Definitely not. Physicians cannot even agree among themselves about hypnotherapy. There has been an ongoing feud within medical circles since the beginnings with [Dr] Mesmer. In the early years of the last century, surgeons were jeered at, even struck off their registers, for daring to reveal they had operated hundreds of times on patients with only hypnosis as an anesthetic. Hypnosis in psychotherapy fared no better. When Dr Ambroise Liebeault began to practice hypnotherapy in 1860 he was ridiculed by his colleagues - despite the cures his patient enjoyed.
     Today hypnosis is widely used by all kinds of medical personnel. In the 1950s both the British and the American Medical Associations endorsed hypnotherapy. However, a widespread belief among many physicians, dentists and PhD psychologists, is that the use of hypnosis should be restricted to themselves. They accuse outsiders of not having adequate understanding, training or ethical standards to responsibly employ hypnosis, especially in psychotherapy. Typical of this view is the following accusation:
     "Stage hypnotists and other lay people…have trifled with hypnosis for a long time, mainly for sensational display. Many of them fancy themselves to be hypno-therapists and advertise themselves as such. Physicians and psychologists across the country have warned that the irresponsible practices of these lay people endanger the public interest, and attempts have been made to outlaw them." (Brown & Fromm, 1986, p.147).
     Brown and Fromm are right to be concerned about irresponsible practices, but wrong to imply that only physicians and psychologists behave in the public interest. Integrity is not something that is conferred along with a medical or psychological degree. If it were, 7% of psychiatrists and 12% of psychologists would not have had sex with their patients nor abused them in other ways such as enmeshing them in cults. As for abuse specifically involving hypnosis, perhaps the most startling is murder. By a doctor. It is ironic that the case is cited by psychologists who want to restrict the use of hypnosis to professionals:
     "Some years ago, a physician/hypno-therapist who was having an extra-marital affair with a woman whom he wanted to marry, hypnotized his wife and suggested to her that she was developing a headache. When the headache would become very severe, he told her, she would swallow all the pills in the bottle he had put in her lap. They would make her fall asleep, so she would not feel the pain any longer. After a while she reached for the pills and took them all. It was a lethal dose." (Brown and Fromm, 1986, p.146). Another example of physic- ian misuse of hypnosis is cited by a lawyer/psychologist who first says, "While the evidence appears overwhelming that hypnosis per se is a safe procedure that carries little risk to a subject, no such claim is made here with regard to the effect of ill-advised suggestions that have been made to subjects. Usually such suggestions are made by either lay hypno-therapists or persons with no psychological training, practicing outside the limits of their professional competenc " (Udolf, 1981, p.276). Udolf then condemns two such "foolish" and "idiotic" suggestions by lay hypnotists. However, he does not condemn an equally stupid suggestion made by a doctor:
"...an obstetrician, angered at a patient for not complying with his suggestions for weight reduction,  [told]  her that if she did not stick to her diet she should kill her pet dog. While this suggestion may have been given by the physician with the intent of 'motivating' the patient, it probably resulted from his own unrecognized counter-transference feelings in response to this ego-bruising therapeutic failure. In any event, it was followed by the patient's actually killing the dog and her subsequent hospitalization with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia."
     Even if the number of professional abusers is very small, it is still absurd for physicians and psychologists to imply that their training or ethics makes most of them immune to temptations of the flesh, incompetence, and self-delusion. Doctors and psychologists are as frail as the rest of us. Other restrictors are proud to openly admit, "We even lie to patients, and we believe that is OK too as long as it is done for the purpose of helping them" (Citrenbaum, et al, 1985, p.14). Given the controversial nature of psychotherapeutic practice and the contradictions of its various theories, how can this minority of practitioners have the gall to insist that they are the only ones who know how to use hypnosis? Especially when some research suggests that two out of three trainee psychologists will be taught by a therapist who is himself either ineffective or harmful? (Cole,1982).
     Condescension is rife among restrictors. For example, they assert that only a doctor or a  psychologist would realize the futility of using hypnosis to help an intoxicated person give up drinking (Getzlaf and Cross, 1988). The spreading of fear of hypnosis by some medical people is a gross disservice to the public. How many thousands of persons have consequently steered away from the opportunity to harness this natural tool for relaxation, self-control, problem-solving and creative development? The restrictors claim that hypnosis can be dangerous  - but not if it's in their hands. This preposterous notion is belied by their own guidelines on how  to reduce risks. Because it is not hypnosis itself but the unique interaction of the subject, hypnotist and environment, which yields the occasional unwanted effect, the guidelines are quite properly concerned with these factors. The most important of which is the character of the hypnotist. Significant hypnotist risk factors are personal and professional.
Personal risk factors are:" personality dynamics,” " verbal and non-verbal behaviors,”and, "style and sexual factors.”Professional risk factors are errors or deficiencies in:" history taking,”" screening,”" informed consent,”"observation,”" diagnosis.”[and] unclear, ambiguous or confusing:" suggestion,” " time and timing,” " word and imagery choice,” "interventions or lack of them,” " debriefing,”"de- hypnosis and follow-up." (MacHovec, 1988, p.63).
There is nothing intrinsic to being a doctor or a psychologist that automatically eliminates the hypnotist risks listed by MacHovec. On the contrary, the would-be restrictors themselves say that - being a medically trained person may in itself pose a risk! The hypnotized client can be harmed by the professional's habitual, non-hypnotic, ways of making suggestions or asking questions, (Brown and Fromm, 1988).
     All the professional factors can be learned and indeed, are often taught by the 'lay' hypnotists to medical and psychological practitioners. The battle for restriction of who can use hypnosis is really about power. Physicians want as much as they can grab. To add hypnosis to their monopoly has nothing to do with protecting the public, but everything to do with aggrandizing physicians.
     Psychologists, eager to garner a little prestige by cloaking themselves in medical rhetoric, are being used by doctors. Doctors know disease, not health. Yet they attempt to medicalise almost everything, (e.g. child-birth). Unlike psychologists they cannot make even a pretense of expertise with the problems in living, (shyness, low self-esteem, phobias, bad habits, sexual and other relationship difficulties, etc.), because these are rarely medically based.
     But the restrictors are correct in suggesting - "Ideally, associations of hypnotists would protect the public from inappropriate use of hypnosis and from claims that it will cure the incurable" (Getzlaf and Cross, 1988, p.265). "Lay" hypnotists are well advised to require clients to have a thorough medical check-up. This protects both hypnotist and client. If, for example, your doctor tells you that your headaches are caused by a tumor, the responsibility for choice of treatment - hypnotherapy and/or surgery - rests where it should: on you as an informed client.
     Brown, Daniel P., Fromm, Erika (1986). Hypnotherapy and Hypnoanalysis. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
     Cole, David R. (1982). Helping: Origins and Development of the Major Psychotherapies. Toronto: Butterworths.
     Citrenbaum, Charles M., King, Mark E., Cohen, William I.(1985).  Modern Clinical Hypnosis for Habit Control. New York: Norton.
     Getzlaf, Shelly B., and Cross, Herbert J. (1988). Hypnotists Associations: A Consumer's Confusion, The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, XXXVI, 262-274.
     MacHovec, Frank (1988). Hypnosis Complications, Risk Factors, and Prevention, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 31, 40-49.
     Udolf, Roy (1981). Handbook of Hypnosis for Professionals. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. © 1995-2005 Bryan M. Knight, MSW, Ph.D.  Dr. Knight can be reached by e-mail at, drknight@hypnosis.org,  by fax at (514) 485-3828, by regular mail at, 73 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC, Canada, H4B 1R7, and by phone at (514) 332-7902.
     Here is an email of mine to an online forum, on this and allied themes.
     I don't know where all this concern over, "untrained" and "unethical" potential use of hypnotism is coming from, it's all over the place. For fifty years or more Hypnotists have being doing their thing. Just as some MD's, Psychotherapists, etc. even Dentists, some Hypnotists have been unethical. Many "trained" by the seat of their pants. But now it is as if "we" are the only ones deserving of this exalted position, and "they" are the undeserving them, who don't deserve this knowledge without the imprimatur of "us".
     I am as "trained" as the next (wo)man, and well versed in hypnotherapy, with ten years in practice as my sole support, plus a wide self-education in various allied fields, among many. I perceive it as a false assumption of superiority to decide who is fit or unfit to receive knowledge of hypnosis.
     It is this parental attitude that used to be the attitude of the Church towards learning Latin, or the employer /owner's opposition to workers or slaves learning to read and write. It is the attitude of Psychotherapist's towards "lay" Hypnotists and Stage Hypnotists. Let's restrict knowledge to us, and control them. It's the attitude of the government, to deprive the population of knowledge of their activities, that took an Act of Congress to change, the "Freedom Of Information Act."
     I'm sure that perhaps I am not reputable enough in many peoples eyes to be admitted to the "club". I had that experience previously in Psychiatric Hospitals as an "untrained" Dual Diagnosis Counselor. I probably broke all the rules, but got results. Later I found out that my groups were the only ones the patients felt useful, and wanted to attend. Drove the "fully trained" Social Workers crazy. The Psychiatrists and Ph/D. Clinical Psychologists only cared that I was able to accomplish what was needed.
     All knowledge has the potential for good or evil, but restricting it's dissemination is rarely useful or practical, and is less and less so in the information age. People can go on line and figure out how to construct an atomic weapon if they want to. The dyke is full of holes, (no pun intended), censorship is pretty hopeless. Hurrah for freedom of information, I say. I am just pro liberty and against control, restriction, limitation or suppression in general, so this is just an offshoot for me. This is so even though I know some people will use information in ways I don't approve of. But my lack of approval is just that, only my lack of approval.
     Opinions from the brain of the other brian.