Jorge Delpino: Presidente de la Asociación Uruguaya de Hipnólogos Clínicos (AUDHIC).
The purpose of this article is to share with the reader my experience in the field of clinical hypnosis, in the knowledge that, perhaps, many have already traveled a similar path or have already taken steps of professional improvement. So, I dedicate it to all those students who have not yet begun to practice Hypnotherapy professionally or those professionals who are taking their first steps in this beautiful profession and finally for those who are looking for different views.
Part of my story begins in 2001, when I decided to study Psychology. I live in Uruguay, a small country located between Argentina and Brazil, we are only 3,500,000 inhabitants and we also have a small community of Hypnotherapists who are adhered to the Uruguayan Association of Clinical Hypnotherapists (AUDHIC), of which I am president, composed of professionals from different areas of health. Years before, while I was studying Medicine, I was working in the Medical Service of UTE (state electric energy company), a position I was forced to resign because of my political ideology, opposed to the dictatorship in Uruguay.
For two years I went to the School of Psychology (UDELAR) and unfortunately I found an archaic teaching system that is practically obsolete today all over the world. To simplify, we were presented with a program from the 19th century, with professors from the 20th century and students from the 21st century. I did not give up and I was fascinated with what I had begun to investigate about classical Hypnosis, so I found in Spain the right place to continue my studies. When I finished my studies and started to work in my country, as a Classical Hypnotist, I felt disappointed, since I did not have the expected result, considering that it should work as a brief therapy. Looking for new strategies and still trusting Hypnosis as a tool, I started to investigate the origin of the problem, what I was missing or what I had not been taught.
In 2009, I remembered a class at the Faculty of Psychology, where it was mentioned that they were trying to change the scientific paradigm (mechanistic, reductionist and absolutist model), which was applied in medicine at the time. The change was directed towards a new science based on the paradigm of complexity, a science without foundations, of approximate results.
This new science tries to understand the most complex systems as the integration of each of the parts that form it, as an interconnected whole, based primarily on systems theory, computer science and cybernetics. Within Biology, looking at homeostasis, which is the ability of cells to find equilibrium through imbalance itself, we can find one more example of this new paradigm.
The Complexity Paradigm has its origins in Palo Alto (California), where Dr. Don Jackson (Psychiatrist) founded in 1959 the M.R.I. (Mental Research Institute). From the beginning, Jules Riskin (Psychiatrist), Virginia Satir (Social Worker), and later in 1962, Paul Watzlawick (Psychologist and Biologist) joined the group. The so-called Palo Alto School was joined by figures such as Gregory Bateson (Anthropologist and Biologist), John Weakland (Psychiatrist), Jay Haley (Psychotherapist) and Milton Erickson (Psychiatrist and Hypnologist).
Many were the collaborators of the M.R.I. between the 60’s and 70’s, to perfect the Theory of Systemic Family Psychotherapy, which gives origin to most of the evolutionary models of the same, and although the M.R.I. closed its doors in 2019, today the methodology following the traditional method continues alive in the Brief Therapy Center (BTC) and under the direction of Karin Schlanger, former professor of the M.R.I.
At the Hypnosis Summit 2025, in Uruguay, I had the honor of meeting the psychologist Gloria Diaz, member of the Brief Therapy Center of Barcelona, trained at the M.R.I. of Palo Alto.
To bring the above down to earth and facilitate understanding in a simpler way, let me give the following example that clarifies it: let us take water, which as we all know is a liquid and therefore responds to that state of matter. We will not stop here to specify each of its properties, only those that interest us for the example, since we only consider water in the liquid state, although it can be found in the three states of matter, solid (ice) and gaseous (water vapor). When we look at its components, we see that it is made up of one hydrogen atom and two oxygen atoms (H2O), but the properties of the parts (two gases) are different from the properties of the whole (water).
The Complexity Paradigm allows us to understand that in the same space and at the same time, the whole presents two antagonistic logics that at the same time complement each other. This made me understand the importance in Hypnotherapeutic treatments, of understanding the functioning of the cerebral hemispheres, considering this antagonism to be applied in the different types of treatments.
Edgar Morin created from the “Paradigm of complexity”, the “complex thought”, published in his book “For a complex thought” in 1982.
Complexity theory is a highly critical view of scientific knowledge. It allows us to see that the mechanistic model generates simple laws behind the complexity of social and psychological phenomena, in fact, it generates a simplified and reduced thinking of reality, which produces a narrow way of thinking.
Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology is considered to have its beginnings during the 70’s, since in that year its name was introduced by Robert Ader, who together with Nicholas Cohen carried out the first studies where the interaction and influence of the central nervous system on the immune system could be related.
It was not until 2008, when I attended a seminar given by Prof. Dr. Gabriela Bouza on “Integrative Medicine in its Medical Vision”, that I first came into contact with Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology (what a name) and things gradually became clearer to me. I began to understand that we were being led by the wrong teaching when dealing with health, and mental health in particular. I mean, I think most professionals today are clear about that knowledge, but in general the holistic care of the self is not brought into professional practice, in all possible dimensions.
I felt, among other things, that many medical, psychological and hypnological treatments were reductionist in their deep understanding of the human being. It took me some time to understand that we are a body integrated by different types of intelligences outside our brain, the existence of a mind that is not the same as the brain, we are a heart (the other mind outside our brain), which is not a simple mechanical pump; we are a digestive system (another mind outside the mind), inhabited by approximately 2.5 kg of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites that are known as commensals and are those that generally do not affect our body, the mutual ones from which we benefit mutually and finally the pathogens that when they increase in disproportionate amounts make us sick.
I learned that we have more non-human cells than our own, inhabiting our body and that biodiversity conditions our health. There is at the same time and demonstrated by different scientific studies, the knowledge of the relationship that links the development and function of the brain, with the leading influence exerted by the imbalance in the biodiversity of the intestinal microbiota, which is capable of causing different neuropsychiatric conditions, including distress, depression, attention deficit disorders, hyperactivity, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, among others. Hence the importance of biodiversity. We are millions of cells that make up organs and systems that constantly share information, it seems, through a complex light code and others through electrochemical messages; we are neuronal circuits that are present in many parts of the body, beyond the central nervous system, we are a sympathetic and parasympathetic system, we are intellect and emotions, which are generated through the production of chains of peptides, amino acids, neurotransmitters and hormones that act on the limbic system and other brain areas, finally we are matter and energy.
This is very important and although we may be informed, we may not take it into account at the time of our intervention, and it is necessary to remember that all psychic conflicts are multi-causal. As we mentioned earlier, a deficiency in the gut microbiota can be a cause of stress, anxiety or even depression, among others.
It is likely that in such cases, Hypnotherapy or Psychotherapy by themselves, have only partially successful results. For this reason, it is important in our training to have basic knowledge about the biological aspects that could interfere with our treatment and to suggest to our client, for example, the possibility of having his intestinal flora studied. This will guarantee a substantial improvement in our results when assessing the remission of the problem and the possible strategies applied in our sessions. And surely our client will benefit the most.
As we see, we are matter and energy, our body being a renewable energy system, formed by atoms, the same atoms that are a structural part of the universe.
Now I ask you to allow yourself to think expansively to define Cosmology as Science which, through Astrophysics, has as its object the study of the Universe as a whole. We understand the Universe as the set of all phenomena that are susceptible to be observed and give us some kind of information that can be studied, measured or quantified from science.
Thus, when we look at the Universe from the standard model of elementary particles we have found and made sense of its dual characteristic.
The studies began around 1960, where the physicist Peter Higgs discovered a new particle that allowed shaping the Standard Model and has been extended until 1980, thanks to the collaboration of several physicists including Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, where the model was finally structured without any controversy so far.
It has already been mentioned many times that the human being is a small representation of the cosmos and has been called microcosm and as such is also a representation of the duality of the Universe, where each particle has its antiparticle. So when we observe matter, we realize the existence of antimatter, when we observe the photon, we find the antiphoton, at the same time and focusing on examples closer to us, we can see the low sea and the high tide, day and night, summer and winter, man and woman, and so on.
But what about our emotions, our feelings? Life resembles a great roller coaster where at times we ascend and then vertiginously descend, going through different stages, from joy to sadness, from peace to anger, from love to hate, from calm to fear, from security to insecurity, from trust to distrust, from pleasure to disgust, etc.
As we see, somehow in the universe, when one thing is generated, the opposite is generated at the same time. As human beings we should understand that we die because we were previously born.
To continue in such knowledge, we see that in male mammals we find a sex hormone, testosterone, although we also find small amounts of estrogens, i.e. female sex hormones. In studying female mammals, we find the characteristic sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone, but also small amounts of testosterone.
When we focus on the human brain, we perceive that it is divided into two halves, called cerebral hemispheres, these are antagonistic from the physiological point of view, since both sides are anatomically similar as they are formed by neurons and glia, although there is a great difference (antagonism) in the way information is processed. Despite this, the two parts of the brain do not function independently since they share information through a biological structure called the corpus callosum, which is crossed by millions of communication fibers between both sides. As we can see, the duality of the Universe inhabits us.
Next, we are going to remember in a brief scheme the most important characteristics to highlight the cerebral hemispheres, where again we observe our dual structure:
Carl Jung developed his Analytical Theory in 1914 in which he told us that we never have a perfect balance between both hemispheres, we are never 50% left and 50% right.
According to the theory of hemispheric predominance (Roger Sperry, 1960 – Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1981), at birth, both hemispheres compete for supremacy, endowing people with different skills and characteristics, according to the predominant hemisphere, through which we process all reality and information, which does not imply that the other is not used, since it is precisely through the corpus callosum that complementation takes place, through interhemispheric communication.
In physical terms, we are like our brain a physical couple, since there are two forces that interact in the same direction, but in the opposite direction, another example of duality.
In order to facilitate understanding of this communication, let us give an example:
When we express ourselves, we use different forms of communication, verbal, nonverbal and bodily.
Verbal communication coming from the left hemisphere (Broca’s area), is capable of transmitting only 8% of emotions, while the remaining 92% depend on non-verbal language, which provides: timbre, tone, volume and intention. Finally, body communication, which is the first form of expression acquired by the human being and with different muscular movements, provides truthfulness to the message, as well as with different expressions, which usually allow the interpretation of different types of emotions and contribute to the development of interpersonal skills through intrapersonal knowledge.
Paul Ekman began to investigate facial expressions between 1966 and 1969, at the same time in 1966 Haggard and Isaacs discovered micro expressions and Ekman also began to study them, and in 1969 Ekman and Friesen named them micro expressions for the first time and set up training software to study them in depth. In 1999 he included new emotions in his list of the six basic emotions, adding a greater number of pleasant and unpleasant emotions.
That is why I think it is extremely important to observe the patient more during the interview and perhaps to make a brief summary after the consultation is over.
Since the study of neurosciences, I have considered it extremely important to integrate this knowledge to the daily practice of Hypnosis, since it will allow us to perform truly holistic work in the attention.
Brain neuroplasticity is the capacity of the nervous system, by our repetitive thinking, to produce an increase or physiological and/or structural change, related to the increase in the number of neurons associated with one or more brain circuits, which would be directed to development and learning.
At the same time, the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging has allowed neuroscientists to create so-called brain mappings and to discover that perception and imagination use brain circuits that overlap in the prefrontal cortex, where there is a group of neurons specialized in distinguishing between reality and imagination. However, in times of crisis, imagination overrides reason by inscribing the brain.
When I was studying Medicine I remembered that in Pharmacology they dedicated about 15 or 20 minutes to the explanation of the placebo effect and I was struck by the high percentage of efficiency of the method, approximately 30 percent on average, which led me to investigate different literatures on the subject and I found the works of Emile Coué and his laws that little by little I began to implement in my consultations, adapting them to the different scripts:
Coué’s “Law of Sustained Attention”, which stated that the constant repetition of an affirmation or thought became reality, which was proven by current neuroscientists (Brain Neuroplasticity).
The “Law of reversible effort” (Emile Coué) stated that, if we think that we will not be able to do something, the more times we try, the less we will achieve it. But we could also read the law from the other point of view: if we think I can do something, the more times I try, the faster I will achieve it.
Let us remember duality, there are always at least two factors of the same thing, (always antagonistic), but at the same time full of nuances that extend between their extremes.
In his second principle Coué stated that when there is an antagonism between reason and imagination in a period x of time, imagination always prevails. “Contrary to what is thought, it is not the will that is the first faculty of man, but the imagination.” (Emile Coué).
I firmly believe in the existence of two different languages that interact differently in each of our hemispheres: the verbal language that is mostly interpreted by the left hemisphere and the imaginary language that is proper to the right hemisphere and that are complementary.
We understand that reality itself is a cerebral interpretation of everything that is outside of me and, to a lesser extent, what is inside me, conditioned by the pre-existing beliefs in my mind. When beliefs are erroneous and what is interpreted as values, are in themselves disvalues, they could constitute part of the causes of dysfunction or pathology.
It is important to understand the psychological meaning of belief and its clinical significance. I understood that Hypnosis cannot change the beliefs of the patient, and I quickly related it to reality. Each one of us, when observing our reality, sees in our cerebral interpretation a manifestation of our own beliefs and hence the existence of as many different realities as there are observers in front of the same scenario.
I began to think about the possibility of the existence of a kind of immune system in the unconscious, in charge of protecting the beliefs of the consultant (understanding as consultant of a health service the wrongly called patient) as a way of safeguarding the identity and the acquired learnings. Identity is a dynamic process that is in constant change throughout our lives, creating images that we build of ourselves, according to our beliefs, our history and our experiences, which also condition our behaviors.
Now, I think it is necessary to remember that the left brain is in charge of programming the right brain. Once the left brain has repeated enough times a learning process, the right brain automates it and from that moment on it performs the learned task without needing to think, it only acts according to its programming, and when such automation is sustained again in time, the learning becomes naturalized. That is where the immune system of identity protection is imposed, protecting the knowledge or belief acquired by the consultant, as appropriate.
Our tool (Hypnosis) is unable to modify the beliefs already installed for years. In these cases, it is necessary to resort to the knowledge of the classic psychologist, to carry out a cognitive reorganization while awake, where the patient is asked to think and imagine (complementary stimulation) how his life would be if he were to analyze his problems from this new perspective of reality, or from a new focus of it. At the same time, we must remember that in order to make any change, it is also necessary that the client can see his reality, accepting that his belief is erroneous on the way to its remission and also intellectually accept this new belief born from this reorganization. As I understand it, this is what Milton Erickson called planting the seed.
It is important here to ask the client, in the understanding of what has been worked on, to appropriate these ideas and thus explain to us in his own words his new vision (active and effective listening). Once the client has made this new belief his own, which he has previously reasoned, we invite him to start imagining (positive psycho-images) in the following week, mainly at night. He should imagine at the moment he goes to sleep, how he thinks his life would be living this new reality (for now virtual), focusing fundamentally on the emotion he would feel (while imagining) living this new reality as part of his new life.
We implement it in this way to take advantage of the dreaming process where a greater presence of alpha frequencies is observed, to enter the natural dream with these images, as a strategy to start from the consultant a restructuring of the existing programming.
When we continue to advance in understanding how the brain stores memories that it does not want to forget, we see that these memories are linked to an emotion or sensory memory. For example, we are walking down the street, absorbed in any kind of thought, and suddenly we feel a particular aroma that seems familiar to us and we quickly identify it as the same aroma we smelled when we were in the first year of school, followed by that emotion loaded with images or thoughts, which tell us about those moments.
The brain is not interested in our happiness, it only cares about our survival, while our mind cares about being happy. If we remember the characteristics of the right hemisphere we will understand that it is amoral, that is to say that it has no knowledge of what is right or wrong, but according to Sigmund Freud, our unconscious lives by and for the obtaining of pleasure and that, if this did not exist, it would seek the least possible displeasure, This is how he expressed this knowledge in “Beyond the pleasure principle”, where the antagonism mentioned above is manifested again, since they are two opposing forces where pleasure is opposed to the needs of reality, thus postponing the pleasure in order to adapt to that reality.
In this way, in the following session, remembering as detailed as possible the words used by our client, Erickson would tell us the importance of resembling our language to that of the patient, to increase our connection (rapport). To do so, we will ask the client to tell us in detail about the positive psycho-imaging and emotion-generating exercises he/she worked on during the week, so that we can build the therapeutic script(s) that we will use in the following sessions.
When we try to reprogram the subconscious using brute force, that is, to go against what has already been programmed without the dynamic intervention of the client in the previous exercises, already mentioned, a force of rejection arises that prevents the new programming and is considered as a psycho-attack, where the brain tries to protect its own identity. When this happens, the consultants have voluntarily come out of the trance, they have felt bad or report that they have fallen asleep. This last state is different from the characteristic oscillations during the trance, of this coming and going of the consciousness.
The practical application of this knowledge and its integration in the sessions has been fundamental in my quest to improve the quality and efficiency of consultations, enabling faster and more efficient referrals. Working together with both cerebral hemispheres, using verbal language and symbolic language (metaphors) simultaneously or selectively, according to the intention and the use of intellectual thought and imagination, make Hypnotherapy a dual work method, in resonance with the laws of the Universe, which together constitute a different view of Cosmology and Hypnosis.