Unraveling Problems Hypnotically:
Utilization, Avolitional Agency, and Therapeutic Change
The Clinical Hypnosis Society of New Jersey is pleased to welcome Douglas Flemons, Ph.D., LMFT for our Advanced Workshop. Dr. Flemons will lay out the foundational principles of an acceptance-based, non-adversarial approach to clinical hypnosis and therapeutic change.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Social Workers, Psychologists, Mental Health Counselors, Graduate Students (with a letter from their university), Marriage and Family Therapists, Physicians, Nurses and Dentists practicing within the scope of their license.
Students and non-licensed professionals are required to submit proof of their status and supervisor.
KNOWLEDGE/SKILL LEVEL OF PARTICIPANTS: Previous hypnosis training is recommended but not required.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Douglas Flemons, PhD, is an emeritus professor of family therapy and the author of several books, including two on hypnosis—Of One Mind (Norton, 2002) and The Heart and Mind of Hypnotherapy (Norton, 2022). His most recent book is Empathic Engagement in Clinical Practice (APA, 2026). Douglas is an advisory editor for the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, which, in 2021, awarded him the Milton H. Erickson Award for Scientific Excellence in Writing on Clinical Hypnosis for his article, “Toward a Relational Theory of Hypnosis.” He presents nationally and internationally on hypnosis, empathy, brief therapy, and suicide assessment. And, since 1993, he has offered an (almost) annual Florida-Board-approved 50-hour hypnosis intensive, Inviting Connection, Inventing Change. Douglas and his wife live in North Carolina, co-directing their private practice and training institute, Context Consultants.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Clients typically contact a clinical hypnotist when they’re caught in the grip of a vexing mind-body problem. No longer able to manage it on their own, they come to us with the hope and expectation that we will help them wrest control from it, or perhaps, once and for all, even conquer it. This appeal for a competitive advantage against what clients perceive as a malicious Other creates an interesting challenge for us. Hypnosis and hypnotherapeutic change embody the logic of mind-body cooperation, not competition, the logic of mind-body connection, not contention. Our capacity to make a difference rests on our ability to invite clients into a synergistic relationship with us and with their own experience. Hypnosis is a context not for defending against and vanquishing a perceived enemy, but for collaborative learning and change.
This workshop will lay out the foundational principles of an acceptance-based, non-adversarial approach to clinical hypnosis and therapeutic change. We’ll explore and experiment with utilizing internal and external impediments to hypnosis, rather than trying to block or overcome them. And we’ll make sense of the seemingly paradoxical notion of avolitional agency as a defining quality of hypnotic experience and the non-purposive unraveling of mind-body problems. Consider this an invitation to a day of rethinking assumptions and discovering possibilities, with opportunities for you to engage, ask questions, and experiment.
COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to—
1. distinguish between disjunctive and conjunctive approaches to problem resolution.
2. state two similarities between hypnotic and meditative experience.
3. define hypnosis as a flow experience.
4. describe the role of prediction and expectancy in symptoms, placebos, nocebos, and hypnotic experience.
5. articulate a utilization approach to hypnosis.
6. specify the guiding principle of improvisation in utilization.
7. identify the role of avolitional agency in hypnotic and hypnotherapeutic experience.
TIMED AGENDA (6 hours of Education/Instruction)
9:00 – 10:30
The Self-Referential Knotting of Mind-Body Problems
• Mind-body disjunction in Western thought and medicine
• Mind-body conjunction in Eastern practice and in hypnosis and hypnotherapy
• The infusion and influence of language in conscious awareness and the self-conscious monitoring of experience
• Prediction in the construction of perception
• Expectancy: placebos, nocebos, and hypnosis
• The self-referential knotting of mind-body problems
10:30 – 10:45 Break
10:45 – 12:00
From Contention to Connection: Hypnosis, Flow, and Avolitional Agency
• Judgment: the entrenchment of disjunctive self-other differences
• Acknowledgment: the establishment of conjunctive self-other differences
• Absorption and flow: the facilitation of self-other indifferences (being of one mind)
• Embodied minds and mindful bodies
• Hypnosis:
o shifting clients from contention/control to cooperation/coordination
o indifferentiating the boundaries of clients’ circumscribed volitional self
• Avolitional agency: self-less (and thus also other-less) engagement
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch
1:00 – 2:30
Utilization in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy
• Ericksonian utilization as an orientation to practice
• Distilling and incorporating clients’ skills and resources
• The key rule of improv: Yes, And
• Getting in sync with being out of sync
• The logic of inclusion: treating—
o resistance as cooperation
o disruptions as contributions
o hindrances as advantages
o impediments as expediments
2:30 – 2:45 Break
2:45 – 4:30
Unraveling Problems Hypnotically
• Fashioning treatable problem definitions
• Intravening rather than intervening
• Collaborative intravention with disjunctive mind-body problems
• Transmuting clients’ helplessness into avolitional agency
• Hypnotically altering the patterns, meaning, and defining boundaries of mind-body problems
• Inviting avolitional emulation
• Undertaking collaborative mind-body experiments
- Extemporaneously incorporating client responses
CERTIFICATES OF ATTENDANCE
CHSNJ Certificates of attendance are included in the cost of the workshop. Certificates of attendance will be emailed to professionals who attend the entire program, provide their license number, and return the CHSNJ program evaluation. The CHSNJ certificate provides information about continuing education credits and approvals.
CANCELLATION POLICY:
A full tuition refund, less a $50 fee, will be made for cancellations up to 14 days prior to the workshop. After that, there is no reimbursement.
COMPLAINTS AND GRIEVANCES
All grievances must be in writing to chsnj1986@gmail.com. A reply will come within 5 business days.
"New Jersey social workers not pleased with a grievance resolution provided by the Clinical Hypnosis Society of New Jersey may appeal to the approving entity or their jurisdictional board."
Training health and mental health professionals since 1986