death of hypnotherapy in a saturated market?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Denis Niblett, PhD on May 10, 2010 at 11:22pm

Steps are already being taken to bring greater regulation into the field of hypnotherapy. The Hypnotherapy Regulatory Forum has been established and is working hard to do just that. They already have a code of ethics which was agreed upon by all therapists involved. For further details take a look at http://www.hypnotherapyregulation.co.uk/


With regard to your second point, this is the state of play in many countries, and with most fields of therapy. There always was more money in teaching than in practicing. Why do you think there are so many NLP trainers, and so few good NLP practitioners? Some teachers are good at teaching yet extremely bad practitioners.

Before I go any further I know that there are many superb professional bodies doing excellent work. But I believe these to be a minority. I do not in anyway mean to insult them, and I praise the good work they do. But now back to the point in hand.

How did we get to the position where there is more money in teaching than in practicing in the first place? Let’s look at a hypothetical therapy which I will call "Auricular Hypno-Counselling" (AHC).

Schools are set up to teach AHC. These schools create “qualified therapists” and after a while get together and form an association, in our case the International Association of Auricular Hypno-Counsellors, or IAAHC for short.

The IAAHC creates a fancy corporate image including a logo (easy with today’s computers), and writes to all the therapists who qualified with one of the schools which formed the IAAHC in the first place claiming to be the best thing for AHC since sliced bread. This is also easy as these schools have all the addresses at their fingertips.

Membership of the IAAHC flourishes, and people studying for qualification in AHC are now told about the IAAHC whilst they are studying. They can even join the IAAHC as a “Student Member” before they even qualify.

However, the IAAHC has decided that in order to renew membership therapists have to collect a fixed number of points (often called CPD points to make them sound fancy) each year.

Guess how they decided to award these points – by therapists attending seminars and workshops organised and held by the schools that formed the IAAHC in the first place!

In short they set up a body which not only charges an initial joining fee, but also an annual membership fee, and on top of that, additional fees for providing often unnecessary training. I even know of one association that offers CPD points for reading books, many of which were written by members of the schools which founded the association.

I call this a perpetual income scam. The public does not benefit from such a system, nor do the therapists. The only people who benefit are the ones who control the bank accounts where the money ends up.

But that seems to be how it is with most things today.

By the way, any screams of indignation which may follow these comments are probably coming from participants in such a scheme.

Permalink Reply by Tamara on May 11, 2010 at 12:41am

Thanks Denis Niblett, for your eloquent reply and I must say diplomatic exposition of it :) Yup I quite agree there is a raping of people within hypnotherapy however you put it. It is even as basic as, and I will put a name to one 'hypnobirthing' whereby you pay for a course then to to practice your skills (which truely is just hypnotherapy) you then have to yearly subscribe to the society to put in practice their scripting processes. Although the 'example' you give is a far more reaching capitalist programme.

I know they are attempting to bring about greater reforms on regulation which I would welcome. Will the situation in hypnotherapy though still be like that of 'Film Studies' graduates? Did you know that there are more people studying film studies in any one year than there are jobs in the entire industry?

Permalink Reply by Jerry Karlin on December 29, 2010 at 9:49am

Hi.  I've read most of this double discussion so far and I understand the "film-school" syndrome.  It happens in many areas - even nowadays, in some university courses!  However, I'm actually looking for a hypnotherapy course here in the uk and I hope to practise rather than teach.  I've checked out the HS which Dennis recommends, only to find that the accreditation/membership loop applies there too!

 

So I am thinking it is not the principle which sucks but something else...

Suggestions include the ease with which money can be earned.  It is obviously more enriching to have 20 or 30 clients in one go, given the broadly similar price per hour.  But the same would apply to learning IT or even English.  However the difference is that most of us realise that you don't learn a huge and valuable amount in just 50 or 100 hours.  This is well understood in university teaching but less so in other domains.

 

So how big a subject is hypnotherapy?  Is it like learning to drive? or is it like getting a decent degree? or all of the above?  I think we need a realistic scale of achievement/standard and something to link that scale to what sort of useful pratcise can result from reaching any given standard.

The only obvious answer which suggests itself to me is to have a system of measuring what is being taught or has been learned.  And one for evaluating a practitioner's subsequent experience.

 

This would need to be independent and reliable - and may involve exams and monitoring.  Any professional societry which simply approves or accredits a teaching establishment is just asking for trouble if it just stops there.

 

I still agree such a society might start there, but what makes most sense to me is establishing a realistic spectrum of ability and devising a way - perhaps online - of measuring up individual practitioners.  I think that only once a viable scale of values has been established will the market operate....

 

Meanwhile, I'm looking for advice on how to proceed here and also I'm wondering why you are suggesting the UK is different from the US.  What is the reason for this difference do you think.  Are we Brits less likely to admit to needing help/therapy? Or is the US perhaps simply a more mature market?

 

Jerry (joined the site today!)

Permalink Reply by Tamara on December 31, 2010 at 8:20am

well there certainely is an established culture in the USA in paying for private healthcare whereas in U.K the cultural climate is that the state should provide.  Courses are running in abundance in the UK too with a varying quality but all producing qualified hypnotherapists and mostly belonging to professional societies. It is an unregulated industry so you are bound to get hiccups in the quality.

 

You are thinking of qualifing, my advice is this don't expect it to provide you with a full-time income at any near future point. Of my class of 26 only two are practicing hypnotherapists and neither is full-time. In short it is hard work and a big financial investment, but a pleasurable enterprise.

Permalink Reply by Jerry Karlin on December 31, 2010 at 8:59am

That's interesting, Tamara.  When you did your course, did you expect (and did your co-students expect) to make a living from it?

I know I've just done a short counselling course, but there was not a huge expectation that many of us would take it any further.  In fact the majority by the end said they would not.  It seemed to me that most of us were doing the course out of interest only.  Do you think that is why some of yours did not follow through, or is the market really that difficult?  One imagines that if hypnotherapy does even half of what is claimed, especially by the likes of Bandler and Paul McKenna, people, including the NHS (uk state medical system) would take an interest.  I know that increasingly CBT is the therapy of choice (partly I suspect because it is relatively quick to produce results), but I would have expected hypnotherapists to make good inroads if they get results too.

 

Of course, maybe most are not that good - It was obvious in my course that the range of levels of competence within the class by the end of the course was very wide indeed, even though I suspect we will all pass the certificate.   I suspect that, especially with short courses, a degree of aptitude at the start is the key to making a success of it.  Either way, this takes us back to the debate about course quality and effectiveness... :)  What is your view?  Is the market bad or is what you get out of a course very dependent on your own natural aptitude/experience and not just the course?

 

It would be interesting to get some market research on this...

Happy New Year

Jerry

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Chase on January 24, 2011 at 11:00am

Sadly regulation will not improve quality of service or skill levels of therapists or efficacy of aproaches. It will  mean that  eventually the price of tyraining will become such that only a select type of person would be able to fund training and worse that the government brings in legislation to formalise qualifications at which point they will hand training over to established educational bodies.

This will have the effect of turning hypnotherapy into a less than useless form of psychotherapy with everyone reading scripts, but it will also mean that really good artisans just do something else.

 

As for going into 'practice' don't be silly. You are a lay person self employed running a service business. It's much the same as being a gardener or running a shop. It's a business and a good teacher will tell you how to run a business and market as well as hypnotise. Hypnotherapy is not a clinical or legal or Professional 'practice'. Nor for that matter is it 'Clinical' or 'Medical' any sense of the terms in my opinion.

No matter what bits of paper you have or letters after your name if you can't hypnotise then your reputation won't build and your business will fold.

 

Anyone who thinks the money is in the teaching is having a laff,

 

Permalink Reply by Tamara on January 24, 2011 at 1:30pm

chuckles heartedly, erm disagree about the £ in teaching.

This is the second time today on this site I have read about the non-use of term medical/clinical in regards to hypnosis (am leaving out the therapy word as well as they dished that too), see the I have a doctorate thread - fake.lol.

I know in psychotherapy regulation or rather the recognised bodies the BACP and UKCP are perpetuating access for those with lots of dosh and free time to offer voluntary work.  So valid point, regulation may well make it a preserve for the rich. Standards are so variable  with hypnotherapy I do think perhaps this needs a quality standard stamp of sorts.

 

dah de dah

 

 

Permalink Reply by george clayton on June 14, 2011 at 2:20pm

Denis you are correct in what you say. I have been involved in practice of hypnotherapy since 1960 and have seen bodies set up before as regulatory forums, they even got as far as the house of lords before being stoped. why well sales use hypnosis, the church uses hypnosis, just to name two. so how do you control them.only the therapy part can be controled, then people will find a new name for that. "Blow away problems"  B.A.P. I beleive that there are a number of bodys like the one that you name, which are saying that they are the official bodies with grants from the goverment, and have the gratest number of hypnotherapist amongs them. me I have ploded on for fifty years perfecting my art without advertising or being a member of regulatory bodies. it will all come out correct in the end when employment starts to grow again. you will see. in the meantime some people will try to make a quick buck out of it