Hypnosis is now being used by doctors, dentists and therapists to help cure or relieve a wide range of illnesses, personality problems and emotional and psychological conditions. It has been used to treat phobias and many nervous symptoms; the help people give up smoking, alcohol and drugs; to overcome shyness, stammering, uncontrollable blushing, nail biting and certain allergies; to curb weight problems (both obesity and anorexia); to help overcome impotence, frigidity and other sexual difficulties; in dentistry as a substitute to local anaesthetics and to counter 'needle-phobia', tooth-grinding and excessive salivation; to alleviate pain and insomnia; to achieve relaxation in pregnancy and childbirth; and also in the treatment of behaviour problems and in crime detection. Originally published in 1981, in this book, the late Dr David Waxman - a medically qualified therapist who had practised hypnosis for over twenty years at the time of writing and who had lectured on the subject throughout the world - explains exactly what hypnosis is; gives a concise history of its practice; discusses the scientific theories about it and how it is used today; and describes what it can and cannot do and when and how it is best used.

Hypnosis is now being used by doctors, dentists and therapists to help cure or relieve a wide range of illnesses, personality problems and emotional and psychological conditions.

It has been used to treat phobias and many nervous symptoms; the help people give up smoking, alcohol and drugs; to overcome shyness, stammering, uncontrollable blushing, nail biting and certain allergies; to curb weight problems (both obesity and anorexia); to help overcome impotence, frigidity and other sexual difficulties; in dentistry as a substitute to local anaesthetics and to counter needle-phobia, tooth-grinding and excessive salivation; to alleviate pain and insomnia; to achieve relaxation in pregnancy and childbirth; and also in the treatment of behaviour problems and in crime detection.

Originally published in 1981, in this book, the late Dr David Waxman a medically qualified therapist who had practised hypnosis for over twenty years at the time of writing and who had lectured on the subject throughout the world explains exactly what hypnosis is; gives a concise history of its practice; discusses the scientific theories about it and how it is used today; and describes what it can and cannot do and when and how it is best used. "

The 9th International Congress of Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine expresses the continuity in the effort to gain scientific knowledge of hypnosis and scientific status for it, ever since the 1st International Congress for Experimental and Therapeutic Hypnotism was held in Paris in 1889, attended by many of the best-remembered psychiatrists and psychologists of the day - men such as Babinski, Bernheim, Binet, Delboeuf, Freud, James, Lombroso, F. W. H. Myers, Ribot, and many others. The continuity was broken by the period of reduced interest in hypnosis between the time of the 2nd Inter national Congress for Hypnotism in Paris in 1900, and the revival of interest shown by the 3rd International Congress for Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine in Paris in 1965. Since then, the Congresses have met more regularly, making the one of which this is the report, the 9th. The programs of these Congresses have become increasingly rich through the years, with many of the older problems still with us but now studied more dispassionately in the light of new knowledge and new scientific methods in the design of investigations and the vali dation of scientific findings."