Diversity of Training Versus Standards of Professional Hypnotherapy

HypnosisAustralia, May 2001

By Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist & Counsellor
Editorial Director of HypnosisAustralia.

Ever since the beginning of modern-day widespread use of hypnosis, from Mesmer in the late 1700s, to medical, dental, physiological and educational applications there has been dispute about standards and methods of training. Certainly technical and philosophical differing ideas have been responsible for a great deal of the discourse, but the money made from training and protectionism of marketshare is really what has driven the wedge between hypnosis disciplines.

Australia is no different from any other continent and profit and protectionism is undoubtedly what has stopped hypnosis organisations coming together and uniting under a greater professional banner. Times, however, are changing and the profit of the future could be from the hypnosis disciplines banding together to have the modality of hypnotherapy more respectfully recognised alongside psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, and counselling.

We are moving into a more forcefully market-driven economy threatening many professional and economic structures through globalisation. People can now pop on a plane and have their surgery thousands of miles away at a cheaper cost than in their own back yard. Online counselling is reducing the standards of counselling care to an impersonal contact, but is increasing in availability and convenience. Psychiatry in Australia is threatened by the emergence and unification of various psychotherapies administered by non-medical practitioners. Insurance companies are looking for cheaper options as the cost and availability of new medical procedures cripples their budget forecasts.

While private practice has supported many dedicated hypnotherapists throughout their careers, they have never had access to government funds via the Medicare system, unless there were medically trained. That could, howeve,r change in the future if the profession was to collect under a united professional banner. This has happened with osteopaths in the UK, but failed to happen with hypnotherapy, because many of the British schools were often not ever speaking to each other. A recent government review before the houses of parliament at Westminster dismissed hypnotherapy as a fragmented profession that was unable to offer sufficient research to substantiate its validity. The bit about the lack of research was rubbish but the truth about the profession being fragmented showed hypnotherapy to be shooting itself in the foot.

The hypnosis trainings in Australia are extremely diverse from sheer medical applications to esoteric eastern philosophical health systems. To says that one is better than the other would be ridiculous because we need to remember Einstein's advice that it is the discipline that defines the theory. What is true, though, is that some trainings are sadly lacking in structure and outcome with little follow-up of practitioners and what they need to be doing throughout their careers to maintain professional development and integrity.

More uniformity may not necessarily be the answer because what we could lose through routine standardisation may be knowledge and practices that could defy our present understanding of healing systems. If we look back 40 years we can see the terrible mistakes made as the Western medical establishment assumed it was the one with the only answers.

But what could be helpful may be structure and consistency of study by students and continuing professional development and supervision within professional organisations. It is not so much what you teach, but how much of it and how often you require practitioners to retrain that counts.

The key that seems to be the route to tying organisations together may well be minimum standards for codes of ethics that support client care and prevent abuse and negligence within practice. Furthermore the ability for training organisations to put forward evidence that a student has studied a healing or medical system applicable to that discipline is also very important for future regulatory bodies to be aware of in order for them to justify professional recognition.

This journal is keen to engage members of staff and heads of organisations in debate by inviting them to submit their own views of possible ways forward for the profession of hypnotherapy to work together in harmony in Australia.

©HypnosisAustralia, May 2001