Get to grips

I attended the UCL Diploma course in Clinical Hypnosis during 1997/98 and was awarded the Diploma with Distinction at the end of a very taxing nine months of part-time study.

The course offers an opportunity to get to grips with the vast literature on the psychological aspects of physical illnesses and neurotic disorders, and the use of hypnosis in their clinical management. Personally, I found the subject matter so fascinating and intellectually stimulating that doing the requisite reading was a pleasure rather than a labour.

Modules

The course is taught in modules over 8 weekends, at the Psychology Department at UCL in Central London, starting in September each year.

• Module One: Fundamentals of the Theory and Practice of Hypnosis.
• Module Two: Applications of Hypnosis in Medicine and Dentistry.
• Module Three: Applications of Hypnosis to Psychological Disorders in Adults and Children.
• Module Four: Ongoing Supervised Clinical Practice. A minimum of 60 hours local practice and 15 supervision sessions are required.

Full course notes and reading lists are provided in addition to lectures, which are relatively informal with class participation. The mix of backgrounds - general practice, psychiatry, clinical and educational psychology - of participants made for a rich discussion.

Assessment

Assessment consists of two 3000 word essays, four case studies and an exam at the beginning of every weekend, plus assessment through clinical supervision, provided locally.

The course assessment runs to a rigorous time schedule, and the commonest reason for people failing to finish the diploma is inability to deliver assignments on time.

I needed the research/study time available on the higher training scheme to cover the course work, and used a special interest session in psychotherapy to practice hypnotic techniques.

Many people are under the misapprehension that hypnosis is a form of therapy in itself; but this is not so. It is an adjunctive technique used in the context of some therapeutic modality, either psychodynamic or cognitive-behavioural. I found myself at something of a disadvantage compared to psychologists on the course who were already fluent in CBT.

New perspective

The Diploma course has broadened my education outside of the MRCPsych syllabus towards a much greater understanding of psychological issues underlying illness and neurosis -  for example the influence of hypnotisability, which is a stable personality dimension possessed to a greater or lesser degree by all people, on illness behaviour and somatisation.

I have also read spectacular anecdotal evidence of treatment successes with hypnosis that cannot be paralleled in orthodox approaches. This has led to an interest in psychoneuroimmunology, a discipline with a much more rigorous scientific background than clinical hypnosis.

Past hypnosis research cannot stand up to the piercing gaze of critical appraisal, and until this is remedied in modern studies the undoubted value of clinical hypnosis will remain controversial, tarnished as it is by the antics of stage hypnotists.

For those of us who use hypnosis, there is no doubt that it can offer a valid strategy that enhances the treatment of suitable patients, and in my year as a Liaison SpR it helped me deal with a variety of clinical situations that my psychiatric training did not offer specific help with. For example, I used a technique from neurolinguistic programming to effectively erase traumatic flashbacks in a man involved in a recent RTA - what a huge potential.

Recommendation

I would thoroughly recommend this course to any medical practitioner who wants to expand his/her understanding of the human psyche as it relates to the development of illness, both physical and mental, who is seeking to expand their repertoire of effective clinical skills and treatments, or who wants to engage in original research at a local level.

Although the course was hard work, I would never have had the discipline to cover so much ground on my own, and the enterprise was highly enjoyable and rewarding.

Maya Spencer
SpR in Perinatal Psychiatry, Southampton