Terence T. Gorski is an internationally recognized expert on substance abuse, mental health, violence, and crime. He is best known for his contributions to relapse prevention, managing chemically dependent offenders, and developing community-based teams for managing the problems of alcohol, drugs, violence, and crime. He has extensive experience working with employee assistance programs (EAP) and has special expertise in working with emergency professionals including fire, medical, and law enforcement. He is a prolific author and has published numerous books and articles.

Neurosci Res. 2014 Jun 25. pii: S0168-0102(14)00103-5. doi:10.1016/j.neures.2014.05.009. Takarada Y(1), Nozaki D(2). Author information: (1)Faculty of Sports Sciences, Waseda University, Saitama 359-1192, Japan. Electronic address: takarada@waseda.jp. (2)Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.

Hypnosis often leads people to obey a suggestion of movement and to lose perceived voluntariness. This inexplicable phenomenon suggests that the state of the motor system may be altered by hypnosis; however, objective evidence for this is still lacking. Thus, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation of the primary motor cortex (M1) to investigate how hypnosis, and a concurrent suggestion that increased motivation for a force exertion task, influenced the state of the motor system. As a result, corticospinal excitability was enhanced, producing increased force exertion, only when the task-motivating suggestion was provided during hypnotic induction, showing that the hypnotic suggestion actually altered the state of M1 and the resultant behavior.

Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd and the Japan Neuroscience Society. All rights reserved.

Praxis (Bern 1994). 2014 Jul 2;103(14):833-9. doi: 10.1024/1661-8157/a001719. Wehrli H. Author information: Klinik für Anästhesie, Intensiv-, Rettungs- und Schmerzmedizin, Kantonsspital St. Gallen.

Dr. Allen Ivey, best known for his "microcounseling" model received his bachelors degree from Stanford University in 1955 and spent a year as a Fulbright student at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark in 1955-56. In 1959 he received his doctorate from Harvard University in counseling and guidance. Dr. Ivey is current Distinguished University Professor in the School and Counseling Psychology Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has authored of co-authored approximately 200 articles and books, translated into 11 languages. Dr. Ivey's most recent work is in "developmental counseling and therapy" which focuses on how to integrate developmental theory into clinical and counseling practice.

In addition to usual medical care it is often critical to consider the patient's inner world in order to sensitively differentiate between harmful and helpful suggestive elements. The respective abilities in terms of hypnotic communication can be easily learned. Confident, empathic attention and a calm, understanding and figurative language narrowing the focus on positive emotions and positive change, which have been shown to improve the patient's chances of healing, are of particular importance. Proper clinical hypnosis goes one step further: it makes explicit use of suggestions, trance, and trance phenomena. The major clinical indications for hypnosis include psychosomatic disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, depression, and pain syndromes. Hypnosis can also be employed as an adjunct for surgical therapy.

Praxis (Bern 1994). 2014 Jul 2;103(14):833-9. doi: 10.1024/1661-8157/a001719. Wehrli H. Author information: Klinik für Anästhesie, Intensiv-, Rettungs- und Schmerzmedizin, Kantonsspital St. Gallen.

Full title: Using hypnosis to disrupt face processing: mirrored-self misidentification delusion and different visual media.

Mirrored-self misidentification delusion is the belief that one's reflection in the mirror is not oneself. This experiment used hypnotic suggestion to impair normal face processing in healthy participants and recreate key aspects of the delusion in the laboratory. From a pool of 439 participants, 22 high hypnotisable participants ("highs") and 20 low hypnotisable participants were selected on the basis of their extreme scores on two separately administered measures of hypnotisability. These participants received a hypnotic induction and a suggestion for either impaired (i) self-face recognition or (ii) impaired recognition of all faces. Participants were tested on their ability to recognize themselves in a mirror and other visual media - including a photograph, live video, and handheld mirror - and their ability to recognize other people, including the experimenter and famous faces. Both suggestions produced impaired self-face recognition and recreated key aspects of the delusion in highs. However, only the suggestion for impaired other-face recognition disrupted recognition of other faces, albeit in a minority of highs. The findings confirm that hypnotic suggestion can disrupt face processing and recreate features of mirrored-self misidentification. The variability seen in participants' responses also corresponds to the heterogeneity seen in clinical patients. An important direction for future research will be to examine sources of this variability within both clinical patients and the hypnotic model.

Front Hum Neurosci. 2014 Jun 18;8:361. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00361. eCollection 2014. Connors MH(1), Barnier AJ(2), Coltheart M(2), Langdon R(2), Cox RE(2), Rivolta D(3), Halligan PW(4). Author information: (1)ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders Sydney, NSW, Australia; Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University Sydney, NSW, Australia; Dementia Collaborative Research Centre, School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales Sydney, NSW, Australia. (2)ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders Sydney, NSW, Australia; Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University Sydney, NSW, Australia. (3)School of Psychology, University of East London London, UK ; Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research Frankfurt am Main, Germany ; Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society Frankfurt am Main, Germany. (4)ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders Sydney, NSW, Australia; School of Psychology, Cardiff University Cardiff, UK.

Dr. Worden's clinical and research interests are in the area of health psychology, with a special focus on life-threatening illness and life-threatening behavior. At Massachusetts General Hospital he has directed four major N.I.H. funded research projects on the subjects of suicide, terminal illness care, the psychology of cancer, and bereavement. His primary therapy interest is the application of gestalt psychotherapy to individuals, couples, and groups.

Judy Belmont, M.S., LPC has been a psychotherapist, wellness speaker and workplace wellness consultant for 35 years. She has bridged the areas of Psychotherapy and Wellness on radio, TV and print media. Her message of positivity, healthy communication, stress resilience and self-empowerment has reached thousands nationwide through her books, consulting and interactive presentations.

The aim of this systematic review was to estimate the efficiency of hypnosis prior to medical procedures. Different databases were analyzed to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing hypnosis to control interventions. All RCTs had to report pain or anxiety. Eighteen RCTs with a total of 968 patients were included; study size was from 20 to 200 patients (14 RCTs ? 60 patients). Fourteen RCTs included 830 adults and 4 RCTs included 138 children. Twelve of 18 RCTs had major quality limitations related to unclear allocation concealments, provider's experience in hypnosis, patient's adherence to hypnotic procedures, and intention-to-treat design. This systematic review observed major methodological limitations in RCTs on hypnosis prior to medical procedures.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2014;62(4):399-424. doi: 10.1080/00207144.2014.931170. Cheseaux N(1), de Saint Lager AJ, Walder B. Author information: (1)a University Hospitals of Geneva , Switzerland.

This study takes a context-specific approach to examine people's willingness to try hypnosis under various conditions and the factors that contribute to their willingness. It examined 378 participants, who completed a web-based hypnosis survey. The results showed that people's willingness to try hypnosis varies by context. Specifically, people are more willing to try hypnosis when it is framed as "peak focus" rather than "hypnosis" and when they perceive the environment as being safer. Moreover, factors including participants' demographics, hypnotists' demographics (relative to the subjects'), participants' control bias, and knowledge of hypnosis affect people's degrees of willingness to try hypnosis, depending on the specific context. The results suggest further analysis of hypnosis occurring in public contexts and the effects it may have on attitudes and therapeutic outcomes.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2014;62(4):425-54. doi: 10.1080/00207144.2014.931175. Davis OC(1), Gao X. Author information: (1)a City University of New York (Baruch College, Medgar Evers College) , New York, USA.

Bradley T. Erford, Ph.D., LCPC, NCC, LPC, LP, LSP, was the 2012-2013 President of the American Counseling Association (ACA) and a professor in the school counseling program of the Education Specialties Department in the School of Education at Loyola University Maryland. He has authored or edited more than 15 books. His research specialization falls primarily in development and technical analysis of psycho-educational tests and outcomes research and has resulted in the publication of several dozen refereed journal articles, more than 100 book chapters, and ten published tests. He has received numerous awards for his scholarship and service to the counseling profession from ACA and the Association for Assessment in Counseling and Education (AACE), organizations within which he has held numerous leadership positions.

BACKGROUND: Induction of labour using pharmacological and mechanical methods can increase complications. Complementary and alternative medicine methods including hypnosis may have the potential to provide a safe alternative option for the induction of labour. However, the effectiveness of hypnosis for inducing labour has not yet been fully evaluated. OBJECTIVES: To assess the effect of hypnosis for induction of labour compared with no intervention or any other interventions. SEARCH METHODS: We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group's Trials Register (31 January 2014), handsearched relevant conference proceedings, contacted key personnel and organisations in the field for published and unpublished references. SELECTION CRITERIA: All published and unpublished randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and cluster-RCTs of acceptable quality comparing hypnosis with no intervention or any other interventions, in which the primary outcome is to assess whether labour was induced. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two review authors assessed the one trial report that was identified (but was subsequently excluded). MAIN RESULTS: No RCTs or cluster-RCTs were identified from the search strategy. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: There was no evidence available from RCTs to assess the effect of hypnosis for induction of labour. Evidence from RCTs is required to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of this intervention for labour induction. As hypnosis may delay standard care (in case standard care is withheld during hypnosis), its use in induction of labour should be considered on a case-by-case basis.Future RCTs are required to examine the effectiveness and safety of hypnotic relaxation for induction of labour among pregnant women who have anxiety above a certain level. The length and timing of the intervention, as well as the staff training required, should be taken into consideration. Moreover, the views and experiences of women and staff should also be included in future RCTs.

Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014 Aug 14;8:CD010852. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD010852.pub2. Nishi D(1), Shirakawa MN, Ota E, Hanada N, Mori R. Author information: (1)Department of Mental Health Policy and Evaluation, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, 4-1-1, Ogawahigashicho, Kodaira, Tokyo, Japan, 187-8553.