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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Ritual function of hypnosis in the follow-up of persistent grief disorders

subject

description

Hypnotic processes are the subject of transdisciplinary studies that attest to a specific state and involve relational and contextual dimensions (Rainville, 2004; Bioy, 2017). This research is carried out in the context of Persistent Grief Disorders (P.G.D.., Prigerson, 2009, Zech, 2006, Fasse, 2013). A pharmacological approach improves the depressive component without affecting the specific symptoms of PGD, questioning the place of psychotherapeutic interventions (Hensley, 2006). This exploratory research questions the meaning that hypnotic experience can take in a PGD context and describes a phenomenology. The ritual dimension of the hypnotic device could underlie the phenomena of "immediate healings" (Michaux, 2007), a blind task in the practice of hypnotherapy. This is a qualitative longitudinal action research using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 2009). The results show that hypnosis can assume a therapeutic ritual function that is characterized by a clear temporal scansion, as an act of closure of a mode of relationship. We have identified a hypnotic mythology of "common knowledge",dependent on the intensity of expectations and beliefs about hypnosis, especially its "magical" and "therapeutic" dimensions. The frame effect and the sequential ritualization of the session are major. People experiencing an "immediate healing" ritual were free of major psychiatric comorbidities. The central elements are: the therapeutic alliance, the absence of competition with other belief systems, respect for the psychological ecology of the subject, his involvement in a change of relationship with the deceased and the opening of a socially acceptable opportunity to produce it. Situations of inoperability show effects of cognitive dissonance induced, between temporary submission to a suggestion and resistance to a lived experience of abandonment of the deceased. The dimensions of "fidelity" and "loyalty" are major in these phenomena.