Kind of Cruel: Clinical Diagnosis and The Stigma of Hypnotherapy

Prakriti Sharma

Kind of Cruel is a thriller/mystery fiction novel by Sophie Hannah that revolves around memories, feelings, secrets, and murder. The protagonist, Amber, visits a hypnotherapist as a last resort to deal with her insomnia but comes out of the session as a suspect for the murder of a woman she has never met. The novel proceeds to weave a highly complex narrative around Amber’s past and the events that could have caused her to utter the words ‘Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel’ despite her never having heard them. Thematically, the book deals with the influence of psychological diagnosis and the stigma of hypnotherapy quite well, as will be explained below. 

Right from the get-go, Amber’s disdain for hypnotherapy is evidenced by her reluctance to go for her first session. Like much of society, her character, too, has been ill-exposed to the various benefits that hypnosis, often in conjunction with other therapies, can provide. 

“The disappointment, when this charade I’m about to participate in leaves me exactly as it found me, is going to hurt – probably worse than after all the other stuff I’ve tried that hasn’t worked. Hypnotherapy is the thing everybody does as a last resort. After it, there’s nothing left to try.” – Amber Herdwine, Kind of Cruel 

This is a common misconception about hypnotherapy in general. It is the vagueness and the lack of an evidenced, methodical procedure for hypnosis that results in the skepticism that surrounds it. A lot of hypnotherapy goes back to Freud’s psychoanalytic therapy (with his methods such as free association) which can also be a considered a reason as to why the former is regarded as an unstable means (i.e. a lot of Freud’s methods are heavily criticized). The variation within patients and case studies as well as the elusiveness of a scientific methodology that everyone can comprehend make it hard to accept the hypnotherapeutic viewpoint. Since therapy itself is already regarded as taboo in a lot of cultures and societies, a form of therapy that cannot produce immediate or prominent results is easily disregarded. 

This apprehension is something that has been very well highlighted throughout this book. Furthermore, even the hypnotherapist herself (in the book), points out the understandable apprehension with her line of work while simultaneously illustrating the many ways that hypnotherapists can deal with the same. These methods involved trying to get the patient to be as comfortable as possible before inducing hypnosis (answering any questions they may have; offering them the possibility of an out) and contextualizing the issue in a way that that a patient would expect a psychologist to – i.e. point out the possible issues, possible causes, and the different ways to deal with the internal conflicts of the patient. 

Apart from the emphasis on hypnotherapy, the book also deals with diagnosis – more specifically, (Spoiler Alert!) the diagnosis of Amber’s sister-in-law, Jo, as a narcissist. The framework of Jo’s narcissism is very well laid out, providing the reader with all the required family history to justify Jo’s condition. Jo’s mother was a clinically-diagnosed narcissist so Jo had to grow up in an environment where she was supposed to look after all her siblings as well as her parents whilst under a lot of pressure. While this, to some extent, gives us a plausible explanation of Jo’s present condition, the hypnotherapist identifies Jo’s trigger into the narcissistic condition as a specific event that took place on her 16th birthday: Jo’s mother makes her promise to look after Kirsty, Jo’s severely disabled sister, after the mother no longer can. According to the therapist, this was something that deeply affected Jo and sent her in a downward spiral in terms of mental health – so much so that Jo could not even risk healthily expressing herself and began to spread herself thin in everyday life. The big burden that was placed on her young shoulders was, according to the therapist, too much. 

While this specific incident can be assumed to be the ‘trigger point’ as it was a prominent event that kept recurring in Jo’s hypnosis sessions, it ends up taking away the emphasis from all the other events in Jo’s life that accumulated to that moment. The text should have also more directly acknowledged the importance of simply living in the vicinity of a narcissist and the effects that can have on you instead of pinpointing the majority of the burden on the whole problem on one single event. 

Conclusively, this book quite effectively deals with the concepts of therapy and diagnosis from a hypnotherapeutic point of view. It incorporates both the general skeptic view as well as a professional’s viewpoint on the same, making it an informative and exciting read. 

References

    Hannah, S. (2014). Kind of Cruel. NY, NY: Penguin Books.

Butcher, J. N., Mineka, S., & Hooley, J. M. (2010). Abnormal Psychology. Boston, MA: Alyn & Bacon.