Medical Hypnosis - Stanford Hospital & Clinics - Stanford University Medical Center

Medical Hypnosis

The medical hypnosis program offered by the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine (SCIM) is designed to be an integrated component of a patient's overall medical care.

Hypnosis allows patients to focus intently on a specific problem and its resolution while maintaining a comfortable state of physical relaxation. It also helps patients to enhance control over their body responses.

Hypnosis is a normal state of aroused, attentive and highly focused concentration -- comparable to being so absorbed in a movie or novel that one loses awareness of his or her surroundings.

This program teaches patients self-hypnosis to help them deal with:

Pain and physical symptom control
Smoking control
Procedural anxiety management
Medical treatment side effects such as nausea and vomiting
Stress management
Phobias
Stress-related neurological problems

Hypnosis Evaluation and Treatment

In the first session, patients are evaluated by means of a formal history so that realistic therapeutic goals can be developed. Hypnosis and its applications are then explored through a standard assessment of hypnotizability, which takes five to ten minutes. These results are discussed and used to plan the role of hypnosis in the overall therapy process.

Training in the use and application of self-hypnosis is taught in the initial and subsequent sessions. Follow-up appointments focus on evaluating response and refining these techniques, or pursuing other matters of interest to the patient. The number of sessions needed depends upon the response, goals, and interests of the patient.

Hypnosis Staff

Manuela M. Kogon, MD -- Manuela Kogon is a 1989 graduate of the University of Basel Medical School in Switzerland. She did her internship at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, and her residency at the Univesrity of Utah School of Medicine. She is board certified in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry and has completed a Fellowship at Stanford University in Medical Psychotherapy and Hypnosis. Her areas of work include medical psychotherapy, hypnosis, guided imagery, gestalt therapy and compliance as well as other established medical and psychiatric modalities.
Thomas F. Nagy, PhD -- Thomas Nagy is a 1967 graduate of Hamilton College in New York. He received his PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1972. He is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he teaches and supervises psychology and psychiatry postdoctoral staff members. He has been using hypnosis and other interventions, including individual pshchotherapy, with patients suffering chronic pain and a broad variety of other psychological and physical complaints for more than 20 years.
David Spiegel, MD -- David Spiegel, Willson Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, is Director of the research-focused Center on Stress and Health at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has authored more than 375 research papers and chapters in scientific journals and books, and numerous awards for his research on mind/body medicine. He co-authored Trance and Treatment (2004), a standard textbook on the clinical uses of hypnosis. Dr. Spiegel was featured on Bill Moyer’s ground-breaking PBS series Healing and the Mind.