I started a blog some time ago on my website reflecting on my years spent learning about hypnosis and my professional experience in the clinic, in lecturing, on training courses, writing, and most importantly in my work providing expert opinions in civil and criminal cases where it is alleged that hypnosis was used by the defendant.

There is something that is too infrequently discussed to in any discourse on the nature of hypnosis but is of crucial significance in accounting for the totality of the hypnotic subject's experience, their account of their subjective experiences, and what we observe of their reactions. This crucial factor is the context in which hypnosis is taking place. The context may be ‘general’—the subject's psychological characteristics and his or her prior understanding of and expectations about hypnosis, about which much has been written—but here I am referring to the ‘local’ context (principally the clinic or therapy room, the stage, the laboratory, or the training course). It is a fundamental mistake to assume that what we conclude about hypnosis in one of these contexts generalises to any of the other contexts. It can't. Yet this mistake is made repeatedly, even by the most respected writers in this field.