Hypno-CBT® College · Selected reading
A focused introduction to the books behind cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy: hypnosis research, practical methods, case formulation and thoughtful clinical decision-making.
This selection supports the Higher Diploma in Hypno-CBT® and gives prospective students a sense of its academic foundations. It is not the complete programme bibliography or a list of compulsory purchases. Students receive stage-specific instructions for required preparation, manuals and assigned extracts.
Start with the core references
The Practice of Cognitive-Behavioural Hypnotherapy
Donald Robertson
A Manual for Evidence-Based Clinical Hypnosis
A central reference for the programme’s integration of hypnosis with cognitive and behavioural methods. Read alongside teaching on formulation, treatment planning and the relationship between theory and practice.
Hartland’s Medical and Dental Hypnosis
Michael Heap and Kottiyattil K. Aravind · Fourth edition
A broad clinical hypnosis reference used in the programme. Consult relevant sections on terminology, approaches, techniques and therapeutic considerations rather than treating the book as a sequence of instructions to apply to every client.
Essentials of Clinical Hypnosis
Steven Jay Lynn and Irving Kirsch
An Evidence-Based Approach
A useful connection between hypnosis research and clinical application. We recommend it for examining the assumptions behind hypnotic methods and relating evidence to practice.
Supporting references: self-help, coping skills and formulation
Strategic Self-Hypnosis
Roger A. Straus
Recommended for its practical, purposeful approach to self-hypnosis. Read it alongside work on goal-directed imagining, rehearsal and self-management, and consider how clients can develop skills they use outside the therapy session.
Stress Inoculation Training
Donald Meichenbaum
A key reference for understanding coping-skills training: making sense of stress, developing and rehearsing skills, and applying them in challenging situations. Particularly relevant to the programme’s integration of cognitive, behavioural and imagery-based methods.
Book details on Donald Meichenbaum’s publications page
The Case Formulation Approach to Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
Jacqueline B. Persons
Recommended for exploring how assessment leads to an individual formulation, how that formulation informs treatment, and how emerging information can change the plan.
Book details from Guilford Press
Evidence-Based Practice of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Deborah Dobson and Keith S. Dobson
Recommended for connecting CBT principles and research with practical decisions. Use it to consider both the support for a method and the challenges of applying it to an individual client.
Book details from Guilford Press
Conditioned Reflex Therapy
Andrew Salter
A historical foundation for the programme’s behavioural approach, including its interest in emotional expression and assertiveness. Students encounter assigned extracts during Stage 2 preparation. The wider book is optional reading and should be considered in its historical context.
Further reading: the wider intellectual landscape
These optional books show the wider range of ideas relevant to Hypno-CBT®: its historical roots, competing accounts of hypnosis, clinical methods, resilience, and contemporary theories of perception and emotion. They extend the recommended list rather than add to the qualification’s compulsory reading.
Historical foundations and theories of hypnosis
- The Discovery of Hypnosis: The Complete Writings of James Braid, the Father of Hypnotherapy — James Braid; edited by Donald Robertson. Primary historical writings for exploring the origins of hypnosis and how its explanations developed. Book details.
- Hypnotism: Imagination and Human Potentialities — Theodore X. Barber, Nicholas P. Spanos and John F. Chaves. An influential historical account of hypnosis, imagination and human capacities. Read in the context of subsequent research.
- Cognitive-Behavior Modification: An Integrative Approach — Donald Meichenbaum. A foundational account of self-instruction and the development of cognitive behavioural methods. Book details.
- Clinical Hypnosis and Self-Regulation: Cognitive-Behavioral Perspectives — Irving Kirsch, Antonio Capafons, Etzel Cardeña and Salvador Amigó, editors. Perspectives on hypnosis, self-hypnosis and self-regulation that invite comparison between explanations and applications.
Clinical methods and formulation
- Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors — D. Corydon Hammond, editor. A substantial clinical reference for studying how suggestions are constructed and adapted to an individual formulation.
- Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders: Science and Practice — David A. Clark and Aaron T. Beck. A detailed clinical reference connecting models of anxiety, assessment and treatment planning. Book details.
- Metacognitive Therapy for Anxiety and Depression — Adrian Wells. A distinct perspective on worry, rumination, attention and beliefs about thinking, useful for comparison with other cognitive approaches. Book details.
- Cognitive Hypnotherapy: An Integrated Approach to the Treatment of Emotional Disorders — Assen Alladin. A clinical integration to compare with the College’s own cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy approach. Book details.
Predictive processing, consciousness and constructed emotion
Begin with the accessible accounts, then move to the more demanding theoretical texts if you want to examine their arguments in depth. These related perspectives are not a single settled theory, and their relevance to hypnosis remains a subject for critical investigation.
- The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality — Andy Clark. An accessible starting point for predictive processing and the active construction of experience. Book details.
- Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind — Andy Clark. A more demanding exploration of prediction, perception, action and embodiment. Book details.
- The Predictive Mind — Jakob Hohwy. A sustained philosophical account of prediction-error minimisation, perception and the mind. Book details.
- Being You: A New Science of Consciousness — Anil Seth. A readable account of consciousness, perception and selfhood that connects with predictive approaches. Book details.
- How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain — Lisa Feldman Barrett. An introduction to the theory of constructed emotion and its account of concepts, bodily signals and context. Book details.
- Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior — Thomas Parr, Giovanni Pezzulo and Karl J. Friston. An advanced, technical treatment of active inference for readers who want to examine its formal foundations. Book details.
These books help frame questions about experience and change. A theoretical connection does not, by itself, establish that a particular therapeutic intervention is effective; that requires relevant clinical evidence.
Trauma, resilience and psychological flexibility
- The End of Trauma: How the New Science of Resilience Is Changing How We Think About PTSD — George A. Bonanno. A research-informed examination of resilience and the different ways people respond to potentially traumatic events. Useful for questioning assumptions about inevitable harm while taking persistent distress seriously. Book details.
Specialist clinical reading extends understanding; inclusion here does not mean that every intervention or condition discussed is taught within the Diploma.
Read critically and connect it to practice
For the Higher Diploma, reading should help you compare explanations, evaluate evidence and justify decisions. For each topic, consider:
- What is the central claim, and what supports it?
- Is the author presenting a theory, a research finding or a clinical illustration?
- What are the limitations or alternative explanations?
- How does it connect to a learning outcome, practical exercise or supervision discussion?
Books provide foundations; continuing engagement with research helps keep that understanding current. A historical text can be valuable without every claim or method representing contemporary practice.
Required reading is the preparation and specific material assigned by the teaching team. Recommended books are references to consult selectively. Further reading extends a particular interest. Being listed here does not mean every page must be read or every book purchased.
For the curriculum, assessment structure and full learning outcomes, see the Higher Diploma in Hypno-CBT® qualification guide.