International Handbook of Clinical Hypnosis - E-Lib FK UWKS

88 INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF CLINICAL HYPNOSIS
and covert exclamation points, for example `I am depressed! Relieve my problem!
I am helpless!' By communicating with imperatives through indirect injunctions,
the therapist ®ghts ®re with ®re. A primary injunction that should be communicated
to all patients is, `You can ®nd within the resource you need to change or cope!'
For more information about the grammar of change, see Zeig, 1988a.)
Merely presenting injunctions is not therapy. The therapist must ®rst elicit and
build responsiveness to offered injunctions. For instance, in attempting to produce
an arm levitation during trance, the therapist might enjoin the patient, `Lift your
arm.' But, even if the patient responds, this is no guarantee that hypnosis has
occurred. On the other hand, if the therapist says to the patient, `I want you to
realise in a way that is handy, that hypnosis is an uplifting experience, in a way that
is right for you,' and the patient lifts her or his right hand in a dissociated manner,
the injunction has been understood and accepted. Because of the dissociated
response garnered by the use of injunctive communication, the existence of
hypnotic responsiveness can be surmised. The therapist's words and data do not so
much promote therapeutic change, as does the patient's ability to hear and respond
to what the therapist has said indirectly Zeig, 1985a).
Hypnotic induction is essentially the elicitation of dissociative responsiveness to
injunctions Zeig, 1988b). During induction, the therapist maximally builds the
patient's response to injunction. Once the patient consistently responds to injunction,
the patient in effect communicates to the therapist, `Okay, I am open to your
in¯uence.' At this point, the door to the constructive unconscious is unlocked and
the treatment phase can begin. Subsequent hypnotherapeutic injunctions access the
resources of the constructive unconscious Zeig, 1985a, 1988b). Once responsiveness
to injunction is developed by the hypnotic induction, then injunction-rich
therapeutic communication can be used to help patients elicit constructive associations
that `drive' more effective behavior.
Injunctions per se are not therapeutic. Again, while the structure of injunctions
may be interesting, it is the response to the injunction that must be elicited during
induction before hypnotherapy can begin. The more responsiveness to injunction
which can be established, the more effective the therapy. As I have previously
argued, `The success of hypnotherapy in general is proportional to the degree of
responsiveness to minimal cues injunctions) developed within the patient' Zeig,
1988b, p. 358).
Communications not only contain underlying injunctions, they also possess a
covert message about relationships.
COMPLEMENTARY VERSUS SYMMETRIC RELATIONSHIPS
Building on Bateson's work, Watzlawick, Beavin & Jackson 1967) de®ned how
interactions tend to followone of two patterns: symmetry or complementarity.
`Symmetric interaction is characterized by equality and the minimisation of