Salient findings: pivotal reviews and research on hypnosis, soma, and cognition.

Recently, 9 especially important critical reviews and research studies have appeared in the general scientific and medical literatures pertaining to 4 areas of applied and scientific hypnosis: management of pain, treatment of gastrointestinal disorders, adjunctive hypnosis in outpatient surgery, and error in memory. Together, these articles examine matters of soma and cognition that are at once core to scientific hypnosis but also of keen interest to clinicians. The studies and reviews are conceptually ambitious and methodologically sophisticated. The findings enlighten medical and scientific readers about what hypnosis is and what it is not.