Associational strategies are most effective with subjects who are willing, wanting, and able to enter the state of hypnosis, while dissociational strategies are used to handle potential conscious interferences otherwise known as hindrences, or resistance to therapy or hypnosis. Because most clients are relatively willing to experience hypnosis, while at the same time being unable to completely set aside their normal control patterns, the most effective hypnotic inductions combine associational and dissociational strategies.

The first step in hypnotherapy is always the establishment of rapport and trust between the hypnotherapist and the client. The hypnotherapist paces, then leads the client’s behavior and at the same time utilizes whatever the client is doing as the basis for entering hypnosis. The hypnotherapist accesses, and revivifies any experiential associations that would elicit a state of comfort, pleasant warmth, security for further development of the trance experience. Interspersed throughout the hypnotic induction may be different confusion techniques to further depotentiate any conscious interference. As the trance develops, dissociation is suggested (time dissociation, spacial dissociation, etc.) to further assist the client in becoming more immersed in trance and explore hypnotic realities.