The evidence map: moderate-to-good support for hypnotic analgesia and IBS symptom relief; conditional support elsewhere; nothing supporting stage-hypnosis marketing. The relevance to NLP: the Erickson language patterns operate in the same domain as suggestion phenomena that have genuine research — while NLP's conversational toolkit itself remains untested. Neighbouring science, honestly labelled.
Clinical Hypnosis: The Evidence
Clinical hypnosis carries real trial support for specific applications — pain management, IBS symptoms, some anxiety contexts — which is more than the Milton Model's borrowed vocabulary usually acknowledges.
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ShriViral Manek, Institute of NLP India · reviewed 30 Sept 2026