Chronobiology. This new field traces the ultradian physiological variations in susceptible subjects by means of clinical studies. These discoveries are based on the presumed chronobiology of the human body. The implications of this for education, productivity, specialized work and health in general will be studied and applied in ways unknown to us. Interpersonal communication. The role in the health sciences of hypnotic communication and of the development of other than sensory ways of communicating will be emphasized in medical students, general and specialized physicians (Levitan, 1991).
A new term has reinforced these ideas. “Nocebo,” opposed also to placebo describes the negative effect of an authority figure on a susceptible person, as happens with a patient and a physician, a teacher and a pupil or a preacher and a believer. Fortunately the current knowledge that allows us to recognize the microdynamics of hypnotic communication between persons in a close relationship, as in psychotherapy, allows us also to become more effective in creating the adequate climate for the expression of sorrow, conflict, death and for the possibility of change (Levitan, 1991).
Also in this same sense the strategic use of the trance phenomenon in psychotherapy, especially in systemic couple and family therapy, provides us with a resource to intervene clinically with metaphors, symbols, tasks and rituals prescriptions, myths and its meanings through figurative language. This figurative language may take the form of story telling, poetry, drama and even brief representations and skits, mime, acting, oral narration and more. In this way the trance will become the vehicle for these analogical interventions becoming a true interactional metaphor (Ruzyla-Smith, Barabasz A., Barabasz M. , Warner, 1995).
From the publications in the last decade on the therapeutic applications of clinical hypnosis, there is indication that there is a shared area belonging both to the diagnosis of some of the pathologies and to the underlying curative processes of hypnosis One may ask oneself if it is indeed the same complimentary dynamic that acts, in one case, to produce dysfunction and in the other to re-establish more adaptive feelings, cognitions and behaviors.
The same dynamic mental process seems to be at work at the subjective moment of a particular experience, either to acquire a pathological state, differently described as state dependent learning, negative self-hypnosis and devalidating trance or, on the other hand, to resolve the traumatic experiences by means of hypnotherapy, making refraining and cognitive restructuring easier and smoother. This parallel is particularly significant in those clinical cases described in the literature as symptomatically complex, such as physical and sexual abuse, PTSD and multiple personality disorder.
These share, at least from the hypnotic point of view, both pathological and therapeutic aetiology (Putnam, Helmets, Horowitz & Trickett, 1995; Ross & Norton, 1989). Something similar takes place in two other pathological configurations, In eating disorders, especially in bulimia, some of the pathological behavior, such as vomit induction, is correlated with a high dissociative capacity. In addictions the linear approaches continue to be the norm. Regressive and progressive hypnotic techniques are novelties.
Nevertheless, by this method the addiction is perceived in historical perspective. In this way the patient can be guided through the sickness/health dichotomy at different stages of his/her life experience so that s/he becomes able to start changing within his/her total ecology. Therefore, more research is required in these two disorders to find out the benefits of those therapeutic approaches that consider hypnosis more than merely a support tool for traditional psychotherapy.