Tad James is well known in the NLP community as the mind behind TimeLine Therapy, and this work on Hypnosis comes with high praise and high recommendation, however it is not without some considerable flaws.

Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Guide runs to a little over 200 pages, however this hides the fact that there is a lot of repetition in the book, and much of the information within it can be found in many other books. Perhaps the biggest negative aspect of this book is the focus on inductions, and is less a comprehensive guide and much more of a general overview.

Once the history is out of the way, a brief overview of the Mind-Body connection is covered. The author refers often to the work of Deepak Chopra in this area, and misses out on the newer scientific research, relying on more of a 'mystical change' rather than medical science', and I was left with a feeling of 'you should believe this', rather than 'here are the facts'.

The reader is then presented with the techniques and approaches of Milton Erickson. It is here that we see the authors bias and experience since over half the book is dedicated to the Ericksonian method of hypnosis. In addition the author peppers the book with references to NLP and TimeLine therapy which to my mind detract from the overall purpose of the book.

As the reader, we are presented with the usual Erickson components of Language Patterns, Metaphors and so forth. These have been covered by so many other works, that their inclusion in this book at such insubstantial level left me disappointed.

The latter half of the book looks at using unconcsious muscle  movement (ideo-motor) to get information from the subconscious and inductions from Estabrooks and Elman, along with some deepening techniques. Once again, there is little or no depth to the chapters, with most of the body taken up with listings (and dissections) of their inductions.

The book rounds off with a reprint of the Erickson, Estabrook and Elman inductions, but this time without narrative.

Conclusion

Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Guide is far from comprehensive and it feels like a book created from other books, padded out with repetitive chapters. It adds nothing new to the subject, and may serve as a brief overview of the subject matter. If you want to learn about Erickson read some of the early work by Bandler and Grinder, or some of Ericksons own books, for Elman, read Elman, it is a far better way of learning the subject.

Overall 2/5