This address is a review of the significant theoretical and practical changes in the practice of psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy in the experience of the author's personal practice over the past 62 years.
During the past several years, we have developed strategies for inducing people to persuade themselves to change dysfunctional attitudes and behavior. Compared with more traditional, direct techniques of persuasion like advertising, self-persuasion produces more powerful, more permanent effects. Specific reference will be made to our research on reducing racial prejudice in schools and risky sexual behavior in young adults.
This address shows how clients can learn to get better rather than just feel better. They can learn to make a profound philisophical change, maintain it, and make themselves remarkably less disturbable even in the face of serious adversities.
After 35 years of experience, Dr. Glasser has now updated his original Reality Therapy. It now is based on his new theory of how people function, called Choice Theory. Because this theory eliminates what Dr. Glasser believes is a hindrance to therapy, talking about the past or focusing on the symptom, it is effective from the first session and can be completed in ten sessions or less with most clients.
Since the person is his body, it is possible to read the history of the individual from the pattern of chronic muscular tension in his body. These chronic tensions limit the individual's ability to respond in a healthy way to the stresses of life. Bioenergetics provides a technique for reducing these tensions.
Current research on neurogenesis (growth of new brain cells) indicates that novelty, environmental enrichment and physical exercise can facilitate new growth in the adult human brain. How can we optimize our Ericksonian approaches to support the psychobiological growth process?