Hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis in psychotherapy.[55]
It is used by licensed physicians, psychologists, and in stand-alone
environments. Physicians and psychiatrists may use hypnosis to help
treat depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sleep disorders, and
posttraumatic stress disorder.[56]
Certified hypnotherapists who are not physicians or psychologists
often do treatments for smoking cessation and weight loss. (Success
rates vary: a meta-study researching hypnosis as a quit-smoking tool
found it had a 20 to 30 percent success rate, similar to many other
quit-smoking methods,[57]
while a 2007 study of patients hospitalized for cardiac and pulmonary
ailments found that smokers who used hypnosis to quit smoking doubled
their chances of success.[58])
In a July 2001 article for Scientific American
titled "The Truth and the Hype of Hypnosis", Michael Nash wrote that
"...using hypnosis, scientists have temporarily created hallucinations,
compulsions, certain types of memory loss, false memories, and delusions in the laboratory so that these phenomena can be studied in a controlled environment."[46]
Controversy surrounds the use of hypnotherapy to retrieve memories,
especially those from early childhood or (alleged) past-lives. The
American Medical Association and the
American Psychological Association
have cautioned against the use of repressed memory therapy in cases of
alleged childhood trauma, stating that "it is impossible, without other
corroborative evidence, to distinguish a true memory from a false one."
[59] Past life regression, meanwhile, is often viewed with skepticism.
