I consider the fact that this book was recommended to me as an authoritative tome at the start of my training to be one of the greatest hindrances of my career as a therapist. It contains a wide selection of stuff, Hartland thought you could cure 70% of problems with direct suggestions of ego-strength -oh really..! The pointlessly superficial material on Elman and Erickson's approaches is not worth reading. The techniques Hartland recommends are basically bog standard eye fixation and progressive relaxation scripts which you can get for free on the net. His recommendations on specific conditions are also very superficial and unhelpful. There is nothing here to inspire, or to expand our understanding of the mechanisms of induction or therapy.

Hartland's book on hypnosis is a staple in the field. It has gone through many editions, this being the most recent and up-to-date. The information is scholarly, well presented, and clinically very useful. The authors do seem to have an academic bent and a bit of an anti-American bias. They question the importance of Milton Erickson's work and poo poo the NLP literature, while at the same time borrowing many clinical techniques from Erickson and NLP without giving due credit. That minor objection aside, I found this book to be richly clinically relevant and I would recommend it to anyone who uses hypnosis in clincial practice. It is one of the "Bibles" in the hypnotherapeutic literature.

Very well written and easy to follow. Much more than I expected on topics that therapists encounter. Great book for those that are interested in hypnosis and want to learn how it is applied. Excellent for those that are already practicing. Many scripts alone and how to use them make this book well worth the price. No steps left out. I have to keep this in the office and often return to it for it's valuable information. For start to finish this is worth it's weight for what you can learn and apply. Jack Nicholais, Clinical Hypnotherapist