Patrick Bellet is a physician, the founding president of the Confédération Francophone d’Hypnose et de Thérapies Brèves (Francophone Confederation on Hypnosis and Brief Therapies) and of the Milton H. Erickson Institute of Avignon-Aix-en-Provence, and a lecturer in the medical faculty of the University of Paris-XIII-Bobigny. He is the organiser the 20th International Congress on Hypnosis, which is scheduled to open in Paris on 26 August 2015. He is the author of L’Hypnose (Editions Odile Jacob, 2002).

Since the 1980s, hypnosis has gained in credibility among healthcare professionals, both in pain management and in the organisation of caretaking tasks. This is primarily due to the pioneering work of Milton H. Erickson. Because hypnosis offers the possibility of altering the patient’s relation to time, it can be of great help to caregivers, in certain surgical procedures, in severe or extreme situations, but also in dealing with chronic disorders and in relations with patients.
Making healthcare more humane means re-introducing words, speech, and human relations. Ericksonian hypnosis is a revolutionary tool implying transmission, first for carers, then for patients.
Discovering hypnosis, learning how it unfolds, developing the practise of hypnosis by working on speech and imagination, and determining when and how to use hypnosis in the course of a given treatment — this is the vast domain that the eminent expert on hypnosis Patrick Bellet explores here.

• A study of Ericksonian hypnosis by one of its greatest experts.
• Practical tools and inspiring texts to enable readers to understand hypnosis and self-hypnosis, through personal experience.
• An original approach that puts language at the centre of hypnosis.
• The 20th International Congress on Hypnosis will be held in Paris, from 26 to 29 August 2015.