Hypnosis, in the realm of psychotherapy, has two major flaws: it does not provide a theory of personality or psychopathology, and its application (hypnotherapy) to the treatment of emotional disorders has not achieved the coveted status of well-established treatment. This chapter provides some future directions for increasing the credibility of hypnotherapy as an effective treatment for depression.

Since hypnosis does not provide a theory of personality and psychopathology, a theoretical framework for conceptualizing treatment is lacking and the manner in which hypnotherapy produces therapeutic outcome is very often not determined. As a rule, hypnotherapy has been used in a shotgun fashion or as an adjunct, without giving adequate attention to the disorder being treated and without stating how hypnotherapy per se will be used to alleviate the symptoms (Wadden & Anderton, 1982). In 1994, I (Alladin, 1994) made the first attempt to provide a conceptual framework, based on empirical, theoretical, and scientific rationale, for integrating hypnotherapy with cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in the management of depression. This conceptualization has been revised and refined in this book (Chapter 4) as the circular feedback model of depression (CFMD). Although CFMD is not a comprehensive hypnotic theory of depression, it emphasizes the roles of negative self-hypnosis (NSH) and dissociation as important factors in the etiology of unipolar depression. However, CFMD should be further studied and refined, and this model can be used as an exemplar to develop other models of emotional disorders. For example, dissociation has been identified to be an important component in the development and persistence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (see Lynn & Cardena, 2007

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