The Nature of Trance by John Cleesattel (review by James Hazlerig)

Review of John Cleesattel's The Nature of Trance

A few months ago, I posted a fairly scathing review of an e-book by John Owens called Clinical Hypnosis: How and Why It Works. Shortly thereafter, John Cleesattel, a regular poster here on Hypnothoughts, invited me to review his e-book. I have to applaud his courage, considering that my review of the former book was not very favorable. I also have to thank him for his patience in waiting for me to get around to reviewing his book.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I've always enjoyed Cleesattel's posts, and I consider him a friend in at least the online sense of the word. I don't think that has influenced my analysis of his book, and by the time you are done reading this review, I suspect you'll agree with me on that point if no others.

(As an aside, I have to say that the text is generally better in terms of typos than a lot of published writing about hypnosis. Even so, it could have used a once-over by a good proofreader. I am just picky that way.)

To sum up The Nature of Trance, I would say that it is a systems analyst's view of hypnosis. Not content with the strictly "how-to" nature of his training, the author set about a program of asking why and how with regards to induction and trance. The book chronicles his exploration of these questions, tracing his decision to create and test a model of the mind and hypnosis, to determine what is truly necessary in hypnotic induction, and create a more effective induction based on his findings.

Questioning methods, models, and assumptions is a worthy pursuit, provided that one remembers not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are very few universally true statements about hypnosis, though there are many concepts that can yield interesting insights when contemplated: I would place in this category nearly every idea that members of this forum have labeled as "sacred cows." Cleesattel, upon finding that some of what he was taught was not true, decided to question everything he knew and rebuild hypnosis from the ground up.

As I said, I have no problem with questioning—a trait that apparently sets me apart from Cleesattel's teachers—but I do have a problem with some aspects of the author's method and approach.

Because the author is rebuilding hypnosis from the ground up, many of the findings in The Nature of Trance are presented as amazing revelations, which makes me sympathize with the author's disappointment in the instruction he received. Some of these "revelations" include the following:

*Trance can happen even with the eyes open.*

Is this really a revelation? I was taught this in school. A good friend of mine has a wonderful saying: "Hypnosis is not a state of eyelids."

*Trance does not require that we use the word SLEEP.*

There are hundreds of well-known inductions that never use that word.

*The conscious mind is not good at multi-tasking.*

The author cites his own experience and anecdotes from friends to demonstrate this. Perhaps he hasn't heard of "The Magic Number Seven," an article published in 1956 by George Miller, who established through experimentation that short-term memory (in other words, the conscious mind) has severe limits as to what it can handle at one time. Certainly, the limitation is valid, but it's not a revelation.

*The unconscious mind multi-tasks by automating processes, such as driving.*

Again, the author does his own informal research to verify what most of us already know. I'm sure I'm not the only hypnotist who uses driving as an example of unconscious behavior. Cleesattel does present the idea that these unconscious processes are analogous to macros in computer science—which is a useful way to explain it, but not exactly revolutionary.

*Hypnosis is about bypassing the "watchdog of the mind" (i.e. the critical factor).*

Once more, this is hypno 101, but it gets presented as something uncovered by the author's research. It's nothing new.

*Hypnosis can be achieved purely on expectancy.*

Elman established this, taking only a few pages to do it before moving on to more interesting matters. No good hypnotic education is complete if the student is not taught at least one pure expectancy induction. Again, this is nothing new.

*Highly analytical types can go into trance (through using the author's methods).*

The notion that 15% of the population is too analytical to be hypnotized is a bit of a straw man; most modern working hypnotists have rejected this notion.

I also find that I doubt the accuracy of the methods of research the author used to arrive at his conclusions. In order to determine which parts of induction were really necessary, the author used an exit survey with his clients. He calls this "asking the experts."

There are a number of problems with this method. Setting aside the question of whether a sampling of 100 people is sufficient, we have to question the efficacy of asking someone's conscious mind about the effectiveness of a process aimed at accessing the unconscious. While I'm sure that some valuable insight might be gained in this way, I doubt that most clients consciously understand the hypnotic process well enough to give authoritative critique. I would certainly not base my entire understanding of hypnosis on it.

In addition to the basic problem of asking the conscious mind to tell you what works for the unconscious, this method runs into what psychologists call "the perils of introspection." In a series of experiments, Wilson and Nesbitt found that having to analyze and justify decisions often led people to make poor choices and give inaccurate information to interviewers.

Using the method of asking his clients whether they thought each part of the process was necessary, Cleesattel arrives at the conclusion that most of the steps in the hypnotic process he had been taught were not necessary—so he tosses them out. (He began the process by tossing out eye-closure when he realized it wasn't possible in online chat hypnosis.) In the end, he concludes that only the convincers, the deepeners, and the induction itself are necessary. In the next chapter, he goes on to conclude that the only necessary part of induction is expectancy.

But here's the problem with that: Convincers, while nice, are not necessary. Many people have experienced trance and changework without convincers. Furthermore, expectancy, while it is sufficient to induce trance, is not the only way to do it, nor is it strictly necessary. I have accidentally induced trance without expectancy on my part or the part of the inadvertent trancer. I have slipped into trance without meaning to. So by Cleesattel's reasoning, we have to abandon both convincers and expectancy as unnecessary.

And that leads to a fundamental problem in Cleesattel's book. He appears to believe that there is one single thing that makes trance work, and that everything else is window dressing. He even proclaims that hypnosis is no longer an art but a science, because he has reduced it to a simple equation that expresses the relationship between expectancy and resistance.

But as my own experience shows, expectancy is not necessary. Indeed, very little is really necessary in the artistic process of inducing trance—but an awful lot of things are helpful. My office doesn't have to have blue walls, a fountain, comfortable seating, candles, a diploma on the wall, soft lighting, air conditioning, or trancy music. I have led people into deep trance with none of those. But they all help. An induction doesn't require relaxation, deep breathing, express permission, rapport established by pretalk, expectancy, convincers, leading and pacing, double binds, dissociation, or any of the countless tools hypnotists use. But they all help. Most of them help by operating beneath the client's conscious awareness. I believe that's the point the author misses.

In the end, I can't agree with Cleesattel's conclusions, but I can applaud him for choosing to explore and question. This work has a good model of the mind and a thorough examination of what keeps highly analytical types from going into trance. I love the author's definition of the term "deep." The last chapters contain an excellent discussion of expectancy and an equally excellent example of a pure expectancy induction. It's a method I'm glad to add to my tool belt.

In truth, I might have preferred that the author had simply offered a treatise on expectancy in hypnosis without feeling he had to reinvent the entire process. Even so, at twenty dollars for the download, The Nature of Trance is worth the money you'll spend on it. I don't consider it revolutionary or indeed fully accurate, but the insights contained within have value to the working hypnotist.