Clinical Hypnosis for Psychiatrists in Training

Interest in the application of hypnosis to clinical psychiatry has increased recently in this country. In the 1950s it had been recommended (Subcommittee of the Psychological Medicine Group, 1955) that experience of the techniques of hypnosis should be available to all medical undergraduates and to postgraduate trainees in certain specialties, including psychiatry. Such a training would lead to an awareness of the practical use and limitations of hypnosis, and would also allow an informed and rational decision to be made about its employment in the practice of medicine. Despite this recommendation, a review twenty years later (Scott, 1978) showed that teaching of hypnosis was a rare feature of medical training.