Adult Development and Hypno-Coaching

 

 




          Why do some hypnotic-coaching strategies fail to help the client no matter how hard the hypnotist tries . No matter what technique he/she uses , the session turns out to be unproductive for the client. One of the reasons could be connected to the developmental stage the client is in . This means what stage of meaning making the client is in. According to psychologist Robert Keegan of Harvard University , people have five stages of meaning making , they range from:

   Incorporative: The sense of self is not developed at this point in time. There is no self to speak of because there is no distinction occurring yet between self and other

2.       Impulsive: suggest that the person is now embedded in impulses, which are those things that coordinate reflexes. The sense of self at this stage of life would be at ease saying something like, "hungry", or "sleepy", being fully identified with these hungers

3.       Imperial: The person as  autocrat is born. In the prior impulsive self, the self literally is nothing more and nothing less than a set of needs. There isn't anyone "there" having those needs yet. The needs alone are all that exists. As awareness continues to rise, person now starts to become aware that "it" is the very thing that has the needs.

4.       Interpersonal: Starts with the first moment when the person becomes aware that there are actually other people out there in the world whose needs need to be taken into account alongside their own.

5.       Institutional:  Those who achieve this level of social maturity understand the need for laws and for ethical codes that work to govern everyone's behavior. This is the first moment that a person can be said to have values, or commitments to ideas and beliefs and principles which are larger and more permanent than its own passing whims and fears.

            This process of becoming progressively less subjective as you mature, and thus more able to appreciate the complexity of the social world, repeats itself multiple times in a given lifespan (assuming people do continue to mature as they age and don't simply get stuck). Each new layer of awareness; each expansion of perspective that a person grows is simultaneously both more objective; offering a better, wider perspective on the social world than did the prior understanding, and also less objective then the understanding that logically follows next.  This could be a reason that the hypnotic session becomes valid or invalid.

   Several hypotheses have emerged in psychology of the developmental process, including those of Freud, Jung, Piaget, Erickson, Maslow, and more recently Wilber (2000). Jung called the process individuation; Maslow called it self-actualization. Spiritual sources refer to it as self-realization.

To remedy this the hypnotic-coach , must have some idea of their clients stage of meaning making , this could be done by an interview , where some open ended questions could give the hypnotist  some feedback as to where the client stands, or by asking the client to write a short narrative about themselves or their presenting issue,  this could open a window into the mindset of the client and their presenting issue. They could also use the E&P Questionnaire created by John G. Kappas  PhD, which would test the suggestibility and sexuality of the client, this could show growth and maturity patterns in a clients behavior. 

             When the hypnotic-coach makes some strides into the clients world of meaning making then he/she can start to formulate a program to help the client to reach their goal by the method of hypnotic-coaching. People become ready to learn something when they experience a need to learn it in order to cope more satisfyingly with real-life tasks and problems. The hypnotic-coach has a responsibility to create conditions and provide tools and procedures for helping learners discover their "needs to know." Hypnotic interventions should be organized around life-application categories and sequenced according to the learners' readiness to learn. If the hypnotic coach can use the power of the clients unconscious to drive these changes as written above , then he/she has a much bigger and better playing field to use his techniques of change in, and will have a rewarding outcome more frequently for himself and the client concerned .