THE ROLE OF HYPNOSIS IN THE TREATMENT OF ANXIETY DISORDERS
The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the existing literature on the use of hypnotherapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders. Based on review and discussion of a representative sampling of the literature, it was concluded that the research is over-represented by phobic conditions and that there needed to be more studies of hypnotherapy with samples suffering from other forms of anxiety disorder.
It was also pointed out that phobic studies need to specifically target anxiety reduction and not just use hypnosis for conditions related to anxiety such as psychosomatic complaints. However, it was noted that despite the foregoing methodological/design problems as well as other problems discussed in the body of the review, the research generally shows good results for the use of hypnosis in the reduction of anxiety.
And no Grand Inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as has anxiety, and no spy knows how to attack more artfully the man he suspects, choosing the instant when he is weakest, nor knows how to lay traps where he will be caught and ensnared, as anxiety knows how, and no sharp-witted judged knows how to interrogate, to examine the accused as anxiety does, which never lets him escape, neither by diversion nor by noise, neither at work not at play, neither by day nor by night.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD, The Concept of Dread
According to Barocas, Reichman and Schwebel (1985) anxiety can be defined as an uncomfortable state of both physiological and psychological tension. The authors note that anxiety can be differentiated from fear in that, unlike fear, anxiety is a feeling that has no specific cause in the external environment. In other words, one feels afraid but does not know why.
While everyone experiences moments of anxieties, there are those whose experience of it is so severely and frequently that they can be said to suffer fro...