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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 38, part two with Scott Giles. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette. Your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business to. Sets. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Welcome back. It’s Jason Lynette here.
Just survived the winter down here in Virginia. We got, uh, a little too much snow than we probably should have had, but now seems to all be melting and well hope to hear that. Uh, you’re staying warmer. You are, especially as now we’re getting into March. Here we go. This is gonna be part two of the two part series with Scott Giles.
Go back Part one K at you back on session number 34. And this is now part two with session number 38. And specifically here you probably know Scott Giles as the chairman of the ethics Committee of the National Guild of Hypnotist. And I basically ask what just happened in Nevada? And Scott told, You get to hear this whole conversation as well.
A lot of great information just in terms of where we are in the profession and what’s being done out there to make sure that we’re still in this profession as well. Here we go, part two with Scott Giles.
Let’s chat briefly about sort of the events in the last year or two specifically, everything that’s just happened in Nevada. Yeah, kinda give us just a thumbnail sketch in terms of suddenly they were ceased and desist letters, correct? Yeah. Well, what happened in every, the psychology law of most states, well, I’ll actually go back a little bit farther.
In the mid 1990s, psychologists began to change their license laws from what was called title protection license laws. To practice protection, license laws, a title protection license law simply said the title, clinical psychologist was protected by law and you couldn’t call yourself that unless you were licensed.
As it when they changed to practice protection. That’s very different. Practice protection doesn’t just protect a title, although it does that too. It also protects a list of protected practices that only people who are licensed to practice that profession may do. For example, physicians have always had practice protection license laws.
It doesn’t matter what you call yourself, you can only do surgery if you are a. It protects the practice, not the title. Well, psychologists began to convert their laws over from title to practice protection. When they did that, the scope of practice section in the license laws that describe what psychology is, became a list of protected practices.
And hepatism or hypnotherapy, in some cases was in that scope of practice, just about every. So when those laws converted, all of a sudden you had to be licensed as a psychologist to be able to do hypnotism or have some other overlapping license. This happened in Illinois shortly after I joined the Guild.
It was 1992. So I called the Guild and said, Well, I’m gonna try to do something about this. And I know a little bit about lobbying. We, we had courses of that on theological school, so I’ll see what I can do. And in the process, I began to learn. How laws are passed, the difference between different kinds of legislation and different kinds of regulation.
And so Dwight Damon, the president of the Guild, said, Well, I’d like you to come on the advisory board because you’ve learned more than almost anyone knows about how to do this kind of, uh, of work and you could help us. So that’s how I did that. Now what happened in, uh, Nevada is that their, their, their law had converted some time ago.
What we did in the, in the late nineties and the early OS around the country legislatively, was to, in some cases, pass specific legislation to correct the interpretation. So here in Illinois, for example, we actually modified the psychology law. So it says nothing in this law applies to the to unlicensed person.
Practicing hypnosis provided they do not use, uh, psychological titles and so on. In New Jersey, we, we did the same sort of thing, but instead of modifying the statute, we passed a rule, which is, uh, a second line of defense in terms of how all law is interpreted. As we began to do this around the country.
The psychology boards began to say, Oh, okay, look, please stop messing with our laws. And we agree that the language in the psychology law will be interpreted as the practice of hypnosis for psychological purposes as the word psychology is defined in the law. So we said fine. And basically that was sufficient to create deta between the psychology boards and the hypnotic community.
So long as we weren’t putting ourselves forward as psychological practitioners, we could do hypnosis, and they were okay with that and they weren’t going after us. And so we didn’t have to keep passing laws. We had shown we could do if pressed. What happened in Nevada this past year is the psychology Board took that language and made a new interpretation of it.
They said, according to us, we think this language now means that only psychologists may practice hip sis. And so they went against the, uh, the agreement that had been sort of negotiated around the country and they put forward a new interpretation and issued a whole bunch of cease and desist orders. But they even gave cease and desist orders to psychiatrists, to chiropractors, basically anyone who is not the official title of psych.
Absolutely. So that was the situation. So we have to get active now to correct this, the, uh, impetus, locally organized to protest this. As you know, the Guild has an affiliate for political purposes that’s part of the AFL cio. This is Local 1 0 4, the National Federation of Heist 1 0 4, and I’m a legislation officer with the Federation.
So we activated our union connections. The thing about being connected to the AFL CIO is that that gives us access to their legislative apparatus at the state and federal level. So we were immediately able to bring political pressure to bear on the government of the state of Nevada about this interpretation.
The psychology board was. There are two locals of A L C I unions who organize heus, the the Guilds version, which is Local 1 0 4, and the Hypnosis Motivation Institute, uh, in California, which is local 4 72. We’ve been working together collaboratively due to kind of control this situation. The Guild has done, I think, some of the, the most fundamental work here.
What we did, uh, is I immediately drafted a letter of opinion for the, to the attorney General. This was sent out, it’s about 12 pages long. Arguing the case that the psychology board was mistaken in this interpretation. The AFL CIO immediately contacted the Attorney General also on our behalf and in Nevada, unions are important.
All the casino workers and so on, our unionized, Oh yeah, absolutely. This is a big political clout. So what’s happened at this point is the Attorney General has said that he will rule on the interpretation of the psychology law, but he hasn’t ruled yet. Still, the, the ruling is still pending. And I think what’s going on is he, he basically doesn’t want to get caught between the AFL CIO on one hand and the psychology board on the other.
So he’s kind of delaying, hoping we’ll just work it. The psychology board has agreed to withdraw the cease and desist orders that were given so you can practice fine in the state of Nevada. And, uh, they’re, they’re informally. Going back to the, the deal we had, we have everywhere else that the word hypnosis in the psychology law only applies to people who are using it for the practice of psychology.
Now, the definitive thing’s gonna be what happens if the attorney general or the attorney general rule said, We don’t know. I meant optimistic. The Attorney General’s gonna rule positively for us and will agree with the letter of, uh, opinion that was filed, that the Psychology Board had made a mistake in their, uh, uh, interpretation of the law.
If so, that settles it. But it’s possible that it could go the other way and the Attorney General could come out and say, No, the psychology Board is right and you have to be licensed as a psychologist to be able to do impo. Which point, all those cease and desist orders are gonna go back out again. So, looking at that possibility, we have taken two further steps.
First, we have drafted an exemption law that will be put into, uh, the legislative process in Nevada. It’s based upon the Illinois law. It’s, uh, a very simple minimalist law. It doesn’t regulate what you call yourself. It just simply says, Provided you’re not using psychological language, you could practice hypnosis without needing to be licensed as a psychologist.
All it says, so when you describe what you do to someone, you can’t use psychological language, but you can use hypnotic language. That’s really all you need to do to practice that bill will be offered if we need it. The other thing we’re doing is that around the country we have worked with, uh, the National Health Freedom Coalition.
This is a coalition of people who provide. Both complementary and alternative helping skills, ACU pressure, herbal medicine, naturepath, that sort of thing, and health freedom laws say that a person can practice their healing profession. Provided they give every client a bill of rights or a disclosure statement so that people understand that they’re not medical doctors and that there are limitations to what they can do and not do.
And also some restrictions on advertise, how you can advertise your services. We have, for example, in California the health freedom law. The heist who practice in that state do so within those limitations? Well, the National Health Freedom Coalition has a bill Health Freedom law set to go in Nevada. So that bill will be offered as well, and we’re gonna support both of these bills.
We’re gonna support the Health Freedom Coalition. I know the guilt has already made a financial contribution to them. I’ve made a personal contribution myself, and we will support, uh, also our own exemption law. So we have two bills in place that we can push. If the attorney general ruling goes against us.
Now, the reason we did the two bills is we think the health freedom law would be better than the exemption law, but health freedom laws are very difficult to pass because when you propose them, all of the other license professions come out against it. And cause it’s not just hypnosis, it’s herbalism and acupressure and lots of other, lots of other people are having their, their territory challenge by that.
So usually it takes like five attempts, five years, uh, to pass a health freedom law. And in, in Nevada, they have, their legislature only meets every second year, so we’re talking like 10 years. So I can’t. On the health freedom law passing. So we have to have a backup and that’s the exemption law. So we’re set, we’re set to go, and, uh, we’re waiting for the Attorney General’s ruling.
And, uh, we’ll see what that says. That may solve the problem. If not, we gotta fall back. Nice. Nice. So let me ask you this to kinda wrap up on this. Should we be licensed? Should we be under a registration program? Should we continue as we are? Well, that’s a good question, and the answer to that question isn’t as simple as you might think.
Right? First, I don’t think that hypnotism will ever be a licensed profession in my lifetime. I’ve gotta share a quick anecdote. There’s a moment where I was brand new to this and I was calling the state that I lived in at the time. I’ll generalize this for obvious reasons, and finding out if there was a licensing program and the response I basically received was, Well, we don’t see any danger in that.
All hypnosis is self hypnosis, right? You need a license, drive a car, cuz that could be dangerous. To which my first response was, could I get that in writing? And they just kind of laughed and said, No . There are states that have regulation for hypnosis now, right? Yeah. There’s a great divide between two different kinds of regulat.
The first kind simply is freedom to practice, but it doesn’t say what kind of training you have to have. So in Illinois, your free to practice hypnosis provided you don’t call yourself a psychologist or use the protected language of psychology. Some states have registration laws like Connecticut where the law says that you could practice provided you register and get a registration.
But anyone can do that, and so long as you practice within the limitations of the registration law, you can keep your number and you can keep on practicing these forms of regulation. Exemption, registration, Do not regulate training. Anyone can practice no matter how much or how little they have. Now, the reason why these laws have passed is they’re relatively inexpensive laws to adminis.
The psychology board enforces the exemption, and the psychology board is already funded through the state budget. Also with the registration law, if all you’re doing is handing out numbers and seeing that people pay their registration fees every year, that doesn’t take a lot of work. So it doesn’t put a big burden on the state budget.
It tends to serve more of the process of, there’s a. Absolutely. Yes. Now, the other side of this divide is when you start regulating training. Yes. That’s what state certification or license laws. , that’s a different thing all together. Now, if I got, if, if a state has a licens law or a, we gotta have a licensing board, those people on the licensing board have to be paid.
There’s gonna have to be civil servants who do due diligence on the applications to verify that. You’ve had the training, you claim you have, and, uh, that’s the degree you claim you have, you actually had, and that the school who gave it to you was accredited and so on and so on. And those people need to have, uh, salaries and health insurance and supervision and all of this gets very expensive, very, very fast.
So the question comes down to when you, when as license law goes forward, is at some point they do a financial impact. What’s it gonna cost the state to pass this license law? And are there enough people who would get the license? That the licensing fees will reimburse the state for the cost of running the law, and in no state does that math work.
Most people who are practicing hypnosis are not running practices serving the public of those that do. Many are already licensed as counselors, dentists, medical doctors, and so on. They just learn the additional hypnotic skillset. So they wouldn’t be going for a license as a heist. So when you, when you actually get it down, you know, you only have like a hundred people, uh, typically in a state that would need to get this license.
Well, it costs about a hundred thousand dollars a year. Run a licensing board with the civil servants that have to be paid. The cost of the licensing board itself. If you have a licensing test, people have to pass. You gotta write that test to prevent a lawsuit on, uh, alleging bias on the test. It has to meet specific standards for tests and measurements, very expense.
So unless you’re gonna charge $10,000 a year for the license, there’s no way you could pass a licensing law without transferring a substantial burden to the taxpayer. And no politician’s gonna vote for a law that does that unless there’s evidence of real and genuine harm being done if they don’t.
Mm-hmm. . So I think we will see in many states, registration laws, uh, structured exemptions. That’s all. Licensure. I don’t think in my lifetime, I don’t think there are enough of us that that math will ever work out during the time. I will be alive maybe someday. But bear in mind that there, you know, the Guild is the largest hypnosis organization in the world, and we have 17,000 members.
There are more social workers in Chicago than there are hous in the world, . And so the, the scope, the the numbers just don’t work for Licens. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette with one last quick thing. Imagine yourself running an even better hypnosis business just in the next 10 days.
Head over to work smart hypnosis.com and check out the 10 Day Hypnosis Business Challenge. It’s 10 days of emails. 10 days of videos, 10 days of specific action steps with tested techniques to help you to grow your hypnosis business. Check that out today.
