HYPNOSIS AND SLEEP-LEARNING: Page 100

There has been considerable success in the treatment of peptic ulcers, and also in treatment of dyspepsia, chronic gastritis, colitis, high blood pressure, rapid pulse, heart palpitations, impotence and frigidity, poor bladder control, menstrual difficulties, and skin disorders such as eczema and hives. Babies have been delivered under hypnosis, and bad habits like bed-wetting and blushing have been eliminated. Motivation is stressed as important, of course, and along with this hypnosis has been employed to break the smoking habit, to overcome insomnia, and to help people reduce and gain weight. Weight reduction experiments reported by Dr. Lawrence B. Winklestein in the New York State Journal of Medicine were extremely successful. On the other end of the scale loss of appetite has been overcome. A series of articles in the New York Post, May 1959, describes the successful personal hypnotic reducing experience of a female reporter of that paper. Life reiterates the warning found in all responsible literature on the subject—that symptom removal must be used with caution; the cause of the disturbance should be treated lest another and worse symptom replace the one being eliminated. Many hypnotists disagree, claiming that bad effects of symptom removal, where it was indicated, were at a minimum. One, in particular, claims that in hypnotherapy the symptom substitution she has used with great effect, is the substitution of accomplishing the elimination of a harmful symptom. In other words, she had found that the ideal symptom substitution is the elimination of the detrimental symptom, and the resultant pride of accomplishment.