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rapport. A child that never had any desire or motive to respond to another person would not need to
develop any system later on to defend itself against being improperly influenced.
But here I would simply like you to think about the fact that it is possible not merely to reduce
defensiveness in a person but to build up a strong desire to please and to cooperate: something I am
calling rapport in this chapter. You can see this naturally in many children who are actively motivated to
please and learn from and respond to and trust and copy a parent or admired elder. We can see it
naturally in someone who is falling in love: there is a very strong tendency to find everything about the
loved one not merely acceptable but admirable. Film stars, singers and other "charismatic" people seem
naturally to evoke similar feelings in millions. Advertisers attempt to use this by using such people to
promote their goods. If your sporting hero says, "buy these shoes" then you will accept the statement,
which you would reject if the marketing manager spoke directly.
If you are fortunate enough already to have the sort of personality that evokes this kind of response from
a wide range of people then you have an asset which will make certain aspects of hypnosis and
hypnotherapy much easier. The question that then arises is, "To what extent can you learn to evoke such
responses?"
I don't know. But here are a few thoughts on the subject.
First of all, it is hard to please everybody. The more appeal you have to those who respond well to a
dominating personality the less appeal you will have to those who hate it and respond only to a
cooperative approach. The more appeal you have for those who like to be told simple, dogmatic truths
the less you will have for those who prefer a detailed, complete understanding.
My second point is that the best way to evoke feelings of trust is to be trustworthy and honest in all you
say and do.
The conclusions I draw from these premises are first that it is better to make the best of who you are
rather than to try to act like someone else, and second that you should, as a therapist, be prepared to
accept that another therapist will do better with many clients simply because their natural style is more
acceptable to them, though of course there are other clients that you will be better able to help.
(Just as this book will be the best for some students, while other students will find other books better.)
If you want to gauge how you are doing on the rapport front then I would suggest that after doing any of
the above exercises you ask a few questions of your partner such as:
"To what extent did you feel like giving a more positive response than was quite truthful?" "Was this to
try to please me?"
"How would you describe your overall assessment of the way in which I was asking questions: warm?
friendly? likable? neutral? cold? manipulative? dominating? other?"
The other very important factor in rapport is whether the subject has confidence in what you are doing at
the time. And the most important way of improving this is simply through your becoming better at it.
And that comes best through practice. And that is why this book is so oriented towards practice.
So in that sense everything you have done is a means to achieving some positive rapport with a subject.
Summary
You should now be far more aware of the existence of a resistive system in most people you meet and the
importance in inactivating it if you want to change their minds on anything. Argument tends to activate
even higher levels of resistance which you will find very hard to break, but the skills that this chapter
encourages you to practise will enable you to lower resistance in others with gentle words. If, beyond
that, you can activate positive feelings of rapport towards yourself you will have learned some skills
which are very valuable in hypnosis.
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Hypnotherapy for Beginners:
Chapter 8
Bringing it all together
The main lessons are summarised. And then the rest of the chapter is directed at giving you a variety of
goals - changes that you might make in a subject - in order to practice and expand on what you have
learned. Many of these are accompanied by hints on how to go about them. The advantages of writing
out scripts for yourself at this stage are presented.
You should have discovered for yourself the following things, others.
1) It is possible to alter the way in which the brain and nervous system functions among temporarily, by
deft use of the way one system of the brain can act on others to made them more or less active.
2) If you can inactivate - "switch off", "put to sleep" - a lot of the normally active systems then it is easier
to change the way in which the remainder, which remain active, act. And you will have found different
ways of achieving this focussing.
3) People respond differently, because of the fact that the natural operations of their brains are different.
4) Changes usually take time.
5) The visual imagination is a particularly useful system to activate both for exploring the depths of
someone's mind but also for making changes to other parts.
6) One system that it is very important that you inactivate is that of resistance, otherwise you will find it
hard to even get started.
If you have absorbed all these and especially if you have practised extensively, then you will have
obtained a very good grounding in what hypnosis is all about.
In this chapter I am going to present you with a large number of simple goals from which to choose some
on which to test out your skills. I am not going to be giving detailed scripts for you to use. The trouble
with fixed scripts is that they either work or they don't, and you therefore have very limited scope for
flexible adaptation or indeed of understanding what is good or bad about them.
It is FAR better if you write your own scripts. This is a very good way of seeing that you really
understand what you are doing.
I would suggest that to design a script you work in the following way. Start in reverse.
3) Write down the goal you have chosen and what system of brain or body it is centred on.
2) Write down those other systems - imagination? verbal direction? sensation? - that you might actively
use to act on that goal system.
1) Write down briefly the way in which you like to start - after reading this brief book you are likely to
choose between a relaxation approach as in Chapter 2 or an eye-closure and fixation approach as in
Chapter 5.
You now have a framework on which to construct your script. You have a starting point and a finishing
point and a choice of intermediate steps. You can then write down a draft of your entire script in the
proper order.
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