Alchemical Hypnosis can increase the Effectiveness of your Therapy Practice Exponentially

​By Patricia Alsup, Psychologist, PhD

​I have worked as a licensed Clinical Psychologist for 33 years in the field of Humanistic Psychology.  Recently, I discovered Alchemical Hypnosis, and am fascinated by its relationship to my work as a Humanistic Psychologist.
Alchemical Hypnosis has enlightened and inspired my work as a Psychologist, adding profound levels of understanding, magic, imagination-based explorations of one’s inner helpers, and daily access to inner healers and spirit guides.
There are similarities and differences between these two methods of working with clients to heal and improve their lives. 

As a Humanistic Psychologist, I view a person in a very positive light.

​I'm not so concerned with a diagnosis and only use it to be able to bill the client’s insurance. What interests me is witnessing and accompanying the client on their journey of individuation and helping them fulfill their unique potential. By creating a safe place for them to reveal themselves to me, and to reveal themselves to themselves, I help them wipe the fog off the mirror, so to speak, so that they begin to see how they can make changes in their behaviors and explore and alter negative patterns of thinking, emotions, and beliefs.
Alchemical Hypnosis is similar to Humanistic Psychotherapy in that it also considers the client from a very positive perspective. The client becomes the source of healing in an Alchemical Hypnosis session. With the help of the Alchemically trained therapist, the client enters into their inner cosmology through a process of hypnosis, which is a method of helping a person become more and more deeply relaxed and open to whatever comes up from the unconscious, be that thoughts, images, characters, feelings, or even tastes or sounds, and then we make a relationship with this inner character.
For example, when working with a client who had a trauma in their early life, we might need to revisit that trauma for a moment or two. All of us as children had day-in and day-out disappointments, like when our parents let us down or when siblings were mean to us. In this case, I take the person down with hypnosis very gently and safely to their deep inner world where techniques are used to meet this little, hurt inner child who experienced the problems or traumas. We can rescue that inner child and create a different story and memory of the event by bringing in a protector, hero, or new inner parents, who can save the child and give them the loving protection they need. This Alchemical “Inner Child Rescue Technique” helps change the traumatic memory into a positive one. Inner characters, such as a new inner mother, a new inner father, or even an animal protector, know how to give the child the love they need and validate what happened to them. Then the client is taught how to access these positive characters every day to help create feelings of safety in their inner and outer worlds. Self-hatred from experiencing severe abuse is often transformed into self-compassion and deep understanding. 

Alchemical Hypnosis utilizes the imagination in a way that is not used in most psychotherapeutic environments.

​In psychotherapy, people can learn about themselves, make changes in their lives, understand mistakes they may have made, or talk about their often-painful problems. I've been a psychologist for over 30 years, helping people to see themselves more clearly and to work toward loving themselves and their families better. These processes are very good, but they don't go far enough. The wonderful difference that Alchemical Hypnosis offers that psychotherapy does not, is a very effective way to produce often very rapid change in the inner world, utilizing one’s imagination to access inner guides and learning how to contact these helpers every day to continue benefiting from the loving and compassionate healing the client received during the session. A person’s life can transform into one of being loved, cherished, and protected in the inner world. These inner world experiences can affect the client’s outer world, influencing how choices are made, how possibilities are perceived, and how behaviors are better understood and more easily improved.
You might say these are imaginary fantasies, but they are much more powerful than that. When a person works with their inner guides on a daily basis, learns their names, and develops a history together, they can call upon the individual guides to help them in certain situations in their outer life, such as needing to see a hostile boss or meeting someone they are attracted to but afraid to speak with.

Alchemical Hypnosis can be used effectively for addictions.

​It involves being taken down into one’s inner landscape through hypnosis, and meeting the part of the person who first chose to use the addictive substance. For example, guiding a person in the trance state back in time to remember the first time they ever smoked a cigarette. We explore that experience thoroughly, getting as many details as we can in the beginning interview with the client about what it was like to start smoking. How did it make them feel? What did it do for them, and what does it keep them from being able to do now? In further sessions we might meet other characters in the client’s inner world in a process called “Conference Room Therapy”, in which sub-personalities, which we all have in our inner world of sometimes conflicting voices, are given a chance to talk about the addiction and express whether they want the person to stop or if they just don't care. There might be an angry inner part that calls out the client for being so dumb as to have gotten addicted. Other subs might be very understanding and supportive. The technique then involves listening to what the voices have to say, looking at suggestions that are made to substitute something else for the addiction that satisfies the identified needs underlying the addiction, even speaking with those voices that disagree, creating compromises or alliances and eliciting promises to help the person to quit their addictive life. Then a gift--an anchor--is given to the person from an inner character, which is a gesture, a place in their body or an object that they can touch to remind them of what they have learned in this process, how to quit the addiction, and reminding them to ask for the help of their inner guides who have promised to be available for them.

When combined and used sensitively by trained professionals, Humanistic Psychology and Alchemical Hypnosis can create incredible experiences of self-learning, self-acceptance, and self-love.

​In each day of class, students first learn the techniques through lectures, and then, with supervision, students practice the techniques on each other.  These practice sessions are opportunities both for intense experiential learning and personal healing.
​The academic education offered through the Alchemy Institute of Hypnosis is the best teaching program I have ever had the opportunity to participate in. If you are a mental health professional, I urge you to consider taking classes through the Alchemy Institute of Hypnosis. It will add so much meaning to your work with clients and increase your ability to help them make rapid, lasting change. 

The Alchemical Hypnosis training has rounded out my professional toolbox for helping people to actualize any potential they may have ignored or forgotten, and become the best people they can be. This work causes a ripple effect of healing and compassion in relationships and communities and, hopefully, in the larger world of Mother Earth.
Patricia S. Alsup, PhD, May 2025

Patricia S. Alsup, PhD, Psychologist

Contact me by email at [email protected] or by phone at 707-630-1789. Please leave a voicemail if you would like a return call.
I offer telehealth and accept most insurances and cash.
You can find me listed on STAR Behavioral Health Providers at starproviders.org, a community of licensed civilian mental health providers trained in military culture and best practices. 
I can also be found on growtherapy.com and goodtherapy.org​

---