I graduated in psychology from the University of New South Wales in 1970 and have worked as a counsellor to university students and staff, at an employee assistance company and in private practice since then.

I began writing this book in 1980 after discovering that self-hypnosis is at least twice as effective as hypnosis by another person (hetero-hypnosis) for reduction or cessation of smoking cigarettes. I believe this also to be the case for other complex issues, such as eating disorders, substance abuse, and gambling.

The book was published in seven countries, including Italy and Iceland.

In the book I have tried to replace popular misconceptions of hypnosis with the concept of the acceptance of suggestions to promote positive change. By reading this book you will also become aware of the significant contribution Australian practitioners and researchers have made to the practice and study of hypnosis around the world..

In addition to theories and known facts about hypnosis, the book contains basic hypnosis scripts and more than 70 specific scripts. The book, hypnosis recordings and scripts are available by using the link Shop: Buy the Book, Recordings and Scripts. The recordings were constructed because it became apparent that not everyone was willing to make their own recording. My partner, Bill Peach (1935-2013) constructed 5 recordings before he became too ill, and I completed the project in 2014.

I have reprinted the book to accompany the recordings and the scripts. It is helpful to understand many things about hypnosis before you embark on your own project.

While the references in the book are obviously dated I find that none of the more recent findings negates or casts doubt on any of the material within.

There have been some fresh therapeutic approaches, in particular Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and the valuable concept of Mindfulness.

However, at the 20th International Congress of Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine (held every three years) in Paris in August 2015, researchers and practitioners were still attempting to understand and explain the phenomenon of hypnosis.

They were in little doubt that hypnosis had established itself as a legitimate treatment method, partly due to advances in brain imaging (the changes in brain activity during hypnosis are startling) and neuroscience. There was a large increase in the number of papers presented by doctors and dentists using hypnosis as anaesthesia for complex surgery. However, theories presented at the Congress, some involving electrodynamics, quantum physics, string theory, chaos theory and neuroplasticity, did little to shed light on the subject.

Some of the current research evaluated the use of hypnosis to treat a variety of disabling conditions – post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, chronic pain, depression, cancer, allergies – and some tried to increase hypnotizability in experimental subjects by various means, to no avail. Many years ago my friend and colleague Dr. Barbara Newton based her Ph.D. on driving brain-waves to increase hypnotizability, also to no avail. This does not imply these experiments failed, but they do imply that hypnotic susceptibility is not amenable to manipulation.

There were very few papers on self-hypnosis, and none of them dealt with people making recordings of their own hypnosis scripts.

In my experience the expectation of success with either self-hypnosis or hetero-hypnosis ranges from close to 100% for concentration, motivation and exam nerves (particularly the latter), slightly less for public speaking, public performance and job interviews, still high for sporting improvement, anxiety symptoms and sleeping disorders.

I presented my smoking cessation findings at the same Congress almost 40 years earlier, in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1978. Subjects using self-hypnosis showed a 75% drop in consumption and a 50% complete cessation rate. The group undergoing hetero-hypnosis were between half and a third as successful. When evaluating success rates it helps to keep in mind that there is roughly a 20% spontaneous recovery rate for most issues.

Individuals differ and in my experience no amount of theorising or testing for hypnotizability will predict what will actually work for a particular person. The worst outcome is that nothing will change. In my 50+ years as a qualified psychologist and hypnosis practitioner there have been no untoward incidents.

Copies of the book, hypnosis recordings and scripts are available by using the link Shop: Buy the Book, Recordings and Scripts.

To me, with hypnosis you make suggestions for desired change in the most likely way they will work, and then they either do or don’t work. If they don’t work for a specific problem – say, giving up smoking – people often feel much better because of the peripheral suggestions for relaxation, increased confidence and self esteem, insight into and acceptance and, hopefully, resolution of issues, The recordings and scripts are chockers with them. If nothing at all happens, back to square one. It may be that other wording, perhaps indirect suggestions, may bring about the desired specific result. In my experience it has never made anything worse. Sometimes there are almost miraculous results, sometimes no change, and there are a lot of surprises.

People think motivation and a belief it will work are important: mostly irrelevant. There are hypnosis scales for hypnotizability: irrelevant. People used to measure for hypnotizability and weed out of treatment those who measured low. Having said that, most of the very top measured hypnotizables we call virtuoso subjects – about 1% of the population – respond to almost any suggestion. But apart from that its anyone’s guess. The most unhypnotizable person as measured can have great treatment results and a high scorer limited success.

The concept is that the conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg. If we could bring about change consciously, there would be no need to find other ways. Things like affirmations have limited success, so we usually need to penetrate areas below the level of consciousness to succeed. Part of the problem is to find wording that will access the unconscious, preconscious or subconscious, to achieve the necessary changes.

The main thing – if it works use it and if not keep trying different tactics. And remember it does no harm as long as you are careful with the wording. Good hypnosis subjects are extremely literal-minded, so I would advise you to go over any specific scripts involving medical suggestions with your doctor.

There is a tendency to gloss over the difference between self-hypnosis and hetero-hypnosis and let you draw your own conclusions. This is because there is no clear-cut agreement. Lately, self-hypnosis has included listening to recordings made by someone else.

To me, self-hypnosis is either telling yourself what to do or making a recording telling yourself what to do, and hetero-hypnosis is being hypnotized by another, either in person or by recording.

I responded very poorly to hetero-hypnosis, I was more likely to do the opposite. And it is a big ask to tell yourself what to do and carry out the instructions at the same time, so making a recording and listening to it seems the way to go.

That is how I gave up smoking, listening to a hypnosis recording I had made for a UT,S student for quality control. This led me to my research.

120 people were either hypnotized by me or listened to a recording they themselves had constructed. The outcome was almost double the effectiveness for self-hypnosis.

Two UTS students were coming second and fourth in the Australian pentathlon of the time and came to see me for hypnosis. The issue No. 4 had was in the swim and No. 2’s issue was a slight hand tremor in the pistol shoot. After a hypnosis session with me they competed and became 1st and 2nd. Later, No.1 distilled my 25-minute session into “ready, steady, aim, fire”.

Now that’s what I call self-hypnosis. But so is making a recording and listening to it.

Sigmund Freud said “all hypnosis is self-hypnosis” meaning that the client took what they wanted from the interaction and let the rest go. But there is still the fact that most people don’t like being told what to do, and therefore hetero-hypnosis has an added resistance factor likely to interfere with success.

It is clear to me that either kind of hypnosis works most of the time, but that for some of the more difficult issues self-hypnosis is twice as likely to be effective.