The Use of Hypnosis By French Anesthesiologists : Anesthetic Modality or Emotional Work?
The Use of Hypnosis By French Anesthesiologists : Anesthetic Modality or Emotional Work?
Thursday, 10 July 2025: 00:45
Location: FSE033 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
Oral Presentation
The aim of this presentation is to report on how, in France in the 2000s-2020s, anaesthetists use a number of practices socially constructed as hypnosis for the purposes of « emotional work » (Hochschild, 2012). These « hypnotic practices » have been disseminated to anaesthetists by moral entrepreneurs (Becker, 1963) through training courses in « hypnosis », considered by clinicians as a modified state of consciousness, as well as through training courses called « hypnotic
communication » or « therapeutic communication », combining hypnosis techniques inspired by the Ericksonian current, dominant in contemporary hypnosis, with communication strategies derived from psychology and management.
This presentation will show that while the capture of hypnotic practices has been facilitated by the 2011 recognition of the practice of sedation under hypnosis as a valid anesthetic modality by the French society of anesthesiology, due to its growing validation by the evidence-based medicine paradigm, it is above all the ability of hypnotic practices to respond to the emotional and relational aspects of the profession that explains its use by anesthesiologists. We will show how anesthesiologists, through these hypnotic practices, seek not so much to implement a new anesthetic modality as to manage the patient's emotions, thereby facilitating the more technical aspects of the work. We will also show how this use facilitates emotional labor on oneself in a profession marked by emotions of stress and anger. Finally, we will analyze how this emotional labor accentuates certain aspects of the relationship of domination between the professional groups of anesthetists and surgeons, who work in close collaboration.
communication » or « therapeutic communication », combining hypnosis techniques inspired by the Ericksonian current, dominant in contemporary hypnosis, with communication strategies derived from psychology and management.
This presentation will show that while the capture of hypnotic practices has been facilitated by the 2011 recognition of the practice of sedation under hypnosis as a valid anesthetic modality by the French society of anesthesiology, due to its growing validation by the evidence-based medicine paradigm, it is above all the ability of hypnotic practices to respond to the emotional and relational aspects of the profession that explains its use by anesthesiologists. We will show how anesthesiologists, through these hypnotic practices, seek not so much to implement a new anesthetic modality as to manage the patient's emotions, thereby facilitating the more technical aspects of the work. We will also show how this use facilitates emotional labor on oneself in a profession marked by emotions of stress and anger. Finally, we will analyze how this emotional labor accentuates certain aspects of the relationship of domination between the professional groups of anesthetists and surgeons, who work in close collaboration.
Bibliography :
BECKER Howard, Outsiders, Studies in the sociology of deviance, New York, London, Free Press
of Clencoe, Collier-Macmillan, 1963
HOCHSCHILD Arlie, The Managed Heart : Commercialization of Human Feeling, University of California Press, 2012