Ericksonian hypnotherapy (from the American psychiatrist Milton Hyland Erickson) is a little-known discipline. Yet, in countries like Canada, England, or the United States, many patients trust this “new” form of therapy, which utilizes hypnosis. The phenomenon is gradually arriving in France.
“I work on the unconscious, following the iceberg principle: the patient is only aware of the tip, and together, we try to dig… without their realization.” Sonia Salmon has been a psychotherapist for just over a year. In her office on Borriglione Avenue, she often receives people who have tried everything without finding solutions to their problems. “My patients often come from one or more intense psychotherapies, and they feel they have nothing to lose by coming here. Most of them are pleasantly surprised.”
Because the hypnotherapist does not prescribe any medication, unlike some psychologists. “We rely on self-healing, we awaken people’s placebo effect. This is why hypnotherapy only works if the patients are truly motivated, if they really want things to change. I’m not here to listen to people talk about their problems for hours; things need to move, they need to be willing.”
Sonia Salmon works a lot with children and teenagers: “With children, it’s easy, they immediately engage in the process, not questioning why they are there or how much it will cost them. I write a metaphorical tale corresponding to the child’s life, and I narrate it to them. And they invent the ending themselves, thus unconsciously solving their problems…”
With teenagers and adults, it’s not always so simple. “When people come of their own accord, wanting truly to heal, I rarely worry. However, when it is the mother or partner dragging the person to the office, it’s already more complicated… I’m not a miracle worker.”
Psychotherapy can help patients heal from many issues: bulimia, anorexia, smoking, psychodermatology, anxiety and phobias, stress, lack of self-confidence, obsessive-compulsive disorders, depressions… Therapy, lasting on average between three and fifteen sessions, involves acting on the patient’s unconscious when they are in an altered state (the state one is in when driving while thinking about something else and not really realizing it, for example). “Hypnotherapy has a future, that’s certain. We will not delay in emulating the Canadians, English, or Americans, who have already widely adopted it. Today, we have somewhat exhausted all possibilities of psychotherapy, which is a limited discipline…”
