From “Hypnosis” to “Phenomenological Control”: Reframing Suggestion-Based Interventions for Acceptability and Implementation in Psychiatric Care

Abstract

Suggestion-based interventions, including hypnotic interventions, show clinical promise across several medical conditions, yet their uptake in routine care remains limited. Although the strongest evidence currently comes from pain management, medical procedures, and irritable bowel syndrome, psychiatry may be a particularly important context in which to examine implementation barriers because treatment engagement, perceived agency, trust, and acceptability are often central to uptake and adherence. This article advances a conceptual, implementation-focused argument that one underexamined contributor to this gap may lie not only in the evidence base or training availability, but also in the cultural meaning of the term hypnosis itself. In psychiatric contexts, that label may evoke concerns about passivity, external control, or reduced autonomy, thereby affecting both clinicians’ willingness to recommend suggestion-based methods and patients’ willingness to engage with them. Phenomenological control is proposed here not as a proven replacement for hypnosis, but as a broader, patient-side framing of the capacity to regulate subjective experience in a goal-directed way. The article argues that this alternative framing may better support acceptability, perceived agency, treatment credibility, and implementation in psychiatric care, and it outlines testable provider- and patient-level hypotheses for future research.