IC01 Invited Address - Ericksonian Psychotherapy and Shamanic Healing - Carl Hammerschlag, MD
The power to manipulate words and environments is a healing ceremony that moves patients
beyond their limitations. Ericksonian psychotherapists and shamans understand that the
process of change is an inner journey whose only prerequesite is a willingness to look within.
Using words, stories, imaginary beings, rituals and ordeals, healers help patients illuminate
the unconscious allowing them to create new ending to old stories.
Besides the patient's past history and present intrapsychic complaints, besides his/her interpersonal relations, the patient lives in an aesthetic, spiritual, cultural, economic and environmental world of intimate things, physical places and invisible atmospheres. To focus mainly upon personal subjectivity to the neglect of the non-human factors falsifies the patient's daily actuality and endangers therapy with artificiality. Therapy must therefore bridge into the world.
Health and well-being are akin to a three-legged stool being supported by one leg of pharmaceuticals; a second leg of surgery; and a third leg of self-care. Whereas the first two legs are awesome in their efficacy, they are not effective in treating 60-90% of visits to health care professionals since these visits are related tos tress and other mind/body interactions. Dr. Benson will describe the therapeutic efficacy of the third leg - especially the usefulness of the relaxation response, belief and spirituality.
In this experiential workshop, volunteers will be asked to describe a dream in detail and then work on it with Dr. Gendlin. It is not necessary to tell everything; private space and silent meditation are essential. The use of Focusing will be demonstrated.
This experiential workshop will begin with a guided silent meditation. Gendlin will work with volunteers from the audience to show how to find "Focusing." The physically felt body sense of a problem is at first unclear and gradually opens and becomes clear. There will be discussion and demonstrations to show how Focusing is used in the context of psychotherapy.
A presentation of the influence upon therapy, particularly Strategic Therapy of Zen Buddhism. Similarities between therapeutic change and spiritual enlightenment are discussed in terms of the relationship between Master and trainee and therapist and client. The use of directives, of riddles, of absurd tasks, and the types of single interventions and paradoxical procedures are discussed. Examples of cases and Zen stories are compared. Zen, systems theory, and Erickson's strategic therapy are brought together.