Unraveling Problems Hypnotically: Utilization, Avolitional Agency, and Therapeutic Change (CHSNJ)
Organization: Clinical Hypnosis Society of New Jersey
Website: https://www.clinicalhypnosisnj.org/event-6818962
Event Title: Unraveling Problems Hypnotically: Utilization, Avolitional Agency, and Therapeutic Change
Agenda: 27_Flemons_Timed_Agenda
Dates: 01/23/2027 – 9am -4:30pm ET
Location: Virtual
CE: 6
Contact : Ginny Dinsmore, ginnydinsmore@gmail.com
Description: Clients typically contact a clinical hypnotist when they’re caught in the grip of a vexing mind-body problem. No longer able to manage it on their own, they come to us with the hope and expectation that we will help them wrest control from it, or perhaps, once and for all, even conquer it. This appeal for a competitive advantage against what clients perceive as a malicious Other creates an interesting challenge for us. Hypnosis and hypnotherapeutic change embody the logic of mind-body cooperation, not competition, the logic of mind-body connection, not contention. Our capacity to make a difference rests on our ability to invite clients into a synergistic relationship with us and with their own experience. Hypnosis is a context not for defending against and vanquishing a perceived enemy, but for collaborative learning and change.
This workshop will lay out the foundational principles of an acceptance-based, non-adversarial approach to clinical hypnosis and therapeutic change. We’ll explore and experiment with utilizing internal and external impediments to hypnosis, rather than trying to block or overcome them. And we’ll make sense of the seemingly paradoxical notion of avolitional agency as a defining quality of hypnotic experience and the non-purposive unraveling of mind-body problems.
Consider this an invitation to a day of rethinking assumptions and discovering possibilities, with opportunities for you to engage, ask questions, and experiment.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to—
- distinguish between disjunctive and conjunctive approaches to problem resolution.
- state two similarities between hypnotic and meditative experience.
- define hypnosis as a flow experience.
- describe the role of prediction and expectancy in symptoms, placebos, nocebos, and hypnotic experience.
- articulate a utilization approach to hypnosis.
- specify the guiding principle of improvisation in utilization.
- identify the role of avolitional agency in hypnotic and hypnotherapeutic experience.
Speaker info: Douglas Flemons, Ph.D., LMFT 27_Flemons_Bio