**5. How to use hypnosis to facilitate prospective memory**

### As Milton Erickson said

*There has to be an integration of unconscious learnings with conscious learnings. This should be foremost in your mind whenever you use hypnosis on psychiatric patients. You can recognize that you can resolve a conflict, a phobia, or an anxiety in the trance state. But unless you do something about it in the waking state, the patient is still likely to have that anxiety or phobia. ([14], p. 6)*

There are some classic hypnotic phenomena reported in literature, such as:

**123**

*Active-Alert Hypnosis to Achieve Personal, Professional, and Therapeutic Goals*

We will focus on hypnotic age progression in this section. Age progression is a procedure that projects the person *into* the future to experience achieving her/his goals as if they were happening right now [24]. This involves not only seeing them as a dissociated image, but also as an associated one, where you can see exactly what you will be seeing, and feeling what you will be feeling once you have accomplished an objective, and then be aware of the steps you take to reach that goal, as if they were made in the past. This approach was used by Erickson in many forms, includ-

Now, when you work with this pseudo-orientation in time, you need to make contact with the conscious mind, and that is where goal construction takes place. According to Robert Dilts [25], people construct their goals using six principal

• defining the goal as the polarity or the opposite of the problematic state

• making a generative outcome (using their own references instead of external

When you are working to generate changes with people, all psychotherapy approaches usually take time to define goals. Some methods establish them in a positive and a future-oriented way, for example "What you are going to be doing once you feel…" [26], or focused on what is going to be happening once you get rid of your problem [27]. In our experience, people often struggle with the construction of their objective because they are ambiguous and lacking both clarity and a deadline. Also people focus on what they do not want rather than on what they

Now, we are presenting an active-alert hypnotic strategy to increase motivation and visualize goals, a methodology that has shown excellent results in our practice, and that currently is being tested for efficacy not only in therapeutic contexts but

• using an external role model or reference to define the desired state

• taking some key characteristics of the desired state

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92197*

• Age regression

• Hypnotic hallucination

• Posthypnotic suggestion

• Hypnotic age progression

ing the "crystal ball" hypnotic strategy.

• negation of the problematic state

• Automatic writing

• Age progression

methods:

ones)

• acting "as if"

really want to reach or accomplish.

**6. Active-alert hypnosis for goal achievement**

also through the use of scientific methodology.


*Active-Alert Hypnosis to Achieve Personal, Professional, and Therapeutic Goals DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92197*

• Age regression

*Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis*

exploring in this chapter.

**4. Prospective memory**

As Milton Erickson said

• Amnesia-hypermnesia

• Catalepsy

• Analgesia

to make the movement to the left or right, your frontal lobe sends a signal to your lips to "move" left or right. That is when it gets tricky: it appears that your brain

Can we say that our decision-making process and motivation are, therefore, unconscious? If so, how can we develop a stronger will and motivation to make different or even better decisions? Some evidence suggests that the decision-making

As hypnotherapists, we are accustomed to "talking to the unconscious mind" [14] and that includes avoiding some of the intellectual and logical barriers that one builds for oneself. In hypnosis, that is achieved through hypnotic suggestions. Weitzenhoffer [15, 16] claims that the difference between a hypnotic suggestion and an order is the nonvolitional outcome after the hypnotic suggestion, that is, the hypnotized person does not act according to conscious will but rather in a "dissociative" mode: "it's as if the levitating arm were not mine." As Farvolden and Woody [17] find on their study, diminished activity on frontal lobe structures could be an explanation to this "unconscious" behavior. And that is the key aspect of a hypnotic

Now, how can we use this process to achieve goals? That is what we will be

Prospective memory is the ability that allows us to make plans in the present and then remember and carry them out in the future [18]. It is known that the hippocampus consolidates memory from short term to long term [19] and such a complex process occurs better while sleeping [20]. Also, the amygdala's involvement in the memory consolidation process is well demonstrated since a memory associated with high-intensity emotional content tends to last longer than a boring one [21, 22]. In the prefrontal cortex, the Brodmann area 10 seems to be responsible for making plans and translating them into action, with support from the structures mentioned above. Also, the same area is responsible for retrieving information about those plans and maintaining the attention required to execute them [23].

sends that last signal *before* your prefrontal region does its job.

and posthypnotic suggestions, the nonconscious willingness.

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."

**5. How to use hypnosis to facilitate prospective memory**

*patient is still likely to have that anxiety or phobia. ([14], p. 6)*

*There has to be an integration of unconscious learnings with conscious learnings. This should be foremost in your mind whenever you use hypnosis on psychiatric patients. You can recognize that you can resolve a conflict, a phobia, or an anxiety in the trance state. But unless you do something about it in the waking state, the* 

There are some classic hypnotic phenomena reported in literature, such as:

Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland).

process comes from a mixture of conscious and unconscious mind [13].

**122**


We will focus on hypnotic age progression in this section. Age progression is a procedure that projects the person *into* the future to experience achieving her/his goals as if they were happening right now [24]. This involves not only seeing them as a dissociated image, but also as an associated one, where you can see exactly what you will be seeing, and feeling what you will be feeling once you have accomplished an objective, and then be aware of the steps you take to reach that goal, as if they were made in the past. This approach was used by Erickson in many forms, including the "crystal ball" hypnotic strategy.

Now, when you work with this pseudo-orientation in time, you need to make contact with the conscious mind, and that is where goal construction takes place.

According to Robert Dilts [25], people construct their goals using six principal methods:


When you are working to generate changes with people, all psychotherapy approaches usually take time to define goals. Some methods establish them in a positive and a future-oriented way, for example "What you are going to be doing once you feel…" [26], or focused on what is going to be happening once you get rid of your problem [27]. In our experience, people often struggle with the construction of their objective because they are ambiguous and lacking both clarity and a deadline. Also people focus on what they do not want rather than on what they really want to reach or accomplish.
