Advances in Children's Trances: Utilizing the hypnosis in the encounter
Laurence Sugarman, MD, ABMH and Daniel Kohen, MD, FAAP, ABMH
Format: MP3 Audio file download

All clinical encounters contain elements of trance. The experience of coming to the doctor's office involves intensified, focused attention, heightened responsivity to ideas and various expectancies, all positively or negatively conditioned from previous encounters. Clinical hypnosis is about utilizing trance therapeutically. This workshop is about the principles and practice of integrating hypnosis into common clinical encounters in child and adolescent healthcare by "finding the hypnosis in the encounter." We will focus on the continuum of child health care - from primary care, to subspecialty situations and behavioral and mental heath care. From our experiences (both faculties' and participants') we will extract principles of (1) how one recognizes opportunities for hypnotic interaction; (2) how one creates an office environment that is conducive to hypnotic experiences; and, (3) how one integrates hypnosis into common clinical interactions (physical examination, medical proceudures, teaching about self-care, etc.). This will be a participatory exerience. We will use your clinical experiences and challenges to find common principles, role-play clinical vignettes to illustrate the use of hypnotic strategies and discuss videorecorded examples. Participants can look forward to creating new ways to discover the hypnotic potential lurking in every encounter. Bring your experience! While the facuty are pediatricians, we hold that skills in hypnosis with young people are valuable with adults. The reverse is not as true. We believe that lessons from this workshop will be just as applicable to those working with adults primarily as those who work with young people.