Within the enormous complexity of human experience, the reflex to connectedness rescues the person from fragmentation. Dr. Polster will portray connectedness along four dimensions: 1) person to person, enhancing relational experience and belonging; 2) moment to moment, restoring continuity and fluidity; 3) event to event, recovering life's storyline; 4) Characteristic to characteristic, integrating the self.
Those suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder are convinced that great harm will come if they do not comply with rigidly set rules of safety. The therapist can reframe the nature of the problem and incorporate all interventions within four simple but provocative guidelines. Then, utilization and pattern disruption lead to new experiences that challenge the dysfunctional beliefs of the client.
The anxiety disorders manipulate people by injecting rules into consciousness, then using that set of laws to take over mental territory. The five anxiety disorders (phobias, panic, social anxiety, generalized anxiety and OCD) control people by generating an absolute standard for certainty and comfort. We will look at the common denominators of this game, and isolate its manifestations in each disorder. Then we will explore how the therapist can teach clients to gain ground by engineering their own tactics and strategies, including the second-order change of switching game boards altogether!
A key idea in Milton Erickson's work was that a person's problematic experiences and behaviors can be skillfully accepted and utilized as the basis for therapeutic change. Self-relations psychotherapy develops this idea further, emphasizing symptoms as indicating the death of an old identity and the impending birth of a new identity. Thus, we don't try to "get rid of" depression, anxiety, or "acting out/acting in" expressions, but instead invite them into a human relationship of "sponsorship", where their healing and helpful nature may be realized. We will see how a therapist can generate a ritual space where symptoms and other disturbing experiences can be "midwifed" into new identities.
Research shows that treatment paired with hypnosis is more effective than treatment alone for many types of problems. The science and art of hypnosis is now widely recognized as a component tool for psychotherapy and has been employed successfully as a comfortable part of private practice and agency practice for years. As hypnosis spreads into the mainstream of psychotherapy, it is important to get competent information regarding its use. Lacking that, many practitioners do not make use of the advantages it provides as an adjunct to a well-rounded set of clinical skills. This workshop is intended to correct that lack of understanding and training in this important area. The rationale, indications and basic use will be explained and demonstrated with practical exercises to help convey the key language skills that are requisite.
Because of the weight of clients difficulties, the employment of lighter areas of experience is often indicated, both for cathartic relief as well as for providing closure. The session will focus on joy, humor, tenderness.
This workshop centers around a videotaped conversation Dr. Szasz had with a young man diagnosed as "schizophrenic" at a major medical center. The conversation effectively demonstrates that "schizophrenia is in the eye of the beholder. "
An interpersonal neurobiology approach to parenting helps psychotherapists promote secure attachment within families by nurturing the creation of coherent narratives of parents' early life experiences. This scientific view proposes that empathetic relationships making sense within our life stories, harmonious mental functioning and an integrated brain all mutually reinforce each other.
MHE's 1965 paper "A Special Inquiry with Aldous Huxley into the Nature and Character of Various States of Consciousness" will be used so everyone can experience their personal version of Deep Reflection, the Double Dissociation Double Bind and the Quantum Qualia of their private consciousness and cognition for facilitating gene expression and brain plasticity to optimize their own growing edges.