Suggestion Therapy in Somatic Medicine

Various research results will be presented proving that appropriate communication – called Psychological Support Based on Positive Suggestions – can improve the medical care in various settings: intensive care, eye-surgery, orthopaedic surgery, obstetrics, etc. The effect of these techniques is reflected in various parameters (shorter hospital stay, better cooperation, less medication, reduced side effects etc.).

The approach is based on the observation that the patients in medical settings are in a state very close to the hypnotic state, so any comment may function as a powerful hypnotic suggestion.

In this presentation apart from our research results I will present some of those exercises that we are using in training medical professionals. These exercises are focusing on the importance of rapport, communicating in situations of emotional involvement, use of suggestive techniques in critical situations, applying simple metaphors, etc.
We will also discuss the relevance of these experiences in training professionals (nurses, psychologists, doctors, physiotherapists, etc.).

Dr. Varga is a professor at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), the head of the Department of Affective Psychology, past president of the Hungarian Association of Hypnosis, board member of the international Society of Hypnosis (ISH), doctor of Academy of Sciences (Dsc). She graduated as psychologist in 1986, and won the Postgraduate Fellowship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1986-1990). Her research topic was the investigation of the subjective experiences connected to hypnosis and the role of suggestions in critical states. She got her degree of “Doctor of University” (ELTE) in 1991, and her PhD degree in 1997 on comparing the subjective and behavioral effects of hypnosis. As a member of the “Budapest hypnosis research laboratory” she is investigating hypnosis in an interactional framework, in the multilevel approach she is focusing on the phenomenological data. From 1996 she has been working with patients of somatic medicine, mostly with critically ill, applying suggestive and hypnosis techniques. She is the founder and professor of the postgraduate training of Psychological Support Based on Positive Suggestions (PSBPS), co-organized by the Hungarian Association of Hypnosis and Semmelweis University School of Medicine, Budapest. She has published several articles, chapters and books and teaches widely about research on hypnosis, and the clinical experiences on the application of suggestive techniques with the critically ill.