Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis?

Title: Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis
Author: Steven Heller and Terry Steele
Format: Book
Source: Amazon.com
Price: $12.89
Rating: Excellent

Despite being nicknamed "The Wizard," the late Steven Heller presents his ideas and observations based on a lifetime of innovative hypnosis in an extremely down-to-earth, clear, concise fashion. The somewhat facetious subtitle—There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis—is drawn from one of the many anecdotes he uses to illustrate his methods; in this particular case, a Pavlovian psychology professor scoffed at a hypnosis experiment Heller proposed, exclaiming, "That will never work because there's no such thing as hypnosis!"

Early on in the book, Heller addresses this question and explains that if people define hypnosis according to the prevalent but fiction-based stereotypes, then there is indeed no such thing as hypnosis. However, he goes on to make the argument that real hypnosis—in the form of what he dubs "hypnotic transactions"—is ubiquitous. Indeed, he puts forth the argument that all learning and most behavior follow a hypnotic pattern. He illustrates how useful it is for a therapist to analyze behavior in this way to facilitate change.

As a side note, the introduction to the book, provided by one of my favorite authors, the late Robert Anton Wilson, presents the ubiquity of hypnosis beautifully. That introduction alone was worth the price of the book.

With an approach similar but parallel to Erickson's, Heller uses numerous teaching stories to convey his message, and the title comes from one of them. In it, he relates that his young son was plagued with a fear of nighttime monsters. Rather than spend countless hours trying to reason with his son or discount the boy's fears, Heller went to the hardware store and bought materials to make a "magical monster-repelling stick." He then taught his son a "magical" ritual for banishing the monsters, which the boy performed for a few nights in a row. Within the week, the son returned the stick, saying he no longer needed it. Heller's point with this story is that addressing irrational, unconscious behavior with rational, conscious therapy is largely a waste of time.

Heller presents a number of fascinating methods in this book. I've decided to extract and summarize several of them for my own use, including techniques for clients "too tense to relax," a method for anchoring a calm response, and a fascinating technique involving two contradictory anchors that cancel each other out.

Written at an easy to understand level but chock full of profound observations and effective techniques, Monsters and Magical Sticks has much to offer anyone from the neophyte to the master hypnotist.