Therapeutic hypnosis: a relational art using attention with the intention to treat. The definition of hypnosis most commonly formulated nowadays by practitioners does not adequately meet the threefold demands of the patient's informed consent, express formulation of the caregiver's intentions, and demonstration of the therapy's efficacy. This common definition of therapeutic hypnosis needs updating, to enable the therapists who offer it to their patients to adjust their relational aptitudes to the scientific, deontological and ethical needs of the contemporary therapeutic relationship. On the basis of semantic, comparative and ethical considerations, this article concludes on a definition of medical and therapeutic hypnosis founded on current knowledge of attention and therapy, adapted to the demands of the psychotherapeutic context specific to contemporary society.