The Benefits of Clinical Hypnosis and Its Applications in Psychology

The dentist’s chair is a terrible place to learn you can’t relax on command. Take Daniel, 34, an illustrative composite: knuckles gone the color of piano keys, jaw clamped, the whine of the drill coming through the wall, every muscle from his neck to his ankles voting unanimously that something was about to hurt. He’d tried breathing apps, a stress ball, a hopeful playlist. What he’d never tried was the one thing he’d written off for a decade because it sounded like a stage show with a swinging watch: clinical hypnosis.

That reputation is the first obstacle. Most of what people believe about hypnosis comes from movies, comedy acts and a vague fear of losing control, none of which resembles a session in a licensed therapist’s office. Meanwhile, hypnotherapy is quietly used alongside medical and psychological care for pain, anxiety, phobias, irritable bowel syndrome and stress-related problems, and a respectable body of trials sits behind some of those uses. Not all of them. And that gap between the well-tested and the merely hopeful is exactly where patients get burned, either by dismissing something useful or by paying for something that isn’t. We’ll sort the solid from the shaky.

So is it real? Mostly yes, with caveats.

This article explains what the benefits of clinical hypnosis actually are, what the evidence supports, who tends to respond, and how its applications in psychology work in practice.

What is clinical hypnosis, and how does it actually work?

Clinical hypnosis is a therapeutic procedure in which a trained clinician guides you into a state of focused attention and lowered awareness of your surroundings, then offers suggestions aimed at a specific goal such as less pain or less fear. It isn’t sleep. You stay awake, you hear everything, and you can open your eyes whenever you like.

The formal definition most researchers lean on comes from the American Psychological Association’s Division 30 (the Society of Psychological Hypnosis). In 2015, Gary R. Elkins and colleagues, including David Spiegel and two other hypnosis researchers, published the revised wording: a state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness, characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion. Notice what that sentence leaves out. No trance in the cartoon sense, no surrender of will, no special powers in the hypnotist.

Think about the last time you got so absorbed in a book that someone had to say your name twice. That’s the raw material. Absorption is a normal human capacity, and hypnosis simply harnesses it deliberately, adding a structure: an induction (a few minutes of relaxation and attention narrowing), a deepening phase, the therapeutic suggestions, and a gentle return to ordinary awareness.

Who does the work? You do, honestly. A good clinician acts more like a coach than an operator, offering imagery and wording while your own imagination carries it out. That’s why hypnosis is a skill as much as a treatment, and why people tend to get better at it with practice.

One distinction matters a great deal. Clinical hypnosis is delivered by a licensed health professional (a psychologist, psychiatrist, physician, licensed counselor or social worker) who has extra training in the method and uses it to treat conditions within their own scope of practice. Stage hypnosis is entertainment, built on volunteer selection, social pressure and a lot of showmanship. They share a name and little else.

It also helps to say what hypnosis isn’t: a stand-alone cure, a form of memory retrieval you can trust, or a replacement for medical evaluation. It’s an adjunct, a tool that sits inside a larger treatment plan, and the research is strongest when it’s treated that way.

Why should a therapist bother? Because the method gives people a repeatable way to change attention, expectation and bodily tension, three levers that sit underneath a surprising number of psychological problems.

Is hypnosis mind control? What the myths get wrong

No. Nobody can make you do something against your values, reveal secrets, or stay “stuck” in a trance. That’s the myth; the fact is much duller and much safer.

The person who did the most to change the tone of clinical practice was Milton H. Erickson, an American psychiatrist whose casebooks, written with Ernest L. Rossi, shaped modern hypnotherapy. Where older authoritarian styles issued commands (“You will sleep now”), Erickson favored permissive, indirect suggestion and what he called utilization: working with whatever the patient already brings, including resistance, rather than overpowering it. His approach assumes you have the resources and the clinician mostly helps you find them. You can disagree with parts of his legacy (his anecdotes are famously hard to test) and still see how much it softened the field.

Here are the beliefs I hear most often in consultation rooms, and what the research and clinical consensus say about each:

• “I’ll lose control.” You remain aware and can reject any suggestion. People often report the opposite: they feel more in command of their attention than usual.
• “I’ll be unconscious.” You’re alert. Most clients later describe the experience as deep relaxation with a narrow beam of focus.
• “I’ll say something embarrassing.” Hypnosis is not a truth serum, and people can lie, stay silent or end the session whenever they choose.
• “I could get stuck.” Nobody has ever been trapped in hypnosis; at worst, a person drifts into ordinary sleep and wakes naturally.
• “Only gullible people can be hypnotized.” Hypnotic responsiveness is a stable trait that is not linked to weakness or low intelligence. Imaginative, absorbed people tend to score higher, which is hardly an insult.

There’s one honest worry buried in the myths. Memory. Material recalled under hypnosis can feel vivid and true while being partly constructed, and professional bodies have warned for decades against using hypnosis to “recover” memories. Any legitimate clinician will say so up front.

So what does a session feel like? Often heavy limbs, a pleasant fog at the edges, time that runs oddly, and a clear sense of being the one in the chair. Some people feel nothing dramatic at all and still benefit.

What does hypnosis do to the brain?

Imaging studies suggest hypnosis changes how brain regions that handle attention, conflict monitoring and self-awareness talk to each other. It isn’t magic, and it isn’t placebo alone either. Both can be true.

The experiment that grabbed my attention years ago came from Amir Raz and colleagues in 2005. They took people who were highly responsive to suggestion and gave them a hypnotic suggestion to see written words as meaningless symbols, then ran a Stroop task, the classic test in which reading the color word “red” printed in blue ink slows you down. Under suggestion, the Stroop interference shrank dramatically and so did activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region tied to detecting conflict. A suggestion, in other words, changed one of the most automatic things humans do: reading.

That’s a small laboratory study with a selected group, so treat it as a clue and not a verdict. But it fits a broader pattern in which hypnosis appears to alter top-down attention control, the way your expectations filter what you notice.

Other studies report changes in the default mode network, the system active when your mind wanders and you think about yourself, along with altered connections between the prefrontal cortex and regions that monitor the body. Shifts in dorsal anterior cingulate activity during pain and conflict tasks turn up as well.

Brain scans, though, come with a warning label. Seeing a region light up doesn’t prove the mechanism, small samples are common, and results haven’t always replicated. The evidence here is thinner than headlines suggest, particularly outside the highly responsive minority.

What can we say with some confidence? Hypnosis behaves like a real psychological state with measurable correlates, and suggestions can alter perception, not just report. Whether it needs a distinct “state” at all is still argued about (the debate between state theories and sociocognitive theories has run for sixty years), but clinicians don’t need to settle that to use the tool sensibly.

Honestly? I find the practical implication more interesting than the scan: attention can be trained, and what you expect to feel shapes what you feel.

Can hypnosis really reduce pain?

Yes, and pain is where the evidence for hypnosis is strongest. Hypnotic analgesia (pain relief produced by hypnotic suggestion) has been tested in dental work, burns, cancer care, labor and surgery, and it often works where people expected little.

Consider Priya, 52, another illustrative composite, waiting for a breast biopsy with her hand over her sternum. Her clinician walked her through a “safe place” image and a suggestion that the area would feel cool and distant. She still felt pressure. She didn’t feel the sharpness she’d braced for.

The headline number comes from Guy H. Montgomery and colleagues, whose 2000 meta-analysis of 18 studies found that about 75% of participants obtained substantial pain relief from hypnotic suggestion, with a moderate-to-large average effect. That figure applied to a mix of clinical and experimental pain, so it doesn’t promise that three out of four patients get a free pass from every ache. It does mean the effect is far too consistent to wave off.

How could words change pain? A neat piece of evidence arrived in 1997, when Pierre Rainville and colleagues used PET imaging while volunteers kept a hand in painful hot water. When hypnotic suggestions made the pain feel more or less unpleasant, ratings of unpleasantness moved, and so did activity in the anterior cingulate cortex. Ratings of raw intensity changed far less, and the somatosensory cortex (which maps the sensation) didn’t track the unpleasantness shift. That separation matters. Pain has a sensory side and an emotional side, and hypnosis seems especially good at turning down the emotional one.

In practice, clinicians use several techniques:

1. Glove anesthesia, imagining a hand growing numb and then transferring that numbness elsewhere.
2. Dissociation, picturing yourself watching from across the room.
3. Reinterpretation, recasting a burning feeling as warmth, or pressure as tingling.
4. Distraction through absorption, filling attention with a vivid scene.

Caveats? Plenty. Responsiveness varies a lot between people, trial blinding is difficult (you can’t hide hypnosis from the person receiving it), and many studies are small. Hypnosis rarely replaces medication; it often trims how much is needed and quiets anticipatory dread.

Not bad for a technique people associate with pocket watches.

Does hypnosis help anxiety, phobias and panic when added to therapy?

It can help, and the best-known evidence is for hypnosis used alongside cognitive behavioral therapy, not instead of it. Roughly, adding hypnosis tends to give a modest boost, and the picture varies by problem.

The landmark paper here is the 1995 meta-analysis by Irving Kirsch, Guy Montgomery and Guy Sapirstein, who reviewed studies in which cognitive behavioral therapy was delivered with or without hypnosis. The average client in the hypnosis condition did better than roughly 70% of clients receiving the same therapy without it, a moderate edge that was clearest for weight management. Kirsch later became famous for skepticism about antidepressants and placebo, which makes his willingness to publish a pro-hypnosis result oddly reassuring.

Later reanalyses questioned how strong that effect really was, since the number of studies was small and the quality uneven. Treat it as encouraging, not definitive.

Why would hypnosis pair well with CBT? Imaginal exposure becomes easier to control, so a person afraid of flying or needles can rehearse the feared situation in manageable steps. Relaxation skills get practiced with focus, not just recommended in a handout. Expectancy rises too: people start treatment believing something will shift, and that belief carries real therapeutic weight. And self-hypnosis recordings keep practice happening between sessions, which is where most therapy gains are won or lost.

Consider Tom, 27, an illustrative case who panicked in crowded elevators before a new office job. His therapist built a graded plan: elevator imagery under hypnosis, then a real two-floor ride, then six floors. The hypnosis wasn’t doing the healing. It made the rehearsals vivid and slow enough to tolerate.

Specific phobias (needles, flying, dental procedures) look like the best fit, since the target is narrow and the exposure structure is clear. For generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder or social anxiety disorder, hypnosis is better regarded as a supplement. If your anxiety is severe or has stuck around for months, that’s worth a proper assessment from a psychologist or psychiatrist first, since no technique should be chosen before you know what you’re treating.

Why does hypnosis work for some people and barely at all for others?

Because hypnotizability, a person’s capacity to respond to hypnotic suggestion, is a measurable and fairly stable trait. It’s roughly as individual as height, and it affects results.

The foundational work belongs to Ernest R. Hilgard, the Stanford psychologist who spent decades studying hypnotic ability, building scales with André Weitzenhoffer and Josephine Hilgard. In a typical sample, a minority of people (often cited as roughly 10 to 15 percent) are highly responsive, a similar small group is barely responsive, and the majority sit in the middle. Hilgard also proposed neodissociation theory, the idea that attention can divide into streams with limited communication between them. His famous “hidden observer” demonstration, in which a hypnotized person with a hand in ice water could report pain through a different channel while denying it in another, remains a vivid if debated illustration.

This trait matters clinically. Highly responsive people often get dramatic pain relief and strong imagery; low responders may gain mainly relaxation. But “low” doesn’t mean “doomed.” Expectation, rapport and practice raise responsiveness for many people, and clinicians generally begin with a short test or simply a first session to see how you do.

Higher responsiveness goes with a vivid imagination, a habit of getting absorbed in books, music or film, a curious attitude toward the procedure, comfort with the clinician, and younger age (children are often highly responsive). Things that don’t predict it: intelligence, gullibility, or a “weak” personality. If anything, strong-willed people who decide to cooperate do well.

A practical point I’d press on anyone considering this. If your first session feels like nothing, don’t conclude hypnosis is a scam or that you’re defective. Try a second and third, ask about alternative induction styles (some people do better with eyes open and active imagery, others with slow progressive relaxation), and if there’s still nothing, move on. Plenty of effective treatments exist.

Prefer a number? Researchers measure this on standardized scales; clinicians often use briefer versions. You don’t need the score, only the honesty to notice what happens.

Can hypnosis support trauma recovery and PTSD?

Sometimes, cautiously. Hypnosis can help with calming, imagery rescripting and managing dissociation, but it’s not a first-line stand-alone treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, and it must never be used to dig for memories.

Here’s the thing about trauma: the problem often isn’t a lack of information but a nervous system that stays on alert. David Spiegel, the Stanford psychiatrist who has worked on hypnosis and trauma for decades, and his father, Herbert Spiegel, described in their 1978 book Trance and Treatment how patients with dissociation and acute stress can use hypnotic skills to regain control over distressing states. Hypnotic ability, in their framing, is a resource, a way to dial intensity down and put a boundary around a memory, not a probe for hidden truths.

Spiegel’s group has also studied hypnosis for acute stress reactions in people recently exposed to a traumatic event. The thinking is straightforward: early skills for relaxing, containing images and managing intrusive recall might help prevent symptoms from hardening. Results are encouraging in places, but the evidence base is smaller than for pain, so enthusiasm should be modest.

Where might hypnosis fit in a trauma plan? Mostly in stabilization skills, such as a calm-place image or a “dial” for turning distress down; in imagery rescripting within a larger treatment run by a trauma-trained clinician; and in sleep and nightmare management, as a supplement.

What shouldn’t happen? Using hypnosis to recover repressed memories. Hypnosis can increase confidence in recalled material without improving its accuracy, and the “memory wars” of the 1990s left real damage, including false memories and ruined families. Responsible clinicians avoid it; if someone proposes it, treat that as a red flag.

The better-established trauma treatments (trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, prolonged exposure, cognitive processing therapy and EMDR) should usually come first. Hypnosis is a possible add-on when a clinician with both trauma and hypnosis training believes it will help you tolerate the work.

And if flashbacks, numbing, or constant hypervigilance have taken over daily life, seeing a licensed trauma therapist is the decision that counts most, whichever method they use.

What else can clinical hypnosis treat, and does self-hypnosis work?

Beyond pain and anxiety, hypnosis has decent support for irritable bowel syndrome, some sleep problems, and certain habits, while evidence for smoking cessation and weight loss is mixed. Self-hypnosis, done at home with recordings or learned techniques, can extend the benefits.

Consider the long-term pain patient. Mark P. Jensen, a psychologist who has spent much of his career on hypnosis for chronic pain, wrote a therapist guide built around structured sessions in which patients learn hypnotic analgesia and then practice at home. His emphasis on repetition is the point: most people don’t get lasting benefit from one dramatic session, but from a short daily routine. His clinical trials, many among people with chronic pain linked to disability, suggest meaningful reductions in pain for a good share of participants, though results vary.

Here’s a rough map of what the evidence looks like for common targets:

• Irritable bowel syndrome: gut-directed hypnotherapy has some of the better-supported results outside pain, and clinical guidelines in some countries mention it as an option.
• Insomnia: promising but preliminary; hypnosis may help with relaxation, though cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia remains the first-choice treatment.
• Smoking cessation: mixed; some studies are positive, others show no clear advantage over other methods.
• Weight management: modest effects at best, mainly when combined with diet and behavior change.
• Nausea around chemotherapy: useful for anticipatory nausea in particular.
• Hot flashes: some randomized trials suggest relief for women in menopause.

Self-hypnosis deserves its own paragraph. A typical routine takes 10 to 15 minutes: settle your posture, fix your gaze, breathe slowly, count down, picture a place, offer yourself a short suggestion (“my shoulders are loosening”), then count back up. Apps and recordings can guide you. Quality varies enormously, which is a polite way of saying some are rubbish, so prefer recordings made by licensed clinicians.

Not everything belongs on this list. Claims that hypnosis cures cancer, undoes past lives, or reverses serious psychiatric illness have no credible support. Be wary of anyone who offers them.

Which one should you try first? Start with the problem that has the clearest evidence and a clear way to tell whether it’s working: a pain score, a sleep diary, a count of cigarettes.

How should you prepare for a first session and keep the gains?

Go in curious, well rested, and with one specific goal. Vague hopes (“I want to feel better”) are harder to treat than a target like “I want to get through a blood draw without my heart pounding.”

Start with logistics. Eat something light, skip the extra coffee, wear comfortable clothes, and use the bathroom beforehand; none of this is glamorous, yet a full bladder has ended more sessions than skepticism ever has. Tell the clinician what you’re afraid of, including the silly stuff. Say you hate the word “trance” or that you can’t stand having your eyes closed around strangers. A decent practitioner will simply adjust.

Picture Marcus, 45, an illustrative case with a long commute and a stiff neck that flared up whenever his manager emailed after 6 p.m. His first session was mostly conversation about what tension felt like in his body, and only the last fifteen minutes involved an induction. By the second session, he’d chosen his own cue: a slow breath and the image of a quiet lake he’d visited as a teenager. That cue became his tool in meetings.

The real work is between sessions. Five to fifteen minutes a day of self-hypnosis matters more than the length of any single appointment, and tying the practice to an existing habit (right after brushing your teeth, say, or just before getting out of the car at work) makes it far likelier to stick.

Keep a simple log. Rate your target symptom from 0 to 10 before and after practice, note what you tried, and bring the numbers to your next appointment. If nothing has shifted by the fourth session, say so plainly and ask whether another approach makes more sense; a good clinician won’t take offense.

Expect setbacks. A stressful week can flatten your practice, and symptoms sometimes bounce back before settling. That’s normal and doesn’t mean the method failed.

What about doing this alongside medication or therapy you already have? Usually that’s fine, and often smart, but tell every provider involved so the plan stays coordinated.

Finally, hold your expectations at a sensible height. Hypnosis rarely produces fireworks. More often you notice, a few weeks in, that the dentist’s chair is merely unpleasant.

Is hypnotherapy safe, and how do you find a qualified clinician?

Hypnosis is generally safe when delivered by a trained health professional, with mild, short-lived side effects such as drowsiness, headache or a brief emotional wobble reported by a minority. Risks rise when untrained people use it, or when it’s aimed at the wrong target.

A short case. Elena, 61, an illustrative composite, answered an online ad for “past-life regression” after her mother died. The practitioner had a certificate from a weekend course and no health license. Over three sessions Elena became more upset, not less, and nobody was equipped to help. A licensed grief therapist with hypnosis training would have looked very different.

Who should be careful? People with psychosis or active severe mental illness, certain dissociative conditions, and those with unstable medical conditions should only try hypnosis under close medical or psychiatric supervision, and some clinicians avoid it altogether in those cases. Tell any clinician about seizures, heart conditions, and your psychiatric history before beginning.

When you’re looking for a practitioner, check for these in order:

1. A professional license in a health field (psychology, psychiatry, medicine, counseling, social work, nursing or dentistry).
2. Specific hypnosis training from a recognized professional society, not just a short online certificate.
3. A clear explanation of the treatment goal, number of sessions and how progress will be measured.
4. Willingness to coordinate with your primary care doctor or other providers.
5. No promises of a guaranteed cure.
6. No use of hypnosis to recover memories.
7. Comfort: you should feel respected and free to stop at any time.

Cost and availability differ widely by country and by clinician, and insurance or public health coverage for hypnotherapy is inconsistent, so ask directly before you book instead of assuming.

A quick red-flag sweep: a practitioner who guarantees results, discourages you from seeing your doctor, requires a big up-front package, or claims hypnosis cures serious illness is someone to walk away from. That’s not a close call.

Wondering what the first appointment looks like? Expect mostly talking. An assessment, a discussion of goals and fears, a short explanation of the method, and often a brief trial induction. Nothing happens to you that you haven’t agreed to.

FAQs about Clinical Hypnosis and Its Psychological Uses

Is clinical hypnosis scientifically proven?

Partly. The strongest evidence supports hypnosis for pain, including procedural and cancer-related pain, and for irritable bowel syndrome, with moderate support as an add-on to cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and some habit problems. Evidence is thinner for insomnia, smoking and weight loss, and weak or absent for claims such as curing serious illness. Many trials are small, and blinding is hard because people know when they’ve been hypnotized. So the honest answer is that hypnosis has real, replicated effects in specific areas, along with an enthusiastic fringe that runs ahead of the data. Judge each claim on its own merits instead of treating hypnosis as one single thing that either works or doesn’t.

Can anyone be hypnotized?

Almost everyone can experience some degree of it, but the depth varies a lot. Researchers describe a spread: a small group is highly responsive, a small group barely responds, and most people land somewhere between. Responsiveness is a stable trait, tied to imagination and absorption rather than weakness. Motivation and trust in the clinician also help. If your first attempt feels flat, try different induction styles or more practice before deciding. Some people still don’t respond well, and that’s fine; other treatments exist, and being a low responder says nothing negative about you.

Will I lose control or say things I don’t want to?

No. You stay aware, hear the clinician, and can reject any suggestion or end the session whenever you want. Hypnosis isn’t a truth serum; people can stay silent, refuse requests, or even lie. What does happen is a narrowing of attention that can feel unusual, with heavy limbs or drifting thoughts. Stage shows create a false impression because volunteers are selected for high responsiveness and feel social pressure to perform. In a clinical setting there’s no audience and no reason for you to do anything you wouldn’t choose to do.

How many sessions does hypnotherapy take?

It depends on the goal. A focused problem such as a needle phobia or dental anxiety may need only a few sessions, while chronic pain or a habit like smoking often takes more, typically with daily self-hypnosis practice between appointments. Many clinicians work in a range of roughly four to ten sessions, though that’s a convention more than a rule. Ask your clinician how they will measure progress, such as pain ratings, a sleep diary, or a fear scale, and when they’d change the plan if little is happening by the third or fourth session.

Is hypnosis the same as meditation or relaxation?

They overlap but aren’t identical. All three can involve slow breathing and focused attention. Hypnosis adds deliberate suggestions aimed at a specific change, delivered by a clinician or a recording, while mindfulness meditation usually trains open, nonjudgmental awareness without steering the experience. Relaxation training focuses mainly on lowering physical tension. Some people find hypnosis easier than meditation because the clinician supplies the structure. Others prefer meditation for the independence. Research hasn’t crowned a winner; the better choice is often whichever one you’ll actually practice.

Can hypnosis recover forgotten memories?

Not reliably, and professional organizations have cautioned against using it that way. Under hypnosis, people may produce more detailed recollections, but the added detail includes errors, and confidence rises even when accuracy doesn’t. That combination is how false memories can form. Legitimate clinical hypnosis focuses on present symptoms, such as pain, fear, tension and sleep, and not on excavating the past. If a practitioner promises to uncover hidden childhood events, that’s a reason to find someone else.

Does hypnosis work for anxiety and panic attacks?

Sometimes. It seems to work best for specific fears and as an add-on to cognitive behavioral therapy, where it can make imagery-based exposure and relaxation practice easier. For generalized anxiety or panic disorder, the evidence is more limited, so established treatments such as CBT, and medication when appropriate, usually come first. A therapist can assess which approach fits your symptoms, how long they’ve lasted, and how much they interfere with work, sleep or relationships. Self-hypnosis recordings can complement treatment, though they shouldn’t replace an assessment if your symptoms are frequent or severe.

Are hypnosis apps and recordings worth trying?

They can be, with a pinch of salt. Recordings are a low-cost way to practice relaxation and suggestion between sessions, and some programs were developed by clinical researchers and tested in trials. Many others are unregulated, vague, or built to sell subscriptions. Look for content created by licensed clinicians, a clear stated goal, and a reasonable length. Stop if you feel distressed or dizzy. Apps are weaker for trauma, psychosis or severe depression, where a live clinician can adjust the approach as you respond.

Bibliography

• Elkins, G. R., Barabasz, A. F., Council, J. R., & Spiegel, D. (2015). Advancing research and practice: The revised APA Division 30 definition of hypnosis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 63(1), 1-9.
• Erickson, M. H., & Rossi, E. L. (1979). Hypnotherapy: An exploratory casebook. Irvington.
• Hilgard, E. R. (1977). Divided consciousness: Multiple controls in human thought and action. Wiley.
• Jensen, M. P. (2011). Hypnosis for chronic pain management: Therapist guide. Oxford University Press.
• Kirsch, I., Montgomery, G., & Sapirstein, G. (1995). Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63(2), 214-220.
• Montgomery, G. H., DuHamel, K. N., & Redd, W. H. (2000). A meta-analysis of hypnotically induced analgesia: How effective is hypnosis? International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 48(2), 138-153.
• Rainville, P., Duncan, G. H., Price, D. D., Carrier, B., & Bushnell, M. C. (1997). Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex. Science, 277(5328), 968-971.
• Raz, A., Fan, J., & Posner, M. I. (2005). Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the human brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(28), 9978-9983.
• Spiegel, H., & Spiegel, D. (1978). Trance and treatment: Clinical uses of hypnosis. Basic Books.