Abstracts of current literature

Abstract

s ofthe Current Literature Adrian, C. (2004). Therapist sexual feelings in hypnotherapy: Managing therapeutic boundaries in hypnotic work. Australian Journal ofClinical & Experimental Hypnosis. 32(2), 127-139. This article elaborates ways in which using hypnosis may create special vulnerability for the clinician, not only experiencing sexual feelings toward patients but also becoming confused about the meaning of these feelings, their relevance to treatment, and the maintenance of appropriate patient-clinician boundaries, Special qualities of the hypnotic experience and relationship likely to generate erotic feelings and impulses in patients and/or clinicians are addressed. A clinical case example illustrates many possible meanings of therapist sexual feelings and the impulses to avoidance or acting out they may provoke. Clinically appropriate and inappropriate ways of managing boundaries in the presence of sexual arousal and of using sexual feelings to deepen clinical understanding and direct treatment interventions are discussed. Beshai, J. A. (2004). Toward a phenomenology of trance logic in posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological Reports. 94(2), 649-654. Some induction procedures result in trance logic as an essential feature of hypnosis. Trance logic is a voluntary state of acceptance of suggestions without the critical evaluation that would destroy the validity of the meaningfulness of the suggestion. Induction procedures in real and simulated conditions induce a conflict between two contradictory messages in experimental hypnosis. In military induction the conflict is much more subtle involving society's need for security and its need for ethics. Such conflicts are often construed by the subject as trance logic. Trance logic provides an opportunity for therapists using the phenomenology of "presence" to deal with the objectified concepts of "avoidance" or "numbing" implicit in this kind of dysfunctional thinking in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. An individual phenomenology of induction procedures and suggestions, which trigger trance logic, may lead to a resolution of logical fallacies and recurring painful memories. It invites a reconciliation of conflicting messages implicit in phobias and avoidance traumas. Such a phenomenological analysis of trance logic may well be a novel approach to restructure the meaning of trauma. Butler L.D., Symons B.K., Henderson S.L., Shortliffe L.D., & Spiegel, D. (2005). Hypnosis reduces distress and duration of an invasive medical