Recently, at the Hypnosis in Taiwan mailing list, we’ve been discussing a bit about training and certification for hypnotists.

I am reminded of a fellow who for years would decry that certifications are not worth the paper they are printed on and that the only thing they’re for is ego and bilking the public and that he would never participate in the certification scam as he called it. However, a few years ago, this fellow founded an organization of hypnotists that now certifies “quality” hypnotists through a fee. He now has a whole slew of “initials” after his name, most of which are titles he himself created and conferred. 🙂

When teaching a course to the public, we have to decide what the purpose of the course is. Are we providing a service whereby we are certifying that someone has attended a course – giving the paying customer what they want – or are we providing a screening process whereby only those who pass competence receive the certification? If the latter, we then have to determine what is minimum competence? If certification training is a business, then there can be a danger of lowering standards in order to please the paying customer (universities have the same problem with grade inflation which I recently posted about on my blog). Hopefully, we err on the side of competence.

Contrary to what some here think about the diploma mentality being pervasive in Chinese society, this is not unique to “Chinese society” as certification mills exist everywhere. Some excellent US-based hypnotists have opted out of this conundrum by staying away from business-model certifying organizations and offering seminars that do not offer certification, only knowledge and skills, while others see the solution as improving their own certification courses (a lot of people who have been to other instructors for basic courses will seek out folks like Gerry Kein and Calvin Banyan because of the excellent reputations they have developed via their students).

When we meet difficulties because we don’t have this or that certification or diploma, it is not the certification that folks are looking for, it is the basic assumption that someone with the certification has a certain degree of competence and knowledge while those that do not may not. Of course, this is not really always the case. Some
teachers are simply better than others. Regardless of their qualifications.

Of course, how difficult a certification test is may be dependant upon the students. 🙂 One man’s rigorous examination is another man’s afternoon lark.

As to the idea of having students video themselves doing an induction, this may not be possible for an entry level course. It may be easier to simply make certain that students have time to practice with supervision during the course and then make certain they are getting correction right then. Outside video work requires that they have video equipment or access to it which not everyone has. You also would have to deal with format compatibility issues (vhs, digital 8, dv, mpegdv, etc). It is a lot easier to have them do the induction in front of you rather than on tape, unless, like some instructors, you have an intern process where they work with clients and tape those (but then you still need to provide the subject).

If students are asked to bring a subject in and hypnotize that person, there are also problems. Be wary of that. Not everyone taking a course has friends who are willing to come in to be hypnotized. Also, anyone who would do so probably will practice beforehand. So, you wouldn’t be testing the ability to do a raw induction but whether or not the subject responds to post-hypnotics to reinduction and in that case it may not have been the student’s skill that got the response but a relaxation tape the person listens to regularly. You’d might as well have them perform processes on classmates to test for general knowledge but if you want them to work on completely raw newbies to trance, you would need to provide them.

I strongly believe any skills seminar should have both theory and practice components.

As to organizational competence concerns, I think there is a huge difference between what folks usually think of us the diploma mill or “buying” a certificate and simply having lax standards for passing a course.

I am not so pessimistic. 🙂

Like many, I intend to go ahead and get the instructor certification from the NGH . . . not because I feel there is any specific need to improve the standards but because I simply love teaching (having taught at university for the past seventeen or so years) and because I love hypnosis and wish to grow my hypnosis business. I’ve been
doing both for so long, it seems a natural step to formally combine them within an organization whose general principles I support. It’s both a professional consideration and a business one. Unfortunately, due to obligations to teach in our graduate school and due to health concerns, I won’t be travelling this year. Grrr.

Of course, as a business consideration, it makes perfect sense for trainers to remain competitive by offering what their customers want . . . certification. The smart trainer does this by imparting skills and ensuring competence (albeit, there will always be someone who just can’t make the cut). Doing so will make certain the public at large are served but also that one’s own reputation as a teacher remains unscathed. Those who do pass will be grateful that their work is rewarded with skills they can use and those who don’t will either buckle down and try again or they will drop out of the process entirely. It is important to explain from the get-go that one is not paying a fee to pass a class and receive certification but that one is paying a fee to take a course, learn the skills, and if one does the work one will have the skills to pass . . . with no guarantee. Otherwise, one can simply do a “relaxing through hypnosis” workshop with no credentials on offer.