Terry nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders and said that it didn't matter, his father would pay...

I looked at him, astounded. Here was a 26-year-old young man telling me his woeful story about yet again failing his professional accountancy exams, sporting a disdainful look which suggested that the whole world owed him a living.

Terry was a hard man to like - and the tone and arrogance of his conversation didn't really help. Terry's father had not only made - and paid for - an appointment for his son with me but he also was picking up the tab for his son's tuition, re-sit and living expenses.

Refusing to get a job on the pretext that he needed to study all day and every day for his re-sits in March, Terry was quite happy to use his father's hard-earned money to finance not only his studies but also his expensive social life.

Clearly, Terry was onto a good number. His father had wanted Terry to see me because he recognised that his son had a block when it came to passing exams - and he thought that I would be able to help. After ten minutes conversation with Terry, it was becoming horribly clear that what he really needed was someone to read him the riot act - and presumably his father had thought that maybe I was just the person!

While Terry's behaviour appeared to be completely selfish, I surmised that something must have happened earlier in his life to make him that way. But before we went into a full hypnosis session, I asked Terry why he wanted to become an accountant.

His response was chilling. While he admitted that he had always liked maths, he didn't have any real desire to be an accountant. More interested in easy money than anything else, Terry felt that accountancy would at least earn him some status as well as guarantee him a steady income. He winced when I suggested that he didn't really need a job for a steady income, as by failing all his exams, Terry could rely on his father to provide him with a steady income without having to go out to work at all!

Finally recognising that he needed to start taking responsibility for his own life, Terry agreed to try hypnosis in order to discover what was at the root of the problem. Failing his exams, I explained, was a symptom rather than a cause.

Once he was completely relaxed, I asked Terry why he was punishing his father. At first he didn't answer. And then the tears began to roll down his face as the whole story came tumbling out. As a teenager his father had enjoyed several extra-marital affairs, which had resulted in his parents divorce and had split the family up. His mother had suffered a mental breakdown. Terry blamed his father totally.

Taking him back still further, Terry gasped in horror as one of his earliest memories came flooding back. He remembered as a child being unable to sleep and he had come downstairs to see his parents silently rowing in the hall. His father had then started to hit his wife and the young Terry had fled back to his bedroom in fear and anger, vowing that he would get even with his father when he grew up.

Still in a state of hypnosis, I gently asked Terry to imagine his father was there in the room with him - and to have the conversation that he needed to have had as a child. First he expressed his anger together with his fear that he would grow up to be like his father. Next, he made the decision to forgive his Dad and to accept him, even though Terry didn't condone his actions. Finally, he made a commitment to his father that he, Terry, was going to take charge of his own life now and stop punishing his father by failing his exams.

When he came back to reality, Terry looked a completely different young man. Wiping the last of the tears from his eyes, he smiled and took out his own chequebook to pay for the consultation, saying "From now on, the buck stops with me!"