The Pregnant Man: And Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist’s Couch
The Pregnant Man: And Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist’s Couch Books
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A student bound for a prestigious writing program is suddenly and inexplicably incapable of reading a single word. A grave society matron, looking to overcome her anxiety about flying, reveals a daredevil past. A young woman trying to come to terms with her sister’s suicide is in a weak position by a poltergeist’s prankish interventions. A man who sets out to end an addiction to nicotine instead develops a fake pregnancy.
Can hypnotherapy heal a troubled mind? Why is it so compelling and controversial? In The Pregnant Man: And Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist’s Couch, Dr. Deirdre Barrett describes how she has used the fascinating discipline known as hypnotherapy to handle these patients and many others. Tracing the voyage of seven patients through her do, she demonstrates how hypnosis can accelerate and magnify the benefits of psychotherapy–and occasionally its dangers. Several of Dr. Barrett’s patients evince disquieting symptoms–hallucinations, multiple personalities, and more–that hypnotic explorations reveal as variations on the universal themes of like, bereavement, envy, and shame. Other patients result in to her couch more mundane complaints–a desire to quit smoking, dread of flying–and in the course of their therapy reveal surprising dramas behind them.
The Pregnant Man follows Dr. Barrett’s private evolution as a hypnotherapist, even as it illuminates the art and science of a branch of psychotherapy all too often misunderstood by the general broadcast. She clarifies how hypnotherapy can offer a deeper window into the workings of the mind and offers expert guidance on deciding whether hypnotherapy is aptly for you.
From the Trade Paperback edition.Amazon.com Review
Deirdre Barrett doesn’t use a gold watch and a cape, but other than that, her daily routine at Harvard Medical School is aptly out of a carnival sideshow. She puts people into trances, suggests how they might overcome or reckon differently about their problems, and snaps them back out again. With some people, if her word is to be believed, it works quite dramatically: witness the chronic asthmatic, addicted to smoking, who quit the weed–everlastingly–after a single session with Dr. Barrett. But, as she admits, not everyone is so lucky. Some people are much simpler to hypnotize than others, and even those who go glassy-eyed quite readily don’t everlastingly end up cured. The range of ailments that hypnotic suggestion can sometimes help, meanwhile, is as broad as their causal tales are obscure. To Barrett’s credit, The Pregnant Man isn’t much interested in causal theories, preferring to stab close to the details of particular case histories. There are seven of those tales here–and that format, plus the title, make comparisons to Oliver Sacks inevitable. Even as she writes clearly and engagingly, Barrett doesn’t quite match up to Sacks’s limpid brilliance and manic erudition. Nevertheless, the theme matter is fascinating, and her treatment of it informative. –Richard Farr
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