Experiential components central to brief, strategic approaches to psychotherapy. We will compare and contrast Ericksonian and psychodynamic perspectives.
Based on the meticulous work of Ivan Pavlov, the Foreground-Background process involves using the "foreground" and "background" of perception with respect to a problem situation and a resource experience to create a quick and seemingly “magical” change. Usually, what is foregrounded in the experience of a problem or resource is quite different. The background of the two experiences, however, often shares many features which can be used to create bridge to resourceful experiences, leading to a transformation of the problem experience that is gentle, unconscious and effortless.
In a 1964/2008 paper MHE documented how "hypnosis was used for the specific purpose of placing the burden of responsibility for therapeutic results upon the patient himself after he reached a definite conclusion that therapy would not help and that a last resort would be a hypnotic 'miracle'.” I will first demonstrate how to gently shift this "burden of responsibility for therapeutic results" in a brief, easy-to-learn group process with the entire audience. Time permitting, anyone who feels they have failed during this group process may volunteer for a therapeutic experience with me in front of the entire audience.
This workshop will detail a philosophy and methods of working briefly and effectively with people who have been traumatized. An array of new methods has shown that previous conceptions and methods of working with trauma are unnecessarily long-term and re-traumatizing. These new approaches, rather than being based on the past and deterministic models, are oriented towards the present and future and a sense of possibilities.
Couples therapy is made much more complex when one or both partners suffers from PTSD. This workshop will demonstrate with films and lecture how to apply Gottman Method Couple Therapy to the treatment of PTSD. Films include cases of both childhood and military trauma.
EP17 Workshop 10 - In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Released Trauma and Restores Goodness - Peter Levine, PhD
Traditionally, therapies have attempted to change perceptions of the world by means of reason and insight, with conditioning and behavior modification, or with drugs and medications. The trauma response is a set of defensive bodily reactions that people initially mobilize in order to protect themselves, both from threat, and then later, against feeling the crushing totality of their horror, helplessness and pain. However, as time goes on, this avoidance keeps them frozen and stuck in the past, unable to be fully present, in the here and now, and unable to go forward in life. Fixed in the defensive trauma response, the shame, defeat and humiliation, associated with the original event replays itself over and over again in the body. Dr. Levine explores the implications of Body-oriented psychotherapy and recent findings in the neurosciences, on how the brain and body deals with e
Based on the brain scans and clinical histories of over 20,000 patients with ADHD, this workshop will help clinicians properly diagnose ADHD and subtype it into 7 different types. They will also learn the clinical symptoms, brain imaging patterns and treatments for each type.
Ways to implement the core tasks of psychotherapy with patients who evidence PTSD and co-morbid disorders of prolong and complicated grief, Substance Abuse Disorders and Borderline Personality Disorders. A case conceptualization model of risk and protective factors and incorporates a constructive narrator perspective will be presented.
It’s been 50 years since the revolutionary inception of General Systems Theory that started couples and family therapy. Yet the central concepts were never made precise, or measurable and the theory never became scientific. In this workshop we show how we can now complete this theory and produce effective and powerful couples and family therapy methods.
Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity.