Scripts and Strategies in Hypnotherapy: The Complete Works

Roger Allen presents a comprehensive and extremely elegantly written collection of scripts for all aspects of hypnotherapy - inductions, deepeners, and scripts for a wide range of specific problems. I particularly like the sections on pain management (including visiting the dentist), smoking cessation, negative emotions, bereavement, and accessing "lost" memories. There's also a small collection of very nice metaphors and a number of short essays on related topics including stage hypnosis, anchoring, parts therapy and others. Personally I would also have liked some essays on the practicalities of running a hypnotherapy practice (I am sure Mr Allen has a lot to share on that) but this, perhaps, is not the book for that. Nevertheless, this is an excellent collection of scripts for all practising hypnotherapists - all of them beautifully written.

A very thorough reference covering several of the more common issues hypnotherapists deal with on a day to day basis. At the same time it's very straightforward and for the experienced therapist you can almost open up and use a script straightaway (after doing all the preliminaries in the consultation/pre-induction talk of course). And the scripts really are wonderful and rhythmic and cover all the right points. The Smoking Cessation script is one I've used more than once with great success. One of more valuable hypnosis reference books.

Allen collates both his previous volumes of collected Scripts and Strategies in Hypnotherapy together in this work. Many inductions are included and a few deepeners. Rightly, most of the work is concerned with the business of therapy itself. Many situation-specific ego-strengtheners are included, as well as sections on common issues such as pain management and anxiety. The ever-popular smoking-cessation, fear-management and weight-control receive large chapters of their own which I have found invaluable in my Central-Manchester, Wilmslow and Romiley clinics.

Previous reviews of the two separate volumes have always touted the scripts as off-the-peg verbatim scripts and frameworks around which to base a bespoke item for the client. However some of the scripts come over as a little too specific for undiluted use, causing me to go through with a pencil making notes.

Part eleven is entitled Therapy Strategies and includes tips for dealing with abreaction, age progression, re-framing, anchors etc. and each of these tactics is dealt with very well. However that is what they are; tactics (or gambits), not strategies. Therapeutic strategy involves various decisions such as "when is it useful to switch from a behaviouristic approach to a classic-dynamic one?" or "should I address the symptom or the cause (or both) in this particular case?" or "how can I most usefully model the direction(s) of causation between the different aspects of this complaint? " etc.

The majority of the scripts, allude to and reflect various strategies as, necessarily so, each script must be based on some paradigm or another. The only exception being the smoking cessation pages where the strategy and paradigm are discussed specifically, (e.g. Aversion vs. Coercion?)

Due to the name of the book, I expected to see some alternative potential conceptions of the nature of each presentation along with their respective interventions, but that's not what the book is all about. The formatting decisions of choosing a large font, and starting each new script on a new page, strongly hint at the book's ultimate purpose. It looks clean and is easily read allowing easy, quick access in the consulting room. After a short introduction to hypnosis it's just cover to cover useful scripts. An index would be welcome, as would be a more complete synopsis of each script, but ultimately the complete re-formatting of the two volumes of 'Scripts and Tactics in Hypnotherapy' has made it much more convenient and better value. Now offering twice as many scripts per pound!

This book is the perfect tool for all Trainee and Qualified hypnotherapists. The tools and stratagies help develop complex and proffesional Scripts. The scripts within the Works help to give the guidlines needed to help in the treatment of Phobias through to Smoking Ceasation. A must buy recommended to all on my Course.

This wonderful book gives examples of Scripts for everyday use in Hypnotherapy. As a Hypnotherapist in training I have found it the perfect tool to help write Scripts for everything from Phobias to General Well being. A must for any therapist today. Anyone who has read the two other versions will be impressed by the content in this Complete Works.