings from whatever organs or extremities seemed appropriate in each case.
I experimented with this approach during a symposium on medical hypnosis in the fall of
1959. It proved most interesting. The physician acting as a subject was in a medium state of
hypnosis. He showed a lag of time between (231) "seeing" the light in each area and being able
to see it at whatever level is represented by the "mind's eye" where he could tell us the color and
intensity of light. The head was represented by a yellow light, the arms by green lights of the
same shade and intensity, but he had a great big red light above the knee in his right leg. I asked
him to let his fingers answer the question, "Do you have any pain in that leg?" The answer was
no. I asked him to orient back through the years of his life experience to the time when a big red
light was put in for that right leg. There was a pause and then the designated finger indicated he
had arrived in his thinking at that time.
[IDEODYNAMIC HEALING OF BURN INJURIES: The method will vary in relation to
the surface extent and the depth of a burn. Ewin (1986) has shown that early action with
hypnosis immediately after a burn and during the time the individual is in a hypnotic-like state
of shock may allow even third-degree burn to heal without need for skin grafting and without
scarring. If a patient is seen hours or days after experiencing a burn, proceed as follows,
explaining the process as a means of eliminating inflammation and allowing healing to occur
rapidly.
1. Accessing inner healing resources
"Remember a time when you walked into cold water. It felt cold for a while until a time when
you got used to it. That represents a degree of numbness. When you are feeling cold at an
unconscious, ideodynamic level, your brain will shut down the messages that cause
inflammation and interfere with healing. "Imagine standing in cold water up to your knees.
When you are feeling that unconsciously, your yes finger will lift. When you are half as
sensitive as normal, your no finger will lift. "Now, walk in further until the cold water is up to
your hips. Your yes finger will lift when you are cold from your hips to your knees, and your no
finger will lift when you are numb from your hips to your toes. Your right hand wrist will be
below the water level and will also feel numb." [This will happen without explanation, even
though the patient is lying in bed.]
2. Self-testing of hypnotic analgesia
"Now you know how to make parts of your body alter sensations. Please place your cold, numb
right hand over the burned area and experience the coldness and numbness flow into the burned
area. When you know the burn is cold and numb, your yes and no fingers will lift to let you
know how well you are doing."
3. Ratifying and maintaining healing
a. "That coldness and numbness will remain there for at least two hours. Then it may be
necessary to repeat the exercise. You will get better each time you do it, and the result will last
longer and work more effectively as you go along."
b. Any difficulty with this procedure may indicate a need to work through emotional problems.
(232)
 A few seconds later he started to chuckle as he said, "That is the darndest thing! I played
football in high school and I had a charley-horse all through school because I kept bumping that
leg." Here was an apparent carry-over of an unconsciously perceived hyperawareness,
conditioned by multiple injuries many years ago. Was this a key to more knowledge that might
help us understand target organ vulnerability to stress?
This hallucinated switchboard body has been most useful in my practice of gynecology
and obstetrics because it has revealed just that type of information. Non-orgasmic patients have
reported "black lights" representing rejection of feeling from genital areas. Some have actually
stated that they could see a light socket but a piece of adhesive tape was covering it. When these
subjects are asked to orient back to a time when "there is a light there" or when something
happens to "make the tape be placed there," there have been helpful bits of information which
were readily explained by the patient in the light of later understandings at the time of interview.
Increasingly I have been impressed by the conviction of many patients that very powerful
forces have influenced their attitudes toward themselves as women, according to what they think
they experienced before, during and after birth. There have been many "lights" which have been
changed by conversations in operating rooms while patients have been anesthetized. There have
been strong hyperawarenesses for various organs because of identifications, because of material
absorbed in the reading of semi-scientific reports in magazines, and because of conditioning.
Box 21 summarizes a "body lights" approach to ameliorating pain and inflammation.
"Imprinting" and Posthypnotic Suggestion in Humans: In my experience, the most
common examples of misdirected sexual development and physiological performance seem to
relate to what Herbert Spiegel (1960) might call "imprinting." Adult females who have suffered
from acne and dysmenorrhea have observed a change in their skin and have rid themselves of
dysmenorrhea on realizing that they had experienced early rejection because of a parental wish
for a boy, and that this did not really mean they were expected to become boys. Clinically, the
matter of fact seems not as important as the apparent fact that the patient believed it to be fact at
(233) the ideational horizon of thinking reflected by ideomotor symbol responses. (235)
["BODY LIGHTS" APPROACH TO AMELIORATING PAIN AND INFLAMMATION
(ARTHRITIS)
1. Accessing and transducing symptoms into "lights"
a. "See yourself standing in front of a full-length mirror. See tiny lights in different parts of your
body. The colors represent the feelings of those parts. When you can see the total picture, your
yes finger will lift to let me know."
b. Scan the body, getting the color of each light and what that color represents to the patient. The
process starts with unimportant parts of the body, ending with exploration of the organ or
extremity suspected of having problems. For example, with rheumatoid arthritis, in which
multiple joints are involved but some are more painful than others, one might proceed as
follows, selecting the least painful for the first therapeutic approach. Confidence builds with
each success from least to most painful. "Look at the entire image of yourself and let your
unconscious mind select the joint you know to be the least inflamed, the least painful. When you
know what it is, your yes finger will lift to tell me which joint and what color."
2. Therapeutic reframing
a. "Let your inner mind shift back to a time when there was a light that represents comfort and
flexibility. When you are there, your yes finger will lift. [Wait for the signal.] Now come
forward to the first moment that color (light) was put there in place of the comfortable light.
When your yes finger lifts, please tell me how old you are and what is happening."
b. "Now, is there any good reason why you should continue with pain in that join!?"
3. Ratifying therapeutic gain
a. "Now that you know what has been happening, is your inner mind willing to let you turn off
that unconscious pain and continue the process of healing?"[If the answer is no, it will be
necessary to orient to whatever factor is standing in the way, as in Step 2.]
b. "Go forward now to the time when you will not only be free of the pain in that joint, but will
have turned off the pain in all the joints that have been troubling you - a time when you are no
longer afraid of pain returning, when you are really well in every respect. When you are there,
your yes finger will lift and you will see a month, day, and year, as though they were written on
a blackboard."
(234)]
Spiegel has likened the neurotic behavior of human beings who are disturbed by single
episode experiences to the very powerful impact of some single episodes with lower animals.
Lorenz (1935) found that graylag goslings exposed to a wooden decoy duck during the first day
of life would select and relate to that duck in preference to their own mother thereafter. Hess
(1959) explored this matter of single, significant experiences compared to the repeated
conditioned types of learning in some birds and mammals. Spiegel compared the "compulsive
triad" of posthypnotic behavior to this phenomenon of apparent "imprinting" in human
compulsive neurotic behavior. An understanding linked with a powerful emotional stress such as
birth, general anesthesia, serious illness, coma, or frightening labor may be repressed into
unconscious zones of mentation and produce disturbed compulsive behavior which then has to
be rationalized in some way by the patient. This is what happens with a suggestion for unusual
posthypnotic behavior. There may be no amnesia for the suggestion. In this case the subject may
decide intellectually to discard the suggestion. If there is posthypnotic amnesia for the
suggestion then, as Spiegel points out, there is amnesia, compulsive behavior, dictated by the
suggestion, and conscious rationalization for the behavior.
Continuation of the process of posthypnotic behavior varies with a number of factors, the
most significant of which is probably the unconscious prehypnotic understanding that this is an
experimental situation which is not expected to continue. Such a censoring mechanism may not
be available for protection during great emotional stress.
Overview of Research on Tissue Trauma, Pain, and Inflammation: Let us explore
some of the reasons we may hope to advance in our understanding and therapy for
psychosomatic disease. First we must know why an organ or system becomes susceptible to
damage, and then we must understand how damage occurs.
Esdaile observed that "mesmeric" relief of pain diminished the inflammatory reactions of
trauma and infection (Esdaile, 1850/1957). The rush of enthusiasm about chemical anesthesia
and what Huxley has called the "voluntary ignorance" (1956) of the medical profession held up
the investigation of just what happens to make this possible. Thirty-two years went by.
In 1877 Delboeuf, Professor of Psychology at Liege (1877/1947), did some experiments
with hypnosis in an effort to understand the reasons for apparent rapid healing and the failure of
blisters to form when hypnotically anesthetized parts of the body were traumatized or burned.
He hypnotized two volunteers and burned both arms of each subject as nearly equally as (235)
possible. Each subject had one arm normally sensitive and the other "anesthetized" by
suggestion. Blisters did not form on the insensitive arms, and healing was more rapid on the
insensitive arms. Reversal of the experiment using the opposite arm for control gave the same
results. Seventy-three years of voluntary blindness elapsed before the next progress.
 In 1950 Graham showed that reactions and permeability of minute vessels in the skin
could be altered in situations perceived by the individual as threatening. The general principles
of this type of reaction might be expected. We see it with the ideo-vascular reactions of
blanching or blushing with emotion. Graham used conversational methods of interview.
Armstrong, Jepson, Keele and Stewart (1957) found pain-producing substances in blister
exudate. In the same year, Ostfield, Chapman, Goodell, and Wolff, (1957) found pain-producing
polypeptides in the scalp exudates of patients suffering from migraine headaches.
The first major contribution to our knowledge of unconsciously controllable tissue
reactions came from Cornell Medical Center in New York. Chapman, Goodell, and Harold
Wolff (1959a,b) reported their findings with what appears to have been an independent
repetition of Delboeuf's experiment. Harold Wolff had not mentioned hypnosis in his 1948 book
Pain, published in collaboration with Stewart Wolf of the University of Oklahoma School of
Medicine.
Results were not particularly remarkable when one arm was normally sensitive and the
other "anesthetized." But they added another step which is of utmost importance. They suggested
to the hypnotized volunteers that something very uncomfortable would be happening to the
normal arm. Anticipation of an unknown painful stimulus brought about a marked difference in
tissue reaction between the insensitive arm and the perceptive arm to which the subject was
giving increased attentiveness. Now when the same stimulus was applied to both arms, there was
a marked inflammatory reaction in the sensitive skin and very little reaction in the insensitive
skin.
Perfusates were collected from both traumatized areas of each subject by running
physiological saline into the subcutaneous tissues at the upper edge of the injured skin and
collecting it by gravity through another needle at the lower margin. It was possible for them to
demonstrate the presence of an enzyme released by efferent nerves at the site of injury. The
perfusate from the consciously painful skin area contained much of this substance, but the
amount of enzyme was diminished or absent on the anesthetized side. The enzyme has specific,
reproducible qualities. It produced signs of inflammation when injected into normal skin
elsewhere in the body. The perfusate from the "anesthetized" skin did not cause an inflammatory
reaction.
In reference to the meaning of their work, these investigators state that release of this
enzyme which they have called "neurokinin" probably represents an adaptive mechanism for
protection of the organism: Chapman, Goodell, & Wolff (1959b, p. 104) say: Such adaptive
reactions at times may be essential to survival, but if evoked inappropriately or excessively may
contribute to disease, since non-noxious stimulation becomes noxious and mildly damaging
stimuli result in greater injury.
Conclusion: We have discussed some techniques of ideomotor questioning and their
values for communication with levels of awareness approximating those where perception and
attitude govern physiologic adaptations. Consideration has been given to some applications of
hypnosis and ideomotor techniques of analysis in areas of medicine where we need to understand
better the emotional forces and their influence. Not all evidence derived from the use of
ideomotor questioning methods and hypnosis is valid. It is increasinglyevident, however, that
hypnosis is a natural phenomenon occurring spontaneously and often helpfully during times of
emotional and physical stress. It is a phenomenon relating to self-protection for the individual
through camouflage and restriction of energy waste. In the hypnotic state, imagery and tissue
memory can be mobilized for immediate use, just as they are in times of stress. For this reason,
the combination of hypnosis with ideomotor communication permits more rapid and complete
access to associations of imagery and physiologic response to stress than any other means so far
available. (237)
15. IDEODYNAMIC APPROACHES IN GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS: DAVID
CHEEK & ERNEST ROSSI: FROM “MIND-BODY THERAPY”: WW NORTON & CO.
NEW YORK: 1988
With few exceptions, the use of hypnotism in medicine is merely an extension of
methods long utilized by physicians who have sensed, consciously or unconsciously, the
importance of psychological factors in disease. With hypnotic techniques it is possible to reach
unconscious memories that cannot be reached in other ways; it is possible to control some
physiological disturbances that cannot be controlled in other ways. The physician who begins to
allow his patients to give him their explanations of symptoms during hypnosis will find an
increasing scope to his successful work and an increasing number of patients who will be
grateful for his catalytic action in helping them recover. He will discover differences in the
meanings of words depending upon whether they are understood at a conscious or unconscious
level of awareness. He will become increasingly sensitive to nuances of facial expression,
emphasis on syllables, and inflections of voice, for these reflect more nearly the important
answers to his questions. He will learn to treat seemingly unconscious patients with respect for
their ability to hear. He will learn not to talk carelessly but will talk purposefully to improve
their chances for recovery from trauma and to improve their responses to surgery (Cheek, 1959).
General Principles for Consideration: There are certain philosophical principles in
consideration of disease and medical therapy which I will outline.
Illness represents an imbalance between an organism and its environment. Environmental
stress, both physical and emotional, may lower resistance to invading organisms or damage
otherwise normal physiological processes. As physicians we are concerned with two situations:
On the one hand, we may find depleted reserves of energy in the individual; on the other hand,
we may find a normal individual overwhelmed by abnormal levels of (280) stress. Our task is to
return the individual to as normal a balance with the environment as possible.
UNCONSCIOUS GUILT AS IMPEDIMENT TO RECOVERY: Forces of
conscience, guilt, and assumed need for punishment function very strongly in all traumatic
situations, and become of increasing importance whenever disease tends to continue in spite of
therapy or to recur after temporary relief. It is of utmost importance that we recognize passive
submission to illness occurring at an unconscious level while our patient is telling us, at a
conscious level, how much she wants to get well.
The patient who was told by her aunt that lifting a heavy laundry basket an hour before a
placental separation must have caused the death of her unborn child may seem consciously to
have accepted a less traumatic explanation from her physician, while her unconscious mind may
be feeling she is now unworthy of another pregnancy.
A 26-year-old patient with intractable pain from local recurrence of a naso-pharyngeal
cancer during her third pregnancy told me, in conscious level conversation, how much she
wanted to live for her husband and child. A few minutes later, in a deep trance, she demonstrated
great agitation and unwillingness to consider the possibility of recovery. With the help of
ideomotor questioning, she was able to verbalize thoughts that had never occurred to her at a
conscious level. She had had intercourse with her husband before marriage, which she had been
able to rationalize until she miscarried a much wanted pregnancy.
When she developed lumps in her neck in the sixth month of her second pregnancy, she
"knew" that God was punishing her for her sin. She refused diagnostic biopsy and surgery until
six months following delivery. The reason she had given her consultants for this delay was that
she did not want to risk harm to her unborn baby by undergoing surgery. Her fingers indicated
another reason. She felt that, if it were God's will to take one baby and to strike her with a
malignancy during her second pregnancy, He probably wanted her to die. By asking her to
pretend that she was God - a kind and forgiving one that she had been taught to revere-it was
possible for her to recognize that premarital intercourse would not merit such punishment.
She began to wonder whether her exaggerated sense of guilt might have caused the
abortion, or even to have had something to do with the disturbed tissue reactions leading to the
cancer. She lost most of the edema of her face and her pain for a brief span of time until her
dominating mother, who disapproved of hypnosis, cast doubt upon the legitimacy of her
experience. She fluctuated once again between hope and abject submission to the will of that
cruel, personal God. She survived the birth of her surprisingly healthy infant by a few weeks
only. (282)
MIND-BODY THERAPY: Such individuals believe that the God who punishes them is
stricter and more unyielding than the God of other people. Their entire picture of illness may
change in the space of a few hours when they are helped to "trade places" with God during a
hypnotic interview.
It should be emphasized here that religious training is not a prerequisite for assumed guilt
and passive acceptance of disease as punishment. In fact, there is some evidence that religion
had its beginnings in times of human dismay, in the presence of overwhelming fire, flood, war,
and pestilence. I have seen two rather hard-bitten painters become enthusiastic about religion
upon returning safely to the ground after swinging wildly for a time on a scaffolding at the
fifteenth floor of a San Francisco building during an earthquake. Hypnotic uncovering
techniques are helpful in finding and correcting misdirected religious feelings leading to
submission to disease. Indeed, we have no other tool as effective as hypnosis in this respect.
DIFFERENT LEVELS OF AWARENESS: There seem to be three general levels of
thought which may, at times, be contradictory, one to another. Human beings react consciously,
according to experience in one way. At a very deep level of unconscious attitude, they have little
sense of humor, they understand the meaning of words in a literal, almost childish way, and they
seem to possess a strong drive to live or recover from illness. It is in the middle zone of
unconscious behavior where confusions of thought abound. Here unresolved anxieties may
fatigue the individual's resources into passive acceptance of disease or into active search for
death as a lesser of evils. Within the brief scope of time available to us in clinical medicine, we
are not able to indulge in protracted orthopsychiatric techniques of therapy. Communication in
ordinary conversation between patient and psychotherapist can seldom gain access to deep
unconscious attitudes. These levels can be accessed, however, by ideomotor questioning
techniques. When we appeal to the deep, unconscious positive drives, we may aid a depressed
patient in understanding her previous reasons for submission and help her decide to fight
successfully for recovery.
VASCULAR STASIS: All muscles of the body must alternately relax and contract in
order to maintain optimum nutrition and oxygen supply. Pathologic changes occur when either
extreme of tension or flaccidity is continued too long. At one end of the scale is atrophy, which
we can see causing the vaginal prolapses of widowed or non-orgasmic patients. At the other end
of the scale there are sensations of pain apparently due to accumulation of metabolic waste
products. Pain causes further unconscious muscle contracture. Excessive or prolonged mild
muscular contraction tends to constrict the thin-walled @82) venous channels of egress while
permitting continued ingress of arterial blood under pressure through the more resilient arterial
system. This disturbance of capillary pressure gradient and nutrition permits escape of fluid into
the tissues causing further disturbance of circulation. The gynecologist must recognize factors
that can cause increased and decreased muscular activity in order to help his patients with pelvic,
back, and urologic syndromes resulting from muscle spasm pain and edema. Approach to these
factors with hypnotic techniques will permit more successful surgery when indicated, and may
often even make surgery unnecessary.
"THE LAW OF REVERSED EFFORT": The achievement of any goal requiring a
learning process is at the expense of many experiences of disappointing failure. Every intelligent
human being has learned to walk, to avoid wetting the bed, and to eat neatly only after many
failures. Thus it happens that there is a law of human behavior, called by Emile Coue, "The Law
of Reversed Effort." Equally balanced forces of hope versus fear of failure will result in failure.
There are myriad examples of this law. There is the difficulty in using a bedpan after surgery, or
the inability of a patient to relax purposefully the contracted muscles around an injured area. It is
possible that many patients develop a relative and even absolute frigidity because of the
assumption that they are not performing sexually as expected. Many patients lose their sterility
problem when they cease making purposeful efforts toward conception and either decide that
children are not important or partially satisfy their needs through adoption. Many have
demonstrated their capacity for conception by simply deciding to let a gynecological consultant
take the responsibility of making necessary improvements in their performance. I have had six
such patients become pregnant after two or more years of sterility during the interval between
calling in for an appointment and the time they were first seen in my office. Age regression
studies of these patients indicated that their conviction in ultimate medical help changed their
attitude toward intercourse. They felt that conception occurred when they stopped feeling that
intercourse was an unfair test of their ability to conceive.
A corollary to this law of reversed effort is the need for giving patients confidence in the
eventual success of any assigned task. We cannot expect a patient to develop a continued
anesthesia for a painful area unless she has learned that she could do it for a foot or an arm or
some relatively unimportant area.
A second corollary relates to what I call the "slip-back phenomenon." A once diffident
and defeated patient who has achieved success will soon begin thinking, This is too good to
continue and I wonder what might happen to spoil it. Such patients should be helped to
understand that relapses are normal but that even these can be instructive if a search for
immediate (283) factors is made when a relapse occurs. Patients should be told that relapses may
occur but will be less severe each time and intervals between will be greater. This type of
instruction proves a stimulating challenge to some patients who may nicely prove that the
therapist was wrong in being so pessimistic.
ALTERING PATHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS: When one arm of the hypnotized
subject is sensitive and the other arm is slightly or completely numb, we can demonstrate a
difference of tissue reaction when both arms are scratched with the point of a hypodermic
needle. While there may be variations in the primary reaction, the response of the scratches after
two or more hours is different. Edema and redness persist along the course of the scratch on the
sensitive arm but they disappear rapidly on the insensitive arm. I have repeated this test with
over one thousand patients. Among two hundred consecutive patients, there were four who
showed no difference between the scratches, and two who, for some reason, gave a reversed
reaction. This simple demonstration is of great value with patients who have lost confidence in
being able to alter a pathological condition. It can give motivation to the patient with a pelvic
congestion syndrome to discover the reasons for her having become hypersensitive in the pelvic
area, and to bring about the necessary improvements that can decrease the size of the uterus,
improve function of the ovaries, and remove discomfort.
I have used simple training for analgesia with a patient who was running a septic course
from a puerperal uterine infection and showing no response to chemotherapy. Apparently, there
was enough improvement in the pelvic circulation brought about by relief from pain to permit
reduction of her temperature to normal within 36 hours (Cheek, 1957). The only explanation that
makes sense here is that the edema and vascular congestion had blocked the drugs from reaching
the infected zone.
Suggestions of numbness lasting 24 hours permitted a patient with a perirectal abscess to
lose the induration and redness after needle aspiration of the abscess. A planned operation for
removal of the supposed fistula tract was not needed, and there was no recurrence during five
subsequent years of observation. At one time I would have hospitalized such a patient for
drainage and hot packs. (284)
[SURGICAL AND OBSTETRICAL ANALGESIA:
1. Accessing unconscious control of analgesia
a. "Walk into an imaginary, cold lake until the water reaches your knees. When you feel the
cold, your yes finger will lift unconsciously. Tell me when you are feeling cold from your knees
down."
b. "When you are in cold water, you soon get used to it. It is no longer cold. You are about half
as sensitive as you usually are. If you stubbed a toe or bumped your shin, you would feel a bump
but there would be no pain. Your no finger will lift to let you know when you are half as
sensitive as you were at first."
c. "Now walk in until you feel the cold water up to your ribs. When you feel cold from your ribs
to your knees, your yes finger will lift. When you are numb from your ribs down to your toes,
your no finger will lift."
d. "Now press your left thumb and index finger together. This associates instant coolness and
numbness, and you will be able to do this with increasing speed every time you repeat this
exercise."
e. "Now loosen your pressure on the left hand, and press the index finger and thumb on your
right hand to bring back, instantly, all the feelings that have been cool and numb."
f. "Practice this at home until you know you can reproduce these sensation changes any time you
wish."
2. Therapeutic facilitation
a. Have patient repeat exercise until confidence is assured.
b. Explain that making labor more like the work of sawing wood than like a long arduous
experience will allow the baby to be born feeling welcome and free of guilt.
c. "By turning off unconscious, painful stimuli, you will heal without inflammation and will be
able to go home sooner."
3. Ratifying and extending new ability
"Learning this skill will not only make your immediate task easier, but also will aid you in
meeting unrelated tasks with confidence in the future." (285)]
I have found hypnosis valuable in therapy for fertility problems. Infertile patients often suffer
from sexual inhibitions and fears that cause non-orgasmic responses. Frustrations stemming
from trying to have intercourse on (284)pillows, in knee-chest positions, and on special days of
the menstrual cycle after study of basal temperature graphs have caused secondary impotence in
husbands and non-orgasmic responses in wives. Although many women with big families have
demonstrated their personal capacity for conception in the absence of orgasm, from the partial
knowledge of clinical observation it seems that there is a physiological advantage given to
anorgasmic, infertile women when their sexual responsiveness is improved.
It is dangerous for a physician to discuss sexual problems in an unctuous tone of voice as
though he were courting a girl friend. I have often spoken of this pitfall to my students; I hope
the advice will be indelibly imprinted upon the unconscious minds of my readers. Another
proviso of utmost importance in the therapy of these problems is that the therapist should meet
the husband and be assured through firsthand observation that the husband understands the
mechanisms of hypnosis and is supportive of it. It is inadvisable to proceed with hypnotherapy
when a husband refuses to come in or indicates in some way that he does not believe in the value
of hypnosis.
SIMPLE POSTURAL SUGGESTION DEMONSTRATING REVERSED EFFORT
EFFECT: The primary steps in therapy with sterility patients are the same for anorgasmic
patients, as well as those suffering from primary and secondary dysmenorrhea. It is most
fortunate that we have some simple tests of postural suggestion available, because with them we
can demonstrate how muscles can contract at an unconscious level. We can demonstrate that
"trying" to move muscles does not achieve a result as easily as knowing that an imaginary force
can bring about the movement. By showing the reversed effort effect described by Coue, we can
help patients understand that past failures to conceive, to respond sexually to the degree
expected, or to control the painful uterine contractions of dysmenorrhea, were not from want of
trying but could, in fact, be the result of trying too hard. This is an emotional face-saving device
of great significance because it disarms any possible counteroffensive of a patient who might
feel that an emotional handicap is a disgrace. The following steps have been valuable in
superficial therapy with many diseases involving hypersensitivity.
(1) The seated patient is asked to close her eyes and to hold her hands extended at shoulder
height, with the thumbs about six inches apart. She is asked to pretend that a heavy purse is
hanging on the arm least encumbered with jewelry. Suggestions of heaviness and the strong
downward drag of the purse are given until the "weighted" arm moves down several inches. She
is then asked to open her eyes and notice the difference in the position of the arms. Attention is
drawn to the fact that one arm felt heavier because she was noticing more sensations from this
arm than from the other one. It is explained that the muscular reaction causing a downward
movement of the weighted arm was produced at an unconscious level in much the same way as
(286) she might put her foot down on an imaginary brake if the automobile driver were
approaching an intersection too rapidly. She is told that many unconscious movements are as
misdirected as trying to stop a car by pressing on the floorboard. It is added that if muscles
continue in a tense state, they will disturb the removal of waste products and the blood vessels
will give pain because of oxygen lack.
(2) After a brief rest, the patient is asked to close her eyes and again hold her hands extended
forward. The suggestion is made that there is a string tied around the wrist nearest to me, and I
am going to pull steadily on the string to draw her arm toward me. After it has moved several
inches in my direction, I ask the patient to keep her eyes closed and "try" to pull the outstretched
arm back toward the other arm. There is usually a tremor as opposing sets of muscles go into
action; the earlier suggestion having been to pull toward me, and the weaker second suggestion
implying failure with the word try pulling toward the other arm. Usually the patient will add
strength to her own suggestion by thinking, Of course I can pull it back. There will be a
momentary movement of the arms together. At this moment I ask her to stop "trying" and let the
arms move as they please while still remaining up. Generally, the arm with the imaginary string
will start to drift back toward me, because that was the original suggestion.
(3) The third step takes only a few moments. The arms are kept up after the "slip -back" is
demonstrated. The patient is told that she can pretend the string is cut; she can learn how to do
things the easy way by pretending that she has a rubber band around her wrists, and that she is
going to relax now and let the elasticity of the band pull her arms together. When her thumbs
have touched, she is asked to open her eyes and observe how nicely a job gets done if she
visualizes the goal as already completed and allows the unconscious mind to take care of the
muscular details necessary for completion of the task. At this moment, depending on the reason
for demonstrating the tests, some hints are given that there will be a living, healthy baby, or that
menstruation can be normal and comfortable.
Ideomotor Techniques of Questioning and Response in Discovering and Correcting
Psychological Factors: The techniques of discovery and correction of psychological factors
may be carried out in the following steps:
1. Determining whether or not the patient believes that there may be some emotional factor
relating to the beginning or the continuation of the trouble; ruling out the possibility of
self-punishment.
2. Asking her in hypnosis to "orient back" to the first moment when she felt that something
significant was occurring in relation to this problem, and letting her yes finger pull up to indicate
when she is there.
3. Training the patient to speak about the thoughts triggered by the (187) ideomotor questioning.
This can often be done with the suggestion, "As your finger lifts, the thought can be pulled up to
the more nearly conscious level where you can speak about it, if you feel it is all right."
4. If there is refusal to discuss pertinent material, ask if it would be all right in orienting forward
again to the time of interview to understand and talk about the material. Often the first memory
is at the horizon of time when it was first experienced, and at that time might have been too
loaded. If this is also refused, we can ask if she can go over this material at an unconscious level
and work it out by herself. If she answers yes, she can be asked to signal the beginning and the
ending of the experience; she can be asked to go over it rapidly many times until she thoroughly
understands it in the light of all her knowledge and experience of later years. She is told that
when it no longer can cause her trouble in any way, she will feel one arm lift upward as though
there were balloons attached to the wrist. This technique has been helpful during a busy schedule
because a patient can be asked to review the material while the therapist is working with another
patient. The raised arm can indicate that the task of review has been successfully completed. I
would prefer to report that this method is universally successful. However, the optimistic
signaling of the completed job of reasoning out the problem does not always assure the happy
termination of the matter, but it does create an atmosphere of optimism which can be most
helpful during continued therapy.
5. After the patient has reviewed unconsciously significant material, she is asked to
project forward on an unconscious level to a time when the goal has been achieved (she has
delivered a healthy, normal baby, or she is more responsive sexually than she has ever dreamed
was possible, or she has menstruated without any discomfort, and so forth), and to signal with a
finger when she is there. She is told that, as the finger goes up to signal, she will know the date
and be able to say it. This mechanism of testing the optimism and confidence of the patient, as
well as setting an unconsciously definite goal, is helpful in evaluating future therapeutic
environment. I have frequently had consciously confident sterility patients tell me how sure they
were of having a baby. A few minutes later, during hypnotic projection to the time of delivery,
these same patients burst into tears, saying they don't think they can ever have a baby. It is
important to achieve acceptance of the goal attainment.
Students often ask about the possible dangers of talking too confidently about the optimal
results of surgery, or about the too optimistic visions of the future. It is my feeling that a
gynecologist is going to use good judgment in ascertaining, as well as he can, the general
possibilities of his patient before speaking out in such a manner. I would consider it poor
judgment to tell a woman with endometrial carcinoma that she could stop this bleeding with
some hypnosis. I would not hesitate, however, to speak of survival and (288) eventual cure to a
woman with a proven cancer, even if she had already shown evidence of recurrence after
therapeutic surgery, or irradiation, or both. Extension of cancer represents only a temporary
weakening of the patient's resistance to cancer growth. The battle can be swung over to the
advantage of the patient by surgery, by irradiation, or by an insurgency of spirit alone. There are
more than 112 valid instances of spontaneous cures of cancer in the world literature (Everson &
Cole, 1959; Locke & HornigRohan, 1983; Locke, Power, & Cabot, 1986; O'Regan, 1987). I talk
about these to cancer patients and explain that they are being given all the best chances to win
the battle. Hope is a valuable asset in all disease and should be nurtured convincingly, even at
the expense of exposing ourselves to our critics as being incorrect in our judgments. I believe
that if our motives are sincere, we can never harm our patients by keeping our own enthusiasm
strong, and by stimulating hope.
Relation of Unconscious Attitudes and Abnormal Uterine Bleeding: For a discussion
of the psychosomatic factors in abnormal bleeding, the reader should refer to Flanders Dunbar
(1954) who, for 25 years, has compiled summaries of important studies relating to bodily
changes with emotion. (See also, Banks, 1985; Barber, 1978, 1984; Cheek, 1962c, 1969a;
Erickson, 1980b; Rossi & Ryan, 1986.) Many medical hypnotists have claimed an ability to
direct menstruation to start at specific times. They probably have not reported their failures, but
still the fact remains that this can be done.
A patient with pseudocyesis and amenorrhea lasting 18 months was carefully questioned
during hypnosis in such a way that she discovered she really did believe she could have children,
and that having children would not mean the destruction of her marriage in the same way that
her mother's marriage had been destroyed. Her father had died of pneumonia a few months after
her birth. She had somehow felt responsible for his death and seemed to think, with the childish
superstition of her unconscious mind, that her husband likewise would be taken from her in
punishment. At the time of her second interview, she decided that she could menstruate on a
specific date three weeks from then. She started on the day prior to this appointed day, but
menstruated a month later exactly on the chosen day. She had no further trouble.
Conversely, continued and profuse bleeding-which is often due to depression, fear of
pregnancy, and fear of loss of a loved one - will respond very well to therapy after the
superficial, conjoint, patient-doctor fear of cancer has been removed by the usual studies. We
can tell the patient stories about other patients who learned that emotional factors caused their
bleeding, and who were cured by this discovery. Usually, such patients will revert (289) to
normal menstrual cycles when their self-confidence has been improved. The original cause may
not be corrected, but the patient can often make her own adjustments following ordinary
conscious-level conversation. To save time, I now use ideomotor questioning with all patients
who have abnormal bleeding. I will not argue with the endocrinologists who feel that there are
hormonal reasons for such bleeding. I prefer to believe that hormonal changes in my patients can
be brought about by feelings of sexual rejection, feelings of guilt over a protracted "stalemate" in
a love-triangle, and depression over death or illness of a loved one. During ideomotor
questioning, these impressions are usually yielded into "possible emotional factors in the
bleeding." I have been impressed with the fear-of-pregnancy factor in continued puerperal
bleeding. The reasons extracted during hypnotic questioning are important, for these patients
have stopped abnormal bleeding. The subjective evaluation is always double-checked to ensure
that there is no other subjectively important etiological factor. Although scientifically the study
is hard to assess, the practical value of such investigation will stand against criticism.
I have had failures with hypnosis in cases of emotionally produced abnormal bleeding.
One failure occurred with a lesbian whose partner had died from exsanguinating hemorrhage
after what seems to have been an induced abortion. My patient's reaction probably represented a
depression factor, sexual rejection shown by the girl's heterosexual complication, and a rejection
of feminine symbolism. Much talk, much hormone, and several curettages were of no avail, and
I was forced, in defeat, to perform a hysterectomy.
In emergency situations of exsanguinating hemorrhage, we have a tool in hypnosis which
can be of life-saving value. It is easy to hypnotize such subjects, for they are often in hypnosis
already. They will respond beautifully when their attention is drawn to their ability to feel
comfortable and relaxed. While paying attention to the speaker's directions given in a quiet and
reassuring voice, they will pay less attention to all the previous stimuli which had added to their
fears. These include the sight of blood, reactions of worried relatives, and the fact that the
physician was willingly available at once, or was worried enough to send an ambulance for the
patient.
I have carefully explored via age regression, the experiences of patients who have
survived massive gynecological and obstetrical hemorrhage. All felt that the bleeding increased
as they became frightened; all felt that they "picked up" their fears from relatives and from the
behavior of worried medical attendants; all felt that they would have stopped bleeding if the
gravity of their condition had not evoked so much hurried and trembling fingered attention.
Personal experience with control of hemorrhage is hard to evaluate. There were witnesses
to massive obstetrical postpartum hemorrhages which I have seen terminated by a few
suggestions given under the assumption that (290) the patient was already in a trance. In my
resident training, I had to apply an Allis clamp to the bleeding cuff of vagina after a total
hysterectomy on one occasion, and in practice I have had to reopen the abdomen of a patient
hemorrhaging from a uterine vein after a cesarean-total hysterectomy. I attempted to utilize
hypnosis with the second patient, but I can well remember how worried I was over her
developing signs. I was an unconvincing hypnotist, telling her to stop bleeding while I was
getting the operating room staff together for emergency surgery. This patient, and one other who
had contradictory feelings about sterilization through hysterectomy after her third cesarean
section, have been the only problems in 1,250 successive gynecological operations, since I have
been using hypnosis. I do not cite these figures in pride over the quality of my surgery, but
rather in respect for the ability of properly prepared surgical patients to do well with their
hemostasis when they are treated with respect for their ability to control it.
Hypnosis should be tried on patients with purpura and other forms of bleeding diatheses.
Fearful responses of physicians are often perceived by such patients, and it seems reasonable to
assume that these responses might be altered. These conditions can occur in conjunction with
gynecological problems, but I have not seen any during 13 years of private practice. Approach to
the problem could be made by stating to the patient that fear has been known to cause such
bleeding, and relaxation in hypnosis seems to have a remarkable effect in improving clotting
mechanisms. I would use an authoritative "shock" method, such as that of Furst and Kashiwa
(1958), or a soothing conversational one, recalling for the patient pleasant times in her life when
she was relaxed and having no trouble with bleeding. The method would depend upon the
gravity of the situation.
The Convergence of Emotional and Organic Factors in the Spontaneous
Development of a Serious Conditioning: A disturbed physiological process was altered in one
patient through the use of hypnosis by first relieving pain, then discovering and resolving
feelings of guilt, and finally, helping her to remember vividly the feelings of diarrhea and
hunger.
The patient had been admitted to an emergency room in coma after she had injected
approximately two hundred cc. of turpentine through the uterine cavity and tubes into the
abdominal cavity. The admitting officer, not realizing that his patient was listening said, "Get a
load of this! This patient has used turpentine to abort herself!" The younger medical attendant
had answered in awe, "It will be lucky if we pull her through this." The patient, who had
mistakenly interpreted her guilt-induced amenorrhea as a sign of pregnancy, reacted to this
conversation rather badly. Because she had been carrying on an affair with another man while
her husband was away, she felt that death was deserved. (291)
She was seen in consultation on the eighth day of almost complete ileus.
There was a doughy, indurated mass of agglomerated bowel, omentum, and peritoneal exudate
palpable above the umbilicus. Her pregnancy test was negative. A probe passed easily through
the cervical os into the uterine cavity, which measured only 8 cms. in length and showed absence
of a pyometra. She had accidentally pulled out her naso-gastric tube the day before consultation.
Standing-flat films showed distended, gas-filled small bowel with numerous fluid levels. Her
urinary output was adequate and her N.P.N. [non protein nitrogen] was within upper limits of
normal; but her general appearance was that of dejection, and I was concerned about her
listlessness. She had been suffering constantly from abdominal pain and had required demerol
regularly on schedule both day and night.
There were several fortuitous circumstances about this situation which helped motivate
me, as responsible consultant, and the patient, as principal sufferer, to use hypnosis. I had seen
the open abdomens of several such patients during resident training in Baltimore, where
turpentine is more commonly used as an abortifacient. Edema with this type of chemical
peritonitis is so marked that a dissecting finger can tear through muscularis of bowel as though it
were wet tissue paper. I did not want to enter this abdomen. The patient was a member of
Jehovah's Witnesses and was not at all interested in having surgery of any kind. I told her that
pain might be the cause of so much tissue reaction in her abdomen, and that the bowel was not
able to function well- partly because she could not feel hungry when she was in pain, and partly
because demerol does not improve appetite.
I asked her if she would be interested in learning how to stop the pain with hypnosis. At
first she was reluctant, but I explained that hypnosis was just a use of imagination and that it was
the same thing every good actress used in making a part seem real to her audience. I was in safe
territory. During our initial conversation she had told me that she had once dreamed of being an
actress. It seemed wise to use this in my appeal. She reacted very well to a test of postural
suggestion with an imagined weight of a purse hanging on one arm. I explained that the
downward movement of her "heavy" arm was caused by unconscious movement of muscles
behaving as they would if there really were a weight hanging there. I said that the difference in
feeling of the two arms was the result of her paying more attention to the ordinary pull of gravity
on the "heavy" arm compared to the other one, and that she could learn some tricks about paying
no attention to the pain in her abdomen in a similar way. I explained that my reason for wanting
her to have the sensation of a normal abdomen was in order for her to begin using the ordinary
behavior of the bowel as it functioned when she was comfortable. The reasoning seemed
acceptable, and the patient went into a medium trance while I explained these things to her as the
test of postural suggestion was progressing.
As she drifted deeper, I asked her to let her fingers respond unconsciously (292) to some
questions, according to the technique of LeCron (1954). She gave a yes signal to the question,
"Is there some emotional reason for your pain and symptoms lasting so long?" (The question was
asked in order to convey the unconscious impression that I believed she could improve if there
were such reasons. I already knew she had guilt feelings about the supposed pregnancy. I did not
know about the significance of the talking in the emergency room until she brought this out a
few minutes later when asked to go back at an unconscious level to the reason for her continued
trouble, and signal by lifting her index finger when she was there.) The memory of the statement
"It will be lucky if we pull her through this" had not been present at a conscious level, nor was it
available at first with conversation during the medium trance.
We discussed the various misunderstandings between herself and her husband and the
possibility that she had let herself become involved in her affair as a reprisal, which could
probably be worked out and understood by both of them later on. I reiterated the fact that she
had not been pregnant, and that perhaps tonight she could stop punishing herself with pain.
Her reaction to the discussion was favorable and she accepted the suggestion of a
numbness for one arm as though she had been lying on the arm for a long time. After she had
satisfied herself of her ability in this unimportant area, I asked her unconscious mind to imagine
a numbness gradually rising upward from her feet, as though she were walking into a magic pool
of fluid capable of numbing all the tissues beneath the wet skin. Her index finger finally raised
to signal completion of the numbness when it had reached her rib cage. (In asking for this type
of imagined analgesia, it is important, I believe, to avoid the possibility of conscious-level
evaluation of the numbness. Normal pessimism will often wipe out development of the analgesia
before there has been a chance to realize that it is present. The patient will accept analgesia when
her unconscious has signaled its presence with a muscle movement, particularly if she has
already seen that ideomotor responses reflect memory which had not been previously available.)
The suggestion was given that she would be able to sleep well that night and that she could
remain comfortable all night.
This patient reported happily the next morning that she had needed no demerol, and she
demonstrated her continued numbness by pressing deeply into her still-distended abdomen. Her
personality reaction had improved with her surprise in discovering her ability.
With this elevated platform of performance, I thought it might be helpful to have her
remember how it felt to have the lower bowel active enough to expel some gas. When I saw her
a few hours later she reported the passage of flatus. It occurred to me that, coming as she did
from New Orleans, she might be able to remember a "good old southern summer diarrhea." With
the feeling and consideration born of personal experience, I described just how actively churning
her bowel could feel, and that in about ten minutes (293) after I awakened her, she could be
concerned about the possibility that she might not get to her bathroom a few feet away before
eliminating a liquid stool. She had two liquid stools within an hour.
On the following morning, her tenth day of illness, she was placed in hypnosis and asked
to let her imagination play with memories of a very special hunger for a particularly choice
meal. She chose to contemplate a juicy steak until her mouth began to water and she complained
of her growling stomach. I asked her to talk with her physician about the possibility of taking
liquids by mouth. He saw her a few minutes after I left the room, and allowed her some liquid
gelatin. None of this returned through her nasal tube when it was undamped after an hour. She
was allowed then to pull out her own tube. Within 24 hours she was eating a soft diet, was free
of distention, and was eliminating soft stools. Although the plastic peritonitis remained palpably
unchanged during the next week, there seemed to be nothing wrong with this patient's intestinal
peristalsis or capacity for selective absorption once she had developed hope, freedom from pain,
and freedom from guilt. She was discharged four days after beginning of hypnotherapy.
This case is presented because it exemplifies the convergence of emotional with organic
factors in the development of a serious clinical problem that threatened a need for surgical
intervention and possibly the patient's life. It also demonstrates some of the ways in which
hypnosis can be used to alter sensation, discover emotional factors, and correct physiological
misbehavior.
Gynecological Conditions in Which Etiological Psychic Factors Are Present :
VULVA
Pruritus vulvae: Sexual denial and frustration.
VAGINA
Some forms of trichomonal, monilial and nonspecific vaginitis: Conditioned response of anxiety
often aggravated by the fear of genital cancer or venereal disease; often aggravated by strict
therapy of the gynecologist and the tacit or verbalized intimations that this may be a recurring
disease.
Vaginismus: Fear.
Vaginal anesthesia: Frigidity.
CERVIX
Leukorrhea: Anxiety, fear of pregnancy, fear of venereal disease. Guilt associated fears may be
conditioned to relate any authoritative figure with the condition. Discharge may start when a
mother is visiting a patient, when a husband returns from a trip, or in the presence of a strict
employer.
Hypersensitive mucosa: Not a disease but a sign of unfavorable gynecological conditioning.
Application of an Allis damp to the squamous (294) epithelium is normally not painful. Painful
response is caused by previous cautery or some form of genital fear.
UTERUS
Premenstrual tension, fluid, and electrolyte retention: Often related to rejection of feminine role.
Amenorrhea: Some forms are due to physical or emotional stress.
Memorrhagia: All forms which occur in absence of trauma to the uterus (see Delius, 1905, and
Forel, 1949).
Polymenorrhea: All forms. These often reflect a polite rejection of husband's sexual needs.
Endometrial hyperplasia: Many women will revert to this picture during times of stress,
particularly when feeling sexually rejected, and will shift back to normal progestational
epithelium when the stress is over and cyclical ovulation has recommenced. They all need
psychic evaluation of their cardinal attitudes toward themselves.
Adenomyosis: This condition has been associated too many times with non-orgasmic response
and rejection of self as a female to be ignored. In my experience it has not always been
associated with dysmenorrhea, but it has always been associated with frigidity. My statement
must be qualified by saying that adenomyosis is a common pathological finding in colored
people of African origin in whom true endometriosis is almost never found. I can make the
above statement only in terms of private patients of other than African descent.
Myomata uteri: The possibility of uterine fibromyomata developing as a result of psychic
disturbances has been considered (see Kehrer in Dunbar, 1954). Wengraf (in Dunbar, 1954) cites
a case of a woman with a "plum" size myoma (case 4) which disappeared after psychotherapy. I
have been impressed by the statements of patients regarding the unconscious conviction that
sexual fears and inhibitions have been largely responsible for their myomata. One patient with a
frigidity-sterility problem stated, "When Doctor told me the fibroids were on the left side
of the uterus, I just knew they had grown there because that was the side I used to lie on when I
was masturbating".
ANNEXA AND PELVIC PERITONEUM: Multiple follicle cysts and giant copora
lutea: It is not possible to determine accurately cause and effect of psychic factors, but I have
found psychotherapy needed in the patients who have had surgery for such cystic ovaries. These
patients often seem to have been laboring under the assumption that they were expected to be
boys by their parents. Several of my patients have reported verbatim statements, in age
regression, thought by them to come from parents at the time of delivery. Of course, the babies
did not know what the words meant at the time, but were reminded of the "recorded" meaning
later when being scolded normally by the offending parent. (295)
It is my feeling from investigation with two patients having the classic indications of
Stein-Leventhal syndrome (episodes of amenorrhea, male type of hirsutism, uterine hypoplasia,
small breasts, normal female genitalia, bilaterally symmetrical enlargements of the ovaries, and
infertility) that my next such patient will be treated only with hypnotherapy aimed at improving
her attitude toward herself as a female, and helping her to realize that impressions derived from
careless remarks heard in infancy do not need to be affecting her unfavorably in later life. I have
wondered why the type of surgery recommended by Irving Stein (1945) resulted in such good
outcomes in terms of childbearing: 64.5%, after bilateral wedge resections of the dependent part
of each ovary. The area most easily accessible happens to be the area of greatest primordial
follicle concentration. Some surgeons have found their results satisfactory from simple bisection
of the ovaries and excision or puncture of all available cysts. The scientific reasoning involved is
that removal of internal pressure allows maturation of ova because of the better blood supply.
I cannot accept this reasoning. I have watched the satisfactory reabsorption, without
rupture, of a 10 cm. diameter ovarian cyst which must certainly have embarrassed the circulation
of the involved ovary. I would feel more inclined to side with the psychiatrists, who might
wonder what punitive needs were satisfied by this mayhem of the ovaries. Having also listened
to operating room conversations of professorial as well as ordinary gynecologists justifying this
pseudoscientific way of curing a general endocrine dysfunction by disfiguring one of the
pituitary target organs, I have felt that the psychic needs of both the surgeon and the seemingly
unconscious patient may have been satisfied. Perhaps it is reassuring for the patient to have some
sort of father-figure, carrying a knife, doing something constructive with her ovaries.
Endometriosis: Many clinicians have observed the relationship of anorgasmia and sterility with
endometriosis. It would be worth considering the emotional factors involved in the patients,
which Sampson (1930) studied in his first theoretical contributions to our thoughts on
endometriosis. He observed a continuity between endometrial peritoneal implants and the
mucosa of the tubes, often in women who had experienced tubal resection for sterilization.
A patient with a 9 cm. endometrioma involving the rectus sheath, the umbilicus, and part
of the underlying omentum, showed at surgery a clear continuity of endometriosis extending to
the severed end of her right tube. This woman had been sterilized six months after delivery of
her second child. She had a normal pelvis but her deliveries had been long and so traumatic to
her emotionally that she had begged the friendly surgeon to release her from fear. The history of
this woman would have made a psychiatrically thoughtful obstetrician work with her enough to
permit her to have easy deliveries. I had to remove the complications resulting from a surgical
(296) approach to her problems, and this necessitated removal also of her uterus, leaving only
her left ovary and adjacent normal segment of tube. Several sessions were then spent in
improving her respect for herself as a female. She promptly cured her orgasmic dysfunction,
which had antedated her gynecological and obstetrical problems.
We know that there is an increase in follicle-stimulating hormone from the pituitary after
surgical castration, and that there may be some stimulus also to form cystic mastitis in some
women. We need to know more about the imbalance that may occur when a woman with intact
but unconsciously rejected ovaries is unable to resolve her sexual drives satisfactorily.
GYNECOLOGICAL CONDITIONS ASSOCIATED WITH PAIN:
Dysmenorrhea: This, I feel, is psychological in origin regardless of when it occurs and
regardless of presence or absence of pathological states such as myomata, adenomyosis, or
endometriosis. I believe it is rarely, if ever, used consciously as a purposeful illness. It is often
punitive, according to unconscious attitudes. It may be accepted in an identification pattern with
someone else who has dysmenorrhea. It can frequently be handled very superficially as long as
its self-punitive role has been ruled out with ideomotor-level questioning. The simple
demonstration of postural suggestion, of effort effect, and then of arm anesthesia will suffice in
giving confidence that the patient can control the dysmenorrhea also (Kroger & Freed, 1943;
Novak & Harnik, 1929).
Pain of ovulation bleeding: This is often conditioned during a time when the pain threshold is
temporarily lowered by a cold or some other disability. It may be conditioned by both sterility
and the fear of pregnancy. A number of my sterility patients have discovered with dismay that
they have unconsciously been avoiding intercourse during their fertile time because they felt
bloated and slightly uncomfortable. Religiously constricted patients who fear pregnancy yet
cannot use contraceptive methods other than the rhythm method derived from research of Knaus
(1959) have often developed ovulation pain. This has proven so helpful that I have frequently
taught otherwise comfortable patients to be just a little uncomfortable for protection at the time
of ovulation. Cure of this type of pain frequently follows the simple explanation of the
phenomenon of intraperitoneal bleeding at the time of release of the egg from its follicle. I have
seldom needed to resort to hypnosis for its cure, except to question unconscious attitudes
regarding menstruation and childbearing.
Pelvic congestion syndrome of Taylor (1949). The low back pains, dragging sensations, urinary
tract symptoms, and boggy enlargement of the uterus always seem related to sexually oriented
emotional stresses. Hypnosis can be used with ideomotor questioning to inquire if there might be
"some emotional factor" related to the trouble. Often there is thought to be a traumatic sexual
experience which may only be a screen memory, but having (297) the patient review the
experience many times at an unconscious level is helpful. There need be no ventilating of
thoughts. The patient can be asked to signal with one finger each time she is starting the
experience and with another finger each time she finishes. She is asked to keep reviewing the
experience until she feels a designated arm start lifting upward to signal that her unconscious
mind has understood the real significance of the experience and knows that it does not need to
give any more trouble.
GYNECOLOGICAL STATES ASSOCIATED WITH HYPESTHESIA:
Orgasmic dysfunction: This is always psychogenic regardless of whether it is total, incomplete,
primary, or secondary. The therapeutic approach varies with the individual. Husbands should be
included in the therapeutic relationship and should be open to the use of hypnosis (Kroger &
Freed, 1950,1954).
Precautions: Do not accuse a patient of being non-orgasmic. Approach the problem by stating
something such as the following: "We have found that it is not easy for patients to talk about
these issues but that patients with vaginal discharges, fibroid tumors, sterility, endometriosis, or
polycystic ovaries often suffer from the feelings of inferiority caused by believing they are not
responding adequately during intercourse. We have found that orgasmic dysfunctioning is one of
the easiest of complaints to cure with hypnosis, providing a patient and her husband are
otherwise on good terms with each other. We have also been happy to discover that cure of the
orgasmic problem has usually cured the trouble for which the patient first requested
gynecological advice."
Ideomotor questioning then can be directed in a nonthreatening way by asking, "Does
your unconscious mind feel that your responsiveness to intercourse can be improved? Do you
realize at an unconscious level that the more pleasurable this experience is, the more you flatter
your husband, and the stronger the bond of companionship and love between you?"
It can be explained that stimulation of the clitoris is not an essential part of the process,
and that patients who have had total excision of the vulva, including the clitoris, for cancer, have
been able to experience orgasm with intercourse when properly freed from the outworn
inhibitions and unconscious fears of childhood. It can be added truthfully that a patient who has
never even had an orgasm in a dream can learn to reach orgasm by kissing her husband on the
mouth, if the situation is appropriate. She can be rehearsed with a pleasurable experience when
she "might have responded completely," if she had been free of inhibitions. The experience can
be kept unconscious and indicated only by a finger signal when completed, or it can be requested
to occur as a dream that night.
Patients should be warned that they may have dreams of sexual experience with some
most unlikely people-such as the President of the United States, or a postman, or even their
physician. They should be told that this must not disturb them; it simply represents a trick of the
unconscious mind, (298) which has to learn to accept by degrees the possibility of a successful
experience with the man who has never previously been associated with success in this area.
Therefore, it is only natural that the unconscious mind should select some male with whom she
could not possibly, in real life, have intercourse. By explaining this as a normal phenomenon, I
have found that patients are protected from thoughts that might otherwise cause some anxiety.
It is wise to finish a therapeutic session with a request for the patient to advance to a time
when she is normally responsive in every way, and to signal with a finger lifting when she is
there. As the finger indicates this, we can learn whether the prospect of cure of the frigidity is
acceptable. We can also ask for knowledge of just when this will occur in order to commit her to
the task of keeping the unconscious promise. It is possible as well to pick up missed cues by
asking her to review, at this future time, everything that has been transpiring to make the cure
possible. She can be asked: "Have you learned anything that might be helpful to discuss with me,
to make sure that I might be better able to help someone else later on with a similar problem?"
This request underlines the fact that she is not alone in having been nonorgasmic, that she
can help her physician to improve his therapy, and can be the means of helping other women
achieve her new level of performance. These are all constructive suggestions. More importantly,
it is sometimes possible to learn something which the patient was not able to reach in previous
interviews. Often in the course of therapy an idea will present itself, but the patient may be
trying too hard to reach significant material to realize the importance of what, at the moment,
might seem trivial. Projected to the completion of therapy, the significance of the matter may
become clear. Patients have often told me at a conscious level the real key to a problem just as
they walk out of the office with an appointment slip in their hands; they may have sat silently or
resisted therapy strongly during the hypnotic interview. A final precaution which has been stated
elsewhere is that care should be taken when discussing sexual problems in a hypnotic interview
to use a normal speaking voice in order to prevent possible misunderstandings by the patient. A
woman could interpret a soft "hypnotic" voice to be seductive. (299)

16. CONCEPTUALIZING HYPNOSIS FRAME OF REFERENCE: DAVID B. CHEEK:

MICHAEL YAPKO: TRANCEWORK: BRUNNER/MAZEL: NEW YORK: 1990
David B. Cheek, M.D., is one of the original pioneers in the medical applications of
hypnosis. Cheek has had many decades of experience in developing and using hypnotic
techniques in numerous ways, some quite nontraditional. Cheek's development of ideomotor
questioning techniques has led to some highly controversial positions relating to the nature of
human memory and information processing. For example, Cheek asserts that the unborn child
and the young infant are capable of reacting to and storing experiences that can have emotional
impact throughout life. Cheek has written extensively on the use of hypnosis and ideomotor
questioning techniques to retrieve memories of such experiences, patterns which defy more
traditional views regarding memory. He has also written a great deal on the ability of surgical
patients to hear and be aware of ongoing events during their surgeries while under the influence
of anesthesia. Cheek's investigations of the unconscious mind's relationship to nonverbal and
somatic memory storage may have profound implications for a better understanding of the
mind-body relationship and healing.
On His Early Interest in Ideomotor Signals: "Leslie M. LeCron was the first to
introduce me to the idea that we can tap into information having to do with the beginnings of
human physical and emotional problems by setting up unconscious muscular movements to
answer questions. His first explorations were with the movements of a Chevreul pendulum as
described in Beaudoin's book about Emile Coue . .Instead of having a pendulum seek out letters
of the alphabet as is done with a ouija board planchette he asked his subject to think consciously,
'yes-yes-yes' until the pendulum chose one of four repetitive body movements to symbolize a
'yes' response. He had his subjects get a 'yes,' a 'no,' an 'I don't know' and an 'I don't want to
answer,' "As with all consciously repeated actions, we tend to relegate the mechanism to
unconscious associative levels. This happens when we learn to drive a car, learn a new dance
step or study the touch system with typewriting. LeCron asked the subject to watch the
pendulum as though someone else were holding it; to avoid thinking consciously what the
answer would be. By asking about successively earlier beliefs about the origin of a problem he
would locate the first moment his subject thought trouble was starting. If there were no earlier
conditioning experiences he asked the subject to have an unconscious (59) response to the
question, 'Now that you know this, can you be free of the trouble it caused?'
 "He was in this way searching for the first experience that set up unfavorable emotional
or physical patterns of behavior and helping the subject decide from mature perspectives whether
or not the behavior needed to continue. The pendulum was used with unhypnotized subjects.
They usually slipped into a ,light trance as they became interested in the responses. Then he
would gently remove the pendulum, ask the subject to close his eyes and select finger
movements for the same responses.
"Neither LeCron nor Milton Erickson mentioned ideomotor responses in the 1954
workshop that I attended. Later, I learned that Erickson had experimented with symbol
ideomotor responses as early as 1929 but gave them up in favor of watching the total picture of
behavior as he worked with his patients. He was using imaginary 'crystal balls' into which the
subject could look and see important events. He did not like the Chevreul pendulum as a
divining instrument He stopped using hallucinated crystal balls also because both modalities
smack~d too much of 'hocus pqcus.' Erickson was such a gifted, intuitive person, that he needed
no 'gimmicks' like the pendulum to learn about his patients.
"LeCron, on the other hand, felt that there would probably never be another Erickson. He
felt he needed to teach physicians, dentists and psychologists easily learned, simple techniques to
use in their work,. He felt the; ideomotor signaling was a priceless tool. I agreed with him on
this after seeing how rapidly his subjects could zoom in on meaningful, imprinted experiences
that had caused maladaptive behavior."
Imprinting: "Repeatedly his demonstration subjects in our workshops would lead him to
a birth experience or to a traumatic anesthetic exp'erience. I had never been able to tap these
areas of information although all my obstetrical aJ;ld surgical experience suggested that these
were important, untouched periods of experience. Something ,said or done in association with
great physical or emotional stress seemed to imprint, or stamp in the behavior evoked by that
experience. Later, more or less similar stiumli would reawaken and stimulate the patterned
behavior. Simple reassurance and consciously suggested improvements were not associated with
the same epinephrine secretions. They had no power to replace the imprinted effect.
"My experience using hypnosis between my dawning interest in 1943 and the time I
joined LeCron in the 'Hypnosis Symposiums' in (60) 1956 had suggested that head movements,
for example, often seemed to contradict the verbal statements of my patients, regardless of
whether they were in hypnosis or not. One obvious example was given me by a patient who
came 'to me for an infertility problem. For five years, she had been trying unsuccessfully to get
pregnant. In my initial interview I asked if she had wanted children when she was first married.
Slowly she shook her head from side to side as she answered, 'Oh yes, doctor, I have always
wanted children.' After two years of unfruitful exposure to my gynecological efforts she gave me
the reason for those head movements as she was recovering from a pentothal anesthetic. The
same question was answered with, 'No, because I was born too soon.'
"We found that her sister had angrily' shown her that she had been born three months
after the date of her parents' marriage, documented on the flyleaf of the family Bible. The
information she later discovered was in her sister's handwriting, Her mother had not made such a
foolish documentation. This woman became pregnant a month later. I delivered two of her three
children that came after resolution of this traumatic imprinting."
Is Early Life Reporting Controversial?: "My beliefs about very early life imprintings
and subsequent verbalized reports have seemed controversial because people cannot accept the
idea that a baby can imprint on language that it 'could not possibly have learned during prenatal
life. To that Lcan say the mechanism is comparable to understanding the noises associated with
an exciting Chinese lecture that was unintelligible at the time but understandable later after
listening to the tape recording and studying the Chinese language. Unborn babies feel maternal
hormones associated with emotion and register the subjective impressions associated with the
auditory and postural stimuli. The newborn infant whose mother is drugged to the point that she
cannot say anything to her baby feels rejected and may never believe a maternal show of love
later when she is fully conscious. "In response to the complaints I add thatI do not accept as
valid any report that has failed to meet my criteria. '
"There has to be an initial physiological expression that something' important has
happened. This must precede the ideomotor signal from a higher associative level in the nervous
system. The patient is unaware at the higher associative levels reflected by verbal
communication until after there have been' repeated reviews of the event at physiological and
skeletal muscle levels." (61)
The Hierarchy of Memory Traces: "You see, I am talking about evolutionary processes
here. All sensory stimuli register at the most primitive part of the brain, the brain stem and its
Reticular Formation that surrounds the brain stem. The Reticular Formation, or Reticular
Activating System (RAS) seems to decide what is meaningful, what should be relayed higher up
and what could be suppressed as unimportant. Biological stresses seem to relate to right brain
activity having to do with survival. They take priority over pleasant, nourishing left brain
impressions. Here is the reason why the original concept of a trauma theory of neurosis as
conceived by Breuer should, I believe, be resurrected if we are to deal effectively with the
therapy of physical and emotional distress."
On Imprinting in Humans: "The term imprinting, as understood by ethologists, relates
to birds and lower mammals. It has not usually been associated with human experience until
LeCron and I put it into the book we wrote together, Clinical Hypnotherapy, in 1968. I feel that
human imprinting can occur at any time in life and depends on the proximity of epinephrine
outpouring with a stimulating, threat~ ening event. Like the imprinting first described by Konrad
Lorenz, human imprinting does not fade with the passage of time. Behavior that has become
imprinted at a time of stress will not be dislodged by experiences tending to contradict the first,
fixed impressions. I believe this is the reason we have more than 400 therapeutic modalities.
People can reassess early imprintings and change behavior constructively if their therapist really
projects his or her belief that whatis being applied as a treatment will really work. The affect of a
trauma may change with any of the modalities of treatment but the original imprinting will
remain unchanged. I have tried often to mentally excise an imprinted traumatic experience and
replace it with something else. I can do it at verbal levels of communication but when I later ask
for an ideomotor review of the experience I get the Teal rather than the suggested replacement.
This is why we need to explore the world of unborn infants and their reactions to birth stimuli if
we are to materially influence human maladaptive behavior. We have to release our biases in
order to do this. We cannot learn unless we have the tools for searching. These are the reasons I
am committed to the value of ideomotor search and treatment methods."
On Milton Erickson: "I feel that Erickson was a genius and a teacher's teacher. Many of
the things I heard him say had a profound effect on my thinking without my realization of the
fact. I would later find some (62) essential 'truth' that I believed must be original with me only to
realize with a shock, 'Why, that comes from Milton. Now I remember!'
"Erickson often shocked people who watched him work with a subject. They would be
horrified about his obvious coercions and manipulations without realizing that he was forcing
the subjects to find ways of getting around the problems he gave them. He had enormous respect
for the dignity of his subjects and for his patients yet they frequently were disturbed by his
methods of showing this respect.
"Erickson showed us that we go into hypnosis when we are reviewing any sequence of
events. This is the essence of most induction techniques. He and Elizabeth, his wife, showed us
that people carrying out a post-hypnotic suggestion re-enter hypnosis in order to carry it out. He
taught us that we only have a certain amount of attention to spend on anything. He taught
women how to ignore the distress of hard labor by getting out of their body and sitting across the
room while their body had the baby. He projected the woman who wanted a sterilization into the
future a few years hence to see how she is feeling having had the operation and then how she
feels having held on to her ability to have a pregnancy. He always maintained that hindsight was
better than foresight. He taught me that this projection into an imaginary future of feeling well
and unafraid of trouble was a valuable way of discovering hidden causes of resistance to therapy.
He taught us that pain is something that can 'be manipulated in a meaningful way if we have
trouble eliminating the pain entirely. By making pain more severe for shorter than usual periods
or having it when it does not matter very much the patient is learning about the built-in power
we all have. I will not forget the teachings of Milton H. Erickson. His voice goes with me."
[Source: Personal communication, 1989]

17. UNCOVERING TECHNIQUES: DAVID B. CHEEK & LESLIE M. LECRON: CLINICAL

HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NEW YORK: 1968
Methods of treating psychosomatic illness, neurosis and other emotionally caused
conditions are by no means standardized nor can they be claimed to be as successful as therapists
would wish. For many years, ever since the beginning of this century, Freudian concepts have
been the accepted ones in English-speaking countries. More recently some of Freud's ideas have
been modified and some discarded. Many therapists do not believe as Freud did that everything
is based on childhood conditioning, with emphasis on sex, and they look more to present
happenings as the genesis of many conditions. For psychotherapy to be more successful we need
to know much more than we do about the subconscious mind and how it functions, for these
troubles as a rule are centered in the inner mind.
Psychoanalysts still follow Freud rigidly. In fact, Freudian analysis has become a cult
with set rihwls. The patient must lie on a couch with the analyst sitting at its head where he is
not seen. This ritual is only because Freud worked in this way, by his own admission being
somewhat shy and uncomfortable if his patient could watch him.
To become an analyst there are the years of medical school, psychiatric and analytic
training with at least 300 hours of training analysis. Then the analyst practices. A complete
analysis requires about 300 to 600 hours. If the analyst works a 40-hour week for 50 weeks of
the year he puts in 2,000 hours. Thus he would presumably deal with five patients a year if the
average analysis consumed 400 hours. Of course many patients do not complete their analysis
and he would see more patients, but to us it seems that this is the worst possible waste of a
medical education, with only the wealthy able to afford lengthy analysis.
The United States remains the only country where Freud has great acceptance, although
the British Commonwealth countries still lend him much credence. Elsewhere in the world,
psychotherapists follow the teachings of Pavlov, seeking conditioned reflexes which are
regarded as the basic causes of emotional illnesses. It is difficult to assess the results of
psychotherapy. Some Pavlovians claim results as 80 per cent (82) successful (Wolpe and
Russian texts). Most effectively administered placebos give 70-80 per cent improvement.
 It should be said that hypnosis is more commonly used in some other countries than it is
in the United States; in others is little known. It is used extensively in Russia where the highest
claims are made.
Regardless of method, hypnosis seems to improve results and accelerate the course of
therapy. The general practitioner or specialist cannot spend as many hours with a patient as a
psychiatrist does. Hypnotherapy for psychosomatic illnesses may require only a few minutes in a
single session, more likely a few hours, but seldom more than 15 or 20 sessions at the most.
ANALYTIC PROCEDURES: The main tools in analysis are free association and
dream interpretation. Free association consists of having the patient try to verbalize every
thought that enters his mind during the analytic hour. No matter how embarrassing his thoughts,
he must say what comes to mind. This is difficult for anyone. Some patients learn to do it well,
though it may take some time, time largely wasted. Some spend hours talking of inconsequential
things while repressing important data. Others find it impossible to talk so freely. Eventually,
repressed ideas or memories may come out or the patient may resolve the repressed problem
without ever knowing consciously why improvement has occurred.
Dream interpretation also aims at bringing "insight." An analyst may become adept at
seeing the inner meaning of dreams and the sources of problems can be reached through the
patient's dreams. For the nonpsychiatrist or non-analyst, this is not very practical unless the
physician is willing to make a study of dreams and their interpretation. Even the trained
psychotherapist may encounter dreams he is not able to interpret, and, unfortunately, his
interpretations may not always be correct. Recent studies (Cheek) indicate that the most cogent
dreams are mostly repressed.
These methods require long-time therapy, much of it unproductive.
The therapist who uses hypnosis and resorts to dream interpretation does not wait for
dreams to be presented by the patient. He can have his patient dream while under hypnosis or
can suggest a dream to occur during the night. Many dreams have no bearing on the patient's
problems, but hypnotic suggestion can cause dreams about some specific problem. Even the
symbols to be used in the dream can be suggested, (83) thus making understanding the dream
easy. If it is difficult to see the meaning of a particular dream, suggestion can cause the same
dream to be produced again but with a different set of symbols or "cast of characters." This can
be carried over again and again until the inner meaning becomes obvious. Furthermore,
interpretation of a dream can be checked for accuracy by asking questions with ideomotor
signals made in reply. Repetition of repressed dreams at an unconscious level of awareness
makes them more accessible for verbal reporting.
The other analytic tool, free association, is much easier and freer if the patient is in
hypnosis. In fact, patients who associate best often will slip spontaneously into hypnosis,
although the analyst may not realize this if he is not familiar with the behavior of hypnotized
people. For the non-psychotherapist, these methods can be disregarded, for there are far better
ways of delving into subconscious thought processes.
AUTOMATIC WRITING: Probably the ideal way of gaining information from the
subconscious and thus uncovering the causes and motives for any condition being treated is by
means of automatic writing. This is a most interesting phenomenon. It consists of placing a
ball-point pen or soft pencil in the hand of a subject. Then his mind is diverted from the hand,
allowing his subconscious mind to take control of the hand. In automatic writing, the subject
may not consciously know what is being written until he reads it later. He may read something
while the hand busily writes. A few "automators" have been so good at it that they can read with
the conscious mind and have both hands write at the same time, each writing on a different
subject. Thus three mental activities can be carried on at the same time.
Automatic writing may be very rapid with the hand racing across the paper, or it may be
very slow. The handwriting never looks like the person's normal writing. Rarely are words
separated. They will be run together. This makes the writing difficult to read. Sometimes the
letters are not clearly formed.
In writing automatically, the subconscious mind takes shortcuts and may write
cryptically. The word "before" might be written B4; a figure 2 or the word "to" may appear for
any of its three meanings. Why take the trouble to add extra letters? The writing may be
performed in a normal way from left to right or might be upside down, backward, mirror
writing, or a combination of all these styles. Sometimes the subconscious seems to take delight
in punning, though otherwise it will show little humor. (84)
The late Anita Muhl, a psychiatrist, was the leading authority on automatic writing and
used it continually in her therapy. She claimed to be able to teach it successfully to 80 per cent
of her patients, though this might require 20 or 30 hours of practice. Others have not had such
good results. It is easiest developed with the patient under hypnosis. Most deep trance subjects
will be able to write automatically.
In learning to write automatically, it is best to use a bread board or lap board of some
kind, as the arm can move more freely when at a lower level than it would be at a desk. For
paper, a roll of wide shelf paper spread over the board is ideal. More can be unrolled then as
required. The pen should write a broad line, or a soft pencil should be used. It should be held
upright between the thumb and forefinger instead of in the usual writing position.
Automatic writing is a very valuable technique if it can be developed without too much
time required. With it the subconscious can express itself freely, bringing out any information it
wishes to disclose. It can write out the answers to questions. Unfortunately it is not always
cooperative. If resistance is encountered in therapy, it may refuse to write at all or may avoid
repressed material. The technique which follows is only a variation of automatic writing; signals
take the place of writing. The Ouija board is another variation.
USE OF IDEOMOTOR MOVEMENTS IN OBTAINING ANSWERS TO
QUESTIONS: We regard this as the most valuable of all uncovering methods. In one session
more information can be learned than in many hours of free association, 'unless there is strong
resistance. The technique consists of wording questions so they can be answered affirmatively or
negatively. This sets up a code of signals which the inner mind utilizes in replying. These signals
are unconsciously controlled movements of some object or the patient's fingers. Ideomotor
signaling can be carried out effectively while the person is awake as well as while in hypnosis.
A light object such as a finger ring, an iron washer, a nut or any other light weight can be
used in one method. To this is tied a thread about eight or ten inches long. Holding the thread
between the thumb and forefinger, the object is allowed to dangle freely, the elbow being rested
on the arm of the chair or on the subject's knee. A kind of pendulum is thus formed. The subject
holds this in his right hand (or left hand if left-handed).
Four basic movements of the pendulum are possible. It may swing in a clockwise circle,
or counterclockwise, straight back and forth across in (85) front of the person, or in and out
away from him. Each of these motions can then have a meaning. One can mean "Yes," another
"No," a third can signify "I don't know," and the fourth can mean "I don't want to answer the
question." This last may be important at times. These signals then form a code allowing direct
communication with the subconscious mind.
 The therapist may assign a particular meaning to each of these answers. However, it is
more interesting to the subject and there is better cooperation from the inner mind if it is allowed
to make its own decisions as. to which signal to use for each of the four answers. It also proves
definitely to the subject that his subconscious thinks and reasons when it makes its own
decisions.
The subject is shown the four motions and is told what the four replies are to be. While
he holds the pendulum so that it dangles, the subconscious is asked to select one of the four
motions which is then to represent "yes." When the pendulum has swung in reply to this request,
the subconscious is then asked to select a motion to mean "no," then for "I don't know." The
remaining one is to mean refusal to answer.
It is better for the subject to watch the pendulum, although it will move even if the eyes
are closed. He should be instructed to try to hold the pendulum motionless and not to think how
he wants it to move. He should let his inner mind control the movements and make its own
decisions as to which one it is to use for each reply.
This technique is very impressive to the subject. When the pendulum moves
involuntarily, it invariably brings exclamations of surprise. The reader should certainly try this
technique himself. He will find his responses can readily be established. It is not necessary for
the questions to be verbalized in doing it yourself. You merely think them.
Usually the pendulum will begin to move almost at once when the subconscious is asked
to select one of the four movements. Sometimes there is a lag of two or three moments. In our
own experience and that of several hundred of those who have attended our classes and learned
the technic, the pendulum will work with about 95 per cent of those who try it.
It is well for the therapist to explain to his patient that the inner part of the mind controls
many muscular movements, thus avoiding any thought that it is magical. Breathing is an
example, as is walking. It is much easier for the subconscious to control the movements of the
fingers which causes the pendulum to swing than to coordinate and regulate all the muscles
involved in walking, or even in breathing.
A similar code of communication can be established by movements of the fingers. Any
four of the ten fingers can be utilized for the replies. However, we have found it best to
designate certain fingers on one hand (86) because it is easier for the therapist to watch only one
hand. Also, if the same code is used with all patients it is easily remembered without taking
notes. The dominant hand should be selected. The fingers are specified instead of allowing the
subconscious to select. The forefinger could signify "yes," the middle finger "no," the little
finger for doubt and the thumb for refusal to answer.
We are somewhat at variance in the use of this technique. Usually Cheek prefers the
finger movements either in the waking state or with the patient under hypnosis. LeCron uses the
pendulum when the patient is awake, the fingers if he is in hypnosis. It really makes little
difference except that the hypnotized person's eyes will probably be closed and he cannot see the
pendulum if it is used. Sometimes it will be found that finger movements cannot be established,
but the pendulum will move readily. Sometimes the opposite is true, and rarely neither will
operate.
During questioning of a patient, sometimes something interesting and unusual occurs.
Instead of the pendulum moving in one of the four basic directions, it will swing diagonally. \
Vith finger movements the ring finger may lift instead of one of the other four. This indicates
that the subconscious is trying to offer information. It cannot answer the questions properly. This
signal may mean "perhaps" or "maybe," or it could mean that the question is not understood.
Perhaps it cannot be answered affirmatively or negatively. It may have been ambiguous or
improperly worded. Further questions can determine the meaning of this undesignated response.
It is further proof of the reasoning power of the subconscious mind.
What questions to ask and their wording requires some skill, and future chapters will
teach this in describing the treatment of illustrative cases. A question must be clear as to
meaning. Here we get into semantics. Often we do not say what we mean. A commonly used
expression is "That makes me mad." We mean we are angry but we actually say we are insane.
The inner mind invariably takes everything literally. As an example, if the question is asked
"Will you tell me where you were born?", a person in hypnosis (perhaps not if in only a light
state) will reply with a nod or will say "yes." If awake he will invariably name the place where
he was born, interpreting the question. The literal answer is "yes." More examples of the
literalness of the subconscious will be given later.
With this questioning technique, how accurate are the answers to the questions? From
our experience the subconscious rarely offers false information in answering. It seems to prefer
to refuse to reply rather than to lie. This might not always be true, particularly if the patient is a
pathological liar, but we have found that false information is rarely given. (87)
Often it is obvious that the reply is correct. Sometimes it is well to take the answer with a
grain of salt until verification is possible. In trying to be cooperative, a patient may lift a finger
or move the pendulum voluntarily. Close observation will quickly detect this. When the
pendulum swings, the movement of the fingers or hand in swinging it is not noticeable. With a
consciously controlled movement, such a motion can be seen. With finger signals, the finger will
almost invariably tremble slightly as it comes up and the movement is very slow. With a very
few people the lifting is more rapid and the finger may jerk. If it is suspected that the patient has
consciously controlled a response, he can be questioned and told to let the finger or pendulum
move of its own accord.
Some patients will lose track of their hands during finger movements, dissociating the
hand. They are not aware of the finger moving although it may be quite pronounced. Therefore
the therapist should always announce the result so the patient knows what information has been
received.
HANDLING RESISTANCE DURING THERAPY: During questioning, resistance
may be encountered with refusal to answer by a signal. This situation calls for careful handling.
Resistance can be broken and information gained, but it would be dangerous sometimes to force
this too strongly because the patient might not be able to tolerate the knowledge. A safeguard
here is to ask if it is all right for him to bring out a suspected conflict or trauma. If the answer is
affirmative it is safe to do so, but if negative the matter should be dropped for the time being.
Resistance may be due to reluctance to bring out some unpleasant memory, some idea
may be too unacceptable to entertain, or there may be a conflict which cannot be faced.
Resistance is an indication that the subconscious does not want something exposed. Steps can be
taken so it may become available at some later time.
During questioning, if a reply is not made, the hypnotized patient can be instructed to
imagine a blackboard in front of him, his eyes being closed. Then he is told to see an imaginary
hand write words, a phrase or a sentence on the blackboard in white chalk. Sometimes this will
appear, perhaps only a word which will offer a clue.
When the subconscious blocks in answering a question, another technique may bring
results. This is one utilized by Freud in his early work when he was using hypnosis, although he
learned it from Bernheim. He would say that he was about to squeeze the patient's head between
his (88) hands and that this would press a thought into the patient's conscious mind, which he
could then verbalize. Often an important idea would then pop into the person's mind. A variation
of this method is merely to make the suggestion "I am going to count to three and a sudden
thought about this matter will come to you." Snapping a finger or tapping a desk seems to
crystallize nebulous thoughts and make them accessible for verbal reporting.
A patient may remark that the answer to a question is certainly "no" (or "yes") while the
ideomotor reply is contradicting the spoken statement or some head movement. This is very
impressive to the patient, and it usually represents the more correct answer.
Aside from gaining valuable information and insight, the questioning technique has
another benefit. When the therapist makes interpretations and explanations, the patient may
doubt if they are correct. When information comes from, his own inner mind through these
responses, he accepts it. The therapist is not telling him; he is telling the therapist. In
psychotherapy it is known that insight from within is preferable to that derived from a therapist's
explanations. More than concious understanding is needed. There must also be a kind of
digestion of the knowledge. These replies from within aid in the "digestive process."
The patient suffering from a psychosomatic illness is likely to believe his condition to be
entirely a physical one. He may continue to be skeptical after the physician has explained how
the mind can affect the body and cause illness. An excellent way to bring realization to him that
this is true in his own case is through the questioning technique. The physician might handle it in
this manner: "Perhaps there's some emotional or psychological cause for your condition, or
possibly it's entirely a physical matter. Your inner mind knows which is true. Let's see what it
will tell us abaut this." Then the question is asked "Is there same psychalagical or emotional
reason for this condition?"
When the answer is affirmative, as it is sure to be if the condition is psychasomatic, the
patient accepts the idea without qualificatian. His subconscious has said there is such a cause; the
therapist has not said it. A goad therapeutic relatianship has then been established. Sometimes a
physician will say to' a patient, "It's all in your mind," a statement often resented and probably
disbelieved.
OUR MENTAL MAKEUP: In dealing with the subconscious in the ways we have
described, it may seem as though there is another person inside us. This is a wrong conception,
for the subconscious is merely one part af the total mind. It (89) does think and reason, though in
a different way than we do consciously. It has been said that the subconscious reasons only
deductively while consciously we can also reason inductively,
Unfortunately we know little about the actual makeup of the mind. Strangely enough
there has been little further investigation to learn more about it since the days of Freud: We
know something of the way it works but not nearly enough.
Today the most usual conception of the mind's makeup is that advanced by Freud. He
considered the mind as consisting of the id, which contains our basic instincts and drives, the
preconscious, the ego or self, and the super-ego. The super-ego is mainly our conscience,
according to the Freudian concept. Freud thought awareness present only in the ego and
apparently believed the id incapable of reasoning.
There have been other theories about our mental makeup advanced before the days of
Freud. Such men as Janet, Prince, Myers and James credited knowledge, reason and awareness
to the subconscious. Anyone dealing directly with the inner mind through hypnosis certainly
must revise the Freudian concept. The hypnotherapist quickly learns to respect the extraordinary
amount of knowledge accumulated in the subconscious and its ability to control bodily
processes. Everything that ever happened to us is stored in the memory in complete detail, and
hypnosis can bring out forgotten memories even back to infancy.
While it is a very difficult matter to prove scientmcally, even memories of birth seem to
be stored in memory. They can be brought to consciousness through hypnotic age regression.
LeCron wrote a paper on this subject: when memory actually does begin. Nandor Fodor
attempted to prove through the interpretation of dreams that there are not only actual memories
of birth bilt even prenatal memories.
Any good hypnotic subject can readily produce fantasies, and an apparent birth memory
might only be a fantasy. Nevertheless it is a possibility that such memories are retained in the
subconscious memory bank. Our own opinion is that such recall may be a valid one. This same
opinion is shared by a number of psychiatrists and others who have had patients apparently
regress to birth, sometimes spontaneously. Cheek believes that birth experiences may be similar
to imprinting which makes a permanent behavior characteristic with one stimulus.
Some case histories will be cited later where such a memory seemed to have an effect
later in life, as in asthma and in cases of chronic headache. Freud, Rank and others have termed
birth a trauma, possibly having such effects, which would indicate that there must be a memory
of birth or no such effects would occur. (90)
Using automatic writing, Miihl has reported being able to contact seven different layers
or levels of the subconscious, each of which would identify itself. She claimed that these ranged
from the equivalent of Freud's basic id, which would call itself the Old Nick or the Devil in us,
to what seemed to be Jung's Super-conscious. Jung felt that this is much more than the
conscience and is something having a connection with a collective subconscious or perhaps with
God. Miihl worked with some 50 subjects in her research on this matter and claimed all 50
brought out these seven segments. It is possible that her own ideas as to this might have been
impressed on her subjects and they then responded as she expected them to do. Her claims
certainly warrant more investigation.
Although Freud greatly furthered our knowledge of the inner part of the mind, it is
interesting to know that such a part of the mind was recognized by the ancient Greek and Roman
physicians as well as by many later psychologists and psychiatrists who preceded Freud, such as
Janet, James and others.
OTHER PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES: Still other projective techniques are possible
in hypnotherapy. The patient may be instructed to imagine that he is looking at a stage or a
motion picture or TV screen. A scene is to develop there and he is to relate what he sees appear
on the stage or screen. The illusion or fantasy is to be about some problem and what he describes
will afford interpretation and insight.
Sometimes a posthypnotic suggestion can bring a bit of insight with a problem. The
patient is told that sometime within the next day or two, the time being left indefinite, a sudden
thought or idea or memory will come to him which will clarify the problem. This is not always
successful if there is much resistance, but often insight is gained when the thought appears.
While any light object which will dangle freely makes a satisfactory pendulum,
"professional models" are obtainable. For example, such a model available from the Wilshire
Book Company, Dept. K, 8721 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, California 90069, is a clear plastic ball
just over an inch in diameter attached to an 8-inch chain.
For induction of hypnosis this pendulum also makes an excellent object for eye fixation.
In fact the therapist will often notice that his patient has slipped spontaneously into hypnosis as
he gazes at the pendulum during questioning. This is a good induction method, for then the
operator (91) merely deepens the resulting trance. This occurs at least half of the time with use
of the pendulum and often with finger movements are being obtained. (92)

18. SOME OF ERICKSON'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO MEDICINE: DAVID B. CHEEK:

EDITED BY JEFFREY ZEIG: ERICKSONIAN APPROACHES TO HYPNOSIS AND
PSYCHOTHERAPY: BRUNNER /MAZEL: NY: 1982
Erickson lives on. He has influenced all of us who have been ready to recognize the
value of hypnosis in the healing arts. That influence will continue through his writings and the
vivid imprintings he left with the students lucky enough to have had personal contact with him
through the years. Erickson was a shining example of the Hippocratic ideal: "In order to cure the
human body it is necessary to have a knowledge of the whole of things." He spent minimal time
searching for causes. Among his gifts was a genius for inventing interesting ways to help people
overcome old problems. He was delighted when his patients succeeded, but he respected their
right to fail when this seemed necessary. His powers of perception led many of us to feel he was
clairvoyant. Erickson denied such a ridiculous idea.
HIS CONTRIBUTIONS; GYNECOLOGY, OBSTETRICS, UROLOGY: Erickson
helped women recognize their right to sexual responsiveness and men overcome sexual fears
(1958). He taught women ways to stop abnormal uterine bleeding due to anger and depression at
a time when most obstetricians and gynecologists were ignoring emotional causality (1960b).
Erickson showed pregnant women how they could sit across the room and, employing imagery,
watch their physical body have uterine contractions. He taught them that they need not be
uncomfortable with (281) labor, that they could center their attention elsewhere, to sequentia1
events of the past. He recognized the ability of the mid-brain reticular activating system in
attending to one set of experiences while ignoring another. He never claimed a parochial right to
discovery in his methods, being familiar with world literature and recognizing that children are
masters of this art. Finally, like Grantly Dick-Read and Frederick leboyer, Erickson believed
childbirth should be considered a natural process, not a disease. Babies have a right to enter the
world without feeling guilt over a mother's discomfort.
ERICKSON AND BODY IMAGE: Erickson recognized the importance of healthy
body imagery. He used hypnosis to help at least two young women allow their breasts to grow in
response to their own hormones. They had previously inhibited such interaction, considering
themselves unfeminine and unattractive (1960a).
In 1960 he told me about a 20-year-old man who grew 12 inches L'1l height in the span
of one year. In hypnosis, at the start of therapy, this stunted young man looked out on his world
as though unwilling to grow, a modern-day Peter Pan. For example, he described a room as
though he were standing beneath a table. Similarly, a cow on his farm was visualized as though
it were ten feet tall; his eyes were on a level with the cow's udder. Growth began to take place
when Erickson encouraged the man to hallucinate his world as though he were standing part way
up a staircase.
I said, "Why have you kept this report out of the literature?" Erickson smiled and said, "No
respectable editor of a scientific journal would publish such an impossible thing." "Dr.
Erickson," I answered, "You are the editor of a respectable journal" He smiled again and said, "I
would like to keep my job."
SPONTANEOUS HYPNOSIS WHILE REMEMBERING SEQUENTIAL
EVENTS: In my opinion, one of Erickson's greatest contributions to the broad field of medicine
was his early observation that people go into hypnosis when they attempt to remember
sequential experiences (1961). This realization allowed him to go directly to the task of healing
without wasting time with formal induction methods. Utilizing this insight has permitted many
of us to continue our use of hypnosis when others have abandoned hypnotherapy, believing it to
be too time-consuming to be practical. (282)
SPONTANEOUS HYPNOSIS TO CARRY OUT POST-HYPNOTIC
SUGGESTION: Betty Erickson shares credit with her husband for recognizing that people
carrying out post-hypnotic suggestions reenter trance in order to satisfy the request (1941). What
a help this concept has been in facilitating the use of hypnosis during subsequent interviews!
ERICKSON AND AWARENESS UNDER ANESTHESIA: In 1954 I heard both
Erickson and Le Cron say that surgeons and anesthetists should be careful about what they say in
the presence of an anesthetized patient. I had been concerned about this possibility, stemming
from personal experience with an operation while in college, but all my efforts to explore this
matter with hypnosis had failed. While assisting Le Cron in another workshop, I accidentally
discovered the reason for those previous failures (Cheek, 1959).
I presented this accidental revelation to Milton. He then casually and gently introduced
me to his classic paper of 1937 reporting interviews with a man who had been drugged and
beaten into unconsciousness. There was no conscious memory of the experience or the events
leading to his period of unconsciousness. Through repetitive subconscious reviews of the events
preceding the period of unconsciousness, the man remembered steps along the way and finally
relived the period of unconsciousness.
In his study with this man Erickson was working at a conversational level, but he was
also forcing his subject to subconsciously review the sequential events preceding his comatose
state. My accidental discovery in 1957 was that the process of repetitive subconscious review
could be carried out in a very short space of world time if the hypnotized subject was restrained
from making any effort to recall events at a talking level of memory. I could see the start and the
finish of the review indicated by unconscious movements of designated fingers.
Other factors involved accelerated retrieval of events during unconscious states as follows:
1) I must choose words which confidently project the idea that memory is possible and expected.
2) I must keep my subject from prematurely talking about an event before he recognizes a finger
has lifted unconsciously, signaling he is ready to remember.
3) I must ask for and obtain permission for him to know consciously, and to tell me what he has
learned. (283)
4) Every repetition of a traumatic experience at a subconscious level of awareness diminishes its
emotional impact, apparently pushing i: progressively into the past.
Adhering to these rules, it is possible to learn very quickly (within five minutes of training the
patient to use ideomotor signals) whether or not an experience under general anesthesia has been
stressful, and whether or not its influence has been damaging. Interview time with traumatic
experiences will vary from minutes to hours depending on the gravity of the experience. When
the impact hat become too great to handle at conversational levels of awareness, it is sometimes
possible to have the patient invert the experience by reporting the operation as if all the right
things had been said and done to make it a pleasant experience. This strategy has proven
therapeutic. The patient can be urged to let this recreated experience replace the real one, a
method I have found very helpful for correcting harmful imprintings at birth.
Erickson explained to me that his interest in continued hearing ability during general
anesthesia resulted from a very stressful experience which he later documented (Erickson, 1963).
He said that his personal experience and his findings with patients led him to believe that
anesthetized people are aware of everything around them, yet they pay great attention only to
what they consider meaningful at the moment. This could be something frightening or
reassuring. Even silence at a critical moment could be meaningful. The word meaningful,
therefore, became an important part of the title to my first paper on the subject of continued
hearing.
ERICKSON THE JOURNAL EDITOR: Part of my homage to Milton Erickson
concerns his open-mindedness as first editor of the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis from
1958 to 1968.
He both stimulated me to explore continued hearing ability and led me to present a paper on this
subject at the First Scientific Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis in 1958. He
then mildly coerced me into writing it up for publication at a time when I know no other journal
reporting on findings relating to surgery or anesthesiology would have given me encouragement
or space.
Erickson published corroborating papers by Wolfe and Millet (1960), (284) Hutchings (1961),
Pearson (1961), Brunn (1963) and Kolouch (1964). ] went on to publish six other papers of mine
on this subject (Cheek, 1960 a, b, 1962, 1963, 1964, a, b).
During the 21 years since publication of my first paper on anesthesia awareness, there
have been various reports by nonhypnotically oriented anesthesiologists. Some of them have
limited themselves to asking patients on awakening whether or not they heard anything or
“dreamed anything during the operation. These authors were satisfied that any “awareness" that
could be reported verbally was related to inadequate amounts of anesthetic agent or faults within
the equipment used.
A study by Terrell, Sweet, Gladfelter and Stephen (1969) showed that the anesthetized
persons were unable to hear. Of researchers using prospective tests with sounds transmitted to
patients during surgery, only Wolfe, Hutchings and Levinson (1965, 1969), have respected the
meaningfulness of information and timing. Retrospective studies have Shown that persons under
general anesthesia are troubled by earphones that keep them from attending to sounds in the
operating room. Generally patients are attuned to the voices of the surgeon, his assistant and the
anesthetist, but they are tuned in at understandably selective moments.
Until the incision is made and after the incision is closed patients are attentive to the
anesthetist. The rest of the time attention is directed toward surgeon and assistant. To expect
anesthetized people to care what is said by an unknown voice on a tape recording transmitted
through earphones is to underestimate the reticular activating system of the midbrain. Certainly
no commonly used anesthetic obliterates ability of the primitive brain to continue its contact
with the outside world. All sensory input comes into the brain stem regardless of what is
happening to the much more vulnerable cerebral cortex.
In addition to my thanks to Milton Erickson, I would like to thank aesthesiologists David
Scott of England (1974), Bernard Levinson of South Africa (1965, 1969) and Jean Lassner of
France, who very kindly translated my first paper into French. Each of these men has helped
spread the idea that people under anesthesia are listening, that their understandings are literal and
childlike, that what has been frightening to them during a period of unconsciousness is not
resolved by reassurance or contradiction after they have regained consciousness. I will be
forever grateful to Milton Erickson for his friendship, encouragement and wisdom. I am not
alone in expressing gratitude to this great teacher, writer, editor, and humanitarian. (285)

19. FINGER OF TRUTH: IDEOMOTOR RESPONSE WITH FINGER MOVEMENTS ON

DAVID CHEEK: DR BRYAN KNIGHT
Finger signals need not be vulgar. Instead of conveying insults, they might communicate
subconscious information. Dr. David Cheek, obstetrician and gynecologist, has for more than 50
years helped hypnotized patients use their fingers to tell him the subconscious causes of
emotional or physical illness.
The process is called "ideomotor", meaning "thoughts that cause a physical action."
Particular fingers are designated (by the doctor or the patient) "yes", "no", and "don't want to
answer." When the doctor asks the hypnotized patient questions the relevant finger lifts in
response -- even when the patient consciously thinks otherwise, or has no conscious awareness
of the answer.
In his new book Hypnosis: The Application of Ideomotor Techniques (a rewrite of the
1968 classic Clinical Hypnotherapy, co-authored with the late Leslie LeCron, the discoverer of
ideomotor techniques), Dr Cheek says: "Because of LeCron's contributions, we now can explore
the perceptions of infants during intrauterine development, the perceptions of anesthetized
people, and the thoughts and reactions to thoughts when humans are in deep sleep states as well
as when normally dreaming. We can discover and correct many sources of resistance that
previously had interfered with successful psychotherapy. The entire process of psychotherapy
has been accelerated, and the cost of psychotherapy has, therefore, been reduced."
These claims, startling as they may at first appear, are mild compared with Dr Cheek's
other assertions in his 300-page book. For instance, he writes convincingly about telepathy
between a mother and her fetus, past-life regression, spirit depossession, and a distinctly unusual
view of homosexuality.
Dr Cheek gives several examples of adult women using ideomotor techniques to uncover
sexual abuse when they were too young to have conscious memories: "Babies have an active
sucking reflex that can stimulate a father, uncle, grandfather, or older male sibling into the idea
of putting his erect penis into that mouth. There is no erotic pleasure in this for the infant. The
experience can be terrifying because it is hard for the infant to breathe. Its normal sucking reflex
may be eliminated by this act. The infant usually senses, and absorbs to itself, the guilt of the
person doing this. . .Since conscious memory does not begin until the age of 2 or 3 years, there
will be no conscious recollection for this infantile trauma. Some patients will recall that they
have had dreams of this being done to them."
He goes on (evidently to doctors) to point out signs in adults that may be evidence of
such abuse: "Be alert to possibility of oral molestation when you learn that your patient was
wall-eyed or cross-eyed during childhood. Their dominant eye may have centered in terrified
attention on the penis or trying to avoid looking at it. Be alert for oral molestation when your
patient has a history of gagging or has had repeated throat infections as a child. Both are
examples of hypersensitivity problems conditioned by emotional trauma from molestation or a
tonsillectomy. The problem of tonsillitis that leads to tonsillectomy will be remembered but the
preceding molestation will be hidden by conscious amnesia."
Dr Cheek believes we are imprinted with particular emotions even while in the womb.
He has taught hundreds of women to communicate telepathically with their unborn children. If a
fetus mistakenly interprets a mother's worries as rejection the feeling will be imprinted and
permanent, says Cheek, and "subsequent love and nurturing by the mother will not alter the
earlier assumption." Birth trauma is at the root of much adult distress, according to Dr Cheek.
He describes how epinephrine -- released at the time of a shock or stress -- "sets" the fear or
distress, thus imprinting the trauma. "The primary trauma may be at the time a mother realizes
that she is pregnant. It can be reinforced during the pregnancy, at birth, and during the first three
years of life. Rehearsals of imprinted traumatic early life sequences during deeper levels of sleep
can occur throughout the remainder of a child's life."
And lead to depression, anxiety, phobias and posttraumatic stress disorders. Ordinary
psychotherapy is inadequate to the task of dealing with such imprinting because it has affected
the primitive and midbrain, not the cerebral hemispheres of conscious memories. (Insomnia and
free-floating anxiety may be evidence of such disturbances.) Ideomotor techniques can uncover
the pre-conscious causes of distress, and then they can be treated.
Hundreds of his pregnant patients have used hypnosis to allow a breech baby to turn
around, and to give birth comfortably. The now well-known experience of surgical patients
hearing conversations in the operating room even while they are deeply anesthetized perhaps has
another explanation: telepathy. Dr Cheek has used ideomotor techniques to confirm this to his
own satisfaction. "If this assertion can be substantiated by the work of other independent
observers," he says, "it will be very important for surgeons and their assistants to keep positive
thoughts while they are working with their surgical patient."
On a lighter note, Dr Cheek tells the reader how to use ideomotor techniques with
self-hypnosis to locate lost objects. The book contains many case examples (sometimes
repeated) and explicit instructions on how therapists can use finger signalling. The chapters on
gynecology and female urology are highly technical. The author hopes that more women will
enter medical schools and more attention will be paid to "the concept of a mind influencing
physical behavior and endocrine balance."
The uses of the techniques to deal with infertility are fascinating, and will give hope to
couples who may be despairing of ever having their own children. Dr Cheek is cautiously
open-minded about other approaches which can be included along with the finger signaling.
These include looking for auras and investigating past lives, although he finds it most productive
for patients to simply cut their ties with past lives, leaving open the question of whether they are
real or hallucinated. He takes a similar position with spirit depossession, warning physicians to
be careful with whom they broach these subjects..
Especially enlightening are the reason given by Dr Cheek about why some people are
fearful and/or resistant to hypnosis: "You [the doctor] may be subliminally reminding these
patients of someone who treated them badly at a time when they were spontaneously in a
trance." Dr Cheek's compassion for patients, and his wish that they be co-therapists in their own
healing is evidenced in his disapproval of a common technique: " The ... concept that repeated
abreactions in total age-regression will catharse a trauma is not a viable therapeutic modality. It
usually alienates patients or forces them to fabricate traumas that either are not the causal ones or
have never happened."
There is much useful guidance on using the ideomotor techniques to help people control
pain and to combat the unwanted effects of chemotherapy. Dr. Cheek also writes about the
forensic and emergency uses of hypnosis. This is clearly a book intended for practitioners, but it
makes thought-provoking reading for laypersons, too. Hypnosis: the Application of Ideomotor
Techniques
by David B. Cheek, M.D.

20. SURGERY: DAVID B. CHEEK: THE APPLICATION OF IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES:

ALLYN & BACON: BOSTON: 1994
Able, the best space monkey the Army ever had, is dead today because of a
thousand-to-one anesthetic fluke. (Original news releases by the United Press in June 1959,
quoted the Army as stressing that her death was not linked to the space trip.
This was Able's second exposure to an anesthetic agent. There had been another, and
nobody had been communicating with Able to learn what subconscious effect had been produced
by the first anesthetic. She had been strapped to her seat for 38 hours before takeoff. Pressure on
her body had increased from 15 to 570 pounds per square inch after takeoff. A period of
weightlessness followed during that 300 mile trip before her descent and sudden deceleration as
the parachute opened.
Able made a great, involuntary contribution to our knowledge about travel in space. She
might not have perished, however, if there had been someone in the Army conversant with
monkey understanding to inform Able about what was to happen to her after that frightening
experience. She needed to know that this experience would be different. There would be the
same room, same smells and the same people as before but there would be nothing more to fear.
She needed to know that the medicine she smells is to make it easy to remove the wires under
her skin without hurting her, and that she would soon be back in her cage where she would have
something good to eat.
Just as in the case of the monkey, Able, we must do our best to discover and resolve
experiences that might influence the safety of a patient we schedule for an operation or refer to a
surgeon for an operation. The patient needs to know in advance what is to be done, why it will
be done and what is expected of him or her to ensure rapid recovery and return home from the
hospital.
(191)
Present-day Hospital Care of Surgical Patients: There have been some changes in the
way surgical patients are treated since the 1968 first edition of Clinical Hypnotherapy. Because
of rapidly growing hospital costs, insurance companies have insisted that patients be admitted in
the morning of the day of surgery instead of the more sensible preceding day that allows some
accommodation to the hospital surroundings. Patients now go through the admission process two
or three days before their surgery. They have seen their regular doctor for a physical
examination and laboratory tests within a week of surgery. They have an interview with one of
the anesthesiologists who is available at the time the patient comes in for the admission
formalities. These include the various legal releases and promises not to sue anyone but rather to
go through arbitration if things do not go well. They are further impressed with the need to pay
their bills on time in case their insurance carrier refuses to pay for hospitalization.
They are not to take any food or fluids after 12 midnight and are to be in the hospital
lobby by 7 a.m. This may mean that they must arise around 5 a.m. if they are scheduled for
surgery to start before noon. They may understandably need to have a quiet time before surgery
to quiet their anxieties and make up for lost sleep. Many of us have had fears that admission on
the day of surgery would lead to anxiety for the patient. The old plan of having a patient spend
an adjustment night in the hospital prior to surgery seemed right. To my knowledge, however,
there have been no statistics to justify this fear. Furthermore, with each hospital day costing
approximately $ 1,000, saving this day would diminish anxiety for the patient with inadequate
insurance coverage.
The Surgeon's Goals: The competent surgeon exercises good judgment in deciding on
an operation, carefully prepares the patient and gives meticulous attention to the details of
surgical technique. He or she offers complete explanations of what has been done as soon as the
patient is recovered from the anesthetic and sees to it that reports from the pathologist and
clinical laboratory are given to the patient as soon as they are available. A delay in reporting will
lead to a growing, potentially damaging, alarm. The pathology report often needs clarification
because the terms can sound ominous to a patient. Finally, the surgeon needs to see the patient
personally on the day of discharge, rather than leaving this task for an assistant or a resident.
Success with the outcome of surgery is not a one-man or one-woman job, however.
Surgeons need assistance from relatives, nurses, house officers, laboratory technicians, the
anesthesiologist, unseen helpers in the kitchen, and, especially, the patient. A good-risk surgical
patient can be converted to a bad one by careless remarks of relatives and friends on the eve of
surgery. The question "Why didn't you go to Doctor XYZ?" can have a devastating effect, even
when the patient consciously knows the person talking is not an authority on surgeons. The
admitting officer asking about the "nearest relative" or insisting on removal of a meaningful ring
may initiate very troublesome thoughts, particularly if it is a wedding ring associated with "Till
death do you part." Statements that could seem silly when a patient is normally conscious can
take on a very different meaning when that patient is in an altered state of anxiety prior to
surgery or while losing consciousness with a general anesthetic later on.
Any of the people just mentioned, including the patient, can be the cause of shock,
cardiac arrest, or hemorrhage during the operation. Any of them can be responsible for
postoperative paralysis of the small intestine (ileus), vomiting, distension, coagulation of blood
in the pelvic and leg vessels, showers of clotted blood to the lungs (pulmonary emboli), renal
shutdown and/or wound disruption with evisceration of the bowel.
Information on these matters has come from people who have survived these
complications and have been able to report their impressions during age regression studies using
ideomotor techniques.
These gloomy complications do not need to occur. They can be prevented. If they have
already occurred, it is possible to help the troubled patient stop them and return to an optimum
recovery. The surgeon, or a psychologist who uses ideomotor techniques, can help the patient
discover and reframe the causal events. It takes very few minutes to do this because a surgical
patient, during a critical time with complications, is already in a hypnoidal state of increased
suggestibility. Finger signals are easily set up and the patient asked to go forward from the
moment of losing consciousness to the moment something significant is happening during the
operation. When this has been recognized and verbally reported, the surgeon or therapist can
help the patient look at the experience with conscious understandings and eliminate the
problem's harmful effect.
For example: A patient awakened in pain, feeling frightened without apparent cause. At
my morning visit to her I was disturbed by her swollen abdomen and absence of bowel sounds. I
asked her to go into hypnosis and search for the cause of a problem that was totally unexpected.
She burst into tears as she said, "All my life I have been afraid I would have a cancer like my
two grandmothers and an aunt." When asked what made her think about this, she said, "The
nurse is saying, 'What is this lump I am feeling?'" The patient did not add my explanation I had
thought would prevent an unconscious patient from worrying. (193) I had said, "Oh, that's just
the lump of scarred omentum from the hernia sac that you saw me drop back into the abdomen."
I had asked the nurse to feel the normal gall bladder that was visible through the incision but her
hand contacted the "lump" instead. She was assisting me in the absence of the resident, who had
been detained in the delivery room. I again explained that the lump had nothing to do with
cancer.
I explained to the patient what had happened. She was relieved and within half an hour
her abdomen was flat and peristalsis was audible. This is a prime example of an alarming
impression taking priority over a nonthreatening one, my statement in the operating room. Her
unconscious fears could have continued with a pyramiding harmful effect.
Complications can occur days or weeks after what seems to have been a routine
operation. Repetitive dreams of reliving the surgical experience can build stress reactions that
lead to the complication.
PROPHYLACTIC PREPARATION FOR TROUBLE-FREE SURGERY: The
patient who knows what is to be done and has had time to think it over and perhaps obtain
another opinion from a competent consultant is the one best prepared for an operation.
In addition, I believe, the surgeon or an associate should teach the patient how to use
self-hypnosis; how to remember hunger, thirst, and hyperactive bowel peristalsis and how to
develop analgesia for the surgical field. The patient should rehearse these changes until fully
confident in these abilities.
Learning to Disassociate One's Self from the Operating Room: The value of
separating from the environment of the surgical theater should be clarified and the patient
instructed on how to go on a prolonged "vacation trip" during the time between a preoperative
medication and return to his or her room following the operation. In this way the sounds of an
operating room will blend in with background sounds of traffic or distant conversations of
people in a restaurant. It is helpful to state the value of ignoring conversation in the operating
room. Instruction should be given during the hypnotic session, however, that the patient will pay
full attention to whatever direction is given when either the surgeon or the anesthesiologist
addresses the patient by his or her first name.
I have never found a way to completely eliminate awareness of what (194) is going on in the
operating room. Part of the patient's attention is always right there.
For further protection, the surgeon should make it clear to the anesthesiologist, the
operating room nurses, and the nurses in the recovery room to either refrain from talking or be
as careful with conversation as they would be if surgery were being done under local or spinal
anesthesia.
The primitive part of the brain is acutely aware of changes from ordinary circumstances
to a stressful one that requires physiological and emotional adaptation. At an ideomotor level of
awareness, reflected by finger signals, a hypnotized subject can discover and communicate
recognition that a certain stimulus brought about a physiological response such as a drop in
blood pressure followed by the beginning of a hemorrhage. This ability is present when a patient
is awake, sleeping or unconscious from injury or a general anesthetic.
The subconscious mind is constantly monitoring sensory stimuli and recording
physiological responses to threatening stimuli whether the conscious mind is awake or blocked
out by natural sleep, injury, or general anesthesia. I compare the job of the reticular formation
(reticular activating system or RAS) surrounding the brainstem to the work of an expert
observing the changing patterns of a radar screen. He is alerted by disappearance of a blip that
has been previously visible and he is alerted when a new blip appears. The rostral end of the
RAS decides what information should be relayed to higher centers for action. It also suppresses
nonmeaningful sensory stimuli (Magolln 1963. Hernandez-Peon et al 1956)
People in hypnosis can shift subconscious memory back to an operation many years after
the experience and can report their unconscious interpretation of an auditory stimulus and the
physiological reaction to that stimulus. They can also report, with remarkable accuracy, what
they believe resolved a problem, or they can teach us what they believe would have corrected the
problem if the right things had been said or done. General anesthesia does not remove this
subconscious alertness to conditions in the outside world.
Bernard Levinson (1965) did the first carefully controlled test of hearing under
anesthesIa. Ernest Werbel, (1965), a surgeon and David Scott (1974), an anesthesiologist, were
the first to put information about hearing in a book. Bonke, Fitch, and Miller (1990) of
Rotterdam assembled a number of papers from the First International Congress on Memory and
Awareness in Anesthesia held in Glasgow, Scotland in November of 1989. Progress is now
being made.
I want to stress the fact that an anesthetized patient will ignore "canned," nonmeaningful
voices used in experiments to test whether or not a hearing sense persists during general
anesthesia (Cheek 1981). My studies have shown that the patient pays selective attention to
familiar voices during an (195) operation. First it is the anesthesiologist; then it shifts to the
surgeon and to the assistant as the surgeon makes the incision. Attention reverts to the
anesthesiologist at the end of the surgical procedure. There is, however, global awareness
throughout the unconscious period. Any sound of alarm from the anesthesiologist will
immediately shift the attention back to him or her during the surgical work period.
Obtaining "informed consent" may be hazardous to health: The tedious and
subconsciously frightening outlining of possible untoward results of surgery while obtaining
"informed consent" to have the operation may be the cause of some of the complications I have
mentioned. To give informed consent the patient is supposed to have the knowledge that
transfusions of blood may be necessary because of hemorrhage. The surgery might not do what
is thought to be needed and new things might be found that could require more extensive work.
This doomsday requirement by the legal advisors for physicians and hospitals is damaging
unless it is countered by teaching the patient how the complications can be avoided. The
subconscious interpretation of what is outlined is that "my surgeon expects these things to
happen."
The subconscious mind pays attention to threats and ignores positive assurances on the
eve of surgery. Ideas about danger outweigh nonthreatening bits of information. This is why the
ordinary way of obtaining an educated understanding about operations is medically and
psychologically inappropriate.
Generalized Anger: Furthermore, if a patient feels angry about treatment during a
hospital stay, the anger is not limited to the person creating that anger. It becomes generalized
and may influence the response of the patient to the anesthetic, to the surgeon, to what the
surgeon does, and to the nursing staff during the recovery period. The patient will have no
conscious knowledge about this generalization.
CASE EXAMPLE: LITIGATION AGAINST THE WRONG SOURCE OF
ANGER: An example of blaming the wrong person and generalizing of resentment was given
by a woman I interviewed in Sacramento in 1979. She had been in the process of suing her very
competent and innocent surgeon because of complications relating to an abdominal operation 18
months prior to my interview with her.
Her surgeon had been unable to see that the anesthesiologist inserted (196) his penis into this
woman's mouth during the operation. The usual drapes over supports around her head screened
him from the surgeon and his assistants, but nurses had been aware of his actions and eventually
brought about arrest and conviction of this disturbed person.
Her complications of continuing fever, wound infection, and disruption of the incision
were strong evidence confirming my findings when this woman reviewed her operation during
an age regression. Repeated, consciously unrecognized dreams of being assaulted sexually while
being unable to move apparently lowered her immune capabilities to organisms in her skin. Her
operation was a simple hysterectomy and should not have been complicated in any way.
Additional evidence of the anesthesiologist's involvement in using this woman and many
others to satisfy his sexual drives was revealed by this patient and two other women that I
interviewed. Each reported that he had not visited her preoperatively. He came into the operating
room while she was drowsy from the medication. None of them heard his voice before, during,
or after surgery. He did not intubate the three women to make the anesthetic safer. He did not
visit them during their prolonged hospital stay. The other two women had also had wound
infections and continuing fever postoperatively.
Example: Damaging Versus Constructive Influences by Surgeons: As a contrast to
this was the information I obtained from a woman who had nearly died at the moment of losing
consciousness during three failed attempts to repair a congenitally impaired hip socket.
Prior to each near tragedy in her first three operations, the communications had been
between the surgeon and her parents. She was excluded as though she were a bystander. She was
10 months of age with the first operation, 11 and 13 years old with the near fatal second and
third operations. She felt coerced and angry when she went into the operating room for each of
the first three operations. She "did not want to be there" as she lost consciousness. Breathing
stopped during the induction as she experienced a flashback to her sensations at birth.
A review of this woman's birth revealed that her mother had been heavily sedated and
was unable to talk. The baby felt apathetic, unwanted, and unloved. She had to be resuscitated.
The chemicals used for each subsequent surgery were the state-dependent connection with her
birth experience.
During her cardiac arrest at age 11, she described the alarm of the anesthetist as he
jumped up, moved to her left side, and began pushing on her chest. She demonstrated with her
hands the rhythm of the pushing. Her spirit left her body at this point. Again she "did not want to
be there." Her spirit visited her horse at the stable and her cocker spaniel at her home (197)
before going to the coffee shop in the hospital. She saw her mother and father appearing worried
but somehow did not feel she could talk to them. Coffee the horse and Vicki the spaniel were
both alarmed at seeing her floating in an unusual position. Next, her body felt the jolt of an
electrical shock, followed by insertion of a "long needle" into her chest. She demonstrated with
her finger that the needle went in just to the left of the sternum in the sixth space between her
ribs. Of course, she might have known about these things being done to people when their heart
stops, but this report was by the ll-year-old child talking in the present tense with absolute
sureness about her perceptions.
There was a "sort of tingling, burning" sensation in her chest just before the needle was
removed. This is when her body began breathing again and she felt her heart beating. Now her
spirit got back into her body.
Following this graphic report, which is recorded on videotape, I asked her to go over that
experience, hearing what could have been said to her that would have prevented her from nearly
dying. This is her statement: The anesthesiologist would have leaned over her at the start and
would have said, "You are going to be all right. We are going to help you get well and be able to
do the things you want to do."
I have to report that the operation record and the notes by the anesthesiologist show no
trace of this near tragedy in the operating room. The surgeon is dead and the anesthesiologist is
retired and could not be found when I tried to learn more. Is it possible this intelligent woman
could have fabricated the whole thing? Perhaps altering the record seemed legally safer for those
involved, in case something should happen later.
Something did, in fact, happen. There was a hematoma and a wound infection. She
remained in the hospital 16 days. The operation was a failure. These are suggestive facts, but the
hospital records suggest that this patient invented her cardiac arrest on January 4, 1966.
The third failed attempt to repair the hip socket was when she was 13 years old. She felt
that her doctor had no idea of what he might be able to do. This was her original orthopedic
surgeon working in the hospital where her first disaster had occurred. Again she reacted badly
during the induction of anesthesia.
Her fourth surgical experience at age 14 was uncomplicated and successful. This was a
hip replacement, a major surgical procedure, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Her orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Roderick Turner, told her that she would be the most important part
of the repair process. He asked her to work with him to make it a success. He outlined what he
expected of her when she came out of the anesthetic and for months to come. This had the effect
of tacitly implying that she would live through the operation and do well in the future. It
centered her mind on events of the future instead of the possible panic of the present at the time
she would be unconscious again. (198)
This woman, now in her thirties, attributed the success to the way her surgeon included
her as a co-worker in the project of overcoming her handicap. Most valuable, she felt, was the
intensity of his commitment to making the operation successful. Perhaps there was also some
telepathic healing energy crossing from Dr. Turner to his little patient during the operation.
Telepathy and Fear: Telepathy: There is no question in my mind that people hear
conversations in the operating room, but it appears that they are also capable of picking up the
thoughts of their surgeon and anesthesiologist. Loss of consciousness is an alarming event. All
the survival senses are at their highest pitch. It seems clear that more than the hearing sense is
available to the patient.
David Dillahunt, a physician of Columbus, Ohio, in 1962 was the first to suggest to me
that anesthetized patients are telepathically aware of thoughts of the surgeon and the
anesthesiologist. I have learned that impressions I once thought were overheard have been
picked up telepathically. The question "00 you hear the surgeon say what you have just told
me?" may evoke a verbal "yes" and a nod of the head but these higher-level perceptions may be
contradicted by a finger saying "no."
At this, I ask, "Let a thought come to you to explain how you know what you have just
told me. Your 'yes' finger will lift at that moment. When your finger lifts, please tell me what
comes to your mind." As the finger lifts, the patient will say, "1 just know it." I then say,
"Please tell me what part of your mind knows this." The patient will put a hand up to the right
side of his or her head. It does not matter whether the patient is right- or left-handed when
recognizing the location of this understanding.
Words, therefore, that are thought to be overheard in the operating room may be simply
thoughts transmitted telepathically. If this assertion can be substantiated by the work of other
independent observers, it will be very important for surgeons and their assistants to keep positive
thoughts while they are working with their surgical patient.
Consciously Recognized Fear at the Time of Surgery: Many famous surgeons,
including J. B. Murphy, J. M. T. Finney, and the senior George Crile, have pointed out the
danger of going ahead with surgery after a patient has expressed a fear of dying. It is possible
with hypnosis to discover the origin of such consciously expressed fear. The origins are usually
ridiculous identifications or assumptions that now is the time (199) to be punished for real or
imagined sins. Sometimes fear stems from unscientific assumption that the diagnosis will be
cancer, and death during anesthesia is preferable to a slow and painful one with cancer.
A WAY OF DISCOVERING AND WORKING WITH FEAR: It is possible for these
fears and assumptions to be corrected in the hospital if the need for surgery is urgent, but there is
seldom such an emergency. It is wiser to reschedule the operation, send the patient home, and
make arrangements to have someone explore the unconscious reasons for fear with hypnosis and
ideomotor questioning such as this:
Q: Is there some past event responsible for your feeling that you might die with this operation?
A: Will usually be a "yes" finger or "I don't want to answer" which really means "yes, but I don't
want to know about it."
Q: Would this source of fear have occurred before you were -? (The completion of the search
and resolution is carried out as described in Chapter 12.)
Before terminating the search, be sure to ask, "Is there anything else we need to know in order to
ensure that your surgery and recovery will be safe and comfortable?" If the answer is "no", you
can ask the patient to hallucinate the earliest date that would be good for scheduling the surgery.
Variants of Fear:
1. We can be afraid and feel free to talk of our fears. We do so usually because we understand
that others have had similar fears. We are willing to listen and be reassured in return.
2. We can know our fear consciously but feel unwilling to talk about it because of the conviction
that others might think us foolish.
3. We may have a consciously recognized fear and be unwilling to talk about it lest it be
justified. We may not want to "hear the truth." This kind of fear causes people to put off visiting
a doctor after recognizing suspicious symptoms. Older people with such fear may have suicidal
thoughts that can lead to actual suicide.
4. We can experience fear subconsciously in tremendous reality and be totally oblivious to its
presence in our conscious thinking. Recent studies have convinced me that such consciously
unrecognized fears may be responsible for major complications like hypercoagulability of the
blood. Thrombosis in pelvic veins may be followed by showers of clot fragments to the (200)
lungs. Initial intravascular coagulation with shock may be followed by massive fibrinolytic
hemorrhage.
Subconscious Fear: I believe the fear that cannot be recognized or expressed may be
even more dangerous than the kind a patient is able to talk about. No careful study had been
made, however, to see how many patients have survived when they thought they would die or
dreamed that they would die during surgery. Whatever the statistics might be, it would be safe, I
believe, to assume that there would be less chance of complications if patients were free of fear
and were looking forward to a quick recovery from surgery. Surgeons should be capable of
asking about the presence of subconscious fear. They or their assistants should be able to
discover and resolve the fear before going ahead with surgery.
There is an easy way to discover subconscious fear without indicating a belief that such
fear is present. It is revealed when, after coaching a patient about analgesia and control of
physiological behavior, you say, "Most ordinary people with the surgery you will be having will
go home from the hospital in five days. You are able to do things that the ordinary patient cannot
do. Let me ask your subconscious mind this question, 'Does your inner mind know you can go
home in five days, or even sooner?'"
A "yes" finger tells you that the patient is optimistic; a "no" signal indicates fear that
going home may not be possible. In reaction to the "no" signal, you can ask, "Are you afraid
either for yourself or the surgeon?" The answer will always be "yes" with a finger signal. The
reason will often be so ridiculous that the patient will feel sheepish when telling you. You can
follow up by repeating the initial question, "Now that you know this, does your inner mind know
you can go home in five days or even sooner?" The finger signal will probably be "yes."
Fear and Uncertainty While Unconscious: Whatever the statistics might show in
relation to fear, we can probably assume that surgical patients will do better and recover more
rapidly when they have confidence in their surgeon, know what to expect, and are free of
conscious and unconscious fear. Interviews in age-regression with adults who have undergone
surgery in early childhood have revealed that primal fear is initiated and aggravated by
uncertainty. There are new sights, new sounds, new smells in hospitals. Then there is loss of
ability to talk, to move, and to feel.
(201)
PREPARATION FOR TROUBLE-FREE SURGERY:
* What the Patient Needs to Know Before Surgery: A patient headed for surgery should feel
comfortable with the surgeon scheduled to do the surgery. Patients are sometimes referred to a
surgeon whom they do not know. You will know him or her better if you ask questions. Most
surgeons are willing to take time to understand and to answer questions. You also have a right to
trust your instincts. Do not undergo surgery
of any sort if you do not feel comfortable with the way your surgeon behaves toward you.
Surgery is a joint responsibility between you and your surgeon. If you are suspicious, if
you identify your surgeon with some other person you have known and disliked in the past, you
owe it to your surgeon and to yourself to go in some other direction. Complications of surgery
that can lead to unhappy litigation are almost never because the surgeon is inept or careless.
They occur because a troubled patient under general anesthesia may misinterpret conversations
in the operating room and incorporate misunderstandings into the structure of sleep patterns
during the recovery period.
Questions to ask your surgeon are:
1. What will you do in this operation?
2. How long should I expect to remain in the hospital?
3. How soon can I get out of bed after the surgery?
4. What should I do, or avoid doing, when I am home?
5. When do you think I will be able to return to work?
Above all, remember that it is your body you are caring for. You have every right to
demand information about the drugs given you. You have a right to refuse "shots" offered you
"for pain" when you are in the hospital. Pain medication tends to slow down action of your
bowel and may interfere with your appetite. You are going to learn how to be free of pain so
refuse pain medication that you have not ordered for yourself.
You may not win friends among the nurses and attendants while you are in that hospital,
but this is not your goal anyway. Your goal is maintaining your power to make sensible
decisions about yourself. Bernie Siegel (1986) has pointed out how important it is for cancer
patients, for example, to be stubborn, rebellious and hated by the hospital attendants. His
observation on this matter stems from long experience with patients who have (202) performed
miracles when they seemed to have no chance to survive with their problem.
What Bernie Siegel says of cancer patients really applies to all patients, medical and
surgical. Nice, polite, and obedient people tend to incorporate the atmosphere of those around
them and may unconsciously give up when things are not going well.
* What the Surgeon Needs to Know: The surgeon needs to keep all communications with the
patient in positive terms. It takes a lot of thought to avoid using negative words. This matter has
been considered in "Principles of Suggestion".
It is important to know about any troublesome experience your patient has had at birth or
with an early life operation under general anesthesia. The most frequently found stressful
experience has been a tonsillectomy. You don't want your patient to flash back to a frightening
tonsillectomy when the anesthetist is starting the anesthetic. Patients often repress the memory of
a nasty tonsil operation. You need to ask specifically, "Have you had your tonsils removed
surgically?" Just as with childhood sexual abuse, you must ask directly or you will miss a very
important part of the patient's history. The remaining problems of allergies and sensitivities to
drugs usually will be covered by the anesthesiologist.
A valuable means of relieving possible unconscious fears is to instruct the patient about
postoperative care when you are seeing the patient before admission to the hospital. Also
important is the appointment by your nurse for a postoperative checkup in your office. This
tacitly suggests the certainty of the patient's survival in order to keep the appointment.
Preliminary Steps Prior to Scheduling Surgery: It is important, I believe, that the
patient be given plenty of time to assimilate the reasons for an operation. The atmosphere for
surgery is best for the patient who has thought it over, obtained another opinion regarding the
need for surgery, and weighed the pros and cons for the operation. It is surgically unwise to
hurry a decision for an operation. Rarely are pain and increasing disability so urgent that surgery
has to be immediately carried out. The general principles that have proven helpful in my
personal experience with surgery have been as follows:
1. The reasons for doing the operation are outlined.
2. Questions are thoughtfully answered.
3. I have suggested that another opinion from a surgeon would be welcomed and I will share my
findings if requested. (203)
4. I explain that I will teach the patient how to use self-hypnosis in order to ensure a comfortable
post operative period and the most rapid recovery.
5. An appointment is made for a final discussion of plans before scheduling the surgery.
Preparation for the Surgery: Admission is now required to be on the day of surgery. There is
no time for preparation in a bustling morning holding area. If I were doing surgery now I would
do this preparation at the time of the discussion prior to scheduling surgery, usually one to two
weeks before the day of admission.
Summary of Steps of Surgical Preparation:
1. Explain the value of prolonged freedom from pain.
2. Tell the patient about James Esdaile. In 1845-1886 he found that all signs of inflammation
disappeared when pain was removed with deep hypnosis.
3. Demonstrate shifting of attention: postural test.
4. Give challenge: "Try to lift your heavy arm."
5. Get around negative effect of trying to lift the arm by imagining what
would lift the arm.
6. Induce hypnosis with your choice of method.
7. Set up ideomotor symbol movements of fingers for "yes," "no" and "I
don't want to answer."
8. Ask, "Are you willing for me to teach you how to turn off painful sensations after you awaken
from surgery?"
9. Develop the means of doing this: (cold water).
10. Set up an "anchor" for instant subconscious numbness.
11. Have the patient rehearse turning it on and off twice. Stress the importance of practicing this
ability.
12. Explain about being "away from an operating room" in order to ignore
careless conversation.
13. Help the patient select a "vacation trip" to use.
14. Obtain a subconscious "promise" for restful sleep while in the hospital
and when home.
15. Ask whether or not the patient feels it is possible to go home at least
as soon as the average patient.
1. The Value of Prolonged Freedom from Subconscious Pain: I will quote my
communications with a patient several days before surgery is scheduled: (204) You will be given
an injection of a mild sedative about an hour before you go into the operating room. The
anesthetic puts you to sleep comfortably with the fluid that has been running into your arm. The
anesthesiologist will give you some medicine that totally relaxes your muscles for a few seconds
while he tips your head back and inserts a tube down your windpipe. You will not be able to
breathe for yourself during those few seconds. The machine will do that for you until you can
breathe naturally again.
This tube is covered with lubrication that makes your throat feel cool and numb. The
breathing tube allows you to have less anesthetic agent than would be needed otherwise and it
makes sure that you are getting all the oxygen you need. It will come out as soon as the
operation is over but your throat will feel cool probably for a couple of hours after that.
A general anesthetic keeps you relaxed and free from pain during the surgery but the
average patient immediately tunes in to sensations from the surgical area and will begin feeling
pain when anesthesia has been stopped. You will know how to avoid this. You will just press
your left thumb and index finger tips together to remind you to become instantly cool and numb.
A nurse may offer you an injection for pain-relieving medicine when you get back to your
room because the average patient will be complaining. When you tell her you do not need the
injection you will feel even more comfortable and relaxed than before. You are free to use
medicine any time but the less you use the better because pain medication only relieves
conscious pain. It does not touch the subconscious awareness of painful stimuli. It does not
prevent muscle spasm and swelling of the tissues in the surgical area.
I want to teach you how to use self-hypnosis so that you are in a different class from the
average patient. I want you to feel hungry right away when you wake up so that you can eat and
stimulate your stomach and intestines to behave as though nothing had happened. Does that
sound reasonable to you?
You will be able to make any part of your body cool and numb. You will not be
wondering when a nurse is going to give you an injection or a pill to relieve pain because you
will have no pain. If something happens to remind you that you should be uncomfortable you
will just pinch your left thumb and index finger tips together to get the instant result you can
experience today and will be practicing before you come into the hospital.
2. James Esdaile's Contribution to Our Knowledge: I believe it is helpful to present some
information to surgical patients that will motivate them to work with control of their reactions to
surgery. I would (205) suggest telling a prospective surgical patient about the work of James
Esdaile, a British surgeon in India in the mid-1840s.
Esdaile's surgical mortality was close to 50 percent in the days when patients had to be
held down while a surgeon worked as quickly as possible. Anesthetic agents were not yet
available in India, and there was no protection from infection. Then he learned how to
mesmerize patients and lowered his mortality to 5 percent, the lowest figure in the world until
the time of Joseph Lister and his introduction of so-called" antiseptic surgery" in 1865.
Apparently Esdaile's secret was his observation that redness, swelling, and local heat disappeared
when a patient turned off pain while in a deep level of hypnosis with his mesmerism. Something
wonderful was happening with factors in blood coagulation, the resistance to trauma and the
power of his patients' immune system against potentially dangerous bacteria that were always
present.
3. Demonstrating Shift of Attention with Postural Suggestion: The next step is to start the
process of improving self-confidence in the surgical patient. I ask him to hold his arms extended
forward without contact between his hands. With his eyes closed, he is to focus attention on his
right arm. I ask him to imagine a heavy telephone directory hanging from a strap around his
wrist and pulling his arm down toward his lap.
4. Giving a Challenge: The arm will begin moving down. It will feel heavy while the same
weight of gravity in the other arm is ignored. Before the "heavy" arm reaches his lap, the patient
is asked to try to lift that arm. Usually he will recognize that it is difficult to lift that arm. Try
involves the idea that the therapist does not believe the action is possible.
5. Getting Around the Negative Effect of "Trying": The lifting becomes easy when the
patient replaces the hallucinated heavy book with a bunch of helium-filled balloons tied to his
wrist. It is always easier to add a new thought to accomplish a result rather than trying to oppose
a challenge that suggests a difficulty. (The value of this first step is that it demonstrates that a
patient can pay attention to one part of his body and at the same time ignore another part. The
pull of gravity downward is augmented by the idea of the heavy weight on one arm. The other
arm does not feel heavy when attention is placed elsewhere. Recognition of this phenomenon
can be helpful with the next steps.) (206)
6. Inducing Hypnosis by Your Choice of Methods: I usually incorporate a selection of
ideomotor symbol movements both as a means of communicating unconsciously and to permit a
patient to enter a hypnotic state while wondering which finger will lift for each type of answer to
a question. For a surgeon starting to use hypnosis, I would suggest a simple induction such as
this:
Please hold a pen between the thumb and index finger of your left hand. I am going to
ask your subconscious mind to pull the fingers apart when you are relaxed enough to learn about
turning off sensations in your body. It is easier to let your subconscious mind decide about that
moment because you will probably be thinking that you are not being hypnotized. You are much
more aware of everything around you when you are in a hypnotic state. You never become a
zombie.
In order to get into a readiness for turning off sensationsl the easiest way is to close your
eyes and get a picture of a lighted candle in your mind's eye, as though you had put one on a
table across the room and could watch the way the flame moves, gets bigger and smaller with the
movements of air in the room. Allow the muscles of your foreheadl neckl and shoulders to relax
progressively as you breathe out with each respiration.
7. Setting up Finger Signals: Suggestions about relaxing will continue until the pen slips from
the patient's fingers. Usually the patient's arm will remain in the original position indicating
catalepsy, a sign of a medium hypnotic state. I ask for the index finger on the left hand to lift
when the patient is IItwice as deep as the moment the pen dropped. This finger then will be the
lIyesll finger. When it lifts, it is usually very easy to get a signal for Ilno" and another for III
don't want to answer.1I I tell the patient that we now have a way of communicating with very
deep levels of perception where the mechanisms for turning off pain reside.
8. “Are You Willing to Turn Off Subconscious Pain?”: A “no” signal will tell you that your
patient has some residual fear of losing sensations or losing control. Often you can get around
this with some questions about the origin of this fear. It will help if you say that you do not want
to eliminate all feeling as occurs with an anesthetic. You want your patient to feel touch and
pressure but be free of any painful stimulus. This is usually very well accepted at a subconscious
level.
9. Develop the Means of Doing This: If the answer to the initial question is a “yes” you can
continue with suggestions about standing in cold water until the tissues become numb. The "yes"
finger is to lift for the coldness and the "no" finger is to lift when everything beneath the wet
skin is numb. This is to include the muscles and the bones. Make this a progressive staging, to
the knees, then to the waist, and finally to a point a little higher than the place where an incision
will be made.
Have your patient do the testing for sensation changes. A pinch is usually adequate.
Some patients do not trust doctors. The numbness might not be there at all if you do the initial
testing when the highest level of numbness has been reached. The degree of numbness can be
augmented by asking the "yes" finger to lift when the tissues are "twice as numb," and so on.
Some patients are able to make their legs numb below their knees but fail to give a signal
for coldness and numbness above this level, particularly for the abdomen. You will recognize
this problem if you get a signal for feeling cold but no signal for the numbness. This usually
reflects fear stemming from some dental experience or an earlier unpleasant anesthetic
experience. It will usually be easy for the patient to decide to keep that experience from
interfering here.
10. Set up an Anchor for Instant Subconscious Numbness: With naturally occurring enhanced
motivations involved in a presurgical experience, it is very easy for a patient to learn about using
a familiar experience from the past to develop mild analgesia. I explain that this will be useful
during the recovery period when the anesthetic has worn off.
Removing subconscious perceptions of discomfort will prevent the inflammatory
reactions that occur when an inexperienced patient's attention is focused on the surgical area as
the anesthetic wears off. With aseptic surgery under sterile condition, there is now no need to
have the muscle guarding, the leakage of fluid into tissues around the incision, the retention of
fluid and salts, and the general unwillingness to move. These are reactions that have evolved for
lower animal having injuries that could otherwise be associated with infection. Modern surgery
does not require outmoded survival mechanisms needed when wild animals have to contend with
their dirty wounds.
After making sure the patient is satisfied about his ability to diminish sensations, as
directed, he is shown how to set up a signal to himself that will automatically call out the
numbness instantly whenever he needs it. Pressure between the tips of thumb and index finger
on the left hand will initiate this process from now on. The "yes" finger on the opposite hand
will lift unconsciously to indicate when this response has been established for future use.
The finger pressure of the left hand will relax when the numbness has been activated at a
subconscious level. Pressure between the tips of the right thumb and index fingers will remove
the analgesia and bring sensations back to normal. (208)
11. Have the Patient Rehearse Turning the Numbness On and Off: Having the patient
rehearse turning the numbness on and off twice is usually enough to give the patient confidence
in doing it in the future. A little reinforcement may be needed when you see the patient in the
recovery room after the surgery is completed.
12. The Value of "Being Away" from the Operating Room: I explain now that it will be
very helpful if the patient could take himself to some beautiful location where there are
sensations of peacefulness, rest, and relaxation instead of remaining in an operating room
listening to clashing steel instruments and pans. "Those noises will become distant sounds of
traffic or conversations of people in a restaurant while you are eating during your vacation."
13. Having the Patient Select a 'Vacation Trip" to Use: The explanation about the value of
"being away" can be given during the initial induction of hypnosis (step 6), or you can have the
patient come out of hypnosis during the explanation and reenter hypnosis now as you say
something like "Please shut your eyes now and let your inner mind go back to the start of some
pleasant vacation period in your life. When you are there, your yes finger will lift. It is not
necessary to consciously remember the vacation trip. When your inner mind knows that you will
go on this trip tonight at some time while you are asleep and again when you are given the
preoperative sedative injection in the hospital, your yes finger will lift to let you know that this is
now in your mental computer. You can select other vacations when you want to sleep while you
are healing in the days or nights after the surgery is completed.
"Hypnotic sense of time is wonderful. You can contract a two-week vacation into the
period of time between the hypo and the moment you are returning to your room, or you can
stretch a one-hour moving picture you have seen so that it takes up a two or three hour interval
that would include your operation and recovery room time.
"You can be right back in the operating room any time your anesthesiologist or your
surgeon tells you how things are going or any time they want you to do something. They will
use your first name to bring you back temporarily to keep you in touch with their work."
14. Subconscious Promise of Restful Sleep: A promise of restful sleep is obtained at the close
of the interview or has already been included with step 13. Ask, "1 would like you to sleep really
deeply and restfully tonight. A good way to ensure that would be to press (209) the tips of your
left index finger and thumb together and say to yourself, 'When I know I will sleep deeply and
restfully tonight and awaken feeling good in the morning, my yes finger will lift.' After the
finger lifts, simply imagine staring at the flame of an imaginary candle until you drift off to
sleep."
15. Questioning about When a Patient Thinks He Can Go Home: This question can reveal
previously unrecognized subconscious fears. It reveals fear without suggesting that fears could
be present. I will say something like this: "Most patients who have this kind of surgery will be
leaving the hospital after five days, but you have been learning to turn off pain, to feel hungry,
and to know that you can put yourself into hypnosis when you want to. Does your inner mind
know that you can go home at least as soon as they do?"
The patient is saying "I am afraid" if the subconscious answer is "no" or "I don't want to
answer." It is very important for such a patient to realize that his conscious desire to be
optimistic is being contradicted by a powerful unconscious energy that will probably turn out to
be ridiculous. Now you can ask for a finger signal when his subconscious mind has oriented to
the moment he began feeling he might not be able to go home on schedule. Check on the validity
of the recognition by repeating the original question and getting a subconscious "yes" response.
 Comment about Telling Patients Not to Listen: It is probably helpful to urge the patient
to "ignore" operating room conversation. After writing about this (Cheek 1960b), I learned that
suggesting such a thing really alerts the patient to paying attention to such conversation. This is
comparable to putting wet cotton in the patient's ears or putting headphones on and turning on
music to drown out careless operating room talk. Patients treated in this way generally feel that
there must be something important to hear or you would not be trying to shield them from it. I
think it is helpful, however, to suggest that all the sounds be either ignored or translated to
something else unless they hear their first name spoken. If a careless remark impinges on the
patient under these circumstances its effect seems to be diminished or diluted.
WHAT TO DO WHEN THERE ARE COMPLICATIONS: I should point out here
what most older surgeons discover for themselves before they retire. The number and
seriousness of complications diminish (210) as their experience with surgery grows. Part of this
experience includes the surgeons' recognition of the fact that surgical patients have enormous
resources for healing if their medical and surgical consultants give them a chance to use them.
The surgeon may not recognize that his or her respect for these resources is what does the
work. This was demonstrated by the case example of the youngster with hip surgeries. If
hypnosis is used to implement these patient resources, there will be fewer complications for a
surgeon to face.
The following are examples of showing respect for patients' resources:
1. An inexperienced, young surgeon who had read about or been told about the healing
potentials of acutely ill and/or unconscious patients ordered a hemorrhaging patient to stop
bleeding and observed the abrupt termination of hemorrhage.
2. Another similar young surgeon asked a patient suffering from postoperative paralytic bowel to
regress to the moment something is happening to produce this ileus and to understand that
reframing of the cause can permit normal bowel activity to begin. Abdominal distension
disappeared and peristalsis became active within an hour.
3. A seasoned but depressed urologist under general anesthesia heard his surgeon comment on
the size of the ulcer in the stomach specimen and the possibility that it could be a malignant
ulcer. At that moment he decided it would be more peaceful to die from renal shutdown and
uremia than from cancer of the stomach. His kidneys put out only 30 cubic milliliters of urine
during the first four postoperative days but released 500 milliliters of urine within four hours of
hearing the resident talking with the surgeon in the hallway outside his room and saying that the
sections were back and the ulcer was benign.
This doctor told me he would not have believed the good news if the surgeon and
resident had reassured him in his presence. This complication probably would not have occurred
if the surgeon, while examining the excised stomach specimen, had said, "This is a big ulcer.
Even if it is malignant, we have removed the whole specimen."
4. An anesthesiologist in Honolulu, Carl Johnson, was able to help a surgeon out of a problem
by appealing to the unconscious resources of his patient during a gastrectomy. Dr. Johnson told
me that the woman began bleeding from small vessels just after removal of her stomach for a
peptic ulcer. He put his head close to her ear and asked her to go into a deepfreeze locker and to
feel very cold. She was unconscious, but she apparently did what he asked her to do. The
bleeding stopped, but her skin turned a little blue. This alarmed the surgeon. Dr. Johnson quietly
whispered to (211) the patient that she could warm up now. Bleeding recommenced. asked her to
imagine drinking a chocolate ice cream milk shake in experience that local coolness in the
stomach without making her en feel cold. Again the bleeding stopped. Her color pleased the surg
the operation was completed. Johnson was recognizing the ability patient to use familiar
experiences helpfully.
What about Hypnosis as the Only Anesthetic for an Operation? Anesthesiology is so
far advanced now and those who are speciality field are so good that there are very few
occasions when there adequate reason to use hypnosis alone for the operation. Twice during my
professional life have I resorted to using hypnosis for this purpose.
1. A 25-year-old woman needed a breast biopsy. Her surgeon ( use a local anesthetic but she
refused. She had an unrelenting convention that she would die if given a general anesthetic. I
had used hypnosis with her during a pregnancy and knew she was a good subject. The
conditioning was set up at a subconscious level for her to be wherever the subject of my reading
would take her. I invited her to come with me to Africa and involve herself in the life of a little
dog, "Jock of the Bushveldt," by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick.
The procedure was simple. There was no bleeding. The patient was totally relaxed. Her
pulse rate climbed from about 70 to 120 when the surgeon cut into the lump after its removal.
He had announced that he would do this. Her pulse rate dropped to its previous level when he
said, this is benign." It was a benign fibroadenoma.
2. A 50-year-old osteopath who had used hypnosis in her work to use hypnosis instead of an
anesthetic for removal of five ste her right femur. These needed to be removed before she could
1 joint replacement in the future. I accepted her plea because she had suffered a Guillain-Barre
syndrome following a dental anesthetic and naturally terrified about the possibility of another
similar problem. She had been totally paralyzed for a year and had to be fed by an assistant.
Comment: At the time of this revision we have substantiating reports by Dal (1990) and
others during the First International Symposium on Memory and (212) Awareness in
Anaesthesia, held in Glasgow, Scotland (April 6-8, 1989). Although some of the papers talk
about "awareness," however, it is clear that the authors, with the exception of Ewin and Henry
Bennett, are referring to what an anesthetized person might consciously report when asked
consciously verbalized questions.
Unfortunately, surgeons continue to be lethargic in accepting the idea that people can
hear and be influenced by what they hear, or think they hear, while anesthetized. It is my hope
that surgical patients in the future will advise the operating room team in advance of an
operation that they will be paying attention to conversations and will be expecting their surgeon,
first assistant, and anesthesiologist to be thoughtful about the subject matter of conversations
while at work. (213)

21. FETAL PERCEPTIONS: MATERNAL- FETAL TELEPATHY: DAVID B. CHEEK: THE

APPLICATION OF IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES: ALLYN & BACON: BOSTON: 1994
Since publication of the first edition of Clinical Hypnotherapy, I have extended my
evaluation of patients to include their regression in hypnosis to the moment their mother was
given the diagnosis of pregnancy in the doctor's office. This is an emotional moment. The
pregnant woman is happy, disappointed, angry, frightened, or ambivalent. These emotions are
keenly perceived by her embryo. If they are interpreted as meaning that its mother does not want
to be pregnant, this threatening impression seems to become permanently imbedded in the
memory of the embryo and will not be softened or reversed by subsequent maternal show of
loving acceptance during the pregnancy or at the time of birth. Although this will appear to be an
overly strong statement, the evidence given me during more than a thousand age-regression
studies with male and female adults has substantiated that statement.
An Example: A German psychologist, living in Hamburg, asked me to place her in
hypnosis and try to find out the reason she and her mother had never been able to get along with
each other. She was born in Berlin in 1943, the first child. Her mother was now aging; her father
had died. She loved her mother but was feeling constantly irritated in her mother's presence
during her occasional visits home, yet she felt her mother's loneliness and increasing needs for
comfort and care. The conflicts were troubling her. (105)
Work with Hypnosis: The psychologist was a good hypnotic subject. It took only a few
moments to establish ideomotor signals with her fingers. She gave permission for me to help her
review her birth and early life with her mother. I asked her to let her inner mind go back to the
moment her head was emerging into the outside world at the end of her mother's labor. Her
"yes" finger lifted to indicate this time orientation. Head movements and the recognition of
which arm came out first were indications that she was getting physiological memories (Cheek
1974).
Q: Is your mother able to speak at the moment of your birth?
A: (Finger signal) Yes.
Q: How does your mother feel when she sees you?
A: She is very happy. She says I am a beautiful baby.
Q: How does the baby feel?
A: (The psychologist now shrugged her shoulders and uttered a sort of grunt that indicated a lack
of interest in the excitement shown by her mother. It appeared that she did not believe the
demonstration of pleasure. This reaction had to be secondary to some earlier imprinted memory.)
Q: Please go back to the moment your mother realizes that she is pregnant with you. When you
are there, your "yes" finger will lift. As it lifts, please tell me how your mother is feeling when
the doctor tells her.
A: (As her finger lifted). She is scared. (After 15 seconds of silence:) She doesn't want me.
Q: That sounds strange to me. Go to the moment she tells your father that she is pregnant.
The psychologist now said that her father was not there, adding, "He's on the eastern front
fighting the Russians." (This came from her adult knowledge.) She had looked puzzled and
unhappy while searching for her father's reaction, as much as to say that he must also not want
her.
I said, "This is a terrible time in the world. A war is going on. Of course your mother would
have been scared. She did not know what the future would bring. She did not know if your
father would live to come home." I said, "Ask your fingers about this. Is there a part of your
mother that is happy to be pregnant?"
A: (Finger signal) Yes .
Now I asked her to come back and review the labor and the reactions of her mother during that
terrible time when Berlin was being bombed at the time of her birth. This time she showed
genuine pleasure on sensing her mother's happiness.
On coming out of hypnosis, the psychologist smiled as she commented on having a very
different feeling now about her mother. That night she put in a long telephone call with her
mother. She told the class about the sudden change in her feelings and the happiness she sensed
in her mother's voice on learning that this distant and often angry daughter had been wrong in
feeling her mother did not want her. Her mother had verified that she really was happy to be
pregnant but was frightened about the outside world.
Comment: Uncovering early life negative attitudes shown by a mother does not always
end so happily. I have been told by patients that their mother really would have had an abortion
if she could have, that their mother never showed love at birth or at any other time. It is
important then to impress the patient with the fact that this attitude on the part of the mother was
her problem and was probably based on the mother's early relationship to her parents and her
siblings.
Sometimes it is possible to have the patient review the moment of her unhappy mother's
diagnosis of pregnancy and have the mother think to her little embryo the kind of feelings that
would have made her baby feel welcome. This is turning the concept of the baby into being the
mother. It curiously is possible for troubled patients to hallucinate the sensations of really feeling
welcome and nurtured when there was none of this in the early experience. At the end of March
1989 I received a stimulating letter from Doctor Charles Wallach, which I will quote in part:
Dear Doctor Cheek: Your fine letter to the Brain/Mind Bulletin (March '89) struck a
responsive note here. For twenty-odd years, I was a member of a multinational research team,
originally funded by a British foundation, investigating the neurophysiological mechanics of
mental telepathy.
Based on irrefutable evidence that telepathy is a real and demonstrable phenomenon, as
hard scientists we were forced to make the assumption that it was not a spiritual or metaphysical
manifestation, but rather mediated by certain areas of brain cells, and that these were connected
to exteroceptor and interoceptor nerve fibers to discrete organs of reception and transmission.
(107)
Over the years, we were quite successful in identifying the biomechanics of telepathy,
and incidentally of several other related parapsychological phenomena, and localizing this
activity to a lower gyrus of the right cerebral hemisphere after the age of two years; before that
age, the function appears to ascend through the triune brain in the same manner as judgement of
spatial relationships from more primitive quasi-cognitive levels.
Our work provided us with definitive evidence that all normal human infants have an
essential telepathic link with their mothers from the fifth or sixth month of gestation (if not
earlier), and (with a few notable exceptions) begin to turn off this communication channel for
very good reasons at around 18 months of age-when more effective verbal skills begin to
develop. We believe this is an evolutionary trend which would not have developed unless it had
positive survival value. Sincerely, (signed) C. Wallach
Warm-blooded animals, birds, and mammals must care for their young until their
children are able to survive on their own. It seems reasonable to assume that warning messages
and commands for appropriate behavior at a time of danger would be communicated
telepathically and would demand instant and complete obedience. It seems further reasonable
that the mechanisms for this type of communication must be in place and rehearsed before bird
eggs are hatched and before a mammal is born.
The recognition and use of maternal-fetal communication are ready and in place for
mothers and their obstetrical attendants. F. Rene van de Carr, a physician in Hayward,
California, has been instructing his obstetrical patients and their husbands about singing and
talking to their unborn child (van de Carr and Lehrer 1988). I feel certain that much of what is
accomplished in his "Prenatal University" is telepathic in nature and has valuable power in the
bonding process between parents and their babies.
Of course, we will have to admit that healthy, normal women have been using this sort of
communication with their unborn child for hundreds of years. My concern is for the women who
have had years of infertility, repeated miscarriages, or other obstetrical tragedies. In my
experience as an obstetrician I have found that such women are afraid to think about a living
child at term. They do not paint bassinets in readiness before their baby is born. They seem
superstitiously unwilling to "count their chickens before they are hatched." They will not be able
to hallucinate the blackboard stating the date of delivery, sex of their baby, weight of their baby,
and length of labor until they are subconsciously very sure that their baby is developing
normally and all is well. This means that their baby has had very little (108) telepathic
information about its mother's desire to have a baby, very little encouragement. This may be the
secret of babies who miscarry or die before birth. We must keep these matters in mind.
A chapter on fetal perceptions would not be complete without mention of the pioneer
research of Stanislav Grof (1985), which began in 1956 in Czechoslovakia using lysergic acid
diethylamide (LSD). Later, in America, he resorted to the continued deep breathing advocated
by Wilhelm Reich when he could not continue with the LSD research. This, like deep hypnosis,
seems to access the memory reservoirs in the primitive brain.
Grof is a spiritually gifted and intuitive psychiatrist who has had the courage to explore
realms of consciousness that culminated in the origin of trans personal psychology. His book
Beyond the Brain is a wonderful resource of information about the world of the unborn child and
the scope of the resources the human mind can tap in pursuit of health and the understanding of
mental activity that has often been called schizophrenia. (109)

22. GYNECOLOGY AND FEMALE UROLOGY: DAVID B. CHEEK: THE APPLICATION

OF IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES: ALLYN & BACON: BOSTON: 1994
Howard Atwood Kelly, the first professor of gynecology at the newly opened Johns
Hopkins Medical School in 1889, believed that urological problems of women should be within
the province of a gynecologist and that gynecologists should be as capable of performing surgery
on the kidneys and ureters as they are in repairing the lower urinary tract. It was also Kelly's
belief that gynecologists should have a thorough training in gross and microscopic gynecological
pathology. In 1941 it was decided by the directors of the American Board of Specialties that
female urology belonged with male urology and that to qualify as a Diplomat of the new
American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology a physician must combine adequate training in
obstetrics and gynecology. As knowledge about the physiology and biochemistry of the urinary
system evolved, the shift of thinking was a logical one. I was fortunate in having urology
included in my residency training at Johns Hopkins during the transition period.
URINARY TRACT INFECTIONS: Female cystitis (bladder infection) and pyelitis
(infection of the kidney tubules) can occur as a result of congenital anomalies that interfere with
drainage, but for the most part they are psychogenic in origin. Even without hypnosis, patients
are able to recognize that they have been under stress just before the onset of infection.
Childhood molestation and painful cleansing of the infant's vulva by a parent who is afraid of
"giving a child ideas" (145) are both possible sources of a hypersensitive urethra and lower
urinary tract, but it will take hypnosis and ideomotor techniques to reveal the fact. Problems of
recurring urinary tract infections, which are predominantly due to E. Coli bacteria originating in
the bowel, can easily be treated with antibiotics, but hypnosis can be very helpful in discovering
and removing the factors responsible for recurring infections.
Some women from inhibited families develop recurring urinary tract infections that
follow intercourse. "Honeymoon cystitis" has been thought to occur because of repeated sexual
trauma during a honeymoon, but constipation also can be a contributing factor. Some
gynecologists have believed that a displaced urethral opening and a shorter than normal urethra
are responsible for urethritis and cystitis and have invented plastic procedures to elongate the
urethra and keep the meatus from trauma during intercourse. The value of this is questionable.
Adequate history taking suggests that emotional, rather than anatomical, factors are the cause.
Patients who can be helped to rid themselves of sexual misunderstandings and to enjoy
intercourse without suffering from fear or guilt have freed themselves from the urinary problem.
Anything that can be done to diminish the need for repeated cycles of antibacterial drugs is
worth trying.
The method of exploring here is the same as can be used with any physical or emotional
disturbance. Look for the first infection. Help the patient recognize what was contributing to the
onset and help her to reframe sexual misunderstandings in the light of mature knowledge.
Case Example: A 21-year-old obstetrical patient came to me for prenatal care in her
third month. Her health was excellent, but she reported that she had been treated for pyelitis
when she was a child. There had been no subsequent problems. In her fifth month she came to
the office complaining of painful and frequent urination. She had a temperature of 103 degrees
and tenderness over her left kidney. Her centrifuged urine showed 4+ protein and visible blood
cells as well as pus cells. She had pyelitis that cleared quickly with a sulfonamide. She said that
she had just visited relatives in Chico, California, where the temperature had been 105 degrees.
She had been constipated. I thought, "This is just a summertime urinary tract infection." Two
months later it was still summertime when she came to my office with the same symptoms and a
temperature of 104 degrees. She responded immediately to tetracycline treatment. She had gone
with her husband, she said, to visit his parents in Chico. This was too much. I had to know what
was going on. It did not require hypnosis to find out.
She said, "I gave you the wrong date for our marriage. We did not get married until I was
two months along. Bill's parents are very religious. Both times that we went up to Chico I was
terribly worried for fear that they would discover we were having sex before we got married.
I said, "Can you guess how many people in the world who love each (146) other have started a
family before they made a commitment in marriage? It is about 10 percent, I believe. God does
not look for marriage certificates on the wall. Now I don't want you to have any more kidney
infections and I will not rat on you to Bill's folks.”
She laughed. There were no more urinary tract infections after several more trips to
Chico. Urological studies were done after her beautiful baby was born. Nothing abnormal was
found. Bill's parents were very proud to be grandparents. This was many years ago. I did not
then know enough to ask this sweet young woman about possible molestation prior to her
childhood pyelitis, but I am sure now that it might have been a sensitizing factor.
Vulvo-Vaginiti and Inflammation of Bartholin Glands: There are many sources of
infection of the vagina and vulva including viral; candida, a fungus; trichomonas, an
amoeba-like protozoa; chlamydia, the viral-intracellular bacteria responsible for trachoma; and
several varieties of pathogenic streptococci that may be aerobic or anaerobic. Children are very
vulnerable to gonorrheal vaginitis. A multiplicity of infections involving a part of the body
normally very healthy and resistant to infection as well as being especially able to heal from
surgical or traumatic injury should call for a search to find the reasons.
Reasons are not hard to find when we look for what the patient recognizes as sensitizing
experiences, often starting in childhood but fulminating in maturity when emotional stresses
combine with sexual ones.
The Bartholin glands, two glands that lubricate the vulva, are especially vulnerable to
infection with anaerobic streptococci. There is a spiral duct leading from this mucus-secreting
gland in the labia to the mucosal surface. One theory is that tight jeans or trauma from sexual
activity kinks and inflames the duct so that increased secretory activity during sexual arousal
will cause the proximal end of the duct to balloon up. The stretching combined with
inflammation causes great pain. Various methods of draining the gland are usually tried before
eventual excision. Once sensitized, however, this gland tends to be vulnerable to infection. Until
culture techniques were improved it was a matter of wonder that the foul smelling pus was
thought to be sterile because it was not possible to grow organisms with the usual culture
mediums. The organisms are usually streptocci that have learned to grow in the absence of
oxygen.
One course of treatment that I have found helpful starts with discovering and offering
help in removing sexual guilt and sources of self-punishment. This is followed by teaching the
patient to first be able to (147) anesthetize the area of infection with heterohypnosis and then
learn to produce continuing analgesia with self-hypnosis. I usually have added an appropriate
antibiotic to justify my position as a "regular doctor."
Just as is the case with genital herpes, however, it is not easy to clear the
self-incrimination that so often accompanies these two problems. The intensity and prolongation
of pain in both cases, herpes and Bartholin gland abscess, seem somehow to augment feelings
that this is a sort of God's punishment for real or imagined sins.
Again, sexual molestation is frequently found as the cause of hypersensitivity and
diminished resistance to infection but you will find it hard to obtain the information unless you
approach it indirectly with ideomotor questioning or the "Christmas tree lights." Putting the
causal experiences into the past and viewing them with adult understanding and perspective can
allow the victim not only to be free of infections but free of the guilt that the child seems to pick
up telepathically from the molesting person.
HERPES GENITALIS INFECTIONS: Herpes genitalis infections can be a source of
great concern to the victim. The virus causing the acute and recurring painful soft ulcers can live
with us quite peacefully until we come under stress of fatigue or, much more commonly,
following sexual contact in a relationship that makes either party feel used or angry.
The treatment of getting the affected skin to feel cool can be much more effective than
any of the chemicals commonly prescribed. In light hypnosis, set up finger signals and ask for
permission to get the tissues cool and to keep them cool for periods of two hours. Start with an
unimportant area for coolness first. Sucking on a peppermint and breathing in is a familiar way
to imagine coolness in your mouth. Ask the patient's "yes" finger to lift when her mouth feels
cool and have her tell you verbally when she is consciously aware of the coolness. When she is
confident about sensing this change, ask if it would be all right to experience that same coolness
in the ulcer area. You may run into resistance, but keep looking for an emotional factor because
there are very good reasons for helping your patient be permanently free of this problem.
Women in childbearing years now have been educated to feel terribly worried when they
become pregnant after once having an acute herpetic lesion of the vulva. Obstetricians add to the
weight of the fear by having their own fear of litigation in case their patient had an undiagnosed
open lesion in the vagina and the baby was allowed to either suffer a malignant eye infection and
encephalitis or a fatal pneumonia. Repeated cultures are taken. The patient is kept in a type of
suspense that may trouble her sleep (148) and lower her immune capabilities as she approaches
term. She knows her doctor may feel safer (for the doctor's sake) performing a caesarean section.
Caesarean costs a lot more money but it gives the parents a feeling that everything is being done.
If something happens to the baby, at least the doctor has done his or her best to avoid the
trouble. Caesarean section is not always a guarantee that the infant will be safe if the membranes
have been ruptured for a few hours.
The situation here seems to be self actuating. We can be what we fear. Pregnant women
need a lot of emotional support throughout their pregnancy. They need to fully understand that
good nutrition, regular exercise, and healthy sleep are wonderful preventive forces and that
delivery at home saves them from exposure to unusual organisms found in modern hospitals
where people with impaired immune systems are being cared for in this very complicated period
in history.
The herpes simplex virus can be transmitted sexually from a partner who has an open
ulcer but once a herpetic lesion has been sensitized it can flare up because of having intercourse
with an innocent male who does not have an infection. Healthy companionship can be broken up
unfairly by one blaming another for his or her conditioned hypersensitivity. The virus has no
preference for one sex or the other, but it can become alarmed and begin reproducing rapidly if
its host is troubled about his or her world.
Just as with the cousin virus (Herpes simplex type I) of cold sores, the genital herpes
simplex type II virus remains with us and in most cases has been transmitted to us vertically
from our mother, according to Sir Macfarlane Burnett (1968) of Australia.
Condyloma Acuminata: Condyloma acuminata are the so-called "venereal warts,"
caused by a virus. They can be embarrassing, and their treatment by freezing, cautery, or
applications of podophyllin in benzoin solution can be painful and unsuccessful. The piled-up
tissue or the flat forms can clear up with a little checking on what was going on before they
appeared. The virus causing the problem is sexually transmitted but once in place it can continue
until the victim learns why the tissue vulnerability continues. Look for childhood molestation to
begin with. If you have permission from the patient to teach her the means to cure the problem,
the way that has worked the best for my patients has been the "peppermint coolness." Coolness
diminishes inflammation and permits the host to send in her own immune cells to bring back
normal balance of the tissues.
In the early days of podophyllin I tried treating just one wart and in a joking way saying to the
warts, "All right now, you are going to feel pretty (149) uncomfortable there before you drop
off. I want the rest of you to get out too or you will get the same treatment!" I was surprised to
find it does work. Of course from Mark Twain's Huck Finn we have known how suggestible the
virus of common warts on the hands can be. This is a suggestible relative.
There are going to be many more sources of vaginal infections as fears about AIDS
increases. The best way we can help our patients is to help them choose sensibly in their
relationships that lead to sexual intercourse and help them learn ways of using their own healing
resources.
Dysmenorrhea (painful menstruation): The common history for this very frequent
gynecological complaint is that there are several painless menstrual periods before ovulation
occurs. It has been surmised that ovulation is the cause of dysmenorrhea because of the
progesterone that is secreted from the corpus luteum at the end of the intermenstrual period. It is
thought that this hormone increases the contractility of the uterus. There is some justification for
this conclusion because dysmenorrhea may stop when a woman with regular ovulation is shifted
into anovulatory menstrual cycles with estrogen therapy.
Menstrual blood contains the proteolytic fibrinolysin, an enzyme that keeps the blood
fluid and free of coagulation in the uterus. If some menstrual blood escapes through the uterine
tubes into the abdominal cavity the fibrinolysin will cause pain when it touches the peritoneum.
So-called retrograde menstruation is definitely one of the causes of dysmenorrhea but its
presence seems to relate to increased contractility of the uterine musculature at the time of
menstruation. The pain due to fibrinolytic enzymes is constant rather than intermittent.
Many theories have evolved regarding dysmenorrhea. Some have believed that
narrowness of the cervical canal is the problem. Doctors dilate the cervix with results that
essentially depend on the enthusiasm the doctor has for this treatment. Because about 30 percent
of women lying on their back on an examining table will be found to have their uterus "tipped"
backward, it was thought that dysmenorrhea was caused by the backward angulation of the
uterus, but women with a forward-bending uterus also can have dysmenorrhea. Pessaries (plastic
or rubber form placed in the vagina) of various types have been invented for the purpose of
forcing the uterus forward so that it could drain better at the time of menstruation. Again,
success depends on the enthusiasm of the doctor rather than the type of treatment.
In my experience the most common reason for dysmenorrhea is the history of a mother
or older sibling suffering and preparing the younger woman for the curse that will be her fate.
Another reason may be that a (150) disabling menstrual pain at some time has saved the sufferer
from a worse alternative.
Case Example: A nurse cured herself of dysmenorrhea so severe that she had to plan
for a substitute to take her place at the expected time of her distress. She suffered from vomiting
and often fainted because of the pain.
During a brief discussion and a demonstration of postural suggestion to show that she
could pay attention to one arm and forget the other, she had a sudden insight. She said as she put
her arms down, "I don't need to work with hypnosis. 1 know what's the matter."
She said that she had never had any trouble with her periods until she decided to fake
dysmenorrhea while she was in training as a "probie" on a service she found was
unpleasant-male urology. There was an examination she needed to study for. Her supervisor
gave her a day off.
She got her studying done while other probation nurses had to work.
She was still on the same disagreeable urological service when her next period was due. To be
consistent, she asked for the day off and her supervisor allowed her to take it. Being basically an
honest and very conscientious person, she felt a bit guilty. She had a few cramps. Pain became
progressively worse with the following cycles. This nurse was totally cured by her revelation. 1
did not need to intervene.
Treatments in the Past: One very successful treatment for dysmenorrhea was the
cocainization of the "Fliess spots" in the mucous membrane of the nose. A German doctor by the
name of Fliess had identified them as having sexual meaning. Cocaine applied to the membranes
of anyone's nose would make them feel better, regardless of gender. The treatment fell into
disrepute with passage of the Harrison Act.
X-ray treatment with mild doses to the pituitary gland and to the ovaries was tried for a
time before World War I, until it was learned that infertility might result.
Gynecologists have performed suspensions of the uterus by shortening the round
ligaments in order to prevent so-called "retroversion of the uterus." This operation is presently
out of style.
During World War II many women were working for the armed services or in factories.
Someone had the idea of teaching working women to do stretching exercises to stretch the fascia
in the pelvic area. Exercise of any sort is helpful for the well-being of working women-or
men-but this mode of treating dysmenorrhea was soon forgotten. (151)
 Another operation that has been abandoned was promoted by a French surgeon (Cotte)
who wrote about an 80 percent cure rate for dysmenorrhea. His idea was to excise sympathetic
nerve fibers and ganglia that lie between the anterior surface of the sacrum and the peritoneum.
He was probably very persuasive, because other surgeons were not as successful. "Presacral
neurectomy" is no longer considered a valid treatment for dysmenorrhea. Wise medical and
hospital insurance companies no longer pay for its use.
The discovery that estrogen tablets could diminish chances of a woman becoming
pregnant led to recognition of a side effect. It relieved some women from suffering with
menstrual cramping. These may have been women who worried too much about a possible
pregnancy, because many women continued to have their dysmenorrhea in spite of taking birth
control pills.
Dysmenorrhea that does not respond to use of birth control pills often leads to a
presumptive diagnosis of endometriosis. Even when there are no pelvic findings to substantiate
the diagnosis, many doctors will recommend a laparoscopy in order to look for possible
endometriosis through fiberoptic instruments. Even minuscule patches of endometriosis or
slightly pigmented bits of peritoneum behind the uterus will be itemized and treated with a
cautery in the hope of relieving the cramps. Gynecologists are particularly interested in use of
laparoscopy when a patient being treated for infertility also suffers from dysmenorrhea.
Laparoscopy is now very popular among gynecologists. It is invasive and expensive and
generally nonproductive. The patient's self-respect can be injured, and she may become
unconsciously alarmed at the thought of suffering without a prospect of relief because nothing
was found to explain her trouble. Some gynecologists "save face" by telling patients that they
have observed varicosities of the pelvic veins around the uterus. This explanation does not make
sense. Pelvic veins can become engorged because of relaxation and immobility due to the
general or spinal anesthetic. This does not mean these veins stay engorged in everyday
circumstances. Engorged pelvic veins can cause low back pain but rarely dysmenorrhea (Taylor
1949).
Use of Hypnosis for Dysmenorrhea: As with any chronic or recurring pain state, we
need to make sure the patient is willing to let someone help with the distress. The circumstances
around the first painful menstrual period need to be explored. The patient needs to recognize that
there have been variations in the degree of distress and to understand what circumstances have
made it worse or better.
I use hypnosis to help the patient feel totally relaxed. This is followed by teaching her to
use self-hypnosis four or five times a day (Chapter 8). The exercise involving diminished
sensations in the abdomen is the same as for childbirth preparation. This will make sense for the
young woman
(152) planning to have children. She may have been told, "If you think menstruating is bad, just
wait till you have a baby." Low threshold for pain with menstruation and fear about a future
labor often stem from knowing or hearing about a mother's "terrible experience." The child
somehow feels a need to suffer to pay the mother back.
For this reason, I have found it very helpful to have the patient first relive her birth
experience as it was and reframe the experience as it would have been if her mother had been
shown how to become instantly numb from the chest down at the start of a labor contraction and
learned how to turn off the analgesia at the end of a contraction. A point is made of the value of
bonding with both mother and father in the delivery room. In this way the patient is learning to
create the same analgesia of her abdomen while experiencing how her mother might have been
coached by her doctor. She can see how easily she can make her own abdomen and legs numb
and she is also gaining first-hand knowledge about how a fetus thinks and feels inside that uterus
during labor.
The next step is to have her recall the sensations of menstrual discomfort, using her left
index and thumb pressure to turn on discomfort. Her "yes" finger is to lift unconsciously as it is
starting and her "no" finger to lift when it is just as strong as usual. When the signal is given, I
ask her to press the tips of her right index finger and thumb together with the accompanying
thought, "I am turning off the pain." This turning on and off of the pain is repeated until she is
confident about her control.
The final step is to hallucinate the date of her first really comfortable menstruation. She
is asked to visualize the chalkboard and to dictate what she "sees." This tends to fix the idea in
her mind that there will be such a time.
The session ends with the question "Now that you know this, can you be comfortable
having menstrual periods lasting a day or two with just enough bleeding to let you know you are
a normal woman?" The answer is usually "yes" with her finger signals, but if it is "no" or "I don't
want to answer," I know that there is more work has to be done.
PREMENSTRUAL SYNDROME (PMS): PMS is a condition involving depression,
anxiety, fluid retention, headaches and general malaise. Some women become violent and break
dishes just before the onset of menstruation. They can be hard on subordinates in the workplace
and can be mean to their families. The diagnosis is made when these problems end shortly after
menstruation has started. Many professional papers have been written about this problem.
Several books have cried out against any idea that this could all be psychological. It has been
thought (153) that progesterone imbalance is a factor, but clinical use of estrogen suppositories
has not proven helpful.
The symptoms and the fluid retention suggest that this problem relates to subconscious
stress that reaches conscious awareness toward the end of the estrogen production and the rising
level of progesterone from the corpus lute urn that forms after ovulation. Subclinical depression
may be in the background and needing attention. Many drugs have been used with variable
results. Efforts to teach the patient to relax at frequent intervals during the last few days before
the onset of menstruation have not been very helpful, possibly because there are subconscious
forces that need release before the relaxation can work.
My results using the standard search of early life experience, recall of the onset of first
trouble, and so on have been successful no more than 50 percent of the time. I am still looking
for the missing links in this very troublesome condition. It is important to recognize that some
women spontaneously lose their PMS without any specific treatment. Changing a job can do it.
We need help from the women who cure themselves. What made it possible for them?
Heavy and Prolonged Menstruation (Menorrhagia): Heavy vaginal bleeding lasting
more than seven days is not normal, and possible organic causes should be ruled out if it has
occurred more than once. Organic possibilities could include a polyp in the cervical canal, a
muscle growth (myoma), or a potentially malignant growth of the uterine mucosa. It can occur
also if there is a disturbance in ovarian function such as a follicle or corpus luteum cyst. It is a
responsibility for the gynecologist to rule these things out.
Emotional causes far outnumber the organic ones. It seems that, biologically, human
menstruation is a sort of physiological weeping because pregnancy has not occurred on that
cycle of preparation for pregnancy. Such weeping can occur also without relation to the
menstrual cycle if a woman loses her job, is abandoned by a husband or boy friend, grieves for
the death of a friend or relative, or learns with great relief that her pregnancy test is negative
after a longer than normal interval without menstruating.
The control of heavy or prolonged menstruation with hypnotic suggestion has been
reported by many doctors after pathological conditions have been ruled out (Fore11907,1927,
1949). Kroger and Freed 1951). Their "control” was effected by direct suggestion for diminished
bleeding. Their successes are anecdotal and hard to evaluate.
It would be safe to say that menstruation is a human form of nuisance that really has no
value in preserving health. No other animal is so troubled. (154) Blood has an odor. It is
dangerous for menstruating women to swim in sharkinfested waters. Nonhuman female
mammals will give off volatile oil when ready for pregnancy, some primates menstruate, and
some mammals in captivity will have some sort of vaginal discharge, but bleeding is not
required and could be dangerous for those in the wild.
We continually replace the lining of all our glands, our mouth, stomach, intestines,
gallbladder, and urinary bladder without bleeding. It makes no sense for women to bleed while
replacing the lining of their uterus. It was my habit to congratulate daughters who were 15 or 16
and had not yet menstruated. I had to be sure, of course, that they had normal female organs and
there was no obstruction in the vagina, cervix, or uterus that would prevent menstrual blood
from escaping. The congratulation was needed because these youngsters can quickly absorb the
alarm of their mother who is wondering what is wrong with her child.
Amenorrhea (Failure to Menstruate): Amenorrhea is a condition that can occur with
chronic illness. It can occur following any great physical or emotional stress. Ballerinas and long
distance runners may stop menstruating for long periods. A premature menopause may occur
after massive hemorrhage as with a major injury or a postpartum hemorrhage (Sheehan 1939).
An adenoma of the anterior pituitary can cause amenorrhea. Subconscious alarm mechanisms
can prevent menstruation.
Exploration may reveal an emotional cause, and psychotherapy with hypnosis can allow
the distressed patient to menstruate again. This has been possible in my practice three times with
women who have been 40 or younger and have not menstruated for one or more years. Hypnosis
should be used first before subjecting a patient to extensive and expensive endocrine studies.
Endometriosis: Endometriosis is another disease that seems related to endocrine
disturbances having emotional components. Endometriosis was once thought related to escape of
endometrial epithelium through the uterine tubes during menstruation with the fragments
becoming transplanted and viable. The incidence of endometriosis has had a curious relationship
to education and socioeconomic level. For many years it was almost nonexistent in black
American women, until opportunities opened for them due to the activity (155) of Marshall,
King, and others during the late 1950s and 1960s. Its incidence now is nearly equal in black and
white women.
That endometriosis represents some sort of neuroendocrine drive to make much tissue
available for implantation of fertilized ova seems a compelling thought. At caesarean section we
will see patches of clearly decidual tissue (changes in the epithelium due to the hormones of
pregnancy) on peritoneal surfaces of the uterus and the ligaments supporting the uterus. The
patches of normally smooth, single-cell thickness peritoneum have metamorphosed temporarily
into the same sort of tissue that lines the inside of the uterus during pregnancy. If the same
patient is operated on during a nonpregnant time, we find no evidence of these patches.
My impression, garnered from many evaluations of women who have presented with
clinically significant endometriosis, is that emotional conflict over feeling unwanted as a female
child but also having normal feminine sexual needs has a part in the process we recognize as
endometriosis. There are many variations of possible cause, but attention to the subjective
reporting and therapeutic reframing of misunderstandings has saved many of my patients from
undergoing surgery for symptomatic endometriosis.
This condition has the appearance of a cancer. It can invade the wall of bladder and
intestines, yet it is benign. It will disappear if a woman becomes pregnant. It is curiously
associated with infertility, and yet there is rarely any blockage of the uterine tubes. Why should
this be? At surgery it is impossible to remove or cauterize all areas of endometrial involvement. I
usually made an effort in this direction while explaining that this is often followed by regression
of the involvement and subsequent pregnancy if desired. Anesthetized patients are highly
suggestible and they are always listening.
Case example: Mary, a 34-year-old nurse, was found to have extensive endometriosis
when she was operated on as an emergency in a neighboring town of Willows. She had suddenly
suffered severe abdominal pain and bloating of her abdomen. Her doctor called me in
consultation. A presumptive diagnosis was made of a ruptured tubal pregnancy or a ruptured
corpus luteum cyst. I removed about 200 cubic centimeters of clotted blood and resected
endometrial cysts from both ovaries and from the back of the uterus. There were patches of
endometriosis throughout the abdomen. I cauterized as many as I could while telling the family
doctor who was scrubbed with me that cauterization of implants has often permitted patients
with this problem to clear themselves and be able to get pregnant. At that time I did not know
how attentive seemingly somnolent anesthetized patients can be to the conversations of the
surgical team.
Mary became pregnant three months later and delivered a healthy child at term. The
doctor told me that she was totally free of symptoms and had no pelvic evidence of
endometriosis on subsequent examinations. (156)
Myomata (Fibroids) of the Uterus: It is not commonly recognized by gynecologists
that there may be emotional factors responsible for the localized growth of muscle of the uterus.
These growths sometimes reach huge proportions in parts of the country where women cannot
obtain gynecological consultation. During childbearing years it is customary to excise such
tumors. Hysterectomy is done when the patient either does not want children or is past the age of
childbearing.
Surgery is not indicated in older women (40 or more years old) unless the tumor causes
symptoms of pain or hemorrhage because myomata tend to grow smaller or disappear after the
menopause. Care must be taken, however, to rule out ovarian tumors, which are often malignant
when they occur in women 35 or older. Ruling out ovarian tumors can now be done with the
help of ultrasound imaging or computerized tomography scan, but formerly there have been
tragedies when a doctor thought nodules in the pelvis of a woman were only benign myomata of
the uterus.
That poor self-image as a woman and troubled sexual attitudes can stimulate growth of
these tumors was considered long ago by the German doctors Kehrer and Heyer. In this country,
Howard Taylor (1949) attributed such growth to "pelvic congestion."
Example of myoma growth: A 50-year-old, married, childless woman who appeared to
be near term with a baby had been a familiar sight in the town where I started my practice. She
called on me one Sunday morning to come to her house to catheterize her because she had been
unable to void for approximately 12 hours.
On my arrival she introduced herself as "Jimmie." Later, I learned that she had never had
intercourse. Her husband had suffered a stroke but had refused to see a doctor. In the course of
helping him walk, she had tripped on a carpet and fallen forward on this "baby," which weighed
29 pounds when removed.
Her bladder and part of her small bowel had been traumatized. By the time she called
me, she had been vomiting fecal matter. This woman's strong religious beliefs turned out to be
important for her survival. It was impossible for me to get a catheter into her bladder. It took
very little persuasion to get her into the hospital for urgent surgery to remove her huge uterus,
repair the bladder and small intestine and release her small bowel obstruction. Her hospital
course was smooth.
Her sense of intense privacy prevented me from learning the cause of her total abstinence
from sex during 30 years of marriage, but my impression was that something had happened long
ago to disturb her endocrine system. At surgery it became clear that she also had cancer with
skin ulceration in both breasts. When I asked permission to take a biopsy she told me that I
should work "down there" and that she would take care of her breasts. (157) This she did for ten
years, until her husband died and there was no further need for her services. The cancer then
spread rapidly throughout her body and she died.
Ovarian cysts and stein-levinthal syndrome: Occasionally a normal woman will
develop a cyst (collections of fluid) in an ovary. Such a cyst may become large enough to twist
on its supporting ligament that carries its blood supply. This twisting (volvulus) will cause acute
pain and usually requires surgery unless the woman can get down on her hands and knees to
change the effect of gravity. Ovarian cysts form either in the follicle of the developing ovum or
in the corpus luteum gland that evolves from the follicle after the ovum has been released. Cysts
may be single or multiple, depending on stimulation from the anterior pituitary gland and the
hypothalamus. In my experience, cyst formation is always psychogenic. A cyst may range in size
from 5 to 20 centimeters in diameter and may spontaneously rupture without causing much
discomfort, or it may resorb over a period of two to three weeks. A rupture of a corpus luteum
cyst is associated with blood containing inflammatory enzymes, which will cause severe pain
and may mimic a ruptured tubal pregnancy.
A gynecologist is moderately concerned upon finding a freely movable, smooth, ovarian
cyst because potentially malignant cystadenomas can start like that. We have a sort of rule of
thumb that we worry if a patient is over the age of 35, but we wait three weeks anyway before
deciding what to do. A benign (functional) cyst will resorb in that time. In the meantime, with
the over-35 patient we get a sonogram and/or a CT scan to learn more about the contents.
The way hypnosis can be valuable with cystic ovarian problems of any sort is to use the
imagery of "Christmas tree lights" (Cheek 1989) or to simply orient back to the time she
"knows" subconsciously that her pelvic organs are working well and normally. A "yes" finger
will lift. Without asking questions about that time, move forward chronologically to the moment
she feels something is changing. Have her signal and to check to see if there has been some
emotional possibility for altering the circulation to her pelvic organs or making them overly
sensitive to an emotional problem.
Keep in mind always that organic problems of importance can also be associated with
emotional stressors. Gynecologists will probably not refer a patient with an ovarian cyst problem
to a psychologist or a psychiatrist because they usually have had no exposure to psychosomatic
lectures in medical school or hospital training. I am writing this for physicians who do general
practice and are sensitive to the problems of the families they serve. I hope also that a woman
who has had the diagnosis of an ovarian (158) cyst will have the opportunity to know that a
waiting period should intervene between diagnosis and suggested surgery. For her, I urge a
consultation with a competent gynecologist either for peace of mind or for a second opinion if
immediate surgery has been ordered.
Multiple Cysts Involving Both Ovaries: Multiple cysts on both ovaries may be
diagnosed as Stein-Levinthal syndrome. This condition involves a number of physical and
physiological findings. The patient may consult her doctor because she has been unable to get
pregnant, she has been overweight, and is concerned about hair on her face and arms. Often she
has also had a problem with pimples on her face and chest. On pelvic examination her ovaries
are found to be enlarged and studded with small cysts. Her menstrual periods may be irregular
and widely spaced apart. Her pituitary follicle stimulating hormone level is usually normal, but
her adrenal glands are secreting more than normal amounts of 17-ketosteroids.
In the past, surgeons have had some success in reversing the process and permitting a
woman to become pregnant. They have removed the thickened capsule of both ovaries. The
working hypothesis has been that the capsule prevents follicles from releasing the eggs. Careful
psychological evaluation of all the patients with this syndrome that I have seen has brought out
the apparent fact that they had a low regard for themselves as female. They have usually been
molested, which has further diminished their selfrespect as women.
Case Example: A 28-year-old woman came to me for obstetrical care. She had suffered
eight miscarriages at four months. She lost this pregnancy at the same period of gestation shortly
after I had seen her. She had hair on her face, shoulders, and arms since reaching puberty. She
had been overweight since the age of 4 years. She had married a pleasant man who was not very
aggressive sexually. She had questions in her mind about his sexual orientation because he
seemed to have a lot of male friends.
A psychological evaluation, made originally to understand factors leading to her
miscarriages, brought out that she had thought she should have been a boy when she was born.
At the age of 3 she was repeatedly molested by her grandfather while her parents were away
from home. She had unconsciously craved carbohydrate food in order to put on weight and not
be attractive to men such as her grandfather. It seemed reasonable that her mental set might have
had something to do with her endocrine balance. Her ovaries were slightly enlarged. She had the
Stein-Levinthal syndrome (159) but I felt that surgery on her ovaries added to the other
childhood assaults would be more damaging than helpful.
She had another miscarriage and eventually divorced her bisexual husband after meeting
a fine, thoughtful, masculine man who treated her with great respect. She called me when she
became pregnant after moving away from the San Francisco area. I referred her to a woman
obstetrician in another city. This time she went to the seventh month before starting to
hemorrhage and eventually losing the immature fetus.
I lost contact with this woman during the next ten years until she attended a lecture I was
giving. She had adopted a child and had given up the idea of childbearing. At this time she
reported that a surgeon had found a large, solid tumor of her left ovary. I knew this doctor. He
and his anesthesiologist were very good psychologists and well aware of the powers of
suggestion.
She said that Doctor "P," her anesthesiologist, had told her as she drifted off to sleep with
pentothal, "You will lose that hair when that ovary comes out." She said that this came true
within two months of the hysterectomy and removal of a benign fibroma of the one ovary. She
did not lose weight, but her husband was enormously overweight also. I will never know if the
ovary had caused all the trouble or the combination of suggestion and her improved status as a
woman with a child were responsible.
I have been the gynecologist for four other women whose infantile history and negative
self-image as females were associated with polycystic ovaries. Each has somehow been able to
stop producing cysts, losing the unwanted hair and getting back to normal weight after reframing
the troubled early life impressions and getting help with their inhibited sexual responsiveness.
Comment: From time to time the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists
has initiated interest in the psychosomatic aspects of obstetrics and gynecology. Joseph de Lee,
J. P. Greenhill, Frederick Zuspan, William S. Kroger, William Werner, Melvin M. Schwartz,
Theodore Mandy, and Edward C. Mann are some of the names that stand out because of their
interest in this matter.
I have witnessed a surge of enthusiasm for a time. Discussions of psychosomatic
obstetrics and gynecology have been held during conventions. William Kroger organized and
started the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. There were 90 doctors on the program but no
additional guests. Excitement has always faded; the turn out for meetings has dwindled into
nothingness. I believe it will take the driving force of thoughtful women (160) to bring about
constructive change. Attention must be given to the concept of a mind influencing physical
behavior and endocrine balance.
Perhaps women can insist on increasing thought and action before the subspecialty of
psychosomatic obstetrics and gynecology will be represented in our medical schools and
teaching hospitals. Most of our specialists who treat women, particularly the specialists who
limit their work to infertility, give only lip service to the power of the human, feminine mind in
relation to gynecological and obstetrical problems. (161)

23. HEALING OF PRE- & PERINATAL TRAUMA HYPNOSIS: THE APPLICATION OF

IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES: DAVID B. CHEEK: REVIEWED BY DAVID B.
CHAMBERLAIN, SAN DIEGO, CA
Anyone wanting to explore the wonders of hypnosis (trance) can have no better guide
than this friendly physician who has been exploring the territory for 50 years. Health care
professionals looking for a practical method to reach the underlying causes of medical and
behavioral problems (for example, birth trauma) will find inspiration and instruction in these
pages.
Members of our Association will be especially interested in the psychological insights
which this obstetrician brings to a range of prenatal and perinatal problems. Cheek has been a
pioneer in documenting birth trauma and birth imprinting (memory), in psychological prevention
of complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and in developing a method by which patients (as
co-therapists and colleagues) can access the primal experiences responsible for imprinting of
maladaptive behavior.
Readers will no doubt be as delighted with the simplicity of the ideomotor method Cheek
teaches as they are with the wisdom and optimism he brings to common problems of
gynecology, pregnancy, and childbirth. By ideomotor, Cheek means a muscular response to a
thought, usually in the form of an unconscious finger signal that stands for Yes, No, or I don,t
want to answer. Once the signals are established, therapy becomes a creative game of twenty
questions to locate the cause of the problem, and then to construct a healthier response using the
resources of the mature mind. Cheek has done more than anyone to develop this method to its
full potential, and, unquestionably, he is its most skillful and ingenious practitioner.
Dabney Ewin of Tulane Medical School writes in the Foreword about his disbelief at
first hearing David Cheek speak of regression to birth. However, after training with Cheek, he
was working with a patient with asthma who suddenly regressed to birth and told him about the
cord around her neck that was choking her to death! After this experience was clarified, the
patient discontinued all medication (she had had conventional medical treatment for 50 years)
and had no further episodes of asthma. Dr. Ewin also shares how he used the ideomotor method
to help himself deal with a personal feeling of rage. The troubling imprint had occurred when he
was 12 days old when he and his mother were still in the hospital following his birth. What
happened was something his mother never knew and could not have told him, yet he went to the
hospital records and confirmed that his memory in trance was indeed correct.
In the chapter on hypnosis in obstetrics, Cheek calls attention to "the dismal state of
obstetrics," particularly its traumatization of babies and its failure to appreciate the psychological
factors that affect the well-being of mothers. Readers will discover Cheek,s profound
understanding of the psychology underlying such common and urgent problems as premature
birth, breech and Cesarean deliveries, and long labor. They will also find that he supports
vaginal birth after Cesarean (VBAC), cooperation between obstetricians and midwives, and the
normalcy of home birth. Of related interest to our readers will be Cheek,s constructive
psychological approach to infertility, gynecological problems, use of hypnosis in labor, his
understanding of pain, and his appreciation for the phenomenon of maternal-fetal telepathic
communication during gestation.

24. HYPNOSIS: THE APPLICATION OF IDEOMOTOR TECHNIQUES: DAVID B. CHEEK,

M.D.: BOOK REVIEW: BRYAN M. KNIGHT, MSW, PhD.
Finger signals need not be vulgar. Instead of conveying insults, they might communicate
subconscious information. Dr. David Cheek, obstetrician and gynecologist, has for more than 50
years helped hypnotized patients use their fingers to tell him the subconscious causes of
emotional or physical illness.
The process is called "ideomotor", meaning "thoughts that cause a physical action."
Particular fingers are designated (by the doctor or the patient) "yes", "no", and "don't want to
answer." When the doctor asks the hypnotized patient questions the relevant finger lifts in
response -- even when the patient consciously thinks otherwise, or has no conscious awareness
of the answer.
In his new book Hypnosis: The Application of Ideomotor Techniques (a rewrite of the
1968 classic Clinical Hypnotherapy, co-authored with the late Leslie LeCron, the discoverer of
ideomotor techniques), Dr. Cheek says, "Because of LeCron's contributions, we now can explore
the perceptions of infants during intrauterine development, the perceptions of anesthetized
people, and the thoughts and reactions to thoughts when humans are in deep sleep states as well
as when normally dreaming. We can discover and correct many sources of resistance that
previously had interfered with successful psychotherapy. The entire process of psychotherapy
has been accelerated, and the cost of psychotherapy has, therefore, been reduced."
These claims, startling as they may at first appear, are mild compared with Dr. Cheek's
other assertions in his 300-page book. For instance, he writes convincingly about telepathy
between a mother and her fetus, past-life regression, spirit depossession, and a distinctly unusual
view of homosexuality.
Dr. Cheek gives several examples of adult women using ideomotor techniques to uncover
sexual abuse when they were too young to have conscious memories. "Babies have an active
sucking reflex that can stimulate a father, uncle, grandfather, or older male sibling into the idea
of putting his erect penis into that mouth. There is no erotic pleasure in this for the infant. The
experience can be terrifying because it is hard for the infant to breathe. Its normal sucking reflex
may be eliminated by this act. The infant usually senses, and absorbs to itself, the guilt of the
person doing this. . .Since conscious memory does not begin until the age of 2 or 3 years, there
will be no conscious recollection for this infantile trauma. Some patients will recall that they
have had dreams of this being done to them."
He goes on (evidently to doctors) to point out signs in adults that may be evidence of
such abuse. "Be alert to possibility of oral molestation when you learn that your patient was
wall-eyed or cross-eyed during childhood. Their dominant eye may have centered in terrified
attention on the penis or trying to avoid looking at it. Be alert for oral molestation when your
patient has a history of gagging or has had repeated throat infections as a child. Both are
examples of hypersensitivity problems conditioned by emotional trauma from molestation or a
tonsillectomy. The problem of tonsillitis that leads to tonsillectomy will be remembered but the
preceding molestation will be hidden by conscious amnesia." Dr. Cheek believes we are
imprinted with particular emotions even while in the womb. He has taught hundreds of women
to communicate telepathically with their unborn children. "If a fetus mistakenly interprets a
mother's worries as rejection the feeling will be imprinted and permanent, says Cheek, and
"subsequent love and nurturing by the mother will not alter the earlier assumption."
Birth trauma is at the root of much adult distress, according to Dr Cheek. He describes
how epinephrine -- released at the time of a shock or stress -- "sets" the fear or distress, thus
imprinting the trauma. "The primary trauma may be at the time a mother realizes that she is
pregnant. It can be reinforced during the pregnancy, at birth, and during the first three years of
life. Rehearsals of imprinted traumatic early life sequences during deeper levels of sleep can
occur throughout the remainder of a child's life."
And lead to depression, anxiety, phobias and posttraumatic stress disorders. Ordinary
psychotherapy is inadequate to the task of dealing with such imprinting because it has affected
the primitive and midbrain, not the cerebral hemispheres of conscious memories. (Insomnia and
free-floating anxiety may be evidence of such disturbances.) Ideomotor techniques can uncover
the pre-conscious causes of distress, and then they can be treated. As a result, hundreds of his
pregnant patients have used hypnosis to allow a breech baby to turn around, and to give birth
comfortably.
The now well-known experience of surgical patients hearing conversations in the
operating room even while they are deeply anesthetized perhaps has another explanation:
telepathy. Dr. Cheek has used ideomotor techniques to confirm this to his own satisfaction. "If
this assertion can be substantiated by the work of other independent observers," he says, "it will
be very important for surgeons and their assistants to keep positive thoughts while they are
working with their surgical patient." On a lighter note, Dr Cheek tells the reader how to use
ideomotor techniques with self-hypnosis to locate lost objects. Also, the book contains many
case examples (sometimes repeated) and explicit instructions on how therapists can use finger
signalling. Furthermore, the chapters on gynecology and female urology are highly technical.
The author hopes that more women will enter medical schools and more attention will be paid to
"the concept of a mind influencing physical behavior and endocrine balance." The uses of the
techniques to deal with infertility are fascinating as well, and will give hope to couples who may
be despairing of ever having their own children.
Dr. Cheek is cautiously open-minded about other approaches which can be included
along with the finger signaling. These include looking for auras and investigating past lives,
although he finds it most productive for patients to simply cut their ties with past lives, leaving
open the question of whether they are real or hallucinated. He takes a similar position with spirit
depossession, warning physicians to be careful with whom they broach these subjects.
Especially enlightening are the reason given by Dr. Cheek about why some people are
fearful and/or resistant to hypnosis: "You [the doctor] may be subliminally reminding these
patients of someone who treated them badly at a time when they were spontaneously in a
trance." Dr. Cheek's compassion for patients, and his wish that they be co-therapists in their own
healing is evidenced in his disapproval of a common technique. "The ... concept that repeated
abreactions in total age-regression will catharse a trauma is not a viable therapeutic modality. It
usually alienates patients or forces them to fabricate traumas that either are not the causal ones or
have never happened." There is much useful guidance on using the ideomotor techniques to help
people control pain and to combat the unwanted effects of chemotherapy. Dr. Cheek also writes
about the forensic and emergency uses of hypnosis. This is clearly a book intended for
practitioners, but it makes thought-provoking reading for laypersons, too.

25. IDEOMOTOR SIGNALS FOR HYPNOTIC EXPLORATION OF SYMPTOMS:

(ADAPTED FROM THE WORK OF DAVID CHEEK, MD): PHYLLIS KLAUS, MFT
This approach is useful for helping to uncover and resolve psychophysiological
conditions which may have an unconscious psychological component. Exploring the
unconscious or inner body/mind communication can provide the otherwise unrecognized
traumas to surface for the goal of both inner healing via hypnosis, as well as creating targets for
EMDR processing. After the inner work is done, it is important to check it in an alert state with
EMDR.
I. Establish ideodynamic (mind/body) communication:
A common way is through finger signals. Have the client first think and feel “yes” and allow a
finger to move as an unconscious “yes” signal. Repeat this with “no”, and “I’m not ready to
answer yet.” Test these signals out by asking the client questions through finger signals to
which you know the answers.
1. Retrospective Approach to Ideodynamic Signaling
This approach is useful for the beginning therapist as a safe approach to desensitizing traumatic
problems. This method allows a client to feel more in control as he or she approaches an event.
2. Accessing a problem: Ask if there is an important event related to the origin of the current
difficulty. Always ask permission if it would be OK to learn more about that. If not , would it
be OK to learn about it in the future.
a. “Is there some past event responsible for your trouble?” If answer is no, ask if there could be
a group of events.
b. “Was before you were 20 years old? Ten years old? Eight years old?”
c. “Review what is happening at that time. Just drift deeper while your unconscious completes
its search. When you are ready to become aware of this experience and know what it is, your
Yes ringer will lift. Take all the time you need to thoroughly review this time. As the finger
lifts, the memory will come up and you will be able to talk about it.”
3.. Therapeutic reframing
a. “Is it all right to tell me about it?” Allow the patient to verbalize the memories and
facilitate therapeutic reframing as needed. Now move forward in time to the first moment the
inner mind is aware that something important is happening in relation to the symptom and let the
âœyesâ finger signal. As the finger moves, ask the client to say whatever comes to mind in
terms of memories, images, feelings, associations, etc. Allow time for emotional discharge and
insight. Use reframing as needed. (Remember that most reactions and behaviors are survival
oriented.)
b. “Is there an earlier experience that might have set the stage, or made you vulnerable to what
you have just shared with me?” If answer is Yes, proceed as in Step 1 above.
4. Integrate and transform the symptom, a way of ratifying therapeutic gains.
a. Ask whether the unconscious now believes that the current symptom can be resolved. “Now
that you know this, is there a wise part of your inner mind that knows you can be well?” A No
response means that further insight and refraining is required, as in Steps 1 and 2 above
5. When there is some agreement to allow healing , It is also helpful to ask, “Are there any
resources that are needed so that this resolution or healing can occur. Would it be OK to discover
those resources now? Please share with me when you are ready.”
b. “Take some time to review the earlier unconscious experience allowing these current
resources to aid you.” “Would it be OK for me to know about what you are learning and
experiencing?”
c. Always ask: “Is there anything else we need to know now about this? Or any other help you
need before you can be free of this problem?” If so, let a thought come to you, and please share
with me when you are ready.” (Here is where the client can begin some potential
problem-solving and developing inner healing mechanisms and positive cognitions for
processing). If it is evident that the client’s symptom, habit, or problematic behavior cannot be
resolved completely at that time, find a date for a more complete cure, as follows:
d. “Let your inner mind give a Yes signal when it is ready to let a date of a healthy and
satisfactory resolution of that problem come into your conscious mind.” If there is no
satisfactory response, more therapeutic work is required, as in Step 2 above.
5. Future Progression: Ratifying the change
a. Ask the client to go forward in time to imagine oneself successfully dealing with real -life
situations in the future that are related to the current symptoms. Suggest that the yes finger can
lift each time they explore and experience a positive change that has been made. Ask the client
to describe each time and experience he or she is aware of in as much detail as possible.
Suggest that when the inner mind knows that it can continue the healing process all by itself,
with the help of the conscious mind, the yes finger can lift.
6.Suggest that when the client feels a sense of confidence that the healing process will continue
successfully on both mind and body levels, he or she can comfortably begin becoming aware of
the outside surroundings. “And when you are ready, slowly and peacefully open your eyes
feeling alert, relaxed and good.”
II. Progressive Chronological Approach to Ideodynamic Signaling
This approach is useful for the more experienced therapist to access significant but forgotten life
events. This allows a more direct method of uncovering traumas. With each event you can elicit
the negative messages, emotions, sensations the person is believing, or experiencing about the
self and that can eventually become the areas for healing with hypnotic methods, activating
healing potential or resolving the events. If using EMDR, these can be the targets to process.
1. Accessing a problem
a. “When you are there at the time before there was any problem or trouble, your Yes finger
will lift. Let that scene develop and tell me where you are and what is happening.”
b. Now come forward in time to the very first moment you are feeling that something
important is happening in relation to this problem. When you are there, your Yes finger will
rise.” (Here is where you can elicit any negative beliefs or messages the person is feeling about
the self from these events’ negative cognitions) (You can also elicit body sensations and
emotions.)
2. Therapeutic reforming
a. “As it lifts, please tell me the first thing that comes into your mind. Don’t edit it. Just say it,
even if it sounds ridiculous.” Allow time for emotional catharsis and/or spontaneous insights.
b. “Now come forward in time to the next thing that makes that first experience important in
causing the problem you have had." Allow patients to verbalize spontaneous insights and
facilitate therapeutic reframing as needed.
c. “Is there any other experience we should know about?”
d. “Let a thought come to you of what help that younger self needs now, and when you know,
the yes finger will lift. ( Allow the inner mind resources to help. You may ask what help is
needed and by whom ). “Take all the time you need, and when your inner mind has completed
this , the yes finger will lift.”
e. “Continue through time to elicit each time the negative beliefs were re-enforced, and then
bring in the healing or resources that were needed, and validate when completed.”
3. Ratifying therapeutic gains( especially helpful for medical conditions)
a. "Please come forward in time to the moment you know you are completely well. When you
are there, your Yes finger will lift."
b. "Look over to one side and see a blackboard with the date written on it in chalk. When you
see that at an unconscious level your Yes finger will lift. As it lifts, tell me the date.”
Any difficulty in verbalizing this date of "cure" means that more work is needed in Steps 1
and 2 above.
c. “When your inner mind knows that it can continue with that curative process all by itself -
letting your conscious mind have whatever insights it needs to facilitate it - your Yes finger will
lift again."

26. DAVID CHEEK'S IDEOMOTOR (IM) APPROACH: DABNEY EWIN & BRUCE EIMER:
IDEOMOTOR SIGNALS FOR RAPID HYPNOANALYSIS: CHARLES THOMAS:
SPRINGFIELD, IL: 2006
Dave Cheek, as detailed in his books (Cheek & LeCron, 1968; Cheek, 1994) often asked
his patients for permission with 1M signals to explore their birth impressions with a focus on
whether or not they felt welcome at birth.
He would have patients review in hypnosis their feelings about their mother's reactions to
learning that she was pregnant. Then, if appropriate, he would have them move forward
chronologically to the moment when their father was told about the pregnancy. He would have
them sense their parents' emotional reactions. If these reactions were negative, Cheek would
often suggest that the patient review it "as it would have been" if their mother had better
preparation and a positive attitude.
He would also attempt to soften the feeling of being rejected by asking if the mother had
an unconscious desire to be pregnant when she conceived. He would also ask if there were times
during intrauterine development when the patient recognized maternal and paternal acceptance.
After establishing IM signals, Cheek (1994) would ask the patient:
Cheek: Would it be all right for us to review your birth? 1M: Yes.
Cheek: Let your inner mind go back (or "orient back") to the moment your head is emerging into
the outside world at the end of your mother's labor. Your "yes" finger will lift to indicate you are
there. ["Head movements and the recognition of which arm came out first were indications that
she was getting physiological memories." (Cheek, 1994, p. 106)]
Cheek: "Is your mother able to speak at the moment of your birth?"
IM: Yes.
Cheek: "How does your mother feel when she sees you?"
P: [Verbal response]
Cheek: "How does the baby feel?"
P: [Verbal and/or physical response]
Cheek: "Please go back to the moment your mother realizes that she is pregnant with you. When
you are there, your 'yes' finger will lift. As it lifts, please tell me how your mother is feeling
when the doctor tells her."
P: [Verbal and/or non-verbal response]
Cheek: "Go to the moment she tells your father that she is pregnant." (69)
Cheek points out that when Mother's attitude was negative about the pregnancy, that "it is
important then to impress the patient with the fact that this attitude on the part of the mother was
her problem and was probably based on the mother's early relationship to her parents and
siblings" (Cheek, 1994, p. 107).
He also utilized the patient's suggestibility in trance to reframe the patient's birth
impressions on an emotional level. He stated, "Sometimes it is possible to have the patient
review the moment of her unhappy mother's diagnosis of pregnancy and have the mother think
to the little embryo the kind of feelings that would have made her baby feel welcome. This is
turning the concept of being a baby into being the mother. It curiously is possible for troubled
patients to hallucinate the sensations of feeling welcome and nurtured when there was none of
this in the early experience" (p. 107).

27. CHEEK’S IMAGERY: DABNEY EWIN & BRUCE EIMER: IDEOMOTOR SIGNALS
FOR RAPID HYPNOANALYSIS: CHARLES THOMAS: SPRINGFIELD, IL: 2006
Rossi and Cheek's "Body Lights" Imagery: I (BNE) often employ Rossi and Cheek's
(1988) rapid hypnoanalytic imagery technique for helping patients experience relief from pain.
Cheek (1994) classified this method as an "indirect" approach to ideomotor search for causal
events. After inducing trance and setting up IM signals:
Therapist: Imagine you are standing in front of a full-length mirror. Look at yourself in the
mirror and see tiny colored lights in different parts of your body. These colored lights represent
different physical sensations. There is a different color for every sensation including pain. In
fact, there are even different colors for different types of pain. The more intense the sensation is,
the more intense, the brighter, the color is. When you see the total picture, your yes finger will
slowly lift.
IM: Yes finger eventually lifts.
Therapist: Now that you see the total picture, would it be all right with your feeling mind for
you to scan the entire picture and tell me what sensations the colors of each light represent?
IM: Wait for a yes.
Iherapist: Would it be all right with your feeling mind to choose the least uncomfortable part of
the body to do some therapeutic work? Answer with your fingers.
IM: Wait for a yes.
Therapist: Yes. Let your feeling mind go back to a time when that body light stood for some
other comfortable sensation. Your yes finger will lift when you are back at that time.
IM: Wait for yes finger to lift.
Therapist: Now, orient forward in time to the first moment when that body light that now stands
for discomfort took the place of the light that stood for comfort. Your yes finger will lift when
you arrive at that moment. When you are there, please tell
me your age and what is going on.
IM: Wait for yes finger signal and for the patient to verbally respond.
Therapist: Yes. You are ... years old and [repeat in the present tense the when, what, where and
with whom of what the patient relates]. (147)
Therapist: Is there any good reason now, why you have to continue having discomfort in that
body part?
Wait for an IM or verbal response.
[If the patient answers "yes," it is important to explore the patient's felt reasons. If the patient
answers "no," ask] Now that you are aware of what is happening, is your feeling mind willing to
let you turn off that discomfort and continue the healing process so that you can get well?
Wait for a response. If the response is no ...
[The therapist should explore with the patient's permission the factors that stand in the way of
turning off the discomfort.
The therapist should also ask] Answer with your fingers. Is your feeling mind willing to let you
turn down the dial on that discomfort so that you can continue to heal?
Wait for a response. If the response is yes ...
Yes. Okay good. Now 1'd like you to imagine a future time when you will no longer be suffering
from discomfort in that
body part. When it feels more comfortable. When you are there, your YES finger will lift and
you will see the month, day, and year as though written on a chalkboard right in front of you.
IM: Wait for a response.
Therapist: Okay. Great! Tell me what you see.
IM: Wait for a verbal response.
Therapist: Thank you. Now lock in on that with every cell in your mind, and body and feelings.
Want it to happen, let it happen, and it will happen.
It is suggested that the patient practice orienting to that future time and rehearse
imagining the associated more comfortable sensations. The above steps are repeated for other
more painful body parts so that the patient gradually works his or her way up a hierarchy of
increasingly painful body parts.
Cheek and LeCron's Method: I (BNE) have been using Cheek and LeCron's (1968)
ideomotor analysis protocol for years with good success. Their protocol is employed as
illustrated in the following case: A 48-year-old single, white male college professor (R.)
consulted ENE for hypnosis for pain management after being referred by his HMO primary care
physician. He said that his doctor told him that I (ENE) helped people manage their pain better
using hypnosis. Although skeptical, he made the call and booked an appointment. An hour and a
half was devoted to the intake.
I learned that R. was diagnosed with spinal stenosis, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue
syndrome, and that he had undergone back surgery three years previously, which entailed
laminectomies at L3-4, L4-5, and L5-S1 vertebral levels. The surgery had eliminated his leg
pain, but his symptoms of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue worsened after the surgery. At this
point, he was thinking of taking early retirement on longterm disability.
At the end of the first visit, after the intake and history-taking, he was hypnotized using a rapid
trance induction, and ideomotor signals were established. He was seen for a second visit three
days later. The second visit lasted about one hour and ideomotor analysis was conducted. The
following is a summary of that session:
T: Is it all right for me to help you with this problem?
IM: Yes.
T: Would it be all right to let your subconscious mind orient back in time to the first moment in
your life when pain of this sort first became important to you?
IM: Yes.
T: Yes. Okay. Let the subconscious part of your mind orient back in time to the first moment in
your life when pain of this sort first became important to you. When you're there, your "Yes"
finger will lift. As it lifts, please bring these memories up to a level where you can tell about
them.
IM: Yes.
T: Is it all right to tell me what's come to your mind?
IM Yes.
T: Yes. Tell me what's come to your mind.
IM: I remember being in my apartment and realizing that I had this "yuppie disease," this
chronic fatigue syndrome they'd been talking about.
T: Tell me what the date is. P: It's December of 1992. (149)
T: It's December 1992 and you realize you have this "yuppie disease."
What leads you to realize this?
P: I'm not getting better.
T: You're not getting better. Does anything happen, or does anyone say something to you that
makes the pain and fatigue you're having seem very important?
P: Hmmm. Yeh. This chiropractor said he cannot do anything for me, and that my back is like
that of a 70-year-old.
T: (Repeats P's last statement.) Did anything happen before this, at an earlier time, which made
what the chiropractor said seem very important?
P: Huh hmm. I kept having like these flues and back attacks. And after each flu, I'd be drained
and washed out for weeks.
T: Answer with your fingers, yes or no. Did what that chiropractor said make you feel that you
could not get well?
1M: Yes.
T' Knowing what you know today, on Tuesday, October 6th, 1998, yes or no, answer with your
feelings, is it possible that the chiropractor was not very knowledgeable about pain and
rehabilitation? 1M: Yes.
T: Sure. That chiropractor was not very knowledgeable about how to get people with your
problem well. Yes or no, didn't you see another doctor who had a better treatment plan?
IM: Yes.
T' Sure you did. And tell me what he said.
P: He said I don't need surgery. He said I need physical therapy.
T: Uh huh. He was a respected neurosurgeon and he said you need physical therapy. Did you go
for the physical therapy?
IM: No.
T: No. You didn't go for it. Tell me why you didn't go for it.
P: Because I was depressed.
T: So you didn't follow that doctor's advice because you were depressed. Okay. You were
depressed then. And eventually you needed to have surgery, and it was a successful operation,
wasn't it?
IM: Yes.
T: Now, here you are today, on Tuesday, October 6th, 1998. Knowing what you know now,
answer with your fingers, yes or no, does your inner mind feel willing to let me help you get
well?
IM: Yes. (150)
T: Yes. Great! Okay. Project forward to the time when you are completely over this trouble and
are no longer afraid of it recurring. When you're there, your "yes" finger will slowly rise, and tell
me the date that pops into your mind.
IM: Yes.
P: It's Saturday, December 26th, 1998.
T: (Repeats date.) Okay. Yes or no. Is there anything else we need to know before we start
working toward this goal?
IM: No.
T Would you like to learn self-hypnosis?
IM: Yes.
I (BNE) taught the patient a brief self-hypnosis exercise. I instructed him to practice it
for two to three minute periods ten times a day. We rehearsed it to make sure he got it and could
do it. We then rehearsed turning the pain ON and OFF, and making it WORSE and then
BETTER as described earlier.
The patient called the following day and complained that his pain and fatigue had
somehow gotten worse. I saw the patient that evening as an emergency. 1M analysis revealed
that the patient had dreamt about conversations he'd had with his mother who was a very anxious
woman and very overprotective. We uncovered the fixed idea (that he had gotten from her) that
he worked too hard and didn't relax enough (this was not so.). As a result of this fixed idea, he
believed that he was a very fragile person and vulnerable to getting sick if he overexerted
himself, mentally or physically. In trance, I removed this suggestion.
We also practiced turning the pain ON and OFF, and making it WORSE and then
BETTER, first on a subconscious level, and then on a conscious level. I also reframed and
removed the fixed idea that HE had caused all of his physical problems through careless weight
lifting several years before his pain problem started.
IM signaling revealed that, on a feeling level, he felt that now that he knew these things,
he could get better. The patient was seen for one more visit two weeks later. He reported that he
was practicing his selfhypnosis, and that he was feeling hopeful, and had more energy.
The patient carne back for another visit inJanuary of 1999, after his visualized recovery
date. He was dating someone and feared that his medical problems would scare the woman off.
In both waking and hypnotic states, these fears were reframed in light of the overall (151)
improvement in his functionality, improved energy level, diminished medication use, and overall
greater comfort.
THE "WHITE LIGHT": This is a guided imagery technique for helping a patient
finish some "unfinished business" with a deceased loved one. It's also useful for helping a patient
gain self-esteem. It is a useful tool in grief or bereavement therapy as well as in pain
management psychotherapy (Eimer & Freeman, 1998).
Summary: We begin by seeding in the waking state, that the White Light is part of the
near-death experience for us all, no matter what our religion (even for atheists). We suggest that
it is possible to safely visit the White Light to make contact with an important person who has
passed, and communicate with that person.
We start by agreeing to go together to the White Light. Trance is induced and 1M signals
are set up. If it's appropriate, with the patient's permission, we either hold hands, or we put our
hand on the patient's. We then begin by setting the scene-that it's twilight, and way off in the
distance we can see a little twinkling light like a small star, pure white and brilliant, even though
it's so far away.
Together, we, and the patient, start walking towards it, and we notice that it is coming
towards us, getting larger and brighter all the time. Soon we become aware that it has no
form-it's not a mist, it's not a cloud, it's not a person, but there is an awesome energy, warm and
bright, and as it envelopes us, we realize that it IS energy, and that energy is LOVE. We can
inhale it, and feel it spread through every cell in our bodies, making us know that we're
precious-not perfect, but precious. And the White Light brings with it an important person who
has gone before, and we suggest that the patient can have a private conversation with that person
to clarify any unfinished business. This is a time when one can ask for forgiveness, give
forgiveness, share love, and reassure each other. We state that we'll be quiet while the patient
takes all the time he needs to complete his conversation, and that when he feels (152) content, he
can just nod his head to let us know (5 to 10 minutes of silence, perhaps some tears).
After the nod, we suggest that it's time now for us to say goodbye and return to our
office, but we take with us the reassurance that we experienced that all of us are precious-not
perfect, but precious. We turn away and know that the White Light is going back, getting
smaller and smaller, until it's just like a little, twinkly star that disappears, and we come back to
TODAY. ... (We state the exact day, and date, because "today" may still be a regression back to
the day the patient's loved one died).
Case Example: The journey is begun with the patient in trance, and after 1M signals
have been set up. The case of one patient who had long-standing, ongoing issues with his stern
father (who was now deceased), went like this:
T: Do you know what the "White Light" is?
IM Yes.
T: Yes. Raymond Moody wrote a book called Life After Life. He interviewed people who had
"near-death experiences" and had recovered and come back alive. No matter who he
interviewed, or what religion they had, if they had a "near-death experience," they all saw the
"White Light." It's an energy concept. Light is a form of energy and the energy they reported in
the White Light was love. But it didn't have to be deserved, or earned. It was love that was given
because it was needed. It engulfed them. They experienced an awesome love, and it was so
wonderful that when they came back, they didn't care about whether or not they actually died!
Almost universally, they said "There's something important I have to do before I can go back. I
have to love more here, and be a better person, because I want to go back and experience the
White Light again." A lot of them said that the White Light brought somebody with it. In
particular somebody they had unfinished business with. Now, I'm going to ask you <Name>,
"yes" or "no," if I go with you, would you like to go visit the White Light right now?
IM: Yes.
T: Yes. I wonder if the White Light will bring your father. Maybe he has something to say to
you and you have something to say to him. But let's just see ourselves in the twilight. Walking
together. Maybe (153) holding hands. And way off in the distance, we see a bright pinpoint of
light, like a twinkling star. It's coming toward us, and as it does, it gets bigger and brighter, and
brighter and bigger. Pure, brilliant white light. It has no form, no shape. It's not a mist, it's not a
cloud, but we experience it as a warm loving energy as we bask in its comfort. It makes us feel
precious, absolutely precious. And your father has gone before you .... Look around and see,
"yes" or "no," does he know you're here?
IM: Yes.
T: Does he come back? Does he have something to say to you?
IM: Yes.
T: Does he think you're precious too, now that he's experienced the White Light?
IM: Yes.
T: Oh, I think that he needs to pass this on to you. In spite of his toughness, he's followed you all
this time. And he's very proud that a part of him is still here, helping people, teaching, growing.
I'll be quiet while you and he communicate in this atmosphere of comfort. When you have
completed saying what's really important, your "yes" finger will rise (silence for 2 or 3 minutes).
IM: Yes.
T: Does he ask you to forgive him for letting you feel so bad for so long?
IM: Yes.
T: Does the White Light communicate to you that all of God's children are precious and they're
entitled to feel lovable, just because they've been made, and you're one of God's children?
IM: Yes.
T: We all ought to do the best we can with what we've got, but we don't have to prove we're
lovable, because that comes with the territory. It's a freebie. We may not act lovable all the time,
or even feel loving all the time. But the issue is whether or not we're willing to accept love when
it knocks. When the White Light comes and it engulfs us, are we going to hold our breath and
NOT inhale it? Yes or no?
IM: No.
T: That would be our stubbornness.
T: This gift is a special kind of love we know as charitable love. It doesn't ask for payback. It's
what the White Light brings, and when (154) someone says "1 don't accept charity," they're
rejecting feeling precious. Perhaps your dad didn't think that he was precious until he got to the
White Light. But he knows now, and he knows that he was precious, and that you are precious.
You wanted to please him. Didn't you?
1M: Yes.
T: And has he just told you that you really do please him?
IM: Yes.
yo Each breath you take, feel this energy. Feel this unconditional love.
Just loving <Patient's Name> because he's <Name>. Breathe it in. Let it go through your lungs
and into your bloodstream. Circulate it through your heart and to your brain. Your liver, your
muscles, your skin. And if you can accept a gift, a gift of love, that makes you vulnerable, but it
also makes you stronger. Can you feel it making you stronger?
IM: Yes.
T: You will be able to continue to process this. 1 wonder if your father is there in your presence,
if you are aware of a message from him in the form of the White Light?
IM: Yes.
T: It's been there all along. All you have to do is inhale it. You're just as precious to your father,
your mother, your wife and your children. And your peers. It's all there for you. Accept it.
1M: Yes.
T. Now it's time for us to corne on back. The White Light begins to move away and get smaller
and smaller and smaller, and we can look way off in the distance and finally it's like a tiny
blinking star, and it goes out. And we look around and here we are back in ... on [Date:
Month/Day/Year]. And when you're ready, just open your eyes and come back, fully alert, sound
in mind, sound in body, and in control of your feelings. Comment. Later this patient reported
that he felt a decrease in tension, and more satisfaction and self-esteem since his visit to the
White Light. (155)

28. CHEEK'S LAW OF PESSIMISTIC INTERPRETATION: DABNEY EWIN & BRUCE

EIMER: IDEOMOTOR SIGNALS FOR RAPID HYPNOANALYSIS: CHARLES THOMAS:
SPRINGFIELD, IL: 2006
When a statement can be interpreted either optimistically or pessimistically, a frightened
person will interpret it pessimistically (Cheek, 1981). A good example of this was reported in the
newspaper when President Reagan was shot through the lung. He was on oxygen and unable to
talk. The news item reported that a member of the surgical team said "This is it," and the
President "blanched (epinephrine?), grasped a pad and scribbled a note to a nearby nurse, 'What
does he mean, this is it?'"
In his review of the literature, Cheek (1980) notes that Levinson (1965) did the only
human experiment using a meaningful, anxietyproducing statement given by the anesthetist at an
appropriate time during surgery. Ten patients had the operation stopped while the anesthetist
said 'Just a moment! I don't like the patient's color. Much too blue. His (or her) lips are very
blue. I'm going to give a little more oxygen." The anesthetist then paused, hyperventilated the
lungs and then after a moment or two, said, "There, that's better now. You can carry on with the
operation." (109) Although none of the patients had any conscious recall, one month later under
hypnotic regression to the surgery, four of the patients were able to repeat almost exactly the
words used by the anesthetist. Four more remembered hearing something or somebody talking,
and some identified the speaker as the anesthetist. Everyone in this last group displayed marked
anxiety, and either spontaneously alerted from hypnosis, or blocked any further investigation.
The remaining two patients denied hearing anything. It is interesting that in hypnosis, it
was possible to get this much recall with just a regression technique. Unfortunately, we will
never know if the four who became anxious and discontinued the experiment would have
produced specific recall with several ideomotor reviews and verbal reassurance that "it's just a
memory, we know you got through it all right, you're safe now."
A number of very interesting controlled studies have been done that show statistically
significant evidence of unconscious hearing under anesthesia. These include Bennett's (1985,
1987) suggestion to touch the ear during a post-operative interview (note that this is an
ideomotor response, not a verbal one), and the studies of Goldmann and Levey (1986), and
Goldmann (1988) on the recognition of cues given under anesthesia.
In their study with cardiac patients, Goldmann et al. (1987) noted that post-operative
anxiety was a significant predictor (p<0.05) of which patients reported recall. Goldmann (1986)
had the ingenious idea to tell patients the blood pressure of an octopus during an operation under
general anesthesia, and have them recognize it later when cued.
In all of the above studies, it is interesting that hypnosis did not enhance recall of bland
and innocuous words (none of which would cause the release of epinephrine if heard). Bennett et
al. (1985) reports using Hilgard's dissociation technique and got no recall.
 Goldmann et al. (1987) report using Elman's (1970) induction, then asking the patient to
reply to ten questions using ideomotor signalling. No ideomotor review was done before the
questions were asked. Clarity suffers at this point because ideomotor signals only allow for "yes'
or "no" answers, while six of the ten questions could not be answered in this way (e.g., What can
you remember about the anesthetic room?).
Nonetheless, using this technique on the seventh to tenth day interview after cardiac
surgery, seven patients (23%) recalled intraoperative events, five with the aid of hypnosis.
Bonke et al. (1986) gave positive (110) intraoperative suggestions to 91 patients having biliary
tract surgery in a double-blind study and found that this protected those over 55 years against
prolonged post-operative stays in the hospital. They do not report any attempt at hypnotic
review.
There are no controlled studies where it is reported that the hypnotic review used Cheek's
highly successful method of multiple ideomotor reviews prior to asking for recall. On the other
hand, there are a number of uncontrolled studies of good meaningful suggestions under
anesthesia associated with improved convalescence (Bensen, 1971; Daniels, 1962; Hutchings,
1961; Kolough, 1964), and there are anecdotal reports of physiological changes during surgery
(Cheek, 1964; Clawson & Swade, 1975; Ewin, 1984). I (DME) have had several clinical cases
where post-operative review of anxiety producing sounds changed the clinical course,
particularly in patients with chronic pain.

(DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON: CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE &

STRATTON: NY: CH 1-14: 1968 #29-41)
29. CH 1: HYPNOSIS: ITS VALUES AND THE MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT IT: DAVID
CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON: CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON:
NY: 1968
SPONTANEOUS SELF-HYPNOSIS: Since hypnosis has been used and
well-publicized for nearly 200 years, it is strange that so many misconceptions and false ideas
are held by the public and even by professional men. Hypnosis may seem mysterious, but
everyone has been spontaneously in self-hypnosis under certain conditions. This probably
happens to all of us every day of our lives. Though these situations are not labeled hypnosis, that
is just what they are.
At times everyone daydreams. This dennitely is a trance state. (In dealing with patients, it
is better not to use the word "trance," but hypnosis is a trance state.) Whenever we become
absorbed in what we are doing, we slip into hypnosis. Self-hypnosis results when you become
absorbed in reading a book, in your work, in watching a motion picture or TV program, while
listening to an interesting talk, even during some religious ceremonies. Any strong emotion may
also produce hypnosis. A state of shock certainly is similar to a trance state. A realization that
we enter hypnosis in these circumstances will give a better understanding of it.
What has been called ''highway hypnosis" is another common condition. All drivers have
probably had such an experience. On the open road where one can relax at the wheel, the
monotonous hum of the motor while keeping the eyes nxed on the white line of the road is
conducive to hypnosis. You probably can remember a time when you were driving and had
passed through some town, then found yourself beyond it with no recollection of having gone
through it. Many accidents blamed on falling asleep at the wheel have resulted from highway
hypnosis. Some people are very prone to this. (6)
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS: Most people expect to pass out and be unconscious
when hypnotized. Actually there never is loss of consciousness even in the deepest stages of
hypnosis. The formally hypnotized subject is just as fully aware as are those in spontaneously
occurring hypnotic-like states of daydreaming, shock and disorientation.
Many people expect to be under the control of the hypnotist, in his power. They think
any suggestion given must then be carried out. In fact there is no surrender of will-power. Any
suggestion given is strictly censored, both consciously and subconsciously. In general it may be
said that no one will do anything under hypnosis that is against his moral code or that he may not
want to do. This matter will be considered at more length in a later chapter. It applies to
hypnosis as ordinarily used but not to brainwashing or dictator-persuasion long continued.
It should be mentioned here that the usual psychiatric term for the inner part of the mind
is unconscious. Other words have also been applied to it. The word unconscious has two
meanings: the inner part of the mind and also a state of unconsciousness. Therefore we prefer the
word subconscious, as it has only one meaning, and we will use this term throughout the book.
Another common misconception is that the mind may be weakened by being hypnotized.
No one's mind has ever been weakened even when hypnosis has been induced many times.
Instead, strong-minded people make better subjects. Hypnosis can even be used to strengthen the
mind and bring out its latent abilities.
Often there is confusion in people's minds between hypnotizability and gullibility.
Gullibility is the quality of being easily fooled and certainly it is not an asset. A very
hypnotizable person may not be at all gullible. Hypnotizability is an asset rather than a liability.
Some patients may fear they will talk and betray "state secrets" or say something they
might not want known while in hypnosis, as may happen with some drugs. Since one is fully
aware at all times when hypnotized, there is no such tendency.
Another fear often expressed is that awakening from hypnosis may be difficult or
impossible. There never is any difficulty awakening a subject except in very, very rare cases.
More will be said of this rare happening in the chapter as to dangers. Actually it is not a danger
and with knowledge of how to handle the situation the subject can always be awakened. (7) Any
of these false ideas may cause one to be fearful of being hypnotized. He may refuse hypnosis or
fear may cause unconscious resistance to its induction. The practitioner may need to discuss the
misconceptions and eliminate whatever fears may be entertained by a patient.
THE USES AND VALUES OF HYPNOSIS: What are the uses and values of hypnosis
in the practice of medicine, dentistry and psychology? One of the main applications is in
psychotherapy. It should be realized that hypnosis is not a method of treatment but is a valuable
tool which can shorten treatment to a very great degree with any method used.
All physicians do not wish to become psychotherapists, yet it is impossible to practice
without some psychotherapy being involved. Even your bedside manner is in this category. On
leaving medical school and beginning to practice, every physician soon finds that many of the
conditions he encounters are psychosomatic in origin. They have an emotional or psychological
background and treatment may be ineffective unless the causes are learned.
It is not necessary for the physician to have any extensive knowledge of
psychotherapeutic methods in order to use hypnosis. Of course the more he knows in this field
the better a physician he will be, whether or not he uses hypnosis. With the methods and
techniques given in the second part of this book, psychosomatic ailments may be successfully
treated with only a superficial understanding of psychotherapy. Most physicians know the basic
principles involved.
Here is a partial list of some of the uses of hypnosis in treatment. It is not complete, for
tension and stress may be a factor in almost any illness, even the infectious ones.
Any illness classed as psychosomatic. Resistance to infection can be improved. Pain can be
alleviated. Inflammatory responses can be decreased with suggestions decreasing pain and
making tissues "feel cool" Muscle spasm either causing or caused by pain may be relieved by
suggestion. Emotional factors influencing the function of any of the systems can be discovered
and corrected. (8)
There are other applications of hypnosis; In the chapter on obstetrics it will be seen that it
undoubtedly is the best method of childbirth, as has been noted by every obstetrician who has
employed it. Another field where it is of great value is in anesthesia and surgery. Dentistry is
another area where it can be of great value. Some possible applications have been little explored,
for instance in diagnosis and in affecting physical bodily changes. These matters and the dental
uses will all be covered in Part II. (9)

30. CH 2: WHAT IS HYPNOSIS? DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON: CLINICAL

HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
Although many books have been written about hypnosis, no one as yet has been able to
formulate a theory about it which is entirely satisfactory. Several have been advanced which
have some merit but none is completely accurate when all its many aspects are considered. All
fall short in some way. One of the difficulties in reaching a workable theory is that a light state
of hypnosis differs greatly from a deep one. We can describe and define hypnosis but a workable
theory is something else again. However, you will have a better understanding of hypnosis if you
know something of the theories which have been evolved, so they will be discussed briefly.
From them it will be seen that hypnosis is a very complex phenomenon.
THE PAVLOVIAN THEORY: HYPNOSIS AS A FORM OF SLEEP: According to
Pavlov, hypnosis and sleep are almost identical, both involving inhibition in some cerebral areas.
Others have believed that hypnosis is at least a modified form of sleep. These ideas are based on
the fact that rhythmic repetition of stimuli induces relaxation and the focusing of attention causes
immobilization and inhibits some brain functions.
This theory falls by the wayside because research has shown that physiologically the two
states are different. In hypnosis there is no loss of reflexes such as the knec jerk, which is lost in
sleep. Another important difference is that there is no loss of consciousness even in the deepest
stages of hypnosis, although there is some alteration of awareness. The differences are even
greater in light stages of hypnosis.
HYPNOSIS AS CONDITIONED RESPONSE: Pavlov also believed that hypnosis is
based on conditioning and is a reaction stimulated by past experiences. Words can act as stimuli
for (10)
conditioned reflexes. Verbal stimuli can produce both organic and psychological reactions. Any
hypnotic induction talk tends in some ways to induce conditioned responses to the words, tone
and ideas. Certainly this theory has merit but fails to explain some important and complex
factors seen in hypnosis. It also does not explain the great differences between a light state and a
deep one.
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY: Analysts, such as Ferenczi, have studied
hypnosis along analytic lines. Ferenczi claimed that there is regression to childhood during
hypnosis, the subject unconsciously associating the hypnotist with the strong father, if induction
was of aggressive, commanding type, or the mother, if it was permissive in form. In other words,
transference is involved. The subject then unconsciously wishes to obey the parent figure based
on love and fear of the parent image.
With this theory self-subordination is present together with the Oedipus complex and
there is then a sexual factor in hypnosis. There have been claims of definite eroticism exhibited
by the subject when in hypnosis. This observation has not been substantiated by other
experienced hypnotherapists and probably is an individual response which certainly is not
generally present. It must be concluded that the operator in some unconscious way promoted
such behavior.
There is no doubt that a subject may experience erotic fantasies, but to say that these are
always present or that the subject regresses to childhood is untrue. If the operator is a male and
the subject a female, erotic fantasies are more likely to develop, but this is also true in any
physician-patient relationship. Experienced subjects able to enter a deep state often deny any
such tendencies. Voice tone and inflection should be carefully studied by those using hypnosis in
order to avoid sounding unctious or condescending or seductive. These ideas are more of a
description of some possible unconscious processes than a theory. They do not take into
consideration some hypnotic phenomena or self-hypnosis.
HYPNOSIS AS DISSOCIATION: In the past, this theory has had many supporters and
certainly has some meritorious aspects. It seems to be founded on the idea that hypnosis (11)
abolishes volition and is a form of automatism. It regards the conscious mind as dissociated
when a person is under hypnosis, some other part of the mind having taken over. Post-hypnotic
amnesia for what occurred during the trance, or amnesia in carrying out a post-hypnotic
suggestion tends to confirm this theory. Here we encounter difficulty in explaining the
difference between light and deep hypnosis. There are elements of dissociation in the deep stage
but almost none in the light trance. Some deep trance phenomena seem to be dissociative. This
theory at present has little support.
HYPNOSIS AS ROLE-PLAYING: Several psychologists, including White, Sarbin
and Barber, claim that hypnosis is merely role-playing on the part of the subject. They state that
any hypnotic phenomena can be produced in the waking state as, for instance, in cases of
hysteria. For the most part, this is true, although such things as voluntary control of
physiological processes is only possible under hypnosis and is not subject to volition (for
instance, change of heartbeat). Briefly stated, this theory is that the hypnotized person acts and
behaves as he thinks a hypnotized person should behave.
Role playing has some points in common with the Pavlovian theory of conditioned
responses, and, in fact, most of our suggestions directed toward improving physiological
responses are based on using previously learned reactions to appropriately chosen types of
suggested environment. To categorize all hypnotic phenomena as "role playing" is unscientific,
however, because hypnotized subjects may burst into tears when asked to recall a happy
experience or may become dyspneic with an asthmatic episode when told to remember some
pleasant experience in childhood.
The factor of rapport with the hypnotist does enter here and almost every subject tries to
cooperate and to please the operator. In a light stage there is at times some role-playing.
However, to us this theory seems highly ridiculous. It completely ignores the possible changes in
bodily processes due to hypnotic suggestion and the positive Babinski reflex which occurs with
hypnotic age regression to infancy. It also ignores the fact that a person can be hypnotized by
indirect methods so that he is unaware of being hypnotized. Furthermore, a child of 4 or 5 years
can be deeply hypnotized and would have no conception of how a hypnotized person would
behave. It even ignores auto-hypnotic spontaneous states. There have been some other
postulations advanced which can explain some facets of hypnosis, but it will be seen from a
consideration of all (12) these theories that no completely workable explanation of hypnosis has
yet been formulated. It is a very complex matter.
WHAT THE HYPNOTIZED SUBJECT EXPERIENCES: While we cannot explain
hypnosis, we can describe it. It is undoubtedly a state of altered awareness, although
consciousness is retained most of the time. Suggestibility is increased under hypnosis, the greater
the degree, the deeper the trance. There is an alteration of reality. If hallucinations are suggested,
they seem real. In hypnosis, the subject tends to relax spontaneously to a greater degree than he
can voluntarily, although some subjects can remain in a rigid form of catalepsy during hypnosis.
The main sensation experienced by the subject is one of listlessness or lethargy. It seems
to be too much trouble to move, although, if sufficiently motivated, movement is possible. But
he doesn't wish to be bothered by making the effort. Speech may be difficult. If told to make
some movement, perhaps to lift an arm voluntarily, it will be done very slowly. These signs and
feelings are greater in the deeper stages.
If the subject's eyes are opened while in a deep trance, there is usually a tunneling of
vision. Instead of peripheral vision extending in an arc of almost 180 degrees, it may tunnel to
perhaps 90 degrees, with peripheral vision lost or narrowed down. Ideomotor questioning reveals
that peripheral vision is maintained unconsciously while the more conscious (verbal level)
reported vision is tunneled.
As a person enters a light state of hypnosis, one of the most usual indications is a
fluttering of the eyelids, which ends as the person goes deeper. This may be slight or there may
be considerable movement of the lids. Most subjects say this is not uncomfortable, but others
find it so. Hence, if it continues, suggestions should be made of relaxation of the muscles of the
lids.
In a first induction and sometimes in later ones, there is an increase in heartbeat and in
the rate of breathing. Probably this is due to anxiety, as most people have some apprehension
over a new experience. With greater depth and more relaxation, heart and breathing rates slow
down to less than normal. Breathing tends to become more abdominal in type. Possibly with
slower rate the pulse becomes stronger. The pulse in the neck may not be observable visually at
first, then may become quite apparent and can be timed by watching it.
If a patient has been in hypnosis for some time, perhaps for the greater part of an hour, if
asked how long it has been since it was induced he (13) will probably greatly underestimate the
length of time that has passed. Often it will be guessed as having been only 10 or 15 minutes.
As the subject drifts deeper into hypnosis and relaxation becomes greater, the lines of the
face smooth out. It becomes mask-like and without expression. In a deep state, this bccomes
very noticeable. Then, if his eyes are opened, they will have a peculiar glassy look and seem to
be in a fixed stare. When closed, the eyeballs often will be seen to have rolled up. Sometimes the
lids will open slightly and the whites of the eyes are visible. Wandering movements of the eyes
beneath the lids are often seen when patients are recalling events in age regression.
Subjects frequently will comment after awakening that they felt as though they were very
light and were floating in the air. More often the opposite effect is experienced. A feeling of
heaviness develops, particularly in the limbs. The person may try to lift an arm and find it too
heavy; the effort to lift it is too great.
When one has become used to being hypnotized, it is almost invariably felt to be a most
comfortable, enjoyable state. People frequently say they were reluctant to awaken. Sometimes it
will be noted that a subject enters a deeper stage when he is told he is about to be awakened. It is
very common during induction for the subject to give a slight sigh as he slips into hypnosis. On
awakening this may be repeated. Many people will rub their eyes on awakening, as if emerging
from normal sleep.
One of the main signs of hypnosis is the disinclination to move. Unless some movement
is suggested, the person may lie for hours without making the slightest movement, something
almost impossible to do voluntarily. Movements are frequent during the lighter stages of normal
sleep. Even if there is discomfort, there is likely to be no movement. If a fly should alight on a
person's face while he is in a deep state, there probably would be no attempt to brush it off, as
we have seen happen. The subject may be uncomfortable for some reason but almost never will
take the trouble to mention it until he is awakened.
Any movement by the subject should be noted by the operator. It might indicate
discomfort, and he should ask about that possibility. Usually it is a matter of the subject
reassuring himself or even more likely is a sign of unconscious resistance. Resistance is
sometimes manifested by the development of an itch on the face which the subject will then rub
or scratch. Still another sign of resistance is when the subject laughs or smiles during induction,
though a smile may only be a sign of self-consciousness.
Throughout the hypnotic session, the operator should take pains to observe the subject,
watching for these signs and for anything in the (14) person's behavior that will give him
information. His procedure will largely depend on his observations. Attentiveness to the subject
should be continued while therapy is conducted.
It is usual for a subject to underestimate the depth of hypnosis he has reached. In a light
state or even a medium one, the subject will frequently state after awakening that he was not
hypnotized, although the operator has noted definite signs and indications of hypnosis. Knowing
that hypnosis has developed, the operator may be inclined to dispute this. It is better not to
contradict the subject in this situation. Using ideomotor questioning, the subject's subconscious
can be asked if he was hypnotized. When it replies affirmatively, this is very convincing to the
subject and he accepts it as a fact. (15)

31. CH: 3: THE HISTORY OF HYPNOSIS: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON:
CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
Practitioners of hypnosis should be familiar with its history, which is quite interesting.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF HYPNOSIS: All primitive cultures, both ancient and
modem, have been aware of hypnosis. Priests and witch doctors have made it a stock in trade
since early in the history of the human race. There were "sleep temples" in ancient Greece and in
Egypt where patients were hypnotized or were talked to during their sleep and given curative
suggestions. The Druids, the Celtic priesthood, are supposed to have been experts in its use. In
primitive cultures, trance induction has always been by means of rhythm: drums, dancing,
chanting, etc.
ITS MODERN HISTORY: This is considered as beginning with Mesmer, the terms
mesmerism or animal magnetism being applied to it for nearly a century. James Braid, a British
physican, coined the word hypnosis from the Greek word for sleep, hypnos. Mesmer began his
work with it in 1773, not realizing that suggestion is involved. He first practiced in Vienna, then
moved to Paris when he encountered strong opposition from his medical Golleagues. His method
of treatment was often successful at a time when nothing was known of psychotherapy. He
became the idol of Paris and patients Hocked to him, especially the nobility. He wanted the
French Academy of Science to investigate his work, but this was at first refused.
Later on, an investigation was made, but Mesmer was disgruntled and refused to
cooperate. The Academy's committee, which included (16) Benjamin Franklin as a member,
investigated some of Mesmer's followers instead and then reported unfavorably, discrediting
Mesmer. The committee ignored the results being obtained and said that they came only from
imagination. This was in 1784 and Mesmer's contributions were forgotten for some time. He
died in Switzerland in obscurity. Braid, working in the 1840s, found that a trance could be
produced by eye fixation and suggestion instead of mesmeric passes. He was the first to
understand that suggestion plays a large role in induction.
About this time, Elliotson, a prominent British surgeon, became interested in mesmerism
and performed many operations with hypnotic anesthesia. James Esdaile, still another British
surgeon, working in a prison hospital in India, began experimenting with mesmerism in 1845.
This was before chemo-anesthesia had been accepted and prior to Lister's campaign against
infection. Esdaile had read that pain could be relieved in the mesmeric trance and proved the
mesmeric relief of pain.
Esdaile performed over 3,000 operations, more than 300 of them being major surgery,
using nothing but hypnosis. Writing in 1847, his book Mesmerism in India is a classic example
of thoughtful observation. It was recently republished by Julian Press under the title Hypnosis in
Medicine and Surgery. In it he describes in detail his methods and results.
At that time, surgeons washed their hands after surgery rather than before. Mortality
from infection following an operation ranged between 25 per cent and 50 per cent. In India,
Esdaile had 50 per cent mortality in his own work. To his amazement, when he began using
hypnotic anesthesia, his fatalities dropped to only 5 per cent. This was very puzzling. He had no
idea ,vhy it occurred, and the only explanation today seems to be that with hypnotic anesthesia
the subconscious mind must develop in the body greater resistance to infection. This
phenomenon has been noted again and again in modem times.
On his return to England, Esdaile was persecuted by his associates. He was tried by the
British Medical Association and lost his license. During his trial it was even stated that he was
blasphemous for controlling pain; God intended people to suffer!
The history of hypnosis has been a series of peaks of interest followed by valleys of
disinterest. Although the few professional men who used it found it so valuable that they would
not give it up, the resulting persecution kept many others from learning about it. Mesmer created
great interest for a few years. This subsided when he was discredited. Another high point in
interest came in the 1830s in Europe and in the 1840s in England and America. The first
extraction of a tooth under hypnosis was in 1823, and 3 years later a woman went through
painless childbirth (17) while under hypnosis. This wave of interest subsided until the 1880s, a
period when interest probably reached its highest until the present day.
In France, Hippolyte Bernheim was at the top of the medical profession. He was
mortified when a country doctor named Liebeault, living in Nancy, was successful in curing one
of Bernheim's patients through hypnosis where Bernheim had failed of a cure. Bernheim went to
Nancy to denounce Dr. Liebeault as a quack. Bernheim was so impressed with what he learned
that he became a convert to hypnotherapy. He moved to Nancy and, with Liebeault, set up the
famous Nancy Clinic, using only hypnosis in therapy. The results were so good that physicians
came from all over Europe and America for instruction in hypnosis. Freud was one of them.
Their therapeutic method was to use direct suggestion to alleviate the patient's symptoms or
illness. It produced good results but there were some failures as well.
 In the 1890s when Freud first began to practice, he worked with a general practitioner
named Breuer, one of the best medical hypnotists of that time. Freud knew little about hypnosis,
was a poor operator and had the mistaken idea that a deep trance was necessary for good results.
Only about one in ten of his patients would enter a deep trance and Freud found this frustrating.
Breuer was having far better results. There was much rivalry between them and Freud could not
tolerate this situation. He therefore sought other methods, gave up hypnosis, and developed free
association and dream interpretation.
Although Freud's contributions to our knowledge of the mind and of psychotherapy are
great, his abandoning hypnosis was harmful, for he blocked hypnotherapy for nearly fifty years.
Today many psychiatrists and most analysts have minimal interest in hypnosis. They know
nothing about it and believe it worthless because Freud first used it and then gave it up. Many of
them firmly believe that hypnotherapy is only a matter of suggesting away symptoms, as
Bernheim used it. Hence it is often claimed that hypnotherapy has only temporary results,
although Bernheim and other physicians of that day certainly proved this idea false.
THE PRESENT SITUATION: In the first half of this century interest in hypnosis was
in such eclipse due to Freud's abandoning it that it was little used. Very few physicians
continued to practice hypnosis. During World War I, some interest developed when it was found
very effective in the treatment of "shell shock" or battle fatigue as it is now called. It was not
until the Second (78)
World War that interest again developed. Oddly it was the dentists who showed more
enthusiasm for it than did the medical profession. In 1945 it is doubtful if there were more than
200 qualified practitioners of hypnosis in this country ..
When the British Medical Association officially endorsed hypnosis in 1955 and the
American Medical Association followed suit in 1958, the picture was completely changed. For
the first time in its history, hypnosis became acceptable, though today many physicians still
regard it with lifted eyebrow. This attitude is gradually diminishing as medical journals now
publish papers on hypnosis in every medical specialty. At last a modality which has helped
hundreds of thousands of patients is coming into its own. (19)

32. CH 4: HYPNOTIZABILITY: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON: CLINICAL

HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
The student of hypnosis may ask, "Will I be able to hypnotize my patients? Will there be
frequent failures which might damage my professional prestige?" He may have read of very
complete and thoughtful studies on the hypnotizability of volunteer college students, some of
whom were not hypnotizable and wonder from these conclusions whether it is even worthwhile
for him to try using hypnosis in his professional practice.
It should be stressed here that the state of hypnosis with its increased suggestibility,
literalness of understanding and willingness to comply with optimistic suggestions is a quality of
behavior that appears spontaneously in human beings at critical times of fear, illness and
unconsciousness. Studies on hypnotizability made with volunteers can be valid only for
volunteers under the test circumstances of the laboratory. They have nothing to do with the
hypnotizability of patients when the therapist feels that hypnosis could prove valuable. The most
unhypnotizable volunteer student will enter hypnosis at an adequate level if the therapist presents
hypnosis to him with honest conviction that hypnosis will work and will work with this
immediate indication. The experienced hypnotherapist approaches an untested patient with the
philosophy that all people are in hypnosis at frequent intervals and "I might as well show this
person how to use it constructively now."
With this attitude, one can hypnotize essentially 90 per cent of his patients on the first
visit. After uncovering and correcting resistances, it should be possible to use hypnosis
successfully in nearly 100 per cent of the patients on the second office visit. This is not to be
misunderstood as meaning that hypnotherapy will achieve its goal in nearly 100 per cent of one's
patients, merely that it will be possible to help a patient achieve at least a light state of hypnosis
and be able to appreciate some of the phenomena of hypnosis by the second visit in nearly all the
patients.
The stages of hypnosis are usually considered as light, medium, or deep, the latter often
called the somnambulistic state. Fortunately only (20) a light state is needed for most purposes.
In some situations it may even be better than a deep one where lethargy may be so great that
communication is difficult. The use of hypnosis would be impractical if we had to depend on the
patient reaching a deep stage, because only about one person in eight or ten will enter this stage
under ordinary circumstances of office consultation.
It is difficult to say why some people enter a very deep trance very quickly on the first
induction, while others who are willing and motivated may only reach a light state on repeated
attempts. Again we must distinguish between the motivation and willingness of experimental
volunteers and the seeming readiness of the patient who is injured, sick or in pain. Patients
coming to the office for control of habits 'will approximate the behavior of experimental
volunteers, while those who are in great pain or are seen during times of emergency will, for all
practical purposes, be in a light state of hypnosis before being introduced to formal hypnosis.
Unconscious human beings under general chemo-anesthesia are unable to demonstrate
phenomena and are unable to communicate, but they are able to hear and react physiologically to
suggestions as has been demonstrated by Wolfe, Hutchings and Pearson, We can only speculate
that a form of hypnosis occurs spontaneously under such circumstances and that we have only to
recognize the possibility in order to use it helpfully for the patient.
Laboratory studies of hypnotizability by Andre and Geneva Weitzenhoffer and by Ernest
Hilgard have shown that there is no difference between the sexes and that no one race is any
more susceptible than another. Children make the best subjects and most of them will enter a
deep trance within short periods of time although they may outwardly appear unhypnotized. The
most responsive period seems to be from ages 6 to 12.
RESISTANCES TO INDUCTION OF HYPNOSIS:
1. Unconscious resistance is often an obstacle even though the individual may be consciously
eager to be hypnotized. Fears may be present though unrecognized. These are usually based on
the common misconceptions about hypnosis. Therefore, it is well for the operator to explain
away these mistaken ideas before an induction is attempted.
2. Previous frightening experiences may cause resistance, seemingly because the human mind
has retreated into a hypnotic-like state and the (21) induction of hypnosis later reminds him of
the unpleasant cause of the earlier spontaneous state. This speculation is supported by repeated
observations of subjects who have uncovered their reasqns for feeling uncomfortable and
wanting to avoid initial experiences with formally induced hypnosis. Such subjects quickly lose
their feelings of fear and are able to enter hypnosis as soon as they learn they need not be
reminded of the unpleasant experience again.
3. Fear of loss of control is another reason for initial resistance. There never is such a loss, for
the subject is fully aware and, indeed, can awaken himself at any time if he desires to do so. Fear
of talking too much and telling "state secrets" is a misconception quickly dispelled by
explanation that it is hard to talk in hypnosis anyhow and protective forces within the subject are
to be respected by the hypnotherapist.
4. Personality factors may interfere with induction. The methods of talking and presenting
ideas by the operator may irritate the subject and interfere with results which could easily be
obtained by another, more relaxed therapist. Unpleasant personality traits in the operator could
lead to distrust and failure to achieve the necessary rapport.
5. Motivation, mentioned last but of greatest importance, has to be considered in relation to
hypnotizability as it does with therapy in general. Primary motivation must come with the
therapist. Even an enthusiastic patient can be cooled by a therapist who is uninterested in the task
at hand. In contrast, an uninitiated and scoffing patient may slip right into hypnosis as he picks
up the convictions and positive motivations of an interested therapist. Dentists and
anesthesiologists are fortunate in having a high percentage of their subjects very highly
motivated toward using hypnosis. Fear of pain and fear of the unknown are strong forces on the
side of permitting easy induction into hypnosis.
It must also be remembered that symptoms may be unconscious mechanisms of defense
or may serve some other purpose. While the patient may consciously wish to be helped,
unconsciously the need for a symptom may be so strong that resistance develops in fear that the
symptom may be taken away. Actually the purpose of therapy is not to eliminate the symptom
when it is needed but to make it unnecessary through a revision of viewpoints and better insight.
The following results are to be expected for an operator of average skill at the first session:
5% unhypnotizable
45% able to enter light state
35% able to enter medium state
15% able to enter deep trance. (22)
These estimates are, of course, subject to great variation. For instance, unhypnotizable subjects
who are completely refractory alone may become good subjects after seeing someone else
hypnotized. The attitude of the operator is also of great importance because his subject is highly
sensitive to minimal cues of voice tone, inflection and timing of words. An uncomfortable
operator will make his subject uncomfortable. The therapist who is afraid of causing dangerous
reactions in his patient will either find that none of his subjects can be hypnotized or he will be
shocked by his high percentage of frightening reactions.
If we were to graph hypnotizability, the graph line would rise very sharply from the age
of 3 to ages 8-10, which would be the peak. The line would then descend very gradually with
increasing age. Elderly people are harder to hypnotize. However, hypnotizability depends
entirely on the individual. Sometimes even a child will be very resistant. Some people in their
eighties will be able to reach a very deep state. Thus, statements as to hypnotizability can only
be general. Of course the skill of the operator enters as a factor.
Naturally the beginner with hypnosis is not very confident, but confidence comes quickly
with practice and results then are better. It should be remembered that everyone who uses
hypnosis, including the most expert, went through the beginner stage and had to develop
confidence. Most professional men soon develop it.
Almost everyone seems to have the opinion that he will be a poor subject. Perhaps it is an
unconscious means of reassuring oneself, or the subject may believe he has too strong a mind to
be "controlled." Regardless of this, the person may then enter a deep trance. His belief seems to
have no bearing on the result. The loudest skeptic may be an excellent subject.
One's station in life may have a bearing on hypnotizability. Again this depends entirely
on the individual. In general, those who customarily give orders to subordinates will not be as
good subjects as those accustomed to receive them. For instance, an army officer would be less
likely to be a good subject than a private.
When a patient proves to be a poor subject or induction fails, ideomotor response to
questions may be utilized to find the reasons. Unconscious resistances or any other cause may be
uncovered in this way and possibly removed.
With experience most operators become able to sense how good a subject a patient will
be. This may come from subconscious intuition as well as from observation of the patient. Such
an ability is a part of the stock in trade of the stage hypnotist. He quickly determines which
volunteer will be resistant and sends others back into the audience, keeping only those who he is
sure will be good subjects. A quick test or two will help him decide that one or two others will
not be good enough for his purpose and they, too, are dismissed.
A case of LeCron's could be mentioned which shows how unconscious resistances can
sometimes be overcome by learning the reason behind them. A 21-year-old girl was referred for
hypnotherapy and he was sure she would be a fine subject. On attempted induction, to his
surprise she could not even be lightly hypnotized. Resorting to the questioning technic, he was
able to learn the reason. At the age of 14 she had attended a stage demonstration of hypnosis and
had volunteered as a subject. She had proved to be a somnambulist. Her brother had attended
with her and on their return home he told their mother of his sister's experience. The mother was
horrified, having the usual misconceptions about hypnosis. She scolded the girl, ordering her
never to let herself be hypnotized again. Unconsciously she had been obedient and had carried
out her mother's command. When this had been learned and her mother agreed that hypnosis
could help the daughter, the girl was again able to enter a deep trance.
TESTS OF HYPNOTIZABILITY: Much research has been conducted as to tests of
hypnotizability. Some are too involved and require too much time to be practical. Those who use
hypnosis should be familiar with some of the simpler ones. There are situations where they can
be of value, but usually the busy practitioner will not bother with them.
One has been called the sway test. With it the subject is asked to stand with his back to
the operator and to close his eyes. It is then suggested that he will begin to feel as if the operator
were pulling him backward, that he will find himself beginning to sway backward and forward
and then will fall backward. First he should be assured that he will be caught and not allowed to
fall. Almost everyone responds in varying degree to this suggestion. The greater and quicker the
response, the higher the degree of hypnotizability. The subject must not be allowed to fall, of
course. Strangely, some people will respond to the suggestion but will do so in their own way,
starting to fall forward instead of backward. The operator must be prepared for this. When the
response is best, the subject will not step back as he finds himself falling. Both feet will remain
on the floor as he goes backward. A susceptible person may enter hypnosis as these suggestions
are given and then may be caused to sit down and the trance deepened, or he may be awakened.
A test called eye closure or eye catalepsy is an interesting one. It can be a way of testing
hypnotizability with the subject awake or can be a (24) means of showing the hypnotized subject
that something is happening to him. This test consists of having him shut his eyes, squeezing the
lids tightly together, then suggesting that they cannot be opened. Enough time must be allowed
for the suggestions to become effective. Speaking slowly and emphatically the wording of the
suggestions could be as follows.
"Now as your eyelids are squeezed tightly together, I am going to count to three and you
will be unable to open your eyes. Wait until I tell you when to try and then try hard, but the
harder you try to open your eyes the tighter the lids will stick together. (This invokes the Law of
Reversed Effect.) One, your eyelids are becoming glued together, glued fast together, gluing
tighter and tighter together. Two, now it is as though the lids were welded together, welded into
one piece and you couldn't possibly open them, welded tightly together. Three, the lids are
locked together now, locked tight. They are tight, tight, tight. Now try to open them, but you
can't; they are locked tight, tight, tight. Now stop trying. Now they are free again and you can
open them."
It is surprising how many people even in the waking state will be unable to open their
eyes with these suggestions. Those who do not will be the better subjects. Do not allow more
than two or three seconds for the subject to try, then suggest that the eyes can open again.
A very similar test has been called the handclasp test. The person is asked to clasp his
hands together in front of him with fingers interlaced and palms pressed tightly together. 'The
suggestions given would be the same as above but substituting the words "hands" for "eyes."
Sometimes an experienced practitioner of hypnosis is asked to speak on this subject and
to demonstrate. In our opinion, such talks should be given only to professional groups, not to
laymen. Either of these two tests provides a way for the lecturer to select a good subject for his
demonstration. The handclasp test is probably the best because it is easier to observe the results.
Watching those in the audience closest to him, the lecturer undoubtedly will see someone
straining fruitlessly to separate his hands. He can then be asked to serve as a subject.
These two tests are good indications of hypnotizability but are by no means infallible.
Both are challenges to the subject. Some of us almost instinctively react to a challenge of this
kind by opening our eyes or unclasping our hands, yet such a person may prove to be a good
subject even if the test failed. In our opinion an operator should usually avoid challenges, even if
the subject is in hypnosis. A failure is a setback.
One way of making such a test which avoids a challenge can be used while the subject is
hypnotized. He could be told he is to be shown how he can respond to his own suggestions. The
operator tells the subject what he is to suggest to himself and states that he will respond to this.
The same suggestions as given above are then given slowly, with pauses between the counting so
that the subject can repeat the words to himself, using the word ''1'' instead of "you." He need not
speak aloud, merely think the words. When the subject gives these suggestions to himself, no
challenge is involved and results should be better.
Another test both of suggestibility and hypnotizability (they go hand in hand) does not
involve a challenge. This is to ask the person to hold both arms out in front of him, fists closed,
and with his eyes shut. He is then told to imagine that he is holding a heavy briefcase full of
books in his dominant hand. If the subject is a woman, a large handbag can be suggested. The
case or bag is said to be heavy and the weight will be felt pulling his arm down. Repetition of
the suggestions will probably cause the arm to move down several inches. The subject is then
asked to open his eyes and note how well he has responded to the idea of weight on that arm,
although there was no difference in the actual weight of the two arms.
A variation of this test is to say that a cord is tied to the subject's arm closest to the
operator and that he will feel the operator pulling on the cord, the arm responding to the
imaginary pull. Usually it will drift over toward the operator, moving away from the other
outstretched arm.
A variation of the sway test is to suggest to the subject, standing with his eyes closed,
that he has something heavy in one hand, very heavy. Continuing to repeat this idea, the subject
will usually bend or lean to that side.
 When any test fails, it does not necessarily mean that the person will be a difficult
subject, though the chances are that a deep trance will not be produced. Some challenging tests
can be of aid in preparing the patient for hypnosis, but if time does not allow testing, induction
may proceed without spending time on tests. (26)

33. CH 5: INDUCING HYPNOSIS: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON: CLINICAL

HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
There are many methods of inducing hypnosis. The induction talk may be given in a
positive commanding way or be spoken very permissively. The latter is usually a slower method
but generally better for the beginner. With it the voice is kept low and the subject almost coaxed
into the trance. The cadence is slow and a monotone should be used. With the commanding type
of induction, the tone is louder and authoritative. The words should be spoken more rapidly and
forcefully. The stage hypnotist always uses this approach because of the quick results. He cannot
take more than two or three moments for an induction or his audience would become bored.
Objection to the forcing type of induction is that it overwhelms the possible resistances of the
subject and may cause resentment that would interfere with therapeutic results.
For induction, the subject should be in a comfortable position so that he can relax well.
Clothing should not be too tight and the discomfort of a full bladder would be a handicap. It
makes no difference whether the subject sits up or is reclining. A so-called "reclining chair"
which will tip back and which has a footrest is excellent for induction, for the patient can sit up
if he prefers or can lie back at any preferred inclination of the chair.
EYE FIXATION METHODS: With most induction methods it is desirable for the
subject to close his eyes as distractions are then shut out. However it is not essential for the eyes
to be closed.
There can be many variations of the eye fixation method. The subject can be asked to
gaze into the eyes of the operator or he can direct his attention to some object. This can be
almost anything as long as there is no discomfort in gazing at it. A picture on the wall, a spot on
the ceiling, a doorknob, anything will serve. A colored light bulb which is (27) not too bright is
sometimes used, perhaps set in the ceiling above the chair. One of the best objects is a clear
plastic-ball pendulum which will be described later.
Many gadgets are available which may aid in induction, although they are quite
unnecessary. Perhaps the best of these is a spiral disk mounted on a phonograph turntable
revolving at slow speed. Another good object is a lighted candle, the flickering flame helping
somewhat in the process of induction. Most effective therapists use imagery rather than actual
objects for limitation of attention.
Eye fixation can also be achieved by means of some bright object held in the hand of the
operator. A wristwatch, a dental hand mirror, a colored Christmas tree ornament, anything bright
will serve. Bernheim asked his subjects to look at the ends of his fingers, holding his forefinger
and thumb extended about a foot in front of the person's eyes.
A variation of this method would be to move the hand up and down, letting the patient's
eyes follow and thus tiring the eyes. Apparently tiring the eyes is advantageous, though perhaps
this is merely because the subject thinks it will induce hypnosis: a matter of indirect suggestion.
Another way to tire the eyes is to ask the subject to open and close them as the operator
counts backward from one hundred. The eyes are to close on the even numbers, open on the odd
ones. The speed in counting should be varied, slow at first, then speeded up, then slowed again.
This can be repeated, depending on how long the count is continued. It should be terminated
when the subject is seen to be having difficulty continuing to open and close his eyes.
When the subject has taken a comfortable position and is gazing at some object, the
operator begins his induction talk. As he speaks he should observe the subject closely. The
speech is fitted to the results indicated by the behavior of the subject. The length of the talk will
depend on these observations. If the patient's eyes close quickly and he is seen to be well-relaxed
and does not move, the talk would be shorter than otherwise. The length of time might be only
two or three minutes or it could be continued for 15 or 20 minutes, or even longer. As an
average, it will probably require about ten minutes. The following wording is an example of
what might be said.
"Now that you are comfortable, let yourself relax as much as possible.
Take a good deep breath which helps you relax. The more you can le.t go, the better it will be.
Keep your eyes fixed on what you are watching. Let your eyes go out of focus if you can. Take
another deep breath. Probably you will find yourself winking at times. You may find your vision
blurring. As you continue to look you'll find your eyelids beginning to feel heavy. They'll get
heavier and heavier. The muscles will relax (28) more and more and the lids feel heavier and
heavier. Let them wink whenever they want to and soon they will be so heavy they will close.
Let them close whenever you wish. Soon they will be too heavy to hold open, and it's good to
shut out the light and let them close.
"Now you are more relaxed and very comfortable. You will probably feel a pleasant,
drowsy, listless feeling creep over you as you relax more and more. Your eyelids grow heavier
and heavier. Take another deep breath. You may feel a heaviness in your arms and legs; perhaps
your whole body will feel heavy. As you relax more and more, the heaviness will increase. Your
hands and arms become heavy, your legs feeling heavy. Your eyelids may be so heavy it's hard
to hold them open. Let them close now. Now close your eyes.
"As you relax more and more, your breathing becomes slower. You may notice that it's
slower now and you tend to breathe more from the bottom of your lungs, the way a singer learns
to breathe. You feel so listless and comfortable. Drowsy and comfortable. It's too much trouble
to move, just too much trouble. Listen only to my voice. Pay no attention to outside sounds.
They will go in one ear and out the other. Now you can relax still more. Begin with your right
leg and let all the muscles go loose and limp, the toes and foot relaxing, the ankle, the calf
muscles, the knee, and the thigh. Let the leg relax completely from the toes up to your hip. And
now let the left leg relax in the same way, from the toes up to your hip.
"Your whole body can now relax more. Let your stomach and abdominal muscles loosen,
then your chest and breathing muscles. Let them go loose and limp. The muscles of your back
can loosen. Now your shoulders and neck muscles. Often we have tension in this area. Feel the
tension going out of these muscles as they loosen. And now your arms from the shoulders right
down to your fingertips. The arm muscles will relax completely. Even your facial muscles will
relax. The more relaxed you are the more comfortable you are. All tension is leaving you and
you are so very comfortable. Often there is a Bickering of the eyelids when you are in hypnosis.
It's one of the signs of hypnosis. If yours are Bickering, they will soon relax still more as you go
deeper. The Bickering will soon stop.
"Notice that you have a feeling of well-being, as though any troubles have been set aside
and nothing seems to matter. It's a pleasant feeling of comfort. Some people seem to feel heavier
and heavier the more they relax, but others reverse this and may feel very light, so light they
seem to be Hoating. It doesn't matter which feeling you have. Now you can drift a bit deeper.
Let go and drift still deeper into this pleasant state. Let go and go deeper with each breath you
take. Deeper (29) and deeper. The deeper you go, the more comfortable and pleasant it will seem
to you.
"Suppose you use your imagination now. In your mind's eye, imagine that you are
standing in front of an escalator such as are in some stores. See the steps moving down in front
of you and see the railings. You're all alone. It's your private escalator. I'll count backward from
ten to zero, and as I start to count, imagine that you are stepping on the escalator and then stand
with your hand on the railing as the steps move down carrying you with them deeper and deeper.
'With each count you'll go deeper and deeper. When I reach zero in the count, imagine you've
reached the bottom and step off the escalator. One, and you step on. Two, etc. Five, deeper and
deeper. Six, etc. Zero, and you step off at the bottom. Now drift still deeper with each breath.
Deeper and deeper."
Some women do not like to ride an escalator. A question can determine this in advance.
In this case suggest walking slowly down a staircase instead. The escalator technique is a
deepening method. Others will be described which could then be added to the induction talk.
Some tests that could also be made have been described in the previous chapter.
The beginner in the use of hypnosis should not bother to memorize this talk. If you will
note how progressive suggestions are made, with repetition, the general idea can be followed and
put into your own wording. In your first practice of induction, this talk might even be read to a
subject. 'With its general idea you can soon fit your own wording to it and either lengthen or
shorten it as seems indicated.
INDUCTION WITH THE SUBJECT STANDING: An induction method frequently
used by us is valuable because it requires only a brief time and gives the operator much
information as he proceeds. It also permits the subject to realize that something is happening to
him.
This consists of having the subject stand in front of a chair. He is told to relax as much as
possible while on his feet, letting his arms dangle at his sides and looking into the eyes of the
operator for visual fixation. Then he is to count backward aloud from 100. This is to be a slow
count, without hurrying it. As the subject counts, the operator talks to him. At the same time his
hands are placed on the subject's shoulders and he is moved around slowly in a clockwise circle.
The response to this circular movement immediately provides information. If the
movement is resisted and it is difficult to move the subject, (31) it is a sign that he is
unconsciously resisting induction. A longer induction talk is then required. If the subject can
easily be moved, induction will be much quicker.
As the subject starts to count backward he will probably begin in a normal tone of voice.
If he counts too rapidly, he should be told to slow the cadence. As he begins to enter hypnosis
his voice will usually dwindle off in tone, perhaps to a whisper, and will tend to count slower.
Sometimes he finds he cannot continue to count.
As the operator talks he also listens to the counting. Confusion frequently develops as the
subject enters the trance. A number may be skipped over, or even a series of numbers. There will
be hesitation and groping for the next number. These signs are not always shown but they are
quite usual. From them the operator notes the progress being made. The subject is fully aware of
the difficulty he is having in remembering and in saying the numbers in proper sequence. He
realizes something is happening to rum.
As soon as signs of hypnosis appear, the subject is told to close his eyes. If this is not
carried out at the first request, it should be repeated. If there is no response to a third request, it
is a sign that the subject prefers to keep his eyes open. The operator should accept this and not
insist further.
As deeper hypnosis is reached, it may be necessary to hold the subject upright as he is
being moved around in the circle. He may become something of a deadweight, completely
relaxed, although his knees do not . give way. This indicates that he is well into hypnosis,
probably at a medium depth or possibly even deeper. This or further confusion in the counting
indicates that the subject can now be directed to sit down in the chair behind him. As he stands
directly in front of it, he need not open his eyes. He can be told to place his hands on the arms of
the chair, then sit down and relax in a comfortable position. The operator, his hands still on the
subject's shoulders, guides him into the chair and then releases him. After being seated, the
subject is told to relax more and more while deepening techniques are used, including the
imaginary escalator.
With this method, a very susceptible subject may be in hypnosis by the time he has
counted only three or four numbers. The average subject will be hypnotized by the time he has
reached about 60 in his count. Resistance may cause the count to go farther, the operator
continuing his suggestions until he sees signs of response. Counting to 60 requires no more than
about two minutes, hence this is a rapid method of induction. With deepening techniques, only a
total of five or six minutes is required for the average subject. (31)
STAGE METHODS OF INDUCTION: Among other direct methods which are very
rapid are the various ones employed by stage hypnotists. You should be aware of these methods
and their principles, but they should be avoided in professional practice. However, it is possible
to learn more about induction from stage hypnotists who certainly are adept at rapid inductions.
Otherwise their knowledge of hypnosis is usually quite superficial. It will be noted that a stage
hypnotist always exudes confidence and plays on his reputation as an "expert."
Most stage techniques are based on a startle effect. The subject literally is frightened so
that he enters hypnosis. These methods are not recommended for use, but they should be
understood and recognized as avenues through which a hypnotized state may be achieved.
A very good rapid method can be used which has a slight startle effect but is not at all
objectionable. It is very successful and sometimes this is true when a previous, more persuasive
technique has failed. Here the subject is asked to sit upright, either in a chair or on a couch.
Suggestions would be something like this:
“I’d like you to look at the ends of my fingers as I hold my hand in front of your face
(about two feet away). I'm going to bring my hand slowly closer to your head and move it on
beyond your vision. Let your eyes follow it until you can't see my hand anymore. That leaves
YOli looking up. Continue to look up toward the ceiling. In a moment then you'll feel like
winking. As soon as you want to wink, let your eyes close."
The patient may wink within a few seconds or may continue to stare upward for a
moment or so. As soon as his eyes close, the operator places his left hand at the back of the
subject's neck with his right hand or fingers pressing on the forehead. He then suddenly moves
the subject's head around sharply and rapidly in a clockwise circle, telling him to relax his neck
and shoulder muscles and to let go completely. The tone should be positive and the words should
be spoken rapidly. Having one's head seized unexpectedly and rotated in this way produces a
mild startle effect.
After rotating the head a few times, the subject should be pushed back in the chair, until
his head rests comfortably or supported back into a reclining position on the couch. The operator
then continues in a more permissive way to induce more relaxation and resorts to deepening
techniques. This method is both rapid and effective and is unobjectionable, although the subject
will be somewhat startled. (32)
The induction techniques we have described are direct methods. Indirect ones are also
available. With them the patient may not even realize he has been hypnotized. Some professional
men who use hypnosis do not wish to be known as "hypnotists." They will resort to indirect
methods to avoid this.
One difficulty in this situation is that the patient may have some knowledge of hypnosis
and may realize that he has been hypnotized. Possibly he might then feel resentment if
permission for this were not sought. One physician lost a valuable patient because of this,
although if he had been better informed he could have made explanations which could have
removed the resentment.
This physician was visited by a patient who mentioned that she had a headache at the
time. By the use of an indirect technique, she was hypnotized, and suggestions quickly
terminated the headache. At the end of the session she asked the physician if he had hypnotized
her and he acknowledged that this was true.
"Doctor," she remarked, "if you had told me you could help my headache through
hypnosis I would have had no objections to your using it. As it is you've tricked me and taken
advantage of me, for I might not have wanted to be hypnotized. I feel that you can't be trusted."
She never returned.
The proper handling here would have been to explain that he knew her headache could
be relieved if she relaxed completely and lost her tension. She had relaxed and had done so well
that she had slipped into hypnosis, as may happen spontaneously with great relaxation. Her
headache had disappeared and now she must feel relieved. This would have led her to believe
that hypnosis had developed spontaneously. She probably would have accepted this without
resentment, although it was subterfuge. However it is our belief that a patient should be
informed when hypnosis is to be used, thus avoiding trickery or deceit.
The most usual indirect induction method is merely to avoid the word hypnosis and talk
only about relaxation. Suggestions would be much the same as in the sample induction talk
given previously. In terminating hypnosis with this method, no mention should be made of
awakening. The patient can be told he will open his eyes and will then be fully alert and normal
in every respect, which would cause him to awaken.
Another indirect technique is. possible but ordinarily there would be little opportunity for
it to be applied in professional practice. This is to talk to a sleeping person, bringing him out of
normal sleep into hypnosis. (33) It is successful with adults but much more so with children.
Probably a parent could utilize it with a child.
Still another indirect method has been called the confusion technique. Some skill is
needed in utilizing it, for it is difficult to handle properly. It may be very successful with even a
difficult subject, for with it he is unable to mobilize his resistances and doesn't realize he is being
hypnotized. The aim of this method is to produce such confusion in the subject's mind that he
escapes into a trance to avoid the bewilderment which develops.
The operator talks rapidly so the subject doesn't have time to analyze and digest what is
being said. Misstatements are made, the operator contradicting himself at times. He says one
thing and a moment later will say exactly the opposite. Attention is called to something, then to
something else and again to something entirely different, too quickly to be followed. The subject
becomes more and more bewildered. The operator is always a step ahead of him, never giving
him time to follow the ideas presented.
As a sample of such an induction, here is a possible wording: "Sometimes it is pleasant to
sit back and relax, to let your muscles go loose and limp and to let go. As you listen to me and
concentrate on what I'm saying, a spontaneous relaxation takes place. At times you can be aware
of certain things and at other times you may not be aware of them. For instance, you might be
aware of a picture on the wall if you look at it. You might be looking at it but if your attention is
elsewhere, as on that window over there, you might not be aware of the picture. You might be
aware of it subconsciously even if you are not looking at it. There is something right now you
are unaware of until I mention it and then you become very much aware of it. That is of having
shoes on your feet. Now you feel them. And you can be aware of me and of what I'm saying or
may say, or might have said, or you may not be aware of some things I say, but your
subconscious could be very well aware of them.
"You can be aware of time or unaware of it. You can be aware of the present or the past
or the future. You can remember various things about the present or the past or the future when
that becomes the past. Day before yesterday, yesterday was tomorrow and that was the future,
and then yesterday became today and was the past. And tomorrow will soon be today and then
yesterday or tomorrow and yesterday can become today. Or even the day after tomorrow. And
you may remember last January first when you wrote 1967 when it was really 1966. (This talk
about time is a good introduction for inducing complete age regression.)
"It may be interesting for you as you sit here to recall that the time is (whatever the hour
is). And as you sit and think about the time, it is (34) interesting to realize that today is (give the
date). Yesterday at this hour you probably were doing something else. You may have been at
home, or at your business, or someplace else. And perhaps you were relaxed as you are now.
And you may be reminded today of how relaxed you were, just so relaxed. And you might have
been rather listless and drowsy and sleepy, really relaxed. And how pleasant it was to relax
completely and to let go completely and forget about today. You may have found your eyes
closing as you relaxed. You were very comfortable and it is always good to relax and let all your
muscles go loose and limp. And you can remember times when you were very sleepy. And how
pleasant it is to drift off and relax and sleep. And sleep deeply, deeply, and soundly. And you
can probably feel those feelings growing stronger and can relax completely now."
This may be continued with similar remarks. Until relaxation is mentioned, the talk
should be so rapid that the patient does not have time to think and follow what is being said.
vVhen talking relaxation, the voice can be lowered and a monotone maintained. It would be well
for the beginner to wait until he has become skillful before trying this technique.
Many operators use the word "sleep" during the induction. It is a perfectly good word for
tlle purpose, but it should be mentioned to the subject that hypnotic sleep is meant rather than
normal sleep. Even children will be able to distinguish between the t\vo meanings.
In primitive societies, hypnosis is always produced by rhythm, drumbeat 'or other
percussion instruments, dancing, chanting, etc. This fact can be utilized in the office. Soft, slow
music can help with any form of induction. A metronome set with slow beat and not too loud
can be used. With practice the operator can learn to set up a rhythm in his voice as he talks,
stressing a word here and a syllable there. A monotone is very effective and the voice can be
kept very low so the subject must strain somewhat to hear. This focuses his attention better.
MESMERISM: In the days of Mesmer and for some decades after, induction was
accomplished by means of passes. This was with the idea that there was a force called animal
magnetism in everyone, greater and stronger in some individuals. It was thought that this could
be projected through the hands. Therefore the operator made passes with his hands over the body
of the subject. The mesmerist moved his hands down the subject's body from head to foot,
sometimes holding them centered over the head or the solar plexus for a moment. Usually the
hands were held a few inches (35) above the body, sometimes contact was made. These passes
might be continued over a long period of time until results were seen, though usually it was for
only about half an hour. Awakening was accomplished by reversing the direction of the passes.
Braid was the first to show that it was not the passes but expectation and suggestion bringing on
the trnnce.
The British surgeon, Esdaile, who had such great success with hypnotic anesthesia, had
his subjects lie down and seated himself so he could breathe on the persons face. With his hands
held in a c1awlike position, he moved them slowly an inch from the body from the back of the
head to the pit of the stomach, keeping his hands suspended there for some time. Though some
patients were quickly hypnotized, he found most required about two hours of continued passes,
some even a much longer time. Obviously he produced a very deep state by taking such a long
time. He awakened his subjects by blowing sharply on the eyelids or sprinkling the face with
cold water. As he found continuing the passes boring and tiring, he trained hospital servants and
others to do this for him. When surgery was intended, Esdaile would come now and then to the
subject and prick him sharply with a pin. If he flinched, he was not yet deep enough and the
passes were continued until a spontaneous anesthesia had developed. No verbal suggestions were
given. In modem times no one has taken the trouble to try in the same way to reproduce
Esdaile's results. It would make interesting research.
TRANCE DEEPENING: A very good subject may enter a medium trance, sometimes
a very deep one, within a very short time, perhaps only three or four minutes. A few more
minutes might be needed for further deepening. With some, a longer time for deepening would
be needed.
For some purposes, as in obstetrics or when preparing a patient for surgery with only
hypnotic anesthesia, depth is important, and as deep a state as possible should be obtained. For
most purposes, depth is not too important. However, it is well to spend a few moments during
the first session in deepening the state obtained.
One of the best techniques for this is the use of the imaginary escalator or staircase. Here
the escalator does the work, if it is the method, the subject merely standing while in his
imagination the steps move down taking him deeper. Sometimes a subject may ask if he can go
up instead of down the escalator. Such a request is always accepted. Then the (36) word
"deeper" should be avoided. It can be said that he is going farther into hypnosis instead of
deeper.
Another deepening method is to inform the subject that you are going to place your
hands on his shoulders and will push him deeper. It is often remarked afterward that the person
felt himself sinking deeper with this pressure. It should be mentioned that it is always well to tell
a subject when he is to be touched in any way, which will avoid startling him.
Stroking the forehead of the subject with suggestions of going deeper will be found
effective, especially with children. It seems to be very soothing.
Verbal suggestions of going deeper and deeper will be of aid. This can be varied by
saying that you will say nothing at all for two or three moments while the subjects keeps drifting
deeper.
Any of the tests of hypnosis which are successful tend to deepen the trance. This is also
true when any hypnotic phenomena are induced. If the person is judged to be in a medium or
deep state, the production of hypnotic anesthesia in one hand, called glove anesthesia, usually
will bring greater depth.
 LEARNING THE DEPTH OF HYPNOSIS REACHED BY A SUBJECT: In the
next chapter, hypnotic phenomena will be discussed. The most reliable way of ascertaining the
depth a patient has reached is the induction of different phenomena. Some are characteristic of a
light state, others will indicate a medium depth, and still others' will indicate the deep state.
Usually an experienced hypnotist can sense the depth his subject reaches. However this
ability comes only with much experience. For the beginner and even at times for anyone using
hypnosis, it is advantageous to be able to determine quickly how deeply the subject may be in
hypnosis. Some years ago Leeron worked to develop a way pf doing this and reported it in a
paper.
Here is the method. If we give the subconscious part of the mind a yardstick v.rith which
to measure, it should be able to determine the depth reached. As a yardstick we can use an
imaginary 36-inch yardstick. Somewhat arbitrarily we can say that a light state is the first foot
on the yardstick, 1 to 12 inches .. A medium state is 12 to 24 inches, and a deep one is 24 to 36
inches. Explaining this to the hypnotized subject, he can then be asked to answer questions by
ideomotor signals and by this means the depth reached can be learned. (37)
When a person is in hypnosis, depth will fluctuate. At one moment he will be deeper than
at another. In a deep trance there even seems to be a kind of wave pattern, the trance lightening
then. deepening. Questions as to the depth reached can be worded to learn the situation at the
moment or to find the greatest depth attained during the session. This is carried out with the
ideomotor responses to questions, which will be described later.
The questions are worded so that they can be answered affirmatively or negatively. The
first question might be "Have you been as deep or deeper at any time during this session as 20
inches on our yardstick?" If the operator believes this unlikely, the question could be as to 15
inches instead of 20. If the answer to this question is affirmative, the next should be as to 25
inches, jumping five inches. If negative, the next question would be as to 15 inches. In this way,
a bracket is established. Obtaining a bracket within nve inches is close enough for all practical
purposes, although some subjects will narrow this down to a single number if the questioning is
continued. This method of learning depth permits a quick evaluation of approximate depth. It
has also proved valuable as a means of involving the patient with therapy. It seems that the
acceptance of estimated depth brings better cooperation.
THE PLENARY TRANCE: While it is usually said that there are three stages of depth
in hypnosis, this is merely an arbitrary division. Each merges into the other. There is still a
deeper stage which has been called a plenary trance. Considering it in relation to our yardstick, it
would be well beyond the 36-inch mark. It is seldom introduced because it requires a very long
time even with the best subjects. Unfortunately there has been no scientilic investigation of this
state. In our era hardly anyone has ever even seen it.
While we can only generalize about the plenary trance, it is doubtful if even one person
out of 25 could ever reach such a depth. At its deepest it would seem to be almost a state of
suspended animation. It probably is similar to the state or condition produced experimentally
with drugs or with freezing.
Esdaile apparently induced this plenary trance with many of his surgical patients. In the
1890s, a Swedish physician named Wetterstrand utilized such a state at times. He reported
keeping some subjects in it continuously for as long as two weeks, using it for some conditions
as a (38) kind of Weir Mitchell treatment. Its possibilities are unknown but the hypnotic
practitioner should be aware that there is such a state.
Leeron has experimented with this with two subjects. It required about three hours of continued
induction to produce it. One subject was a young woman who remained in the state for 36 hours,
being brought back to a lighter level once to eat a meal and to go to the bathroom. Her pulse was
reduced to about 50 beats a minute and her breathing rate dropped to only three breaths a
minute, hardly discernible. It required almost half an hour at the end of the session for her to
become fully awake. She reported being fully aware at all times but that her mind seemed to be a
blank unless spoken to. A friend stayed with her during the night. Questioning with ideomotor
replies indicated that she did not sleep while in this deep trance.
TESTS FOR HYPNOSIS: The production of hypnotic phenomena is one way of testing
to find the depth of trance reached or merely to learn if the subject is hypnotized. Eye catalepsy
or the handclasp test is often used. Another which is one of the best because it is not a challenge,
is arm levitation. It is suggested to the hypnotized individual that one of his arms will begin to
lose all sensation of weight. The arm selected should be the one closest to the operator. Wording
could be as follows.
"Your arms are probably feeling rather heavy now, but your right arm, the one closer to
me, is going to begin to lose the feeling of weight. It's as though all the weight were draining out
of it. It begins to feel lighter and lighter, lighter and lighter. In a moment it will begin to lift. It
will lift of its own accord, without conscious effort. Your hand will start to float up toward your
face, lifting until the fingers touch your face. The arm is becoming lighter and lighter. Think of
some part of your face where you would like to have your fingers touch when your hand reaches
your face. It can be your forehead, your ear, your nose, any place. But your inner mind will
cause your fingers to touch some other part of your face. Let's see where it will touch. A
different place than the one you thought of consciously. Now your arm is getting still lighter. (It
is well to lift the arm somewhat, letting it rest on your own hand.) Your hand will begin to float
up away from my hand. It's as light as a feather. I'll give it a start and it will continue to lift until
the fingers touch your face. (The arm should be pushed up slightly.) It is bending at the elbow,
floating up toward your face, lifting higher and higher. Floating on up. In a moment (39) you'll
feel your fingers making contact at a different spot than the one you thought of."
Such suggestions can be continued as the hand lifts. With some subjects only a moment
will be required for the hand to begin to move upward. With others the suggestion must be
continued. When the fingers touch the subject's face, he should be told to lower his arm to some
comfortable position.
Sometimes a subject will lift his hand voluntarily, trying to cooperate. This can be
detected at once, and he should be instructed not to move it voluntarily, that it will come up of
its own accord. If the movement is involuntary (ideomotor), the hand will move upward with
slight jerky motions. The movement will perhaps be very slow, only an inch at a time. When the
arm is lifted intentionally, the movement is smooth and rapid. The difference is easily detected.
Suggesting that the hand will touch a different place than the one consciously selected
allows the subject to learn that his inner mind can make its own decisions. Perhaps this will also
bring better cooperation from that part of his mind. As the arm lifts, the subject may be aware of
its position and that it is moving or sometimes will lose track of the arm entirely, dissociating it.
If the arm fails to respond, as occasionally happens, it is a sign of resistance. When the
operator lifts it and lets it rest on his own hand or finger, it is easy to sense if there is any
response to the suggestions. If it continues to feel heavy after spending two or three minutes in
suggesting lightness, the test should be abandoned, perhaps saying that you do not want to take
too much time for this. Failures are seldom with this technique. Many who use hypnosis make
this test almost routinely during a first induction.
 SUBSEQUENT INDUCTIONS: A busy practitioner will not wish to spend on
inductions any more time than is necessary. The first session may require perhaps as long as 20
minutes. Later inductions do not require more than three to five minutes, or even less. During
the first session a posthypnotic suggestion is given that in the future when the subject is
willi.J:1g to be hypnotized he will enter hypnosis quickly, responding to some signal which is
specified. This can be a word or phrase or some touch or movement. For instance, the suggestion
could be that when the phrase "relax now" is said to him and repeated, he will let his eyes close
and will at once relax and go into hypnosis. We find it well to combine such a phrase with some
touch or movement. As the phrase is said, his arm will be lifted by the operator until the fingers
touch his face. The combination is more effective than a single signal. When this suggestion has
been made, the subject should later be awakened and the signal given so that the result is well
established. In other words, it should be practiced once, which will make it more effective in
later sessions. Such a posthypnotic suggestion saves much time in subsequent inductions.
TRANCE ENDING: Before the hypnotized person is awakened, all suggestions which
have been given should be removed, with the exception of those intended to be posthypnotic in
effect. De-hypnotizing is usually simple, and it is rare for a subject to fail to awaken at once.
However, it is essential to be sure the person is fully awake before he is dismissed. Almost
everyone requires no more than a moment or two to become completely alert, but if the person
has been in a deep trance, a few more moments may be required.
The usual method of awakening is to suggest that the person will awaken at the count of
three or perhaps five. This should be spoken slowly, allowing time for him to become wide
awake. The wording could be as follows.
"I'm going to count to three and you will then be wide awake and fully alert. You'll
notice how refreshed you feel, relaxed and clearheaded, feeling exceptionally well. One, you are
coming awake. Two, now you are almost awake. Three, wide awake now. Wide awake, alert and
feeling fine."
These suggestions will prevent the patient from feeling dull or fatigued and also will
prevent a headache from developing as is sometimes noted otherwise. This is not a common
result of hypnosis, but a few people do complain of a slight headache afterward. The reason for
this is not clear. The rare instances of difficulty in de-hypnotizing will be considered in the
chapter on possible dangers in hypnosis, although this is not a real danger, for it can easily be
handled.
SELECTION OF AN INDUCTION METHOD: Most of those who practice hypnosis
find with experience some method with which they seem to have the best results, and they then
favor it. This is natural and advantageous but should not be overdone. Often an (41) operator
will work out some variation of his own. The skilled hypnotist tries to fit his method of
induction to the individual subject's needs and character. In selecting the form of induction to be
used, the decision should rest on the observations he makes as to the patient. He considers the
type of person with whom he is dealing. It would be a mistake to use a forceful, dominating
technique with one who is positive and aggressive in his behavior.
If the patient is a woman, it might be interpreted and resented as seductive to use the
standing technique where the subject is moved around in a circle, or the rapid technique where
she would be pushed back on a couch.
The time available to the operator in a first session would also be a factor in deciding as
to method. Ordinarily it is best to allow about 20 minutes for a first induction, even if it might
not be required. This would not be true if it seemed apparent that the patient would be a good
subject and was perhaps experienced. Yet there could be some circumstances when this much
time is not available where a rapid method would be indicated.
In general, for office practice the slower, permissive, "lullaby" type of induction is best,
but this depends on the patient and the situation. It would be indicated with a patient who seems
frightened or apprehensive about being hypnotized. Yet the degree of such an emotion might
have a bearing. Remembering that stage hypnotists usually frighten or startle their subjects into
hypnosis, sometimes the rapid technique would be a good one, taking advantage of the feeling of
apprehension if it is not too great. When anyone is under an emotion he is apt already to be in a
light state of hypnosis.
The practitioner should always keep his prestige and be aware that he has prestige with
the patient. Otherwise that person would not have come to him. He should always show
confidence. When there is a failure in induction, prestige can be maintained by an explanation
that not everyone can be hypnotized on first attempt, that this is an ability which improves with
practice. Blame for failure should not be placed on the patient but on the circumstances.
Something has caused him unconsciously to resist, though he has consciously been cooperative.
Something acted to prevent him from being hypnotized.
The practitioner must always realize that there will be failures and should not be
discouraged when these occur. Even the most adept operator at times will fail in an induction. It
is "par for the course" and should not be disturbing. (42) Inductions which are rapid and
practical in clinical situations are presented later. We feel that time-honored induction
techniques should be mastered before attempting the more advanced methods involving
subconscious review and ideomotor questioning. (43)

34. CH 6: TRANCE PHENOMENA: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON: CLINICAL

HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
Certain phenomena have been assigned as characteristics of the different stages of
hypnosis. However, it should be understood that this depends entirely on the individual subject.
Sometimes phenomena attributed to the deep state will be evidenced in only a light state. In
other instances light trance phenomena cannot be elicited with a subject in a very deep trance.
Anesthesia sufficient to permit a woman to go through childbirth painlessly usually requires a
deep state, but not infrequently the patient will be free of pain while only lightly hypnotized.
This variation is true of all hypnotic phenomena. Motivation may be a consideration in this
effect.
RAPPORT: Rapport is not only related to hypnosis but is a factor in all good
physician-patient relationships. Rapport seems to become stronger when one is under hypnosis
and will even be present in the first session when the subject may have had no previous
acquaintance with the hypnotist. Rapport can be said to be empathy on the part of the subject
with a strong desire to please the operator. It is closely related to what Freud called transference.
This regard and attitude toward the operator is of great advantage in therapy.
In the earlier days of hypnosis, one aspect of rapport was the idea that a hypnotized
person would pay no attention to anyone but the hypnotist unless instructed to do so, if rapport
were transferred. Suggestions given by another would be disregarded. A question would not be
answered. This situation is rarely seen today, though it can be shown. It depends on the subject's
attitude and desires. If he wants to respond to someone else, he will do so. In the rare cases
where there is no response, the subject will say when questioned that he merely didn't want to be
bothered. He heard, but was too listless to pay attention. (44)
 CATALEPSY: This term is usually considered a matter of muscular rigidity which
develops spontaneously under hypnosis. vVhen this phenomenon is present, an arm or leg may
be placed in some position, even an awkard one, and it will remain there. The position may be
maintained for some time and an inhibition of fatigue in the muscles seems to accompany the
catalepsy.
In fact catalepsy is not only muscular rigidity but includes the opposite condition,
extreme flaccidity of the muscles similar to cerea flexibilitas or waxy flexibility. There is a
change of muscular tonus but it may be either rigidity or flaccidity.
One of the usual "stunts" of stage hypnotists is to suggest complete body rigidity, then to
lay the stiffened subject between two chairs, his head on one and his feet on the other. The
hypnotist will then sit, or perhaps stand, on the subject's stomach. The weight will be borne with
no apparent effort. This is spectacular but is not without danger. Back injuries and enlargement
of hernias have occurred after such experiences.
One day while discussing catalepsy, one of the instructors with Hypnosis Symposiums
who is able to enter a deep trance remarked that he thought this body rigidity might be artifical
and that anyone laid across the chairs in this way could maintain the extra weight while not
hypnotized. It was decided to try it. The instructor was slender and above average height.
Stiffening himself as much as possible, he was placed across the chairs. He held this position,
though with some grimacing and straining. VVhen another person slowly eased himself down on
the instructor's stomach, the position could not be maintained and he "caved in."
This was then repeated with the instructor hypnotized. He was able to hold the extra
weight and gave no sign of straining. Afterwards he commented that the feeling was entirely
different. He made no effort to maintain rigidity and the weight of the person sitting on him did
not cause him to strain. This test proves the actuality of catalepsy in its rigid form, but it is not
recommended for experimentation or demonstration.
MUSCULAR INHIBITIONS: A phenomenon sometimes resorted to in order to let a
person realize that he is hypnotized is to suggest immobility of an arm or that it cannot be bent at
the elbow. In the first instance it is suggested that the weight of the arm is so great that there is
not enough strength to lift it. If suggesting it cannot be bent, the wording is that the arm is stiff
and rigid (45) like a bar and that it cannot be bent at the elbow no matter how hard you try, that
the elbow is locked in place. It is most impressive to the subject when he fails on making an
effort to lift or. bend the arm. However, these are both challenges and in our practices we think it
best, as a rule, to avoid challenges.
In carrying out these suggestions the subject may evidence much fruitless effort or he
may accept the idea and feel too lethargic even to try. If he does make the attempt, the
antagonistic muscles will be seen to oppose the movement.
There have been reports of suggestion under hypnosis greatly increasing bodily strength.
Tests of strength of grip with a grip dynamometer show a considerable increase in the number of
pounds squeezed by the hand, perhaps as much as 40 pounds. Undoubtedly the body has great
reserves of strength, but strength tests have some element of danger.
Inhibition of fatigue through hypnotic suggestion seems to be possible to an
extraordinary degree without being deleterious. This is also seen in catatonia. Since muscular
fatigue is supposed to involve chemical changes in the tissues, it can be presumed that these
changes are inhibited.
Old-time stage hypnotists used this phenomenon to attract customers to their
performances. These hypnotists traveled from town to town. The day before a performance, a
well-trained subject would appear in the town and enter the display window of a store. If the
subject was a girl, she would sit down at a piano, place herself in hypnosis and play without
stopping for 24 hours, not even attending to bowel or bladder elimination. If the subject was a
young man, he would mount a bicycle with its rear wheel jacked up and would peddle it rapidly
for the 24 hours. They were trained to do this and to inhibit fatigue and body functions of
elimination while doing so.
HYPNOTIC ANESTHESIA: There will be a thorough discussion of anesthesia and
analgesia in a later chapter where its use is described. It is something which the physician or
dentist should be familiar with. It is of particular advantage in obstetrics, surgery and dentistry,
although of course it has many other medical uses.
Theoretically there has been controversy as to whether hypnotic anesthesia is real, in the
sense that pain is not felt, or is it felt but disregarded? Some research projects, such as by Sears
and Dynes, have shown no changes in respiration, pulse, galvanic skin reflexes or in the pupils
of the eyes when painful stimuli were applied. This would suggest that pain is not experienced.
(46)
On the other hand, some equally good subjects have shown these changes yet claimed
they felt no pain. In one test, a subject was given suggestions for glove anesthesia. He was
producing automatic writing at the same time. When pain stimulus was applied to his
anesthetized hand, the other hand wrote automatically the word "ouch," although he reported that
he felt no pain at all.
In all probability the difficulty in such research is that there is a difference in the subjects
themselves in the way they accept suggestions for anesthesia. One may shut off all perception of
pain and an organic change takes place, the nerve impulses from the stimulus not registering in
the brain. Another subject subjectively does not feel pain but actually does, disregarding it, as is
true when a lobotomy has been performed. Cheek has pointed out that pain may be perceived
and indicated by ideomotor signals when the subject is consciously unaware of pain.
AMNESIA: Following a deep trance a subject may awaken with a complete
spontaneous amnesia for whatever occurred during the time he was hypnotized. Such an amnesia
can also be suggested, or it can be prevented by suggestion. In our experience complete
spontaneous amnesia is infrequent, although this may be because we are not too concerned about
obtaining a very deep trance for most purposes. Total post-hypnotic amnesia usually requires a
depth on the "yardstick" of 30 inches or more. A few subjects will produce it after having been
in only a medium depth of trance. A partial amnesia can frequently be established in a medium
stage. This would be accomplished by suggesting amnesia for some particular occurrence during
the trance or for some posthypnotic suggestion which has been made.
POSTHYPNOTIC SUGGESTIONS: If an acceptable suggestion is given for some
action to be performed after awakening, it will be carried out compulsively. It is more likely to
be carried out if there is also suggestion of amnesia for it, apparently because conscious
reasoning is bypassed. Even some bizarre or very illogical behavior will be executed when there
is amnesia for the suggestion. The subject usually rationalizes an explanation for such behavior.
LeCron gave a posthypnotic suggestion, with amnesia for it, to a young woman in a class
demonstration. She was seated on a couch with a (47) coffee table in front of her on which was a
vase containing some flowers. It was suggested that, after awakening, she would take off one of
her shoes and place it on the table. After she was awakened she fidgeted uneasily for a few
moments, apparently trying to resist the compulsion to carry out the suggestion.
Finally she took off one of her shoes and placed it on the table. She then took some of the
flowers from the vase and placed them in the shoe. When asked why she had done this, she
explained that she had a vase at home shaped something like a shoe and she wished to try what
kind of flower arrangement might be used in itl Thus she rationalized her unusual act. Herbert
Spiegel has suggested that some forms of neurotic behavior may be initiated by suggestions
picked up under circumstances of emotional stress.
Milton and Elizabeth Erickson have shown that the subject re-enters hypnosis
spontaneously when carrying out a posthypnotic suggestion. They state that the act may be
arrested and the subject will be found, when tested, to have reverted to the hypnotic state. This
seems generally to be true. It is more likely to occur when there is amnesia for the posthypnotic
suggestion.
Of course there may be unconscious refusal to accept a posthypnotic suggestion. For
instance, if there is strong need for some psychosomatic symptom, any suggestion for its
termination probably would be refused and it would persist. When the suggestion is acceptable
the subject finds it very difficult to resist carrying it out. His thoughts continually revert to it, no
matter how he tries to avoid it, and great anxiety may develop until it is performed. For this
reason we urge that permission always be obtained by an ideomotor signal before suggesting
posthypnotic activity.
A posthypnotic suggestion may wear off after a time, but with a good subject it may
persist for years. Estabrooks writes of using a subject several times in demonstrations where the
same suggestion had been carried out a number of times. This was in response to a signal made
by Estabrooks. Twenty years later he met the man again and gave the signal to see if he would
respond. When it was given, he did so.
LeCron once agreed with another member of our teaching panel to demonstrate
hallucinations of the sense of smell. The panelist was told in deep hypnosis that he would smell
only perfume. Then he was given perfume to smell. Next a bottle of 30 per cent ammonia was
held to his nose. As he sniffed it he said. it was very nice perfume and showed no reaction to the
strong ammonia. Inadvertently LeCron neglected to remove the hallucination. Over a year later
the instructor remarked that he seemed to have lost his sense of smell. He could only detect the
odor (48)
of flowers. He had even quit smoking because he could no longer smell tobacco smoke. This is
another example of the literalness of understanding during hypnosis. Leeron then remembered
their demonstration and the hallucination of the panelist's sense of smell. The suggestion was
removed and his sense of smell returned to normal.
At one of our symposiums a physician asked for help in stopping smoking while acting
as a demonstration subject. He requested that he be given a suggestion that tobacco would taste
like something most unpleasant. When questioned, he said he found the taste of castor oil as
unpleasant as anything else. \'Vith his consent he was told under hypnosis that when he smoked
he would find tobacco tasting like castor oil. Some months later this physician again attended a
course. He was asked if he had stopped smoking. He replied that he had quit for a few days and
then started again. "But you know," he added, "I've developed the most remarkable liking for the
taste of castor oil!" Obviously his liking for cigarettes was greater than his motivation to give
them up.
Posthypnotic suggestions can often be used to great advantage in hypnotherapy and
hypnodontics. A caution here is that some termination to the suggestion should be set in order to
avoid such an error as occurred unintentionally with the hallucination for "only perfume." While
a psychologist was treating a woman patient for alcoholism, she insisted that she be given
suggestions of nausea if she took an alcoholic drink. Against his better judgment, the
psychologist made this suggestion to her. When he saw her four days later she was pale and wan.
She told him she had wondered if the suggestion would work and on returning home had drunk
some whiskey. She had been violently nauseated and had continued to vomit frequently ever
since, unable to keep anything on her stomach. The suggestion had not specified any time for its
termination.
AGE REGRESSION: One of the most interesting of hypnotic phenomena, and the
most valuable in hypnotherapy, is age regression. There are two forms of regression. There is
also a variation which could be said to be a third form. Much research has proved the validity of
age regression. While it is never really complete, one form might be called complete regression.
It has also been termed revivification. A deep trance is requisit~ for this type. By suggestion, the
subject is told he is some certain age or is returned to some specific time or experience. Behavior
then (49)
seems to be that of the suggested age. It seems as if time after that age has been blotted out.
The subject's voice becomes childlike if told he is six years old. His handwriting will be
childish and he probably will print instead of writing. Intelligence and other tests given at
various age levels during regression give results indicating the age level is nearly as young as
suggested.
In infants before the age of about six months, there is normally a negative plantar reflex
(positive Babinski). Regressed to three or four months old, a naive subject who knows nothing
of this reflex will occasionally display the Babinski when the sole of the foot is stroked.
Explanation for this phenomenon is that the subsequently learned grasping plantar reflex is
eliminated during age regression to such an age.
The second form of regression might be called partial. Both types of regression are quite
different from mere memory recall. The person relives an experience with all five of his senses
functioning. He sees, hears, feels tactically, and if smell and taste were present they are
reexperienced. In complete regression the subject is unaware of the identity of the operator who
is then an anachronism to him. He may spontaneously assign some identity to the operator, or
this may be suggested: "You know me, I'm just a friend." He is disoriented as to where he is.
With regression to infancy he cannot speak.
With partial regression, on the other hand, the person is aware of where he is and knows
the operator's identity. At the same time he relives the suggested time or experience. When taken
back to a childhood incident, he is able to understand it with his adult viewpoint. He gains
insight. 'With complete regression this is not true. Then insight is lacking as the viewpoint of the
suggested age is retained. Therefore partial regression is much more valuable for therapeutic
purposes. It is also more valuable because it can be obtained in only a very light state.
With either form of regression if an emotion was felt at the time there will be abreaction
and discharge of the emotion: catharsis. Much feeling may be shown, which is desirable and just
what the therapist seeks. Because some repressed experiences might possibly be overwhelming,
regression should never be suggested without first inquiring with ideomotor answers if it is all
right or safe for the patient to return to the experience. If the answer is affirmative, there is no
danger of bad results. If negative, the regression should not be forced. Perhaps it can safely be
carried out at a later time. It must always be remembered to return the person to the present
before awakening him. In all probability this would occur spontaneously but one cannot be sure
of this.
Regression even to a vague time or to a certain age should never be attempted without
the precaution of asking if it is safe. The operator (50) would not lmow what happened in a
patient's life at some certain age. In a demonstration a patient was regressed to his third birthday
without this precaution. He produced an actual asthma attack with difficult breathing and with
actual rales. His face became red. Returned quickly to the present he soon recovered. Later the
subject was asked if he would be willing to repeat this and agreed. This time he gave mild
indications of breathing difficulty, but tests showed no real asthma. While he tried to cooperate,
he obviously was only partially regressed and was protecting himself by showing only
pseudosymptoms. It is important to know how best to suggest age regression. To develop skill,
complete regression should be induced for practice, selecting a very good hypnotic subject.
Suggestions are aimed at causing disorientation. The principles of the confusion technique of
induction are helpful here. They can be applied before resorting to the following methods.
One excellent way is to suggest that the patient is sitting or lying on a magic carpet. The
carpet is described as floating in the air. He is instructed to look below him and there he will see
a broad river. This is the "river of time." Downstream is the future and upstream is the past.
Below him he is told to see a milestone representing the present year. Now the magic carpet
begins to move upstream. Another milestone is seen approaching, the milestone of the previous
year, which is stated. The carpet moves faster and faster. Other milestones are mentioned as
being passed and the speed increases. Then the carpet stops at some designated year. Even the
month and date can be stated. Perhaps Christmas or a birthday is selected, with the age
mentioned.
Then the subject is asked how old he is. If regressed he will give the suggested age,
putting it in the present tense. He can be encouraged to see some gift he has received at the time
and to describe it. He can be told to see any other people present. Other detailed suggestions can
be made so that the scene develops more clearly and vividly.
Another technique is to suggest that the subject is looking at a tall grandfather's clock.
Below the face of the clock is a panel on which the present year is shown. Now, as he watches,
the hands of the clock begin to reverse and speed up, whirling around. He sees the year on the
panel change to the previous year. Then other previous years are seen in sequence, back to the
desired date.
Still a different method is to suggest that the subject is looking at a large book, the book
of time. It is opened at the present date, each page representing a month. He is told to begin to
turn back the pages month by month, then to rime them rapidly by years until the desired time is
reached. (51) All of these methods depend on disorientation and the production of
hallucinations, which requires a deep trance. When regression is to childhood, the operator
should adopt the tone, words and manner he would use in speaking to a child of the suggested
age. It is far easier to obtain partial regression. Often no formal induction is necessary. The
subject can merely be told to close his eyes. In regressing he will spontaneously enter hypnosis,
perhaps only lightly, possibly going into a deep trance.
With a good subject, partial regression may be suggested directly to some particular
incident in his life. This may be by saying you will count to three and the patient will then be at
the suggested age, seeing the scene. This can be elaborated, stating that he will see it becoming
clearer and will see the people present. He can be asked to describe the clothing worn by anyone
present, with other minor details brought out which tends to develop the reliving of the
experience further.
When a suggestion is given of returning to some event, it could be added that as soon as
he has mentally regressed to it, the patient's right forefinger will lift up involuntarily as a signal.
This tells the operator when his suggestions can be ended.
In teaching a patient how to regress satisfactorily, he can be told to go back to something
which has recently taken place, something of no significance or importance. This might be to the
time when he had breakfast that morning or to any recent meal when someone else was present.
He is instructed to feel his position at the table, to see the food which he is eating. Then he is to
taste and smell the food, perhaps a cup of coffee, and to hear the other person speak. This tends
to develop perception by each sense. Details can be brought out, and the patient finds he is
reliving the experience with all five senses functioning.
After such practice it is easier to take the person back to some event at a very early age or
to one of importance. In therapy, sometimes traumas or happenings in infancy or even at birth
may have importance. In psychoanalysis it is rare for a very early experience to be brought out.
The reader should be cautioned that experiences "relived" or recalled may either be
actual or sometimes they will be found to be fantasies or misunderstood actual happenings.
Freud has pointed out that fantasies may have as much importance as a real experience. It is
always valuable to note the offerings of the subject but the therapist must use caution in their
interpretations.
One interesting matter in partial regression to a very early age is that the subject will
report what is being said by persons present. Perhaps this will be only fantasy but it seems
possible that things said have been registered in the subconscious mind as sounds, as if a tape
recording had (52)
been made. At an early age these sounds had no meaning but are interpreted when language is
learned. They then may affect the individual. This fact will be considered further in chapters on
hypnotherapy.
A third form of regression or a variation of the partial type of regression can be utilized.
Instead of the patient re-experiencing the event, he is told he is to watch it as an observer and to
see what happened. He watches rather than being the participant. This may be valuable if the
experience was traumatic. The patient may then depersonalize it. He sees what is occurring,
though not taking part. He may display emotion but it will be felt ,vith much less intensity.
Sometimes it is best to use this form. The patient goes through the incident once or twice
as an observer. Then he is told to return to it again but now as the participant. He can then
discharge more of the emotion attached to the event. Unconscious resistance to regression can
often be overcome by using this method. The subject may be willing to see the experience as an
observer when it would be too disturbing to relive it as the participant.
When using regression in therapy, the purpose is to learn what has taken place and to
discharge emotions tied up in it. Taking the patient through it once may bring out a great display
of emotion. Going through it again discharges more emotion, but the display is milder. Further
repetition finds less and less display of emotion and soon the patient is merely narrating the
happenings. All emotion may be gone by the third trip through, or it may require a few more,
but it should be continued until all emotion is vented. The importance of this is not always
realized by therapists. Effects of the experience may linger unless all emotion has been
discharged. Returning several times in this way can be conducted all in the same session.
A variation of the use of regression is to have the patient regress at an unconscious level.
This type of regression allows review with nearly complete freedom from unpleasant abreaction.
It permits the sorting of significant events in a minimum of time. He is told to go back to some
significant experience only at an unconscious level. As soon as he is regressed to it, his "yes"
finger is to lift. When he has gone through it, his "no" finger is to signal completion. The
therapist thus knows when to suggest further review. The patient may have no conscious thought
about it as he carries out this subconscious review. It is even possible to use time distortion (to
be described) and have the patient go through an important experience in only a few seconds of
world time.
It might be mentioned that age regression has been used successfully for the recovery of
mislaid jewelry or important papers. It has also been used in police work to obtain forgotten
information from witnesses of some crime, such as the license number of a car used by
criminals.
(53)
It seems that everything that happens to us is stored in the memory in complete detail.
Conscious recall is limited to a very tiny part of total memory. Regression under hypnosis can
bring out completely forgotten memories. It is also possible to bring them out merely by
suggesting that they will be recalled. In this situation the patient remembers but doesn't relive the
event. Minor details which are unimportant will not be recalled. Recovery of memories in this
way may bring out some emotion but it does not provide as much catharsis as does age
regression.
HALLUCINATIONS: Hypnotically produced hallucinations may be either positive or
negative. Something that isn't there may be seen, or objects or persons actually present may be
blotted out. Both positive and negative hallucinations may be present at the same time as is seen
in the following demonstration which is sometimes made.
With others present in the room, the subject in a deep trance is told that all the others
have left the room. Only he and the operator remain. He is then asked to open his eyes. He will
have a negative hallucination of the bodies of those actually still present. At the same time he
experiences a positive hallucination of the chairs in which the people are actually sitting.
All five of the senses can be hallucinated. It is easiest to obtain those of taste and smell,
more difficult with touch, and still more difficult to hallucinate the auditory sense. The visual
one is hardest to induce. Auditory and visual ones usually require a deep state, the others
frequently are obtainable in only a medium state. Some subjects can produce any of the five in
only a medium state.
There has been much research into this phenomenon, which indicates that such
hallucinations are actual. Complete blindness or deafness can be induced, even color-blindness,
although indications are that deep subconscious correct awareness is always retained, though
consciously the subject is blind or deaf. These distortions of the senses can also be suggested to
be operative posthypnotically. As the Ericksons have mentioned, the subject probably relapses
into hypnosis when hallucinating posthypnotically.
In a therapeutic situation, hallucinations may be valuable. One of the projective
techniques to be discussed later involves having the subject hallucinate a TV or motion picture
screen and see something happen on (54) it. At times a dentist may find it valuable to distract his
patient's attention by having him hallucinate a previously witnessed TV program while the
dentist performs his work. Possibly anesthesia will also be suggested.
TIME DISTORTION: All hypnotic phenomena had been discovered by the middle
part of the Nineteenth Century with the single exception of time distortion. The ability to distort
time under hypnosis was a discovery of the late Lynn Cooper, M.D., of Washington, D.C. He
presented his findings first in a paper, then in a chapter in LeCron's book Experimental
Hypnosis, and later, with Erickson, wrote an entire book on the subject.
While in a deep trance, it is possible for a subject mentally to speed up time, disorting it
so that involved mental processes can be accomplished in a remarkably short time. Cooper told
his experimental subjects that they would hear a metronome beating at the rate of once a minute.
He then assigned them a mental problem, perhaps a mathematical one, which would ordinarily
take about ten minutes to solve. They were told they would have ten minutes (ten beats of the
metronome) in which to solve it. Actually the metronome was set to beat once a second. The
problem would be solved within the ten beats, thus speeding up time 60 times the normal rate ..
To learn the use of time distortion it can be practiced best with children. It is easily
established with most children ages 6 to 12. The child can be told he is to see again one of his
favorite TV programs. He can be asked what he would like to see. He is then hypnotized and
told to open his eyes and see a TV set in front of him. Then he is to turn it on, the wavy lines
will appear and probably a commercial will be seen. Then the program will appear just as he saw
it previously. The operator says he will count slowly to ten and the child will see the entire
program while the count is made. Thus a half-hour or even an hour program can be seen in a few
seconds. Counting should be slow. Questioned afterward, the child will describe in detail what
he saw and heard.
A psychiatrist who attended one of our courses decided to practice induction with his
ten-year-old son. He hypnotized the boy and told him he was to see a movie which they had
attended a few days before, as a hallucination. He said he would awaken the boy in about ten
minutes and he could then tell about it.
As the child sat hallucinating the movie, he suddenly began to lift his hand up to his face
again and again, as fast as he could move it. The psychiatrist wondered what this meant but said
nothing. The movement (55) quickly stopped. After awakening his son at the end of ten minutes,
he asked as to this arm movement. "Oh," said the boy, "I was eating popcorn." His father then
realized that he had inadvertently produced time distortion in the boy. He had seen a two-hour
movie in ten minutes.
Time may be distorted at either a conscious or unconscious level. It has been said that a
drowning person may seem to relive periods of his life at the moment when he has almost
drowned and will recall this when saved. This would seem to be the same phenomenon as
hypnotic time distortion.
HYPNOTIC DREAM PRODUCTION: Suggested dreams have been mentioned
previously. Probably at least a medium trance is required. The dream may be either like a vision,
similar to daydreaming, or it may be of the type occurring during sleep. A posthypnotic
suggestion of dreaming can be given, the dream to take place during the night. Even a definite
hour for the dream to take place can be suggested. If the patient is told he will awaken at the end
of the dream and is then to look at his watch or clock, he will find the dream probably occurred
at the suggested hour.
Some subjects while under hypnosis have an ability to understand readily the meaning
and symbolism of their own dreams or even the dreams of others. Dream interpretation is thus
facilitated, though this also usually requires a deep state. Not many are able to develop this
facility.
The production of dreams hypnotically is very advantageous. Much can be learned in this
way. It is not necessary for the hypnotherapist to wait for the patient to bring him a dream.
However, most physicians will hardly wish to study the interpretation of dreams and may not
resort to suggesting dreams.
Another way of understanding dreams is to ask the patient while under hypnosis to
redream a dream, changing the details and the characters but keeping the meaning. This can be
repeated several times until the meaning is easily understood. This method is generally credited
to Milton Erickson.
Cheek has found that physiological disturbances, such as bleeding from the pregnant
uterus or the onset of premature labor, may be initiated by consciously unrecognized frightening
dreams. Search for and correction of these dreams can reverse the reactions even during a
telephone conversation at the time a patient reports the emergency. Ideomotor responses are used
to localize the disturbing dreams. The patient (56) automatically goes into hypnosis either
because of the immediate fear or because she has been in hypnosis during previous office visits
when ideomotor responses were being used.
HYPNOTIC CONTROL OF ORGANIC BODY FUNCTIONS: Apparently the
subconscious mind has the ability to control body functions, working through the autonomic
nervous system. There should be many possible medical applications of this ability. Strangely
there has been little scientific research to verify these possibilities. Some such controls have been
questioned. Perhaps this is- due to the fact that one subject may produce a change, although
others cannot do so, but, as the saying goes, it only takes one white crow to prove that all crows
are not black.
Some of the bodily changes said to be capable of being made are speeding up or slowing
down of the heartbeat, control of blood circulation as in bleeding, speeding up of the rate of
healing of wounds and injuries, lowering or elevating body temperature and lowering of blood
pressure. Proof of these possibilities is lacking.
Researchers in Europe, South America, Japan and the United States have reported control
of other bodily functions such as digestion, metabolism, bleeding, skin reaction to allergens, etc.
Not much is known of what glandular functions can be influenced by suggestion. Very little
investigation has been carried out along these lines, probably because rese.arch centers are not
usually manned by people interested in hypnosis. There is much room for productive research in
these areas, for they would be valuable in medical practice. (57)

35. CH 7: THE PRINCIPLES OF SUGGESTION: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON:

CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
As hypnosis and suggestion are closely related and results are largely dependent on
proper suggestion, the therapist should know how best to apply it, and its laws. Everyone is
suggestible to some degree, but we become hypersuggestible when we are in hypnosis or are
unconscious. The deeper the trance, the greater the suggestibility. It is such an important factor
in the art of medicine that research with drugs must eliminate the placebo effect or expectancy
may produce the same effect as that of the drug.
TYPES OF SUGGESTION: Suggestion may be given in a commanding way or
permissively. Most people resent being dominated, hence permissive ones are usually more
acceptable. However, a permissive suggestion can be made in a forceful way for emphasis. If a
suggestion is worded "You will," it is a command. ''You can" is permissive. A command would
be indicated when there is an unconscious need to be dominated, which the therapist may notice
in a patient.
Another distinction between types of suggestion is positive or negative wording. A
positive wording is much more forceful than negative suggestion. The words "not, don't, won't
and can't" should be avoided as much as possible. All are negative. In mathematics, two
negatives make a positive, but in medical or dental practice, "You will not feel any pain" means
"He thinks I really will feel pain," Better wording would be ''You will feel comfortable in every
way" or "You may feel pressure or touch but will be free of pain." Negatives have negative
effects with hypnotized patients, no matter how joined together. A suggestion may be direct or
indirect. The latter type may not consciously be noticed but can be very effective. Your manner,
tone of (59) voice, dress, the way your office is maintained, the car you drive, all may be
indirect suggestions indicating that you are prosperous and a good physician or dentist.
THE LAWS OF SUGGESTION: During the 1920s, Emil Coue in Nancy, France,
conducted a clinic where he taught the uses of autosuggestion. He was a pharmacist, but he was
a very successful therapist. Coue made a study of suggestion and learned much about it and how
to use it most effectively. Much of our present knowledge of this subject stems from Coue's
observation.
Repetition is one important factor in causing suggestion to produce results. Suggestions
should be "rubbed in." Advertising is suggestion, and a good example of how advertisers realize
the need for repetition is seen in TV commercials which are repeated again and again. Some TV
advertisers make the mistake of overdoing repetition which may bring revulsion and resistance
to the listener. The effect of repetition is cumulative up to a point. Hypnotic suggestions should
ordinarily be repeated three or four times.
Suggestions should be worded so that they are set in the immediate future rather than the
present, which allows time for them to be absorbed and to become effective. If suggestions were
being used to remove a headache, instead of saying "Your headache is gone" (contrary to fact,
thus putting it in the present), the wording should be "Your head will begin to clear and soon the
ache will dwindle away and be gone." Pain seems to disappear at a subconscious level long
before the relief is consciously recognized. Establishing motivation for acceptance makes a
suggestion more potent.
Desire for some condition to be ended is an excellent motive with patients.
Visual imagery can be added to a suggestion. Repetition is just as important here as when
the suggestion is given verbally. There is a tendency on the part of the subconscious to carry out
any prolonged and repeated visual image.
To illustrate: in treating obesity in a woman, she can be told to obtain a photograph of
herself taken when she was slender. If none is available or if she has never been slender, she can
cut out a picture from a magazine of a slender girl in a bathing suit. If possible, the patient
should cut the head from a picture of herself and paste this over the head of the girl in the
picture. This picture is then to be fastened to her mirror. Every time she looks in the mirror she
should look at the picture (60)
and think, "That is 1." On going to bed at night she should close her eyes and visualize herself as
being like this picture.
When giving suggestions, it is better not to plant too many ideas at the same time. This
burdens the subconscious and diversifies results. No more than two or three should be given in
one session when working with a patient.
Coue` made a point of suggesting only the end result. Details of how it should be
accomplished should be avoided. He believed a general, nonspecific suggestion was best,
avoiding telling the subconscious how to do it. His famous phrase, which he urged his patients to
say to themselves several times a day was "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and
better." This was very specific as to end result but left the details of accomplishment to what he
termed the "teleology of the unconscious."
THE LAW OF REVERSED EFFECT: Coue` was the first to write about this law. It
affects everyone at times. He said, "If one thinks I should like to do this but I can't' (a negative
thought), the harder he tries, the less he is able." People troubled by insomnia often find this law
acting to prevent them from going to sleep. Such a person goes to bed expecting to have
difficulty in getting to sleep. He tries, and the harder he tries the wider awake he becomes. When
tired out, he stops trying to sleep and then drops off.
Here is another example as given by Coue of how this rule operates. If a board a foot
wide is placed on the floor and you try to walk its length, you need hardly glance at it as you do
so. If placed between two chairs two feet from the floor, it is easily walked but with more care.
"Put the board between the towers of a cathedral and you would assuredly fall," as Coue put it.
Your doubts would either prevent you from trying to walk it, or you would likely fall if you
tried.
THE LAW OF DOMINANT EFFECT: Another of Coue's contributions is this law: an
idea always tends toward realization. A stronger emotion will always counteract and take
precedence over a weaker one. If fear is stronger than anger in a situation, you will try to escape.
If anger is stronger than fear, you attack. Coue` said that the imagination will always win when
the imagination and the will are in conflict. Actually this means that the subconscious will
always win over the conscious mind when they are in conflict. (61) Negative and other
detrimental suggestions affect everyone at times, although we may be unaware of them. A part
of hypnotherapy is the locating and removal of these suggestions. They may act exactly like
posthypnotic suggestions. Therapy is de-hypnotizing the patient of these ideas when they are
present. (62)

36. CH 8: SELF-HYPNOSIS: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON: CLINICAL

HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
Essentially all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. The operator is merely a guide and the subject
produces the result in carrying out the ideas presented to him. The easiest way for one to learn to
hypnotize himself is first to be inducted by someone else and be given posthypnotic suggestions
for induction. There should be some definite formula to follow, stated in detail. By going
through this formula, the subject enters hypnosis. As it is a learning process, practice is usually
necessary, although very good subjects may learn self-hypnosis in only one session and then be
able to reach a deep state. Others will require two or three inductions by someone else, with
further practice sessions. While no statistics are available as to what percentage of people can
learn self-hypnosis without being previously inducted, many have been able to accomplish this.
A tape recording of an induction talk is helpful for this. Several are commercially available.
As with hetero-hypnosis, a deep stage is of little advantage for most purposes. The
lethargy when deeply hypnotized may even be a disadvantage. A medium depth of about 20 to
24 inches on our yardstick is probably ideal for self-hypnosis. However, there are situations
where greater depth is important, as when visiting a dentist, for childbirth, or if hypnotic
anesthesia is to be used in any other way. Major surgery with hypnotic anesthesia can only be
performed when the patient is deeply hypnotized. Depth is also important if the person's eyes are
to be opened, as when using hypnosis for purposes of study.
There are many advantages in being able to hypnotize oneself. It is the best means of
overcoming insomnia unless this condition is a deep-seated neurotic symptom. The relaxation
attained in hypnosis helps one stay more relaxed and free of tension in his daily life. If some
degree of self-anesthesia can be produced, there are often opportunities for its use, as when
visiting a dentist. A student who can learn to study while (63) hypnotized usually finds his
concentration much better. Obstetricians who use hypnosis usually teach the woman patient
self-hypnosis so that she can induce it on first entering the hospital.
Of course the elimination of pain must be handled with discretion. It would be a mistake
to anesthetize a broken ankle and walk on it. Such relief would be beneficial with a sprained
ankle. It could be dangerous to remove abdominal pain of appendicitis, but it might be a
lifesaving maneuver if it were impossible to obtain the services of a competent surgeon or if a
long trip to the hospital were necessary. People with painful terminal cancer have been taught
auto-hypnosis and self-anesthesia and have been comfortable during the last days of their lives.
The student who can study under hypnosis finds his concentration greatly improved. Then there
is better absorption and increased recall. Grades received are usually higher, and some have
taken examinations and tests while self-hypnotized with greater recall.
A physician from another state planned to take the California state board examination.
He had been in practice for several years and believed he had forgotten many things that might
be asked. Taught selfhypnosis, he took the examination while in hypnosis and passed easily. He
stated that he was able to recall the answers to some questions which had long been forgotten.
Practitioners will often wish to train a patient in self-hypnosis. After induction, a detailed
formula to follow is suggested. This should include a key word or phrase which the subject is to
say to himself with repetition. It should be added that this will have no effect unless the person
intentionally uses it to hypnotize himself. Some movement, such as lifting one hand to the face,
can be suggested as a deepening method. The imaginary escalator can also be used for
deepening. The following wording is an example of suggestions given for self-hypnosis.
"When you wish to hypnotize yourself, you should take a comfortable position. It doesn't matter
whether you are lying down or sitting up as long as you are comfortable. You need say nothing
aloud, merely think your suggestions. Your eyes should be closed, and you can relax better if
you take two or three deep breaths. Then think, 'Now I am going into hypnosis.' This is a
suggestion. Then three times slowly repeat the phrase, 'Relax now.' As you repeat this, you will
begin to slip into hypnosis. "Then you will want to go deeper. Say to yourself, 'Now I am
going deeper.' Use the imaginary escalator while you count backward from ten to zero, stepping
on as you begin to count. Step off at the bottom when you reach zero. (64)
"At any time you wish to go into a deeper stage, repeat this escalator technique. You can also go
deeper at any time by merely lifting either hand until the fingers touch your face. When you
are ready to awaken yourself, you should think, 'Now I am going to awaken.' Count slowly to
three and you will then awaken, always feeling refreshed, relaxed and clear-headed on
awakening." After going through the suggested formula, the person should suggest greater
relaxation, taking a few moments to let his entire body become more relaxed.
Self-induction should be practiced several times within the next few days after being
given this formula. This will bring greater depth. When the operator has given these formula
suggestions, it is best to awaken the subject and immediately have him go through the formula
and hypnotize himself. Of course any other suitable formula may be suggested instead of this
sample one. Additional suggestions can be given as to whatever use of autohypnosis is intended.
It is best for the patient to make no tests or try to produce any phenomena until he has practiced
induction several times He should take it for granted he is getting results and should not care as
to the depth attained. After some practice he can make some of the tests such as arm levitation,
eye closure, or the handclasp test. He can also induce glove anesthesia, though only after the
operator has shown him how this can be produced. After a few practice sessions, the depth he
reaches can be learned with the use of the imaginary yardstick. If a patient does not have good
results in his practicing, he may de better if the operator will make a tape recording of an
induction talk adding to it the formula suggestions. After being inducted by the recording several
times, the formula may be more effective. Some practitioners believe it best to have the
subject fix his eyes on something prior to going through his formula. This can be any object as
described in the chapter on induction. It is not necessary to continue to gaze at the object for any
great length of time. Two or three minute. should be sufficient. Hyperventilation by taking
several short breaths at a very rapid rate can also be helpful. This should be continued until a
slight dizziness is felt, then there should be as much relaxation as possible, followed by going
through the formula.
With self-hypnosis there is some tendency to drift off into normal sleep. Usually this can
be prevented by auto-suggestion that the person will remain in hypnosis until he is ready to
awaken. Time may seem to pass very quickly when in hypnosis. Thirty or 40 minutes may have
passed and seemed like only ten. Self-suggestion can (65) limit the time spent in hypnosis. It
can be stated that one will awaken spontaneously at the end of 15 minutes, or any stated period,
or at a certain hour.
DANGERS AND CONTRAINDICATIONS FOR SELF-HYPNOSIS: Our
symposium instructors have taught thousands of patients and hundreds of professional men and
women how to hypnotize themselves. We know of no one who has ever had a bad result or
found any danger in self-hypnosis. Freedom from any possible danger should be emphasized to
the patient who is learning it, because some psychiatrists have claimed that self-hypnosis is
always dangerous (Rosen). We emphatically do not agree with this dictum. A few psychiatrists
have warned that a patient might form too many fantasies with self-hypnosis and tend to
withdraw from reality. There have been no reports of this ever happening. Theory here is based
on clinical experience with psychotic patients who can do this without any training. Such an
argument fails to consider that daydreaming is self-hypnosis and that everyone is spontaneously
self-hypnotized many times. There are very few contraindications to the teaching of
self-hypnosis. They are as to anyone who is retreating from reality, who is detached, or who
tends too much toward introspection and daydreaming. Other contraindications are the same as
for hypnosis in general, as will be considered in another chapter. (66)

37. CH 9: IS HYPNOSIS DANGEROUS? DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON:

CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
What dangers does hypnosis involve? Can it be used safely by the practitioner? These are
pertinent questions. The answer is that there are some dangers. However, they are minimal and
are readily avoided when their possibilities are understood and simple precautions are taken.
Many physicians and dentists who have considered attending courses or otherwise
learning hypnotic technics have feared to do so after reading or hearing some psychiatric
criticisms and statements about the great dangers they envision with hypnosis. It can be said
emphatically that these are very greatly exaggerated. The title of psychiatrist does not qualify
one as an authority on hypnosis in the absence of experience any more than the comer grocer can
offer himself as an authority on nutrition.
Harold Rosen, a psychiatrist, has exaggerated the idea of hypnosis being dangerous. He
has lectured throughout the country speaking to medical, dental and lay groups, warning that
hypnosis should be used only by those who have had extensive training in psychiatry. If this
were true, all physicians should also have such training before practicing medicine for much
medical practice is concerned with psychosomatic, emotional illnesses. Fortunately psychiatrists
with long experience using hypnosis disagree completely. Erickson, undoubtedly the greatest
authority on this subject, has said that hypnosis itself is not dangerous in any way, although it
can be misused. He feels that hypnotherapists can learn much psychiatry from their patients as
long as they respect the needs of these patients and refrain from coercing them in hypnosis.
The best indication that dangers are minimal is the fact that thousands of lay hypnotists
and many stage hypnotists who know little about hypnosis other than how to induce it use it
indiscriminately, yet bad results are rarely reported ..
Another important point is that the professional man is fully covered by malpractice
insurance carriers when using hypnosis in the field of work for which he is qualified. No
insurance company writing (67) malpractice insurance has had any claims because of the use of
hypnosis by physicians or dentists. This was reported at a meeting of the Professional Liability
Underwriters. No company knew of any difficulties having developed and no company plans
restrictions on the use of hypnosis.
WHAT ARE THE ALLEGED DANGERS? A very common idea is that if a symptom
is removed by hypnotic suggestion another will form, possibly a worse one. The compulsive
drinker might turn to narcotics if his need to drink were to be inhibited. This idea is based on a
Freudian concept that behind a symptom there is a force seeking an outlet, the symptom
providing the outlet. If the outlet is blocked by removal of the symptom, the force will seek
another outlet. It is surprising how prevalent has been the acceptance of this theory which has no
basis in fact. Just what is this mysterious force? It cannot be demonstrated in any way.
It is true that there may be a strong need for a symptom and it may serve some purpose,
such as being a defense mechanism. It is very doubtful if a greatly needed symptom could ever
be removed by suggestion. Suggestions are only effective if they are acceptable.
In actual practice, symptom removal by hypnotic suggestion is seldom attempted. In the
old days of hypnosis, that was the only method of psychotherapy known, yet it was very rare for
a new symptom to form, and the method was often successful. When a situation calls for an
attempt at symptom removal by suggestion, there is a safeguard which would prevent any
danger: that is to make the suggestions permissive rather than commanding. If there is a strong
need for the symptom, the suggestion would not be carried out and no possible harm would
result.
Another safeguard should also be applied. With the questioning technique it should be
asked of the patient, "Is it all right for you to lose this symptom?" If the answer given by the
subconscious mind is affirmative, there is not the slightest danger. If negative, no attempt at
removal should be made at that time.
Strangely, this idea of danger in symptom removal is applied only to the use of
suggestion. Psychiatric critics prescribe tranquilizers by the millions for depression and for other
conditions. This is symptom removal by drugs. If it is by drugs it is considered safe, but if by
suggestion it is dangerous. Of course this is nonsense and ridiculous. It is well recognized that
loss of resistance to infection may be psychogenic. Use then of an antibiotic would be
"dangerous" removal of a Dorcus, in a paper given at a meeting on hypnosis at the University of
Kansas, called attention to this and emphasized that in the rare cases where a symptom was
removed by suggestion and another appeared, there was no reason to believe it was because of
any mysterious force seeking another outlet. The new symptom might have no relationship to the
former one, or it might have been present but consciously unobserved because of the dominant
symptom.
As a matter of fact, a very large part of medical treatment is nothing but symptom
removal. Usually it is by means of drugs, but even surgery can be symptom removal. If a
gallbladder is removed, the cause of the illness is not being treated, although surgery may
remedy the condition. With the Freudian idea of a force seeking an outlet, some other illness
should develop following such surgery. Treatment of migraine or other headaches with drugs is
symptom removal. Does some other ailment then occur? Headaches are frequently
psychosomatic. If you take an aspirin and relieve it, do you develop some other symptom? These
are merely examples pointing out that symptom removal by hypnotic suggestion is no more
dangerous than any other treatment that does not eliminate the causes.
OTHER POSSIBLE DANGERS: Psychoanalysis state that a patient undergoing
hypnotherapy becomes extremely dependent on the therapist, with a greater transference
developing. It is true that there may be a great dependence initially, but this is of advantage to
both the patient and the therapist. As progress is made and the illness or condition responds to
treatment, dependence dwindles away. A large part of hypnotherapy is the building of ego
strength in the patient. Hypnosis facilitates this and then dependency needs are ended or
modified. It could be pointed out that anyone continuing in analysis for three .or four years with
little progress certainly is displaying great dependence on the analyst.
As to transference, in brief therapy it seldom is of any importance and usually is
disregarded or does not even develop. Ordinarily it can be handled easily through hypnosis.
Still another criticism by some psychiatrists is that if hypnosis is used with a person on
the verge of psychosis, he could be thrown into a psychotic break. This is a possibility, but it
would be from the misuse of hypnosis and not from the mere fact of being hypnotized. A skilled
therapist might even use hypnosis with such a patient to prevent a (69) psychotic break. In itself,
being hypnotized never caused anyone to become psychotic. Undoubtedly misuse can do so.
Any form of treatment can be misused through ignorance or inadvertence and promote such a
result.
CONTRAINDICATIONS: One of the contraindications for the non-psychiatrist in the
use of hypnosis is to avoid it with anyone who is extremely disturbed, greatly depressed,
suicidal, or who the therapist might think is pre-psychotic. The pre-psychotic is difficult to
recognize. If there is a question in the mind of the therapist as to any such possibilities, no
attempt should be made to use hypnosis. Of course this is also true of anyone who is obviously
psychotic. In all conditions mentioned, referral to a psychotherapist is advisable. It should be
realized that a psychosomatic symptom such as insomnia or an illness such as severe headaches
may be masking great depression with the patient consciously unaware of being depressed.
Whether or not this is so can be ascertained with the questioning technique.
WHEN DEHYPNOTIZING IS DIFFICULT: In rare occasions there may be
difficulty in awakening a subject. This can be annoying and embarrassing but would only be
dangerous if the operator is not prepared to handle it properly. It should be emphasized that
many practitioners who have hypnotized hundreds of patients have never had this happen. It is
indeed rare but can occur. The danger here is that the hypnotist might become alarmed and
transmit his fears to the subject, with panic and hysterics then resulting.
If a patient does not awaken at once when it is suggested, there is always some reason for
it. The operator should find out why this has happened. With knowledge of the cause, the subject
is almost sure to awaken readily. The ideomotor questioning method can usually locate the
reason. It may not consciously be known by the subject, but his inner mind knows.
If time does not permit questioning, wiping the patient's face with a cold, wet towel, at
the same time blowing on his eyelids is almost sure to awaken him. To prevent shock or
resentment, he should first be told this is to be done. (70) When there is failure to awaken, the
operator must reassure his patient. He should be told there is no danger; that there is some
definite cause which can be learned and he will then awaken. The best reassurance is to suggest
that it might be well for him to go even deeper into hypnosis. Thus he will be more comfortable
and it will be easier to find the reasons for the difficulty. No one has ever stayed in hypnosis for
any long period of time. If nothing at all was done to facilitate awakening, the person probably
would soon drop off into normal sleep and eventually would awaken.
In this situation some tricky methods have been successful. One patient visiting a dentist
did not awaken at once. When told by the dentist that another patient was waiting to use the
dental chair but that the first patient could continue to occupy it if she were willing to pay the fee
for the time, she quickly awoke.
A psychiatrist who had difficulty awakening a patient used another technique. He asked
if the man would mind walking out into the waiting room and returning in the same way as he
had when he first came into the office. Returning, he awoke, for he had been awake on first
entering the office.
To show possible reasons preventing awakening, some actual cases can be cited. After a
demonstration when this happened it was learned that the subject had been a battle fatigue victim
during World War II. He had then been treated with sodium amytol. Unconsciously he
associated hypnosis with the state he had been in with this treatment. It had taken some time for
the effect of the drug to wear off. Therefore he expected the same thing to happen with hypnosis.
Explanation that the states were not the same enabled him to awaken thereafter.
In a course where student physicians were practicing induction, a woman physician
acting as a subject failed to awaken. The class had had instruction in handling this situation. The
colleague who had hypnotized her therefore was not alarmed but reported it to one of the
instructors. She was reassured, told to go even deeper and asked to come to the head of the class
so the other students could witness the handling of the situation. She sat down in a comfortable
chair and the instructor then noticed that she spasmodically stiffened herself at very frequent
intervals. He believed this had some meaning. Questioning with ideomotor replies revealed that
she was relating her hypnotic state to some past experience. This was narrowed down and
located as that morning. She had witnessed the showing of a motion picture on hypnotic
childbirth. A month before, her only son had d.ied suddenly. All day after seeing the movie, she
had thought of her own delivery of the boy. When hypnotized, she had spontaneously regressed
to her delivery. The spasmodic movements (71) represented her uterine contractions. She did not
want to awaken because she would then continue to think of her dead son. Brought back from
the regression and given posthypnotic suggestions of being interested in other things and
thinking no more at the time of her son, she quickly roused.
DANGER TO THE HYPNOTIST: In hypnosis there is a possible danger to the
operator rather than to the patient. Women patients have sometimes fantasied a sexual assault by
the therapist. This can happen also without hypnosis. While it is not feasible for a
psychotherapist to have someone else present, others should take the precaution when dealing
with a woman patient of at least having the door of the room open and someone nearby.
A dentist was visited by a new woman patient who was accompanied by her husband.
Hypnosis for her dental work was suggested and the couple agreed to it. She was then
hypnotized. Her husband was present throughout the interview and the hypnotic session.
Another appointment was made for her work but the next day the husband phoned to cancel this
appointment. Asked why, he said that his wife claimed the dentist had made sexual advances to
her while she was in hypnosis. The husband apologized profusely, saying he knew this was not
true as the dentist had never been alone with his wife, but he said his wife refused to return. It
was most fortunate for the dentist that he had not seen the woman alone. Such an incident is
made less likely by setting up ideomotor responses and asking first if it would be all right for the
subject to be hypnotized.
Another precaution for the therapist is to make sure that the hypnotic patient is fully
awake before dismissal. Most people awaken within a moment or two, but following a deep
trance several minutes are sometimes needed for complete arousal. Before awakening a patient,
any suggestions other than those intended to be posthypnotic in effect should be removed. For
exmJ1ple, if anesthesia had been produced, it is important to terminate it.
UNEXPECTED PATIENT REACTIONS: A beginner with hypnosis might become
very alarmed if a hypnotized patient reacted in some unexpected, perhaps hysterical manner. His
first thought might be to awaken the subject. Since much better control is (72) possible with the
patient hypnotized, reassurance should be given and the patient told to go even deeper.
It is not unusual for a subject to display sudden emotion on entering hypnosis. A woman
may burst into tears. Hypnosis seems to remove some inhibitions and to allow the subject to
display emotions which have been bottled up. Properly handled, this is an advantage. It is
helpful to the patient to be able to vent these emotions and to talk about what is disturbing.
Encouraged to ventilate and verbalize what is bothering her, the patient will soon quiet down
and feel relief. Sometimes the patient may not consciously know why she has become so
emotional. Ideomotor answers to questions can usually uncover the reasons.
In rare instances, a patient has been known to regress spontaneously when hypnotized.
Usually it is to some childhood experience, and the regression becomes apparent from the
patient's behavior and the way he talks. If this is suspected by the operator, the question might be
asked suddenly, "How old are you?" The answer would then show what has happened.
During the first hypnotic session with a 40-year-old male alcoholic, LeCron saw the man
begin to sniffle, to squirm in his chair and to show regressive signs. Asked how old he was, he
replied, "Six." Encouraged to talk and asked what was disturbing him, he said, "It's my birthday.
Dad bought me a goat as a present, but Mom won't let me bring it into the house. She's so mean
to me! She says it stinks." Just why he regressed to such an incident wasn't apparent, but further
investigation showed that he hated his mother and needed to bring this feeling out and resolve it.
It is always well for the therapist to remember that the subconscious takes everything
literally and to be careful to say what he means when giving suggestions. A rather strange
unexpected reaction to hypnotic suggestion took place in the following case.
A senior dental student attending a course on hypnotic techniques in dentistry undertook
to practice induction with his girl friend. She came from Pasadena but was attending a university
and living in a sorority house. Before awakening the girl, the dental student gave her what he
thought was a helpful suggestion. He told her "You will go home, and tonight you will get a
very good night's sleep." This was actually two suggestions.
The girl returned to the sorority house and slept very well, but the next morning she
demanded that someone take her to her home in Pasadena. As it was a school day, no one could
do so. She became hysterical. A sorority sister who had been present when she was hypnotized
the night before phoned the dental student. He re-hypnotized the girl and (73) found out the
trouble. He had told her to go home. Home was Pasadena, not the sorority house. She felt
compelled to go home as had been suggested posthypnotically. This suggestion was removed,
and she calmed down and was all right again.
Most professional men have had little or no training in psychodynamics or much
instruction in treating psychosomatic illnesses other than with drugs. Most physicians in general
practice or specializing do not wish to become psychotherapists. With the methods given in Part
II of this book, much can be accomplished with such patients without extensive knowledge of
psychotherapy. This can be safely carried out with this information and with the safeguards
given here. Dangers are so minimal that they can be disregarded. Of course some knowledge of
psychotherapeutic methods is to any physician's advantage, but this need not be extensive if
basic principles are followed. (74)

38. CH 10: ORIENTATION TO HYPNOSIS: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON:

CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
We have seen that hypnosis can be induced spontaneously by lulling stimuli, in driving
an automobile, that it can occur spontaneously during times of great emotional or physical stress
and that it can be produced by disorientation in space and by confusion in thoughts. We have
learned that the state of hypnosis is characterized by restriction of attention through any of the
five senses, by diminution of physical and mental wastage of effort and by literalness of
understanding of words. We have seen that the hypnotized subject may relate the present state of
hypnosis to a previously experienced traumatic event even when the means of induction are very
different. We have found that movements are slow and that speech is more difficult as depth of
hypnosis is increased.
There is a great speed of thought in relating meaningful events at a deep subconscious
level. Ideomotor signals may show that such events may take many repetitions of the
subconsciously remembered experience before they are recognized consciously. Let us take note
of these matters and come back to them presently, for they are of great importance if we are to
use hypnosis meaningfully in our research and in the healing arts.
Animals, plants and saprophytes from the most primitive to the most complex seem to
share a tendency to go into resting states when living conditions are unfavorable. Spore
formation, hibernation, sleep and hypnosis share the common factor of diminished need for
oxygen and nutrition. Sleep overtakes the unfortunates who are freezing to death before they die,
but if they are lucky enough to be partially insulated by air while buried under snow, they will
fall asleep during a blizzard and awaken a few days later, wondering about the passage of time
and the fact that they have not needed to eat or to excrete urine or feces. Such is the
pseudo-hibernation of human beings and some of their domestic animals. If the temperature goes
too low and their insulation is insufficient, they will freeze to death.
In some mammals, however, there have developed further protective features of resting
states. If the surrounding temperature drops too low, (76) there will be an arousal response that
first increases the metabolism and circulation in the forepart of the body and finally causes
awakening and bodily activity. The effect is like that of a thermostat in a furnace.
Some of the living fossils, Dipnoid fishes in Africa, South America and Australia, are
able to survive long periods of drought by digging into the mud and sleeping for months at a
time in the absence of water and air. Some species of swallows will enter a hibernation-like state
when deprived of insects necessary for their food. Anatol Melichnin has given us an interesting
account of his experience with starvation in a Nazi prison camp in Russia in 1941. He has
pointed out the improvement in suggestibility of Pavlov's dogs when they were starved before
testing their ability to conform to expected patterns of conditioning.
It has been pointed out by students of hibernation that pain tolerance is very high in some
hibernating mammals such as the ground hog but that they will awaken during otherwise
painless surgery if they hear a human sneeze. Such sounds do not normally occur where these
animals are hibernating. They are phylogenetically alerted by potentially threatening sounds but
have had no conditioning for the effects of a sharp scalpel or gentle handling in preparation for
surgery. Perhaps some of these features of animal behavior will make sense when we consider
some of the other characteristics of behavior under stress and characteristics of learning process.
An opossum caught in its natural environment by a dog will struggle awhile and then
suddenly appear to be long dead. Its skin temperature drops to that of its surroundings, its eyes
glaze over, and it loses all reHexes except that of its prehensile tail. The effect of this sudden
change is to shock the dog and cause it possibly to drop this disturbing cold thing and go looking
for the real opossum that seemed to have escaped. Though seemingly insensate, the opossum
knows when the dog has gone far enough away for it to escape into the forest or up a tree.
Curiously, this all-out effect of danger does not occur when the opossum has been kept a few
days in captivity. Instead there may occur a sort of catalepsy, a rigid immobility. The body
temperature may be only slightly diminished during the time of accommodation and apparent
discovery that chance for survival is good. In the interim the animal will not eat and there is no
elimination from bladder or bowel. Explanation for the sudden drop in temperature and
assumption of a seemingly dead appearance probably resides with the apparent occurrence of
massive intravascular coagulation which is later corrected by massive production of fibrinolytic
enzymes. These enzymes dissolve the intravascular clots and allow resumption of circulation.
(77)
This mechanism is not restricted to marsupials such as the opossum. :'vlcKay et al. have
suggested that human shock, the findings in eclampsia, placental separation and the generalized
Schwartman-Sanarelli phenomenon are related. John Hunter, shortly before his death from
coronary occlusion, a possibly related phenomenon, reported on the interesting fact that human
beings killed suddenly, when they might be expected to be initially frightened, will have fluid
blood in their vessels and that this blood does not coagulate when removed from the body. His
report on "The Blood and Gunshot Wounds" was delayed in being published in 1794 after his
death, because the Royal Society objected to Hunter's seeming belief that the blood really was
able to think for itself. Later it was learned that Hunter was the first to discover the fact that the
fluidity of cadaver blood after sudden death resulted from fibrinolytic enzyme activity. This
phenomenon was put to use by Yudine in Russia in 1930 as he developed methods of using
human cadaver blood for massive blood replacement after hemorrhage. The phenomenon occurs
only when death has been sudden and associated with greatly increased epinephrine secretion.
With consideration of these apparently widely separated observations on resting states,
limitation of motion, high pain tolerance, massive intravascular coagulation and rebound
fibrinolysis, we may wonder a bit about threatening situations present with human beings during
sleep, anesthesia, surgery and pregnancy. We can well wonder why some cancer patients will go
into shock during surgery, look dead for a time and then rally only to start bleeding from every
possible source. We can wonder why perfectly healthy men and women may go into cardiac
arrest or may show the shock-massive-bleeding phenomenon during surgery or while being
suddenly jolted in positioning them after induction of anesthesia. vVe have been gathering
evidence since 1957 to show that unconscious human beings are thinking and listening under
general anesthesia, though at an unconscious level. They may believe they have cancer even
when they have been told the contrary by their doctors. They may have such a pessimistic frame
of reference or masochistic need for self-punishment that they misunderstand normally
innocuous statements by the operating room team.
 Why should inflammatory reactions to trauma and infection be the same in organs
incapable of transmitting painful messages to the brain as they are in organs well supplied with
pain-transmitting nerve pathways? Is it possible that the human mind is kept aware of tissue
damage even though consciously unable to recognize any painful stimuli? This seems indeed to
be the case. We can find improvement in joint mobility and decrease in muscle guarding and
edema when a hypnotized patient (78) has accepted subconscious relief from consciously
unrecognized pain, indicated only by appropriate movement of a finger. We can now more
sensibly consider the possibility that a patient can be oblivious to pain during an operation under
anesthesia but may be so alarmed by conversation in the operating room that his brain is
intensely "zeroed in" on all painful stimuli from the operative area on awakening as seems to be
the case with the hyperawareness of causalgia or reflex-sympathetic-dystrophy occurring after
injuries coupled with great emotional upheaval.
LEARNING:
There are four major types of learning:
(1) genetic, through the DNA and RNA,
(2) imprinting (single impact learning),
(3) mimicry (observation of parent animal) and
(4) repetition (commonly recognized type in schooling).
The first of these is beyond our grasp at the moment. Imprinting has only been
recognized during the past century, and for the most part our understanding of it has been
limited to observation of birds and some lower mammals. That imprinting of some sort plays a
major role in human learning has received only vague attention. Breuer recognized that
traumatic events could produce a state akin to hypnosis which he termed "hypnoid." Bernheim
observed that catalepsy and a sort of hypnotic behavior occurred in some patients seriously ill
with typhoid fever. Breuer noted that the induction of hypnosis often reminded the patient of a
traumatic episode and would evoke responses appropriate to the traumatic event being relived. \
Ve have noted the great tendency of the human mind in hypnosis to revert to a frightening
experience when a request has been made for recall of a pleasant experience. Perhaps there is a
logical reason for this phenomenon if we consider the possibility that one of the brain's functions
should be the storage of salutary impressions and appropriate reactions associated with escape
from danger and the maintenance of these "package deal" reactions in readiness in case of a
similar experience. It would be helpful for the animal to waste no time in trying to decide
whether to climb a tree or run from a threatening animal. There could be no possible value in
storing up for immediate action the memories of pleasant happenings.
Two medical students opened their eyes and refused to go on with a group induction of
hypnosis which Cheek was demonstrating to the class. Separately these two boys asked the
demonstrator why they had felt alarmed and could smell ether while Cheek had been talking
about relaxing in the sunshine in a mountain meadow. They each discovered (79) with
ideomotor questioning that they had previously entered a state something like the hypnosis they
were experiencing in the lecture. The previous state occurred in association with a frightening
induction of anesthesia. Both entered hypnosis rapidly and comfortably after deciding that they
need not be so reminded again.
Lorenz has pointed out that a single exposure of mallard ducklings to a moving piece of
wood shaped like a mother duck could cause a fixed and permanent memory. The ducklings
exposed once to this decoy in the absence of their real mother would thereafter go to the decoy
in preference to their real mother. Similar observations have been made by D. A. Spaulding with
chicks in 1873. It seems clear now that emotionally weighted experiences at critical stress
periods during human existence are able to evoke more or less permanent responses for which
there may be conscious amnesia. These responses caused by a single experience may be very
much like the effects of classical posthypnotic suggestions. Herbert Spiegel has drawn a
comparison between imprinting and posthypnotic suggestion with its amnesia for the original
suggestion, the compulsion to carry out the suggested act, and a rationalization for the act to be
completed.
It is beginning to appear likely that experiences or misunderstandings of experiences at
birth, at times of great stress and during periods of unconsciousness may be single-impact
producers of patterned behavior. These may be harmful to the individual. With the tools of
communication with deep subconscious memories furnished by Milton Erickson and Leslie
Leeron with better understanding of ideomotor activity, we seem to be approaching sources of
learning which are identical with or very similar to the imprinting of Lorenz. We are learning
how to communicate better and are opening wide horizons for research into the physiological
and psychological meanings of natural sleep. We are learning from patients how best to
communicate hope and what mechanisms and uses of words can destroy hope and crush the will
to live.
The feature of mimicry as a learning process is seen in all birds and mammals that care
for their young. At times of danger we see that the young become silent and immobile. They
turn to the parent and mimic the behavior of the parent or remain immobile while the parent
either attacks or leads the enemy away. These facets of restricted attention, immobility, silence
and mimicry for animals in danger are classical features of hypnotic behavior.
Every mammal mother licks her young at birth and with each feeding. It is mere
speculation but it is a possibility that the mesmeric passes of Europeans healers and the blowing
on the face and stroking the body as done by the medicine men of Assam are just variations of
the natural (80) process whereby mother mammals reduce the requirements for oxygen in their
young at birth and lull them to sleep after nursing. Strength is given this speculation by
discovery that the electrical field potentials are altered by stroking the body and that similar
changes are effected during natural sleep and chemoanesthesia.
We are still groping for a better understanding of the meanings of hypnosis for better
concepts of its values and limitations. Perhaps we can make better use of hypnosis if we consider
it a phenomenon of natural selection enabling animals in trouble to survive, that it is far more
than a man-made contrivance allowing one person to suggest behavior to an uncritical and
obedient receptor for suggestions. Perhaps we can better understand why hypnotizability can be
well categorized for volunteer student subjects but lose all meaning when a sincere and highly
motivated doctor works with a sick and frightened patient. The subjective, literal willingness to
accept sincerely given hopeful suggestions is ever present when a human being is in danger. We
have only to recognize the potential in order to use it for the benefit of our patients. We can
better understand why fears of causing trouble with hypnosis can create the trouble we fear.
We can better understand why victims of assault may confuse a wouldbe hypnotherapist
with the person who once assaulted them. We can understand better why the review of traumatic
experiences in life occurs so quickly during a hypnotic interview and when the review is carried
out at a level of awareness reflected by ideomotor responses and unrecognized at a verbal level
of awareness. We can better understand the spontaneous elimination of conscious pain, for
conscious pain serves no good purpose at a time of danger. Subconscious awareness of tissue
damage is another matter. It takes a deep hypnotic trance to eliminate subconscious pain. When
we think of the hypnotic state as a generally protective one with a long phylogenetic history, we
can begin to understand that no single group of intellectuals should decide whether this thing
should or should not be studied in our medical and dental schools. This channel of understanding
the patterns of conditioning in a threatening environment should be carefully studied from many
angles. We are just beginning to learn about it. (81)

39. CH 11: UNCOVERING TECHNIQUES: DAVID CHEEK AND LESLIE LECRON:

CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
Methods of treating psychosomatic illness, neurosis and other emotionally caused
conditions are by no means standardized nor can they be claimed to be as successful as therapists
would wish. For many years, ever since the beginning of this century, Freudian concepts have
been the accepted ones in English-speaking countries. More recently some of Freud's ideas have
been modified and some discarded. Many therapists do not believe as Freud did that everything
is based on childhood conditioning, with emphasis on sex, and they look more to present
happenings as the genesis of many conditions. For psychotherapy to be more successful we need
to know much more than we do about the subconscious mind and how it functions, for these
troubles as a rule are centered in the inner mind.
Psychoanalysts still follow Freud rigidly. In fact, Freudian analysis has become a cult
with set rituals. The patient must lie on a couch with the analyst sitting at its head where he is
not seen. This ritual is only because Freud worked in this way, by his own admission being
somewhat shy and uncomfortable if his patient could watch him.
To become an analyst there are the years of medical school, psychiatric and analytic
training with at least 300 hours of training analysis. Then the analyst practices. A complete
analysis requires about 300 to 600 hours. If the analyst works a 40-hour week for 50 weeks of
the year he puts in 2,000 hours. Thus he would presumably deal with five patients a year if the
average analysis consumed 400 hours. Of course many patients do not complete their analysis
and he would see more patients, but to us it seems that this is the worst possible waste of a
medical education, with only the wealthy able to afford lengthy analysis.
The United States remains the only country where Freud has great acceptance, although
the British Commonwealth countries still lend him much credence. Elsewhere in the world,
psychotherapists follow the teachings of Pavlov, seeking conditioned reflexes which are
regarded as the basic causes of emotional illnesses. It is difficult to assess the results of
psychotherapy. Some Pavlovians claim results as 80 per cent (82) successful (Wolpe and
Russian texts). Most effectively administered placebos give 70-80 per cent improvement.
It should be said that hypnosis is more commonly used in some other countries than it is
in the United States; in others is little known. It is used extensively in Russia where the highest
claims are made.
Regardless of method, hypnosis seems to improve results and accelerate the course of
therapy. The general practitioner or specialist cannot spend as many hours with a patient as a
psychiatrist does. Hypnotherapy for psychosomatic illnesses may require only a few minutes in a
single session, more likely a few hours, but seldom more than 15 or 20 sessions at the most.
ANALYTIC PROCEDURES: The main tools in analysis are free association and
dream interpretation. Free association consists of having the patient try to verbalize every
thought that enters his mind during the analytic hour. No matter how embarrassing his thoughts,
he must say what comes to mind. This is difficult for anyone. Some patients learn to do it well,
though it may take some time, time largely wasted. Some spend hours talking of inconsequential
things while repressing important data. Others find it impossible to talk so freely. Eventually,
repressed ideas or memories may come out or the patient may resolve the repressed problem
without ever knowing consciously why improvement has occurred.
Dream interpretation also aims at bringing "insight." An analyst may become adept at
seeing the inner meaning of dreams and the sources of problems can be reached through the
patient's dreams. For the nonpsychiatrist or non-analyst, this is not very practical unless the
physician is willing to make a study of dreams and their interpretation. Even the trained
psychotherapist may encounter dreams he is not able to interpret, and, unfortunately, his
interpretations may not always be correct. Recent studies ( Cheek) indicate that the most cogent
dreams are mostly repressed.
These methods require long-time therapy, much of it unproductive.
The therapist who uses hypnosis and resorts to dream interpretation does not wait for
dreams to be presented by the patient. He can have his patient dream while under hypnosis or
can suggest a dream to occur during the night. Many dreams have no bearing on the patient's
problems, but hypnotic suggestion can cause dreams about some specific problem. Even the
symbols to be used in the dream can be suggested, (83) thus making understanding the dream
easy. If it is difficult to see the meaning of a particular dream, suggestion can cause the same
dream to be produced again but with a different set of symbols or "cast of characters." This can
be carried out again and again until the inner meaning becomes obvious. Furthermore,
ipterpretation of a dream can be checked for accuracy by asking questions with ideomotor
signals made in reply. Repetition of repressed dreams at an unconscious level of awareness
makes them more accessible for verbal reporting.
The other analytic tool, free association, is much easier and freer if the patient is in
hypnosis. In fact, patients who associate best often will slip spontaneously into hypnosis,
although the analyst may not realize this if he is not familiar with the behavior of hypnotized
people. For the non-psychotherapist, these methods can be disregarded, for there are far better
ways of delving into subconscious thought processes.
AUTOMATIC WRITING: Probably the ideal way of gaining information from the
subconscious and thus uncovering the causes and motives for any condition being treated is by
means of automatic writing. This is a most interesting phenomenon. It consists of placing a
ball-point pen or soft pencil in the hand of a subject. Then his mind is diverted from the hand,
allowing his subconscious mind to take control of the hand. In automatic writing, the subject
may not consciously know what is being written until he reads it later. He may read something
while the hand busily writes. A few "automators" have been so good at it that they can read with
the conscious mind and have both hands write at the same time, each writing on a different
subject. Thus three mental activities can be carried on at the same time.
Automatic writing may be very rapid with the hand racing across the paper, or it may be
very slow. The handwriting never looks like the person's normal writing. Rarely are words
separated. They will be run together. This makes the writing difficult to read. Sometimes the
letters are not clearly formed.
In writing automatically, the subconscious mind takes shortcuts and may write
cryptically. The word "before" might be written B4; a figure 2 or the word "to" may appear for
any of its three meanings. Why take the trouble to add extra letters? The writing may be
performed in a normal way from left to right or might be upside dmvn, backward, mirror
writing, or a combination of all these styles. Sometimes the subconscious seems to take delight
in punning, though otherwise it will show little humor. (84)
 The late Anita Muhl, a psychiatrist, was the leading authority on automatic writing and
used it continually in her therapy. She claimed to be able to teach it successfully to 80 per cent
of her patients, though this might require 20 or 30 hours of practice. Others have not had such
good results. It is easiest developed with the patient under hypnosis. Most deep trance subjects
will be able to write automatically.
In learning to write automatically, it is best to use a bread board or lap board of some
kind, as the arm can move more freely when at a lower level than it would be at a desk. For
paper, a roll of wide shelf paper spread over the board is ideal. More can be unrolled then as
required. The pen should write a broad line, or a soft pencil should be used. It should be held
upright between the thumb and forefinger instead of in the usual writing position.
Automatic writing is a very valuable technique if it can be developed without too much
time required. With it the subconscious can express itself freely, bringing out any information it
wishes to disclose. It can write out the answers to questions. Unfortunately it is not always
cooperative. If resistance is encountered in therapy, it may refuse to write at all or may avoid
repressed material. The technique which follows is only a variation of automatic writing; signals
take the place of writing. The Ouija board is another variation.
USE OF IDEOMOTOR MOVEMENTS IN OBTAINING ANSWERS TO
QUESTIONS: We regard this as the most valuable of all uncovering methods. In one session
more information can be learned than in many hours of free association, 'unless there is strong
resistance. The technique consists of wording questions so they can be answered affirmatively or
negatively. This sets up a code of signals which the inner mind utilizes in replying. These signals
are unconsciously controlled movements of some object or the patient's fingers. Ideomotor
signaling can be carried out effectively while the person is awake as well as while in hypnosis.
A light object such as a finger ring, an iron washer, a nut or any other light weight can be
used in one method. To this is tied a thread about eight or ten inches long. Holding the thread
between the thumb and forefinger, the object is allowed to dangle freely, the elbow being rested
on the arm of the chair or on the subject's knee. A kind of pendulum is thus formed. The subject
holds this in his right hand (or left hand if left-handed).
Four basic movements of the pendulum are possible. It may swing in a clockwise circle,
or counterclockwise, straight back and forth across in (85) front of the person, or in and out
away from him. Each of these motions can then have a meaning. One can mean "Yes," another
"No," a third can signify "I don't know," and the fourth can mean "I don't want to answer the
question." This last may be important at times. These signals then form a code allowing direct
communication with the subconscious mind.
The therapist may assign a particular meaning to each of these answers. However, it is
more interesting to the subject and there is better cooperation from the inner mind if it is allowed
to make its own decisions as. to which signal to use for each of the four answers. It also proves
definitely to the subject that his subconscious thinks and reasons when it makes its own
decisions.
The subject is shown the four motions and is told what the four replies are to be. While
he holds the pendulum so that it dangles, the subconscious is asked to select one of the four
motions which is then to represent "yes." When the pendulum has swung in reply to this request,
the subconscious is then asked to select a motion to mean "no," then for "I don't know." The
remaining one is to mean refusal to answer.
It is better for the subject to watch the pendulum, although it will move even if the eyes
are closed. He should be instructed to try to hold the pendulum motionless and not to think how
he wants it to move. He should let his inner mind control the movements and make its own
decisions as to which one it is to use for each reply.
This technique is very impressive to the subject. 'When the pendulum moves
involuntarily, it invariably brings exclamations of surprise. The reader should certainly try this
technique himself. He will find his responses can readily be established. It is not necessary for
the questions to be verbalized in doing it yourself. You merely think them.
Usually the pendulum will begin to move almost at once when the subconscious is asked
to select one of the four movements. Sometimes there is a lag of two or three moments. In our
own experience and that of several hundred of those who have attended our classes and learned
the technic, the pendulum will work with about 95 per cent of those who try it.
It is well for the therapist to explain to his patient that the inner part of the mind controls
many muscular movements, thus avoiding any thought that it is magical. Breathing is an
example, as is walking. It is much easier for the subconscious to control the movements of the
fingers which causes the pendulum to swing than to coordinate and regulate all the muscles
involved in walking, or even in breathing.
A similar code of communication can be established by movements of the fingers. Any
four of the ten fingers can be utilized for the replies. However, we have found it best to
designate certain fingers on one hand (86) because it is easier for the therapist to watch only one
hand. Also, if the same code is used with all patients it is easily remembered without taking
notes. The dominant hand should be selected. The fingers are specified instead of allowing the
subconscious to select. The forefinger could signify "yes," the middle finger "no," the little
finger for doubt and the thumb for refusal to answer.
We are somewhat at variance in the use of this technique. Usually Cheek prefers the
finger movements either in the waking state or with the patient under hypnosis. LeCron uses the
pendulum when the patient is awake, the fingers if he is in hypnosis. It really makes little
difference except that the hypnotized person's eyes will probably be closed and he cannot see the
pendulum if it is used. Sometimes it will be found that finger movements cannot be established,
but the pendulum will move readily. Sometimes the opposite is true, and rarely neither will
operate.
During questioning of a patient, sometimes something interesting and unusual occurs.
Instead of the pendulum moving in one of the four basic directions, it will swing diagonally.
With finger movements the ring finger may lift instead of one of the other four. This indicates
that the subconscious is trying to offer information. It cannot answer the questions properly. This
signal may mean "perhaps" or "maybe," or it could mean that the question is not understood.
Perhaps it cannot be answered affirmatively or negatively. It may have been ambiguous or
improperly worded. Further questions can determine the meaning of this undesignated response.
It is further proof of the reasoning power of the subconscious mind.
What questions to ask and their wording requires some skill, and future chapters will
teach this in describing the treatment of illustrative cases. A question must be clear as to
meaning. Here we get into semantics. Often we do not say what we mean. A commonly used
expression is "That makes me mad." We mean we are angry but we actually say we are insane.
The inner mind invariably takes everything literally. As an example, if the question is asked
"Will you tell me where you were born?", a person in hypnosis (perhaps not if in only a light
state) will reply with a nod or will say "yes." If awake he will invariably name the place where
he was born, interpreting the question. The literal answer is "yes." More examples of the
literalness of the subconscious will be given later.
 With this questioning technique, how accurate are the answers to the questions? From
our experience the subconscious rarely offers false information in answering. It seems to prefer
to refuse to reply rather than to lie. This might not always be true, particularly if the patient is a
pathological liar, but we have found that false information is rarely given. (87) Often it is
obvious that the reply is correct. Sometimes it is well to take the answer with a grain of salt until
verification is possible.
In trying to be cooperative, a patient may lift a finger or move the pendulum voluntarily.
Close observation will quickly detect this. When the pendulum swings, the movement of the
fingers or hand in swinging it is not noticeable. With a consciously controlled movement, such a
motion can be seen. With finger signals, the finger will almost invariably tremble slightly as it
comes up and the movement is very slow. With a very few people the lifting is more rapid and
the finger may jerk. If it is suspected that the patient has consciously controlled a response, he
can be questioned and told to let the finger or pendulum move of its own accord. Some patients
will lose track of their hands during finger movements, dissociating the hand. They are not
aware of the finger moving although it may be quite pronounced. Therefore the therapist should
always announce the result so the patient knows what information has been received.
HANDLING RESISTANCE DURING THERAPY: During questioning, resistance may
be encountered with refusal to answer by a signal. This situation calls for careful handling.
Resistance can be broken and information gained, but it would be dangerous sometimes to force
this too strongly because the patient might not be able to tolerate the knowledge. A safeguard
here is to ask if it is all right for him to bring out a suspected conflict or trauma. If the answer is
affirmative it is safe to do so, but if negative the matter should be dropped for the time being.
Resistance may be due to reluctance to bring out some unpleasent memory, some idea
may be too unacceptable to entertain, or there may be a conflict which cannot be faced.
Resistance is an indication that the subconscious does not want something exposed. Steps can be
taken so it may become available at some later time.
During questioning, if a reply is not made, the hypnotized patient can be instructed to
imagine a blackboard in front of him, his eyes being closed. Then he is told to see an imaginary
hand write words, a phrase or a sentence on the blackboard in white chalk. Sometimes this will
appear, perhaps only a word which will offer a clue. When the subconscious blocks in answering
a question, another technique may bring results. This is one utilized by Freud in his early work
when he was using hypnosis, although he learned it from Bernheim. He would say that he was
about to squeeze the patient's head between his (88) hands and that this would press a thought
into the patient's conscious mind, which he could then verbalize. Often an important idea would
then pop into the person's mind. A variation of this method is merely to make the suggestion "I
am going to count to three and a sudden thought about this matter will come to you." Snapping a
finger or tapping a desk seems to crystallize nebulous thoughts and make them accessible for
verbal reporting.
A patient may remark that the answer to a question is certainly "no" (or "yes") while the
ideomotor reply is contradicting the spoken statement or some head movement. This is very
impressive to the patient, and it usually represents the more correct answer.
Aside from gaining valuable information and insight, the questioning technique has
another benefit. When the therapist makes interpretations and explanations, the patient may
doubt if they are correct. When information comes from. his own inner mind through these
responses, he accepts it. The therapist is not telling him; he is telling the therapist. In
psychotherapy it is known that insight from within is preferable to that derived from a therapist's
explanations. More than conscious understanding is needed. There must also be a kind of
digestion of the knowledge. These replies from within aid in the "digestive process."
The patient suffering from a psychosomatic illness is likely to believe his condition to be
entirely a physical one. He may continue to be skeptical after the physician has explained how
the mind can affect the body and cause illness. An excellent way to bring realization to him that
this is true in his own case is through the questioning technique. The physician might handle it in
this manner: "Perhaps there's some emotional or psychological cause for your condition, or
possibly it's entirely a physical matter. Your inner mind knows which is true. Let's see what it
will tell us about this." Then the question is asked "Is there some psychological or emotional
reason for this condition?"
When the answer is affirmative, as it is sure to be if the condition is psychosomatic, the
patient accepts the idea without qualification. His subconscious has said there is such a cause;
the therapist has not said it. A good therapeutic relationship has then been established.
Sometimes a physician will say to a patient, "It's all in your mind," a statement often resented
and probably disbelieved.
OUR MENTAL MAKEUP: In dealing with the subconscious in the ways we have
described, it may seem as though there is another person inside us. This is a wrong conception,
for the subconscious is merely one part of the total mind. It (89) does think and reason, though
in a different way than we do consciously. It has been said that the subconscious reasons only
deductively while consciously we can also reason inductively, Unfortunately we know little
about the actual makeup of the mind. Strangely enough there has been little further investigation
to learn more about it since the days of Freud: We know something of the way it works but not
nearly enough.
Today the most usual conception of the mind's makeup is that advanced by Freud. He
considered the mind as consisting of the id, which contains our basic instincts and drives, the
preconscious, the ego or self, and the super-ego. The super-ego is mainly our conscience,
according to the Freudian concept. Freud thought awareness present only in the ego and
apparently believed the id incapable of reasoning.
There have been other theories about our mental makeup advanced before the days of
Freud. Such men as Janet, Prince, Myers and James credited knowledge, reason and awareness
to the subconscious. Anyone dealing directly with the inner mind through hypnosis certainly
must revise the Freudian concept. The hypnotherapist quickly learns to respect the extraordinary
amount of knowledge accumulated in the subconscious and its ability to control bodily
processes. Everything that ever happened to us is stored in the memory in complete detail, and
hypnosis can bring out forgotten memories even back to infancy.
While it is a very difficult matter to prove scientifically, even memories of birth seem to
be stored in memory. They can be brought to consciousness through hypnotic age regression.
LeCron wrote a p\lper on this subject: when memory actually does begin. Nandor Fodor
attempted to prove through the interpretation of dreams that there are not only actual memeroies
of birth but even prenatal memories.
Any good hypnotic subject can readily produce fantasies, and an apparent birth memory
might only be a fantasy. Nevertheless it is a possibility that such memories are retained in the
subconscious memory bank. Our own opinion is that such recall may be a valid one. This same
opinion is shared by a number of psychiatrists and others who have had patients apparently
regress to birth, sometimes spontaneously. Cheek believes that birth experiences may be similar
to imprinting which makes a permanent behavior characteristic with one stimulus.
 Some case histories will be cited later where such a memory seemed to have an effect
later in life, as in asthma and in cases of chronic headache. Freud, Rank and others have termed
birth a trauma, possibly having such effects, which would indicate that there must be a memory
of birth or no such effects would occur. (90)
Using automatic writing, Muhl has reported being able to contact seven different layers
or levels of the subconscious, each of which would identify itself. She claimed that these ranged
from the equivalent of Freud's basic id, which would call itself the Old Nick or the Devil in us,
to what seemed to be Jung's Super-conscious. Jung felt that this is much more than the
conscience and is something having a connection with a collective subconscious or perhaps with
God. Muhl worked with some 50 subjects in her research on this matter and claimed all 50
brought out these seven segments. It is possible that her own ideas as to this might have been
impressed on her subjects and they then responded as she expected them to do. Her claims
certainly warrant more investigation.
Although Freud greatly furthered our knowledge of the inner part of the mind, it is interesting to
know that such a part of the mind was recognized by the ancient Greek and Roman physicians as
well as by many later psychologists and psychiatrists who pro ceded Freud, such as Janet, James
and others.
OTHER PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES: Still other projective techniques are possible
in hypnotherapy. The patient may be instructed to imagine that he is looking at a stage or a
motion picture or TV screen. A scene is to develop there and he is to relate what he sees appear
on the stage or screen. The illusion or fantasy is to be about some problem and what he describes
will afford interpretation and insight.
Sometimes a posthypnotic suggestion can bring a bit of insight with a problem. The
patient is told that sometime within the next day or two, the time being left indefinite, a sudden
thought or idea or memory will come to him which will clarify the problem. This is not always
successful if there is much resistance, but often insight is gained when the thought appears.
While any light object which will dangle freely makes a satisfactory pendulum,
"professional models" are obtainable. For example, such a model available from the Wilshire
Book Company, Dept. K, 8721 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, California 90069, is a clear plastic ball
just over an inch in diameter attached to an 8-inch chain.
For induction of hypnosis this pendulum also makes an excellent object for eye fixation.
In fact the therapist will often notice that his patient has slipped spontaneously into hypnosis as
he gazes at the pendulum during questioning. This is a good induction method, for then the
operator (91) merely deepens the resulting trance. This occurs at least half the time with use of
the pendulum and often while finger movements are being obtained. (92)

40. CH 12: THE HYPNOTHERAPY OF PSYCHOSOMATIC ILLNESSES: DAVID CHEEK

AND LESLIE LECRON: CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NY: 1968
THE GENERAL PRACITTIONER encounters a wide variety of illnesses which have behind
them tension and stress, and in many there will be emotional and psychological factors as causes.
These diseases will also be treated by the specialists in whose field they fall. It will be
impossible in one book to cover all of these, and we will deal with only a few of the more
common ones. However, the general principles involved will apply to any of these conditions
with similar factors in their causation. Treatment would be similar in many ways for all of them.
While this is not a text on psychotherapy, if the physician will look for certain causes
which may be present in any of these illnesses and apply the hypnotherapeutic methods given
here, he will be successful in helping many patients, far more than drugs can cure. With some
conditions, medical treatment may also be indicated.
Ideomotor answers to questions can locate the causes present in any particular case, no
matter what its type, and will eliminate other possibilities. There are seven causative factors
which we might term keys to the genesis of these conditions. They are also involved in those
more serious mental disturbances which would be dealt with by referral to psychiatrists or
psychologists. With these seven keys the door to the understanding of these ailments can be
opened and insight gained by both patient and the physician. They can be treated in the way we
will describe.
THE SEVEN KEYS:
CONFLICT: A simple definition of conflict could be that it is a situation where we
want something or want to do something but are prevented by our moral (93) code or the taboos
of society. It might be stated even more simply as I want colliding with you can't. Soon after
birth an infant encounters life's prohibitions: no, don't, you mustn't, etc., and he is frustrated by
not having his desires fulfilled.
There are many sources of conflict. One of the most common concerns sex. Conflict may
be a source of strong guilt feelings, particularly if the person acts against moral codes. A conflict
may originally be at a conscious level but later may be repressed and the person then is
consciously unaware of it. Often there is no repression and the conflict is consciously recognized
but is not resolved. While in hypnosis a patient can more easily talk of his conflicts and
problems. He can more easily bring to consciousness a repressed conflict.
Every therapist must be objective but must have empathy with his patient for a good
relationship to be established. He does not judge; he listens and encourages reorientation of
attitude on the patient's part, giving him reassurance and clarifying harmful viewpoints and
ideas. He serves as a "wailing wall."
Hypnotherapy is active and dynamic rather than passive, as in orthodox analysis. It deals
in a direct way with the subconscious part of the mind. To some extent it is forceful, although
the therapist should not be too forceful and often must proceed with caution in order not to bring
out something which might be threatening to the patient if too rapidly raised to conscious
awareness. Safeguards as to this will be pointed out. The therapist is more thoughtfully directive
than is the analyst.
As a result, hypnotherapy usually is brief and results may come very rapidly. Resistances
and repressions can occur and can defy the therapist as is the case with other forms of therapy.
The difficulty in these conditions is centered in the subconscious part of the mind, not in
consciousness.
A case of persistent conflict was shown by a young man who visited LeCron because he
suffered much anxiety whenever he was with a group of people or even with individuals. He was
a successful salesman in spite of this. At a meeting of any kind he always had to sit in the rear of
the room near a door so he could leave if his anxiety became too great. He hated to shake hands
with anyone and avoided it when he could.
Ideomotor answers to questions with the pendulum quickly revealed a conflict as the
cause of his anxiety. The reason came out in his third session. While he knew of the conflict
consciously, he had never connected it with his symptoms. In hypnosis he told of his boyhood
masturbation. He was unmarried and had continued to masturbate. He had heard the usual false
ideas about masturbation, including the statement (94) that the hands of anyone who masturbated
would be moist and would perspire. This was his reason for not liking to shake hands.
 His anxiety was based on a fear that his associates or others to whom he talked would
know of his masturbation, that it would be evident to them. To overcome this, he was asked if he
could tell by his observation of others if they masturbated. He admitted that he couldn't and saw
his fear as illogical. He was also straightened out as to his mistaken beliefs, and some of his guilt
feelings were assuaged. Hypnotic suggestion was employed to help him digest the insight he had
gained. After a fourth session his anxiety around people had disappeared.
MOTIVATION: Does an illness or symptom serve some purpose? Here there can be
much variance. A simple motive would be if the ailment or symptom gained sympathy and
attention. This would be immature behavior but might be entirely at an unconscious level. Most
of us have immaturities along some lines.
A motive in hysterical blindness could be that the condition prevents the person from
seeing something unpleasant or could serve as punishment for having seen something about
which he feels guilty. As an unconscious means of escaping from hated housework, a woman
might develop an allergy to detergents. These are merely possible motivations, the condition
thus serving some purpose.
The motive behind a symptom or illness frequently is defensive, the condition acting as a
protection. An example would be migraine headaches which are used as a defense against
unacceptable feelings of hostility and aggression, emotions which almost invariably are found in
migraine patients. Motivations are sometimes deeply hidden but much more often can quickly
be located through the questioning technic. Often insight alone is enough to overcome the
condition.
IDENTIFICATION: Anyone who has children in the family has noticed how a child
tends to copy the parents and at times tries to be like them. In early childhood we all identify
with those close to us, and this can be carried over into adult life. Identification means
dramatization. It may be difficult to know whether some trait or even illness is inherited or is
merely a result of identification. If a mother, or perhaps the father, is greatly overweight, (95)
Dr. Jones had a very busy practice and worked long hours. His physician had warned him
to ease up as he had a slight heart condition. He did not follow this advice. One cause for the
bursitis was an attempt on the part of his subconscious mind to permit him an excuse for a long
needed rest. If he couldn't use his right arm, he couldn't practice. Thus bursitis was a defense.
Dr. Jones had a daughter married to an alcoholic who weighed over 200 pounds and beat
her up frequently. Jones weighed only 150 pounds. This man had threatened to murder the
daughter if she tried to leave him. She was living in constant fear of him. Jones intervened once
and had been slapped down by his over-sized son-in-law. He longed to clobber the man. Due to
his bursitis he couldn't, the symptom apparently serving again as a defense in keeping him out of
trouble. He considered shooting the son-in-law and thought seriously about it. This was
unconsciously an unacceptable thought as Dr. Jones was a good Christian. The bursitis may have
been acting as a punishment for such a desire.
It was suggested that Dr. Jones have his daughter go to the police, see a lawyer and get a
restraining order against her husband. Dr. Jones agreed to do this. Using the finger signals, he
was asked if the bursitis could be ended with the insight gained as to its causes. The reply was
affirmative. The patient was then awakened and Dr. Jones found to his surprise that all pain had
left his shoulder. He could move it freely when he cautiously tested it. He had only slight further
trouble with it. X rays showed the calcium deposit still present, but it hurt only at times when he
recognized a cause for tension. The symptom served as a reminder for him to ease up and relax.
IMPRINTS: Psychotherapists unfamiliar with hypnosis and the effects of suggestion
are rarely aware of single impact imprints which often seem to explain the cause of a problem.
An imprinted experience may seem consciously trivial yet they are often of great importance. An
imprint can be said to be an idea which has become fixed in the subconscious part of the mind
and then is carried out in exactly the same way as a posthypnotic suggestion is carried out.
Spiegel has pointed out that many neuroses may be of this origin with compulsion to act out
behavior for which the causative stimulus is forgotten.
Estabrooks has said that when a person is under an emotion he becomes very suggestible.
Something said at the time may register in the subconscious and it is as though a post-hypnotic
suggestion has been given. Apparently when one is under an emotion we slip spontaneously into
hypnosis. Thought processes become childlike and literal just as in (98) hypnosis. There is no
doubt that everyone is unconsciously affected by emotionally charged imprints or "engrams."
Depending on their wording, they can be very beneficial, but at other times they are extremely
detrimental. They can affect behavior, cause illnesses, and some types of imprint or "prestige
suggestions" may prevent recovery from disease or prevent the loss of some symptom.
The authors have encountered such damaging imprints many times. Here we are in the
field of semantics. These "command statements" are worded something like this: "You'll never
get over this," "You'll have to learn to live with this condition," "Nothing does any good," "It
can't be helped." If such an idea is set up, therapy will be unsuccessful until the imprint is
removed. Of course such phrases would have no effect if the person were not under an emotion
when it is said. At the time a discouraged or frustrated physician makes such a statement the
patient is very likely to be frightened or discouraged enough to be hypersuggestible. The
physician speaks with prestige or superior knowledge and years of experience.
An interesting case was that of a middle-aged woman with a cough which had plagued
her as long as she could remember. Every few moments she would have a bout of coughing. She
said no treatment had ever helped her. Some explanations were made as to imprints,
identifications, and other possible factors which might be present as causes. Then questions were
asked, using the pendulum.
Q. Is there some emotional or psychological reason why you have this cough?
A. Yes (with the pendulum).
Q. Does the cough serve some purpose? Is there some benefit from the cough?
A. No.
Q. Are you identifying with someone who in your childhood had a similar cough?
A. No.
Q. Is organ language involved? Are you trying to cough up something, some idea or memory
which is unpleasant, trying to get something out of your system?
A. No.
Q. Is there a fixed idea working in your inner mind that makes you cough?
A. Yes.
Q. Is there more than one idea involved?
A. No.
Q. Is that the only reason why you cough?
A. Yes. (99)
Q. An imprint or idea has to have an origin. Is there some past experience where this fixed idea
developed?
A. Yes.
Q. Is there more than one such incident?
A. No.
Q. Let's find out when it happened. You've had the cough for many years, ever since you can
remember. Did this past experience take place before you were ten years old?
A. Yes.
Q. Was it before five years old?
A. Yes.
Q. Was it before three?
A. No.
Q. Was it when you were three?
A. No.
Q. When you were four?
A. Yes. (Finding the time within a year is usually close enough.)
Q. Is the cough associated with some illness?
A. Yes. (The patient then verbally volunteered that she had had a bad case of whooping cough at
that age and had nearly died from complications. )
Q. Was this whooping cough the experience we are trying to locate?
A. Yes.
Q. Did someone say something at that time that set up this imprint or fixed idea?
A. Yes.
Q. Was it one of your parents?
A. No.
Q. Was it a doctor?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the doctor's name? Answer verbally.
A. I don't know.
Q. Does your inner mind know his name?
A. Yes (pendulum).
During the questioning as the patient watched the swing of the pendulum, she had
gradually slipped spontaneously into hypnosis. This was deepened and she was then regressed to
four years old to the time when she was ill with the whooping cough. She related that she was in
bed and her mother and father were standing by the bed. The physician was also there and she
now recalled his name. Her mother was crying and the physician was saying to them, "She'll
never get over this." She heard and was frightened. (100)
Here was her imprint. The physician represented authority. While still in hypnosis it was
pointed out to her that she had recovered from the illness but the cough was a major part of it.
With this imprint in force her inner mind had carried out the idea, causing her to retain the
cough. She was then questioned further.
Q. Now that you see why you have continued to cough and since you really did get over the
illness, do you think that this false idea the doctor planted need continue to affect you?
A. No. (finger signal).
Q. Can you now be free of the cough permanently?
A. Yes.
It was rather significant that the patient had stopped coughing during the pendulum
questioning as soon as she began to slip into hypnosis. A checkup with her some weeks later
showed that she had not coughed again after this one session.
The steps taken with this case were: explanation of the possible causes, search with the
questioning technique, spontaneous development of hypnosis, age regression to the experience,
reorientation and "mopping up" by establishing that the symptom could be terminated.
An imprint is somewhat similar to a conditioned reflex. A Pavlovian method of
eradicating a conditioned reflex is first to locate it, then to erase it through insight and the use of
hypnotic suggestion combined with explanations and rationalizations. Knowledge of the wording
of an imprint, with regression to the lime when it was originally established, then taking the
patient through that experience several times, can wipe it out. Insight and explanations usually
occur during this process.
In the coughing case, going through the experience once was sufficient to permit it being
eradicated. If the patient had answered negatively to the question as to the cough continuing, she
would have been taken back over the incident until an affirmative was given. If this was not
obtained after three more times of going through it, a question would have been asked as to
whether something was blocking her from now losing the symptom. If so, this would have been
investigated.
When it would seem that a goal has been reached it is wise to try to obtain a commitment
from the subconscious by asking in this way if the patient can now be rid of the imprint. An
affirmative answer usually but not always means that the outlook for relief is probable.
ORGAN LANGUAGE: An interesting source of physical difficulty at times is what has
been termed "organ language" in psychology. Often we speak of something (101) unpleasant,
saying "That's a headache to me," "That makes me sick at my stomach," "I can't swallow that,"
"It's a pain in the neck to me," "That gives me a pain," and various other phrases. The actual
physical condition mentioned may develop from such an idea. Many a chronic headache, nausea,
pains, etc., seem to arise from organ language. This can be seen sometimes in cases of
dermatitis, the person "itching" to do something. A breaking out of the skin can appear because
something is "irritating," the skin being one's outside.
As part of the causes in a strange case of torticollis, two organ language phrases were
implicated. The patient was a man whose head was turned far to the left with the muscles so taut
that it could not be straightened. The condition had persisted for about three months and his
physician thought hypnosis might help in relaxing the muscles.
Ralph, as we will call him, had a responsible position and was married, with four
children of whom he was very fond. He was a heavy drinker, usually getting drunk on Saturday
night, recovering over Sunday, and staying sober the rest of the week. He was a good hypnotic
subject.
During the second visit, questioning was used to locate the reasons for the condition.
First he was asked if there was any psychological cause for his wry neck and the answer was
affirmative. Further inquiries eliminated identification and imprints. Involved were conflict,
self-punishment, past experiences, motivation and organ language. It seemed rather complicated
for there to be five of our seven keys involved. Further questions were as follows:
Q. Is your conflict over sex?
A. Yes (finger movement).
Q. Are you punishing yourself because of this? A. Yes.
Q. Is there more than one past experience connected to this condition?
A. Yes.
Q. More than two?
A. Yes.
Q. A series of experiences?
A. Yes.
Q. Self-punishment is one motivation. Is there any other motive or
reason for your wry neck?
A. (A movement of the ring finger.)
Q. Does that lifting of the ring finger signify "perhaps?"
A. Yes.
Ralph was then hypnotized, and further questioning located the past experiences. He was
then able to verbalize the situation. Nothing was (102) repressed, but he had not associated his
torticollis with what had happened. Organ language had not been explained to him, though it
was described later when he used the phrases in his speech.
Ralph had fallen in love with his secretary, whose desk in his office was to his left and
slightly to the rear of his own desk. She had returned his regard but both were Catholics and
divorce was impossible, nor did he want to be separated from his family, and hence there was
conflict. After a time they decided that the situation could not continue. They agreed not to see
each other any more and she left his employment. His drinking had then become worse and
torticollis developed.
In telling of this affair Ralph remarked that the girl had "turned his head." A little later he
said he was "looking back" at the experience with regret. Here was the organ language, his head
being turned in the direction where the girl had sat. Replies to more questions confirmed this.
Masochism was due to his strong guilt feelings about the affair, although he had not had sexual
relations with the girl.
When awakened after this second session, the tension was gone from Ralph's neck and he
could hold his head straight with no discomfort. A few days later he returned with the head again
to one side. Strong reassurance and suggestion enabled him again to lose the symptom. A week
later it had returned. He said he had been all right until Sunday morning of this week, and the
same was true of the week before. Sundays he had awakened with his head twisted once more.
Further questions determined that he now was punishing himself for his Saturday night
drinking bouts. The answer was given that he would be free of the torticollis the last four days of
the week but if he continued to drink in this way it would then return for the first three days of
the week. Ralph doggedly refused to stop drinking and the last known of the case was that it
persisted in this way, three days of wry neck and four days without.
PAST EXPERIENCES: Experiences of the past may be involved with some of the other
of our seven keys. In Ralph's case, the past experiences with his secretary were a part of his
conflict and the motivation for the symptom. When an imprint is established, a past experience
was involved. Guilt feelings and unacceptable ideas originate in the past.
A different type of experience is one which was traumatic. A great fright may be
responsible for the development of a phobia or may produce many other effects. In two stutterers
it was found that a sexual trauma combined with verbal suggestions was one cause of the speech
(103) difficulty, both cases being almost identical in this respect. As a child the stutterers had
been sexually molested by an adult and had been told, "If you ever tell, I'll kill you," which was
the command statement. The molester in each case meant he would kill the boy if he told of the
attack but literally "If you ever tell" means about anything; if you speak at all. With the
subconscious carrying out this idea, if he talks he will die. It doesn't matter if the threat was
made years ago and there is no present danger, the threat hangs over him like the sword of
Damocles. The subconscious does not view this logically. A need to talk collided with the fear of
being killed if he talked, so there is blocking and stuttering.
 Of course there can be many other reasons for stuttering, but these two stutterers quickly
found they could speak normally after the trauma had been brought out and the imprint removed.
Strangely most stutterers are good hypnotic subjects and most do not stutter if they talk while in
hypnosis. When awakened the speech difficulty returns. This fact is of help in the therapy of
stuttering. Some other command statements may also be active with a stutterer. One is where a
stern parent has repeatedly told a child to "shut up" or "be quiet" "shut your mouth" or some
similar exclamation.
Difficulties may develop from other kinds of traumas. When a past experience is located,
the patient can be age regressed to the time and the effects removed. Much emotion may be tied
up in the experience. The first time the patient is returned to it he may show the emotion
strongly. Going back over it again it may still be rather strong, a third time reduces the emotion
greatly, and by a fourth or fifth time all emotion will probably have disappeared. The object of
such a regression is not only to gain insight but to discharge the pent-up emotions tied to the
experience. The patient should be taken back through it again and again until a finger response
says all emotion has been discharged. This may be done in a single session.
The patient should never be regressed to a traumatic event without first obtaining an
affirmative answer to the question "Is it all right for you to return to this event?" The causes of
many psychosomatic illnesses will be found to be very superficial and easily remedied, though
other cases may be very complicated, so deep-seated that special consultations may be necessary.
In our courses we always demonstrate the treatment of such ,cases as may be available, usually
finding some among the physicians and others who attend, or sometimes having patients brought
in. Frequently we can only make a start at helping the patient, giving him some insight through
the questioning technique. But it is surprising how often in one demonstration perhaps lasting
only 30 or 40 minutes we can uncover the apparent (104) roots of the matter and witness a rapid
clearance of symptoms. A later check often shows that permanent benefit resulted. In such cases
the causes must have only been superficial. Long suffering usually crystallizes many
constellations of triggering causes for distress. It takes longer to effect cure and one may have to
settle for mitigation of distress.
The cases we have cited here are typical in showing how ideomotor answers to questions
can bring out apparent causes for psychosomatic ailments. Almost any such illness can be
handled in the same general way. In our experience a large percentage of psychosomatic
illnesses can be cleared up in a very few sessions, indicating the superficiality of the case. These
can usually be handled readily by the non-psychotherapist. Others may take much longer, and
there will be failures with some. Resistances and repressions can prolong treatment. (105)

41. CH 13: HYPNOSIS IN GYNECOLOGY: FRIGIDITY: DAVID B. CHEEK & LESLIE M.

LECRON: CLINICAL HYPNOTHERAPY: GRUNE & STRATTON: NEW YORK: 1968
In the private practice of gynecology, the major problems are not what we saw during
our residency. The most common source of trouble begins at birth and reaches its peak of
unfavorable conditioning during the first three years of life. Its influence is made less tractable
because it occurs before the first glimmerings of conscious awareness, development of reasoning
power or the learnings by repetition. Adult understanding of anatomy and normal sexual drives
come later. None of these, unaided, can adequately overthrow the imprinting and preconscious
conditionings for the majority of women in the "civilized" world. Their problem is genital taboo,
learned in the cradle and often carried unaltered to the grave.
It is normal for babies to put things in their mouths. It would be dangerous if there were
no sucking instinct. Parents recognize this yet they become embarrassed and improve the habits
of their babies by gently denying them use of thumbs, toes, movable objects and "security
blankets." Babies need stimulation of their skins in order to develop normal patterns of bladder
and rectal elimination. Many premature babies are denied this stimulus.
Parents have a way of mocking babies for soiling their diapers, giving babies names of
pseudo-endearment such as "Poopsie," "Droopy-drawers," and "Stinky," which might interfere
with normal eliminative needs of babies. Multiple studies in age regression with patients who
have suffered from colitis and repeated urinary tract infections have brought out similar early
impressions of parents looking disgusted and making angry sounds while changing diapers or
cleaning up the "messes" in cribs, behind sofas in the living room or in clothing after
"accidents." The information on this matter was not suggested to adult patients in hypnosis. It
has been a repeated spontaneous offering of patients with intestinal and urinary complaints on
orienting to some important experience relating to the origin of troubles with bowel and bladder.
(106)
Mammal young will die of ureteral and intestinal obstruction due to inadequate peristaltic
action if they are denied the instinctive licking given them by the mother at delivery and after
each nursing period. This lesson was learned by keepers of zoos and the early experimenters
raising mammals in germ-free states. LeCron has mentioned the importance of an empty bladder
for the successful induction of hypnosis. Normally there has been a long period of association
between feelings of anxiety with the stretching of the bladder and the rectosigmoid and peaceful
relaxation after feeding, elimination and comfortable reclothing. Feeding, elimination and the
drowsy comfort of warm, dry clothing are usually followed by sleep in secure contact with the
mother and siblings for most mammals. Let us study parental methods in our advanced Western
Culture. We laugh at "Stinky" making grunting noises after feeding. We cannot remember the
feelings of humiliation we had at the same period of life with the mocking noises of our own
parents. We plunk the infant on a frighteningly high place in the most defenseless position. We
make wry expressions as we hold our breath or make comments about the odor and quality of
the excrement. We hurriedly wash, oil, dust and rewrap. Then we either take the "little monster"
to tire it out in the living room or we eliminate it from civilization and bodily warmth directly in
its "very own" room. It does not take long for the toddler to learn that the living room bit is the
prologue to physical elimination from the family. No wonder the child cries in the night!
Next in the course of unfavorable conditioning is discovery that digital exploration of the
nose, mouth, ears and umbilicus is acceptable but exploration of the genital area and rectum
evokes sounds of objection, restraining action or even a slapped hand. The process of learning
that stimulation of the clitoris, vulva and perineum can be pleasurable would normally include
unconscious rubbing against a bunched-up blanket in sleep, but mothers have a habit of "looking
in" on babies at this stage of development in order to make sure they are oovered. They snatch
away such blankets incorrectly used. The child will have no conscious knowledge that there is
something bad about rubbing against a bunched-up blanket, but this child as a frigid adult will
report in hypnotic age regression that this sleepy experience has been a powerful one in teaching
her that pleasurable sensations around the clitoris are frowned upon by mother.
The same can be said for the pleasures of "riding a cock horse to Danbury Cross" on
daddy's shoe. Sliding down the bannisters too often or climbing poles may also call for
correction from parents or grandparents. One 30-year-old frigid patient remembered the
admonition of her grandmother after too many gleeful trips down the bannisters: "There are
(107) nerve endings there between your legs. If you rub them too many times you'll go crazy.
Now run along and play in the yard."
Punishment for being curious about what is under the little neighbor boy's pants,
admonition against accepting candy from men or riding in strange automobiles are probably all
necessary to protect growing girls from trouble. These more mature learnings would probably
not cause too much trouble if there were no prior taboos and imprinted fears.
Eczema and the rashes of measles and chicken pox feel good to scratch, and the havoc
caused by scratching receives concerned and loving attention from parents in an atmosphere of
acceptance. There is no such acceptance when a child develops a vulvar itching although it feels
good to squirm and scratch. Habit patterns of acceptable skin-scratching often supplant
non-acceptable masturbatory activities.
Children in private or parochial schools are usually kept in the dark about the reasons
group activities in communal bathrooms or behind locked doors are matters of concern for their
adult guardians of sanctity. Their usually innocent desires for privacy and exclusion of adults are
somehow made into unsavory urges by the way they are treated.
What are some of the problems the gynecologist sees in private practice, away from the
funneling concentration into teaching hospitals of tumors, torsions, hemorrhage, congenital
anomalies and venereal disease? First on the list would probably be vaginitis associated with
trichomonas, monilia, herpes simplex, cocci, mixed infection or chemical irritation from too
much douching. Conditioning processes, guilt feelings and self-punitive drives seem to play a
large part in the anxieties capable of making the vaginal mucosa more vulnerable to normally
non-painful stimuli.
Hyperventilation during anxiety may play an important part in producing trichomonas
vaginitis. Hypnosis in the treatment of vaginitis is of value for helping the patient pinpoint the
first moment at which symptoms or discharge began. Patients may recognize the relationships
between symptom and sexual experiences or fantasies about which they feel uncomfortable.
Continuation of the problem in spite of the usual treatments may allow the therapist a chance to
point out that her body is reacting badly to the anxiety of a hopeless affair, that she should break
off an association where mutual respect and interests have been sacrificed.
As with all psychosomatic complaints involving a target organ, it is helpful to
demonstrate the effects of postural suggestion, the power of the challenge and the word "try,"
show the difference in tissue reaction with a painful scratch on a sensitive arm as compared with
the same injury to the opposite numb area when it has been made analgesic. The patient in (108)
light hypnosis can "orient back to the first time" something was happening that had something to
do with her problem.
One patient who had never had an orgasm developed an acute trichomonas vaginitis 12
years after her marriage when she began having orgasms in her sleep, dreaming about a sexually
attractive, married associate in her teaching job. She consulted a woman gynecologist who said
that this infection could eventuate in cancer if it were not cleared up. A strict ritual of vaginal
salves and douching was maintained for two years. In the meantime there was no intercourse
with husband or anyone else.
The dreams stopped and a painful relief from subconscious sin continued with vaginitis
until the patient was able to talk about her problem with another doctor. She was told to stop
douching and let her vagina have a chance to heal. The unintentional misunderstanding about
cancer was corrected and reinforced by subsequent vaginal smears. Within 48 hours the foul
discharge, pelvic pain and tissue edema had gone. The patient was congratulated on learning at
this late date that the subconscious mind almost never offers gratifying sexual dreams about a
husband when she has never had an orgasm with him. Fantasies about other males occur
normally until the learning process, which should have occurred in sleep many years before
marriage, has taught that orgasm is a mental process and depends upon recognition that sexual
feelings are normal. Then and only then can she have dreams about her husband if she is
sexually attracted to him and is not using sexual rejection to punish him. It was added that real
intercourse could be much more satisfying than dreams.
DYSMENORRHEA: The common history for this second most frequent gynecological
complaint is that there are several painless menstrual periods until ovulation occurs. Men of
science have decided that ovulation is the cause of dysmenorrhea and there is some justification
for this conclusion because dysmenorrhea may stop when a woman with regular ovulation is
shifted. into anovulatory menstrual cycles with estrogen therapy.
Some people have wondered about the factors responsible for stimulation of ovulation
and the instinctive physiological weeping that occurs when pregnancy has not followed
ovulation. These questions may be worthy of consideration. There have been approximately
thirty major approaches to the problem of dysmenorrhea through the years including successful
use of various aromatic spices and cocainization of the "genital areas" in the nasal passages,
described by Fliess. (108)
Radiologists before 'World War I were irradiating the ovaries and pituitary glands with
token doses of X-ray. Presacral neurectomies made popular .by the Frenchman Cotte only
temporarily removed sympathetic innervation but often permanently cured dysmenorrhea. These
all seem to share the more or less costly and traumatic quality of implying to the suffering young
woman that this way lies cure. Some young women are more suggestible than others, but many
develop a need for pain to escape from sexual guilt feelings, punish themselves or manipulate
associates. These are the people who are finally subjected to hysterectomy or may, in
desperation, ask for psychological help.
Another common factor arises from the expectation of having cramps and pain at the
time of a period. This expectation comes from repeatedly hearing from mother, sisters and
friends about the discomforts they have experienced. These suggestions can act to produce
dysmenorrhea.
Therapy does not depend solely on hypnosis. Treatment of the patient must include
recognition that unconscious forces cannot always be directly reasoned with or corrected by
mechanical means. The patient must be absolved from the feeling that she is being difficult.
Therapy can be accelerated by setting up ideomotor signals and asking if it would be all right for
her to know how to menstruate comfortably and learn the control of pain in preparation for
letting her future pregnancies be exciting and pleasurable experiences instead of painful ones. In
the search for factors which might first have made the pelvic organs vulnerable to pain, we have
had case upon case reporting that their birth caused mother much pain, that this is a way of
making it up to mother. Naturally this impression is immediately recognized as ridiculous. It
remains the most powerful force militating against the painless labor ideal of "natural
childbirth." When it is brought up by the patient, it is helpful to ask the questions referred to in
the chapter on obstetrics.
Some patients have discovered that dysmenorrhea began shortly after they had
experimented in mutual masturbation with a girl friend or followed fears that petting or being
kissed might make them pregnant. Whatever the subjectively significant assumed causes chosen
during orientation back to "an important" reason for the pain, it is usually rather easy to let the
patient decide whether or not it is worthwhile to continue with the misunderstanding.
 Since the advent of the contraceptive pill, it has been Cheek's custom to put the patient
on "the pill" for two months with the consent of the parents. This allows time to evaluate the
importance of ovulation versus conditionings for pain. It allows time to know more about the
problems of the young lady before directly approaching the subject of (119) dysmenorrhea as a
purely psychological problem. Hypnosis is mentioned at the second visit as an adjunct in
speeding up the cure. The patient is told that she can raise her tolerance for pain by learning how
to relax and how to shift awareness. Motivation is added by pointing out the value of knowing
how to review material she is studying in school and how to use brief rest periods several times a
day. It is mentioned that the girl who learns to stop the pain of menstruation will have an easy
time delivering babies.
Emotional causes for dysmenorrhea are far more common than the organic ones of
adenomyosis, endometriosis, myomata and salpingitis. Most gynecologists now agree that
retroposition of the uterus has little to do with causing menstrual cramps. It is worthwhile to
expose the patient with organic possible factors to the same treatment as the patients with purely
psychogenic factors to assure success of time-honored treatments.
Treatment is usually broken up into three sessions of thirty minutes each:
(1) exposure to relaxation induction and selecting ideomotor signals. Attempt to run down
factors subjectively believed important in making the first painful menstrual period.
(2) Have the patient develop slightly deeper trance state and relive the feelings of the first
painful menstruation. Ask her to . turn off the pain at a subconscious level and have an
ideomotor signal indicate completion and have her report verbally when she feels comfortable.
(3) Place the patient in hypnosis with dropping of a pencil as the indicator of reaching a level
deep enough to permit helpful use of hypnosis. She is asked if it will be all right for her now to
menstruate scantily, perhaps one pad a day, three days each month, and with complete comfort
to do any of the things she would like to do when she is not menstruating. This is a means of
giving helpful suggestions in the form of a question. It reveals resistance due to unresolved
self-punitive attitudes.
If a painful menstrual period occurs after acceptance of this suggestion, the therapist
must look for previously undiscovered organic and emotional factors. These steps take only a
few moments of the third session. The rest of the time is spent having the patient rehearse
autohypnosis as discussed in the chapter on obstetrics.
During the course of therapy for dysmenorrhea, the patient is told that there will be times
when dysmenorrhea may occur again during an illness or a time of depression or stress. At such
times she must think of this "slip-back" as a reminder to ask herself about and learn the factors
responsible. It can remind her how to turn off pain and the practice can be helpful. (111)
LOW BACK PAIN, MUSCLE SPASM, MITTELSCHMERZ, PERITONITIS:
Many factors play apart in producing these painful conditions. We are the only primates who
spend most of our waking hours walking on two legs or sitting. There are, therefore,
gravitational forces at work on the viscera of the abdomen and on the pelvic girdle muscles for
which our bodies were not primarily constructed. Continued hypertonicity of the back and pelvic
muscles will cause pain because of interference with oxygen supply. Pain increases muscle tone
in the area and we have a vicious circle. The peritoneum lining the pelvis and covering the
intestine, bladder, uterus, tubes and ovaries is sensitive to proteolytic enzymes released on
contact with some virulent organisms, with blood containing fibrinolysins, with bile, stomach
contents and the groumous material contained in dermoid cysts. In addition there may be a
genuine chemical reaction of a painful nature when turpentinue, potassium permanganate or
soaps are injected into the uterine cavity and out through the tubes to the abdominal cavity
during abortion attempts.
Pelvic pain may then be produced slowly because of continued tonicity of back and
pelvic muscles in response to external stresses or it may have an acute onset with a primal insult
that sets up a pattern of increased sensitivity to moderate stimuli. We have learned that freedom
from conscious pain does not mean that the central nervous system is not receiving slightly
painful or subconscious messages of discomfort.
In the therapy for these conditions it is again important to know something about the
emotional factors associated with whatever organic cause there was in the beginning. It is
important to know what emotional as well as physical factors are active in continuing the pain.
For general principles, refer to the chapter on pain.
AMENORRHEA: This also is a condition with many possible causes, most prominent
of which are pregnancy, great emotional stress and great physical disability. Before subjecting
such patients to extensive hormonal assay and exploratory laparotomy, it is wise to do a quick
scanning of attitude about menstruation if menstruation has never occurred, and it is helpful to
orient the patient back to the last normal period and come forward to something responsible for a
change of reaction if there has been an unexplained cessation of menses. Menstruation is not a
necessity for cleansing the body or soul. The patient can be congratulated on her ability to do
something that most women cannot do. She is told that efforts will be (112) made only to find
out that she is free of problems and that she will be made to bleed only if she thinks it is
necessary to do so.
Having searched for factors she is asked if she can now menstruate regularly with three
days of light bleeding. If the answer is "yes," she is asked to select the time for her next period.
This does not always work on the first effort but repetition of the suggestion will usually
eventuate in regular menses.
It should be mentioned here that primary consultation with an endocrinologist at the first
concern over secondary amenorrhea may complicate matters. The emotional background and the
frames of reference of endocrinologists, like those of many neurosurgeons, neurologists and
orthopedists, make them uncomfortable when dealing with psychosomatic illness. They are
highly competent in diagnosing trouble but have a tendency to stress rather frightening
possibilities of grave genetic abnormalities and various types of endocrine-producing tumors in
the course of their examinations. Fortunately these are rarely found but once considered are
rarely removed as sources of fear for the patient exposed to them. Unconscious fears and
identifications may be compounded by these added fears of the unknown.
Warning. Please remember that consciously unrecognized self-punitive attitudes may
make men and women with serious organic disease believe consciously and unconsciously that
their problems are trivial. They may jump at the opportunity of having their underlying disease
go undiagnosed. Amenorrhea may be caused by brain tumors, hyper- and hypothyroidism,
panhypopituitarism after massive blood loss ( Sheehan's syndrome), ovarian tumors, adrenal
tumors and any far advanced disease including tuberculosis and bilateral renal calculi. We must
be more alert for serious disease when amenorrhea follows previously regular menses than when
there has been no onset of menstrual cycles (primary amenorrhea). Remember, however, that
primary amenorrhea may result from occlusion or non-formation of the cervical canal. Failure to
discover this fact during the first few cycles may leave permanent damage to the tubes and
ovaries. Never forget that pregnancy occurs at any age from 8 to 56 whether females are married
or unmarried. We have seen women who have been totally unable to accept the fact of their
pregnancy even though witnessing their delivery and being shown the child.
MENORRHAGIA: Visible bleeding is not essential in the course of being a normal
fertile woman. One woman at Johns Hopkins Hospital established this fact (113) with 11 normal
children delivered at appropriate intervals during 15 years of amenorrhea.
An acceptable amount of bleeding, intended to keep women from worrying about
themselves, is ideally that amount which will require changing a pad or vaginal tampon three
times during a 24-hour time and terminating at the end of three days.
Bleeding after intercourse and bleeding at irregular intervals between menstrual periods
must always be considered due to organic pathology in the vagina, cervix, uterus, uterine tubes
or ovary. It should never be assumed to be emotional in origin or due to endocrine therapy until
repeated examinations of the pelvic organs, vaginal smears and uterine curettings have been
done. Intermenstrual bleeding often occurs with young women using contraceptive hormone
pills. Such women are also likely to be troubled by fluid retention, tender breasts and pelvic
discomfort. In the author's experience, these complaints are rare with women who are free of
worry about their reasons for using "the pill." Religious and other conditioned guilt feelings play
a large part in these evidences of aldosterone activity, but it is still necessary to rule out
potentially dangerous pelvic pathology. Cervical cancer has been reported in newbom infants
and is being found fairly often in women less than 20 years old.
Spotting between periods and postcoital bleeding are diagnosed as metrorrhagia, but
when disease processes of an organic nature have been excluded, the approach to their correction
is the same as for heavy bleeding. That scant intermenstrual bleeding can be psychogenic is
clearly seen during physical examination of women who have become alarmed over the chance
that they may have cancer or some other serious malady. Approximately 10 per cent of the
authors' patients in this category will be seen to have a trace of blood in the cervical canal during
speculum examination. Absence of blood in the vaginal secretions and on the vaginal walls
indicate that bleeding began as they got on the table for examination. This minimal bleeding
seems to occur without respect for time in the menstrual cycle and is probably comparable to the
capillary bleeding witnessed by Markee within a few seconds of fright or injection of
epinephrine intravenously. In his classic studies of endometrial implants in the anterior chamber
of the eyes of rhesus monkeys, Markee was able to see that this type of bleeding terminated with
clot formation, whereas menstrual bleeding did not lead to clot formation. Stieve has reported
this type of bleeding in amenorrheic women within a few minutes of learning the time of their
execution.
Profuse bleeding which gushes around pads and requires frequent changes during the
night occurs about as frequently in women who have (114) no demonstrable gynecologic
abnormality as it does with endometrial hyperplasia, polyps, submucous myomata and cancer.
True menorrhagia may well relate to hormonal disturbance due to emotional or physical stresses.
We must keep the organic factors in mind, but we should always ask the patient about emotional
stresses at the first interview, whether it be on the telephone or in the office. The question allows
the patient great relief from the primal worry over some dire disease. She knows the question
would not have been asked unless emotional problems were known to cause hemorrhage.
Profuse bleeding may occur after great personal loss, after great disappointment or coincident
with suppressed rage. Menorrhagia associated with emotional causes is well recognized, and
there are abundant references to it in the world literature.
Psychogenic uterine hemorrhage will sometimes stop within a few minutes when a
physician indicates possibility that emotion can cause bleeding. Women seem to recognize this
fact subliminally if not consciously. They need to know, however, that a qualified physician is
willing to recognize it also and is willing to listen. Epsilon-amino-caproic acid (Amicar,
Lederle) is a valuable adjunct for slowing down uterine hemorrhage until emotional possibilities
can be assessed. An initial dose of 2 Gm. (four tablets) followed by two tablets per hour for no
more than three hours will usually prevent the need for emergency hospitalization and curettage.
It is never safe to use general anesthesia under circumstances where a patient is alarmed. This
drug apparently inactivates fibrinolysins or their precursors and is a valuable addition to a
physician's office medications and handbag.
STEPS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR ABNORMAL BLEEDING:
1. Set up ideomotor responses.
2. Orient to the moment just before heavy bleeding starts and ask for a "yes" finger to lift at that
moment.
3. Advance from this moment to some thought or feeling that might have something to do with
starting the trouble. The "no" finger is to lift at this time, and she is instructed to bring this
thought up for conscious recognition.
4. Ask "In light of what you have discovered, do you think it might be possible to stop this
heavy bleeding and return to a normal type of menstruation?"
5. At this point, and no sooner, it is helpful to ask the following very important questions:
( a) "Does the deep part of your mind feel that you (115) have a serious or dangerous
disease?"
(b) "Have you identified yourself with any other person who has had bleeding like this?"
These questions are placed here to diminish chances of the patient thinking the therapist believes
a serious condition exists.
6. A very helpful addition recently has been a scan of thoughts and dreams during the night
before trouble began. Dreams may give significant clues which may escape notice if questioning
is limited to daytime.
Warning. Cessation of bleeding on discovery of emotional factors does not exclude
possibility that emotional bleeding has been superimposed on an underlying dangerous disease
process. The author has seen one clinic patient and two private patients whose early uterine
cancers were discovered because of the lucky accident that they were emotionally disturbed
enough to bleed from their normal endometrium and require diagnostic studies. Vaginal
cytology and uterine curetting should be examined in each instance after the emergency is over.
FRIGIDITY: The term "frigidity" is used here in a general sense to cover the problems
of men and women whose fears, misunderstandings and guilt feelings have interfered with
maturation of sexual attitudes. The problems are in general related to sexual behavior but cannot
be restricted to this area, because sexual feelings of inadequacy, fear and guilt certainly influence
general behavior in all spheres of activity. Since homosexuality does not occur among any
animals that are not tampered with by human beings, it is a logical conclusion that the problems
of homosexuality must be conditioned by disturbing experiences in early life and their solution,
if desired, could be found in reconditioning by psychotherapeutic methods. The treatment of
homosexuality will be omitted here because it is a complex psychiatric problem. Its treatment
should be restricted to the province of psychiatrists who are comfortable in this type of work.
Considerations will be limited to those areas in which physicians and psychologists can
be helpful without risk of uncovering information too stressful to be handled by the patient.
Some women ask for help because they recognize their physical attraction to a sexual
partner but are unable to reach a climax during intercourse. Some feel happy with their
responsiveness even though there has never been an orgasm but ask for help because their sexual
partner has complained of inadequacy according to his values. Some men ask help because they
have had sexual dreams with ejaculation but are (116) unable to ejaculate during intercourse.
Some men eventually seek help at the request of their sexual partner because they ejaculate
before or immediately after entrance into the vagina or they lose an erection before or during the
act of entering the vagina.
Basically women and men meeting these criteria for frigidity, premature ejaculation and
impotence have similar backgrounds of disturbed sexual learnings. They can be helped,
providing they love and respect their sexual partner and can be motivated toward more
satisfactory behavior for the benefit of their sexual partner. Human beings may love and respect
each other at one plane of awareness but continue to use sexual maladjustments as punitive or
manipulative tools. Such perversities may tax the skills of the most expert therapists.
The task is much more difficult when sexual fears and misunderstandings are so great
that men or women will not permit themselves to engage in a healthy, loyal relationship with a
member of the opposite sex. In this category we find the boastful "confirmed bachelor," the
young girl in a triangle, some homosexuals, and women who work for companies supplying
temporary office help. Some people extend their fears of commitment into their work. There are
great variations in capacity for sexual response among individuals in this second category, but
fundamentally they avoid any great strength of emotion.
Group 1 are willing to be helped; they are sexually frigid. Group 2, afraid of
commitments, are emotionally frigid and should be cared for by psychiatrists who themselves
are comfortable in discussing sexual difficulties.
There are many men and women in the first group who will not primarily come under the
care of a physician for sexual help. Attention should be drawn to the classes of problems so often
associated with sexual difficulties that sexual factors should at least be excluded before attacking
the visible trouble.
In women:
Psoriasis, neurodermatitis and recurrent genital Herpes
Adolescent acne of face and upper trunk
Dysmenorrhea
Endometriosis
Myomata uteri
Pruritis vulvae
Repeated vaginitis due to trichomonads or monilia
Recurrent urinary tract infection in absence of obstruction Unexplained infertility
Habitual abortion and repeated premature delivery (117)
In men:
Psoriasis, neurodermatitis and recurrent genital Herpes
Migraine headaches
Meniere's syndrome
Recurrent urinary tract infection in absence of obstruction
Prostatis
By no means do the authors express or mean to imply that these problems are always
linked with sexual inhibitions, guilt feelings and fear. vVe suggest that the target organs are
somehow made more vulnerable to infection, disturbances of endocrine balance and the
influence of catechol amines. Among the factors responsible may be found problems arising
from conflicts of a sexual nature.
STEPS OF THERAPY: It seems important during history-taking to note the parent
whose age is used from which to compute the age of the other. This is not an absolute means of
knowing which parent is most influential but it is helpful. Note carefully when an American girl
carries a name suggesting that her parents had planned on a boy, when a girl is the first-born, the
only child or the only surviving child. She may have very confused understandings of her
importance as a female in the family. Watch for a history of parental death, serious illness or
separation of parents before your patient has reached the age of five years. Every child is capable
of misdeeds evoking signs of displeasure in parents. Propinquity of such acts and death, illness
or divorce may fill a youngster with consciously unrecognized guilt feelings capable of injuring
all future happiness. It is helpful to ask married women whether intercourse is painful or not and
whether or not they feel they respond adequately. Their statement of satisfactory responses
should be followed by an estimate of how frequently, in percentage, they achieve an orgasm.
Less than 80 per cent call for further study because it is probably an overstatement.
The above history can be taken during the first interview and without the aid of hypnosis.
If there is an expressed feeling that sexual patterns are in need of improvement, it is wise to
discuss these at another time after the patient has had a chance to think over her reactions to you
and decide whether or not she could comfortably embark on a course of therapy. If she satisfies
the requirements of having a good relationship with her sexual partner in other areas and does
not use her difficulties for punishment or manipulation, she can be told that therapy should (118)
take no more than a total of two hours. This may be broken into three visits of one hour the first
time and a half hour each of the remaining times. It would be foolish to hazard a guess with
unmarried women asking for help or women who give the impression of carrying hostilities for
their sexual partner. There are too many variables to permit more commitment than the
willingness to evaluate the problem during a onehour interview with the help of hypnosis.
At the second visit, the patient is asked if she has had sexual dreams culminating in
orgasm and whether or not she has had something like an orgasm with petting. At least 10 per
cent of all women are consciously unaware of ever having had an orgasm. It may be necessary to
search their dreams on this matter with the help of ideomotor responses and light hypnosis. This
might be a helpful way of inducing hypnosis while clearing up a historical point.
Results and methods of attack vary according to which of four major groups a woman
belongs:
F. Has never had an orgasm when awake or asleep, does not know what an orgasm should feel
like, has never masturbated knowingly.
F-l. Has had orgasm in dreams, with masturbation or with petting but never during coitus.
F-2. Has had orgasm with coitus at one time but not anymore.
RF. Relative frigidity estimated on percentage basis in relation to times of coitus. Classify with
number as RF 20 (per cent) at beginning of therapy.
The first group (F) have no basis on which to judge experience but remember every
sexually normal woman was that way in childhood. Class F women often come from broken
homes or homes where indications of affection were never given. It would be a speculation, but
they have probably had little skin stimulation during infancy. Their development stages of sexual
learning have been blocked at every turn. Fortunately, the Creator seems to have given all
women a genetic capacity for sexual responsiveness at birth. It is usually necessary to place these
Class F patients in deep hypnosis, check for misunderstandings at birth, and have them
hallucinate the necessary steps of learning that have had no chance to occur. This includes being
fondled and hugged by mother and father, discovering that it feels good to have the ~enital area
cleaned and dusted with powder, that it feels good and is all right to slide down bannisters, that it
is normal to explore the pleasurable feelings of masturbation. A search must be made for
traumatic experiences with male relatives, old and young, and guilt feelings removed. (119)
They must be told that sexual learning is the only one which is consistently excluded in
parent-child relationships except when it is made important by obvious avoidance or expressed
dismay. All other learnings are associated with expected mistakes, and encouragement is given
by parents to persist until the task is learned.
The second visit can be terminated by asking for visual hallucination of Christmas tree lights in
various parts of the body representing the sensory awareness in these parts. These can be
recognized at an ideomotor level and then elevated to a speaking level and reported in the
following order:

Right Center
Left Date
Head yellow

2/10/62
Arms green
green
(7/15/62)
Legs brown
gray
Breasts "nothing" (pink) black (pink)
Abdomen yellow
Genital red (pink-white)
The patient is then asked to let a thought come to her of what the color should be for her
breasts to be exquisitely sensitive to caressing and what the color for the genital area should be
for her to be able to reach climax 8 or 10 times with intercourse. These are marked down inside
brackets and the patient is asked to hallucinate forward to the time when these changes will have
occurred after she has removed all the guilt feelings and fears that have interfered with the
capabilities she was born with. This hallucinated date is put in parentheses beneath the date of
the first evaluation. Failure to select a date indicates resistance to therapy and must be
discovered; immediate selection of a date is a helpful signs of willingness to learn.
The third visit can be started with a review of dreams and events since the last time she
was in the office, to see if there have been any moments when sensations in her body were
something like the chosen ideals. She is then asked to orient back to about 13 years of age and
pick up the normal type of dream of being fondled and of noticing pleasurable sensations in her
breasts and clitoral area. It is difficult to describe an orgasm to one who has never experienced it,
but it should be remembered that the normal child of that age has not yet been taught what an
orgasm is. She is asked to have an ideomotor signal if and whenever she has a subconscious
feeling that approximates what she believes an orgasm might feel like.
The course of therapy from here on would depend bn information as presented. In
general it is wise to make clear to your patient that there are conscious feelings she will have at
an appropriate time with the real experiences, but that you are asking now only for subconscious
feelings (120) which act rather like blueprints for the total feelings when the situation calls for
these. This approach protects the patient from embarrassment and keeps her from defeating
herself in trying too hard.
Patients in the other three groups offer much less of a problem and can be handled in the
same general way:
(1) Is there subconscious willingness to be helped with this problem?
(2) Is there any real or imagined cause for the difficulty as it is now presented?
(3) Subconscious rehearsals of helpful dreams and real experiences with successive increasing
loss of fears and inhibitions until there 1s ideomotor indication that orgasm can be reached with
kissing, caressing of the breasts, entrance of the penis into the vagina, continued alternate
contracting and relaxation of the vagina around the penis and at any time there is an awareness
of pulsating enlargement of the penis with ejaculation. Relatively few women will be able to
achieve these goals in reality, but subconscious repetition of the possibilities teaches them that
orgasm is a mental process that does not need any specinc stimulation to a target organ.
It should be stressed that orgasm is a mental process or it could not occur with dreams or
with hallucinated experience. Arnold Kegel, in an experiment with developing the
pubococcygeus muscles of women suffering from urinary stress incontinence, accidentally
discovered that patients using the intravaginal instrument according to his directions found they
were no longer frigid during intercourse. He concluded that development of the vaginal muscles
is essential for curing frigidity. In his writings he shows no indication of realizing that frigid
women have usually been prevented from even thinking of putting something in the vagina. He
was giving them permission to do this and an acceptable excuse to pay attention to awareness
from that part of their anatomy.
In 1950 one of us performed a radical vulvectomy, inguinal and femoral gland dissection,
hysterectomy and removal of the rectum in an effort to salvage the life of a 27-year-old woman
who was soon to marry again. She was sexually responsive before this radical surgery for
advanced cancer of the vulva. Much time was spent during her recovery period adjusting her
emotionally to her colostomy, loss of her vulva, clitoris, and half her vagina. Ten years later she
stopped in the office to report her good health and announce that she was as responsive now as
she had ever been. Perhaps this example explains why the authors do not recommend
circumcision or hormones in the treatment of sexual frigidity in women.
Therapy for male impotence, premature ejaculation, and inability to ejaculate during
intercourse should be considered from the same viewpoint as similar problems in women. There
should be search for key or imprint-like experiences in childhood and inhibiting factors should
be
(121) searched out and removed before rehearsal of experiences as they should be.
We should always keep in mind with the treatment of frigidity in women that their sexual
partner may be the cause of trouble and may need help. Occasionally it may be possible to help
even the male who refuses to come in for help. It is a common fact that males will make
excessive demands for intercourse when their sexual partner seems unresponsive. The effect of
this is to make the female even more frigid. In one instance, a woman who had never had an
orgasm begged for help because she was being raped several times a day by her troubled
husband. She was willing to try the experiment of reaching a climax "at least ten times" with his
next advance. It worked. His demands fell to a happier level of twice a week.
Conversely, a frigid wife may search for an increasing number of ways to justify her
unwillingness to have intercourse. These will include excessive fatigue, disgust over her
husband's drinking, not wanting to muss her hairdo and having a child not feeling well. Always
suspect the possibility of serious sexual inhibitions when a woman states her father "is an
alcoholic." One drink can make an alcoholic in the eyes of an insecure, frigid wife, and a real
alcoholic father can be the target of so much resentment and disgust that a child of that family
may be hypercritical of the man she marries. (122)