Books by David Lesser

© Mary Ratcliffe 2012

‘The Book of Hypnosis’ and ‘Hypnotherapy Explained’ – are recommended / required reading and if you are anything like me, you probably read both before starting the Home Study. Also, at some time during the Home Study or the Practical Course or even later on, you may find yourself revisiting them. You may want to see examples, in David’s writing, of the theories and techniques you are learning about in your training.

And you may be puzzled by what you read. Depending on where you are in your training/development, various theories and techniques may have already become second nature to you – and you will probably fail to find at least some of them in David’s books. You may even find examples that appear to go against some of what you’ve been learning recently.

So to put the books into context and to add my own personal assessment of how such paradoxes evolved…

David wrote his books in the 1980’s. LCH is like a modern language. It is constantly evolving, adapting, improving – in both its effectiveness as a therapy and in the efficiency of the training methods.

David believed that the only way to solve a problem is to find and resolve its underlying cause. He also believed that the only source of that information, the underlying cause itself, is in the subconscious mind of the person with the problem.

Those are both still core theories underpinning the whole of LCH.

In a proportion of his treatments, David found the underlying cause, the cause of the belief, by following his instincts – following a route that was for him – if for no-one else – clear and obvious. In the rest of his treatments, based on the accounts in the books, he found the causal incident for the symptom, the trigger incident – the incident that led to the creation of the presenting problem.

Modesty prevents Helen from claiming acknowledgement for her part in analysing and clarifying what it takes to fully resolve, not just the presenting symptom, but the need for any kind of symptom at all. But I don’t need to hold back from saying that the various techniques taught on the Practical Course, the ones that enable so many therapists to facilitate long term and far-reaching benefits for their patients, were created, analysed, formalised and clarified by Helen herself.

David’s books were written many years ago and much progress has been made in the understanding and the teaching of LCH since then. So to see them in context, we can view them as the ‘early history of LCH’. Without them, who knows if LCH, in its present form, would have come into existence as early as it did. Without David’s strong and unwavering belief that it was possible, and without his energy and conviction and determination to set off and continue on that journey, who knows where the therapy would be right now.

But equally, without Helen’s attention to detail, her analytical skills, her analogies and inventive teaching methods, and the seemingly endless time and energy she has invested in passing the skills and understanding on to students and qualified therapists, many patients of many therapists might still be suffering symptoms and conditions and issues that they can now barely remember.