Where do we draw the line?

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Permalink Reply by Dennis Atkinson on August 26, 2009 at 3:55pm

Thanks to people like Gil Boyne, our profession now has freedoms that were not readily available in the 1960's. These freedoms are one reason why you will find the variety of hypnosis products and services you now see in the marketplace.

Hypnosis back then, with exception of Milton H. Erickson, psychiatry, and psychology, was generally viewed as a type of entertainment ... much like a magic show. When it came to using hypnosis for therapy, it was closely guarded, and regulated. To practice hypnosis for therapy was a violation of the medical profession, and you ran the risk of being arrested. Looking back, I would imagine much of the regulation had to do with potential religious and morality concerns, more so than actual documented cases of misuse.

But have these freedoms gone too far? Talk of the availability of so called "suicide scripts", when assisting a person's suicide in most states is criminal; videos depicting how to hypnotize women into having sex, how to use hypnosis to "trance" your partner into bed; hypnosis and recordings available so that you can have a hypnotic orgasm, the list goes on. How far do we stretch it before those same entities that controlled it in the 1960's come out of the woodwork to control and regulate it once again? Many of the laws and provisions surrounding psychology came about because of improper conduct on the part of the therapist - usually of a sexual nature.

So how do we keep our freedom to practice our profession the way we do today if we don't self regulate and monitor our activities on an individual level?

Permalink Reply by Rick Crockett on August 26, 2009 at 5:26pm

Dennis Atkinson said:

. How far do we stretch it before those same entities that controlled it in the 1960's come out of the woodwork to control and regulate it once again? Many of the laws and provisions surrounding psychology came about because of improper conduct on the part of the therapist - usually of a sexual nature.

So how do we keep our freedom to practice our profession the way we do today if we don't self regulate and monitor our activities on an individual level?

You ask a good question: I started a group on Yahoo intending to take it international as the:
Society for Ethics in Hypnosis. I would like to continue this effort and to make membership as inexpensive as possible but with a contract to abide by the associations guidlines. SEH membership would be an endorsement not a political statement. Maybe even include a liquidated damages clause if a member broached ethics in a profound way.

Look OKmaybe I made a good pet for awhile for some girls I loved. That was a private thing and not a way to run a practice but we know some are just as cavalier right inside their business offices. What bothers me more are a couple of different things.

One was my misadventure at Sharp Hospital in Encinitas. By the way elsewhere I may have mis-stated Scripps. It was Sharp and Sharp refused to tell me what happened and why I was missing for nearly nine hours. When I asked they told me they were under a criminal investigation and where taking the fifth. Finally a psychiatrist at Scripps Miramar told me I had been hypnotized but refused to give me the script or say more. Both should have been sanctioned.

Years earlier I was helping the Kiwanis that had some material stored in a common area between offices. As I was moving some stuff I realized I could hear right into the back office of a local hypnotist. He was performing sex therapy with a women and giving a pretalk I felt very lude. Four months later he was arrested for rape. According to the local news paper, he was having intercourse with a 14 year-old girl who came to and screamed. This guy had a mail-order certification took more dollars than test questions to get.

The way I feel about it is if a girl friend wants to hypnotize me and make me a pet then more power to her but it has got to stay out of the office. Maybe I shouldn't even have a since of levity about it but the home stuff is going to go on no matter what the law says. We need a self-policing professional society that is independant of the schools. One trade mark that certifies us all and gives us guidlines between what we do professionally and on the side. Had our friend the lady tist marketed her experimental products under a pysudonym, Penn & Teller would have not been able to nail her to the wall. The mixing of her very remarkable professional image with the questionably taudry stuff burnt her! I think she would have liked some guidlines and they would have been better for her in the long run.

More More...

Best Wishes,

Rick C. -Bentized and very very happy!

Permalink Reply by Ron Franks on July 10, 2010 at 12:00am

It seems to me that whenever a line is drawn by one (or many ones forming a group) that some other one percieves the drawing of that line as a challenge to cross it, and cross it he/she will. And consequences such as sanctions and punishments for crossing the line may act as deterents but not as prevention measures. As with most if not all matters, I'm of the opinion that the best method for motivating any desired behavior is showing people the benefits of compliance as well as detriments of non-compliance. If we suceed in our efforts to show an individual that there is more benefit in conpliance to ethical behavior then there is in non-compliance then I beilieve we have the best chance of producing the ethical behavior we desire to experience.