 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||
|
| Page 1 | Page2 | Page3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page 6 |
| Ideodynamicism Ideodynamic processes, (Erickson's notion that one can transform "ideas" into "dynamics" without conscious mediation) is also a core foundational concept coming out of the Ericksonian legacy. Erickson was the ultimate master in reading the "language" of the unconscious and learning to work with the body's own autonomous utterances arising in the breath, subtle variations in posture and somatic presentation, and in the spaces and rhythms between specific words that are used. This part of the legacy became core in NLP explorations of ideomotor signals and eye accessing cues (Bandler & Grinder 1975a; 1975b; Grinder & Bandler, 1976), was deeply influential in the development of notions of "reframing" in paradoxical and strategic therapy (Grinder & Bandler, 1981; 1982; Haley, 1963; 1973; 1976) and also in the "solution" language of deShazer and his associates (deShazer, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1991). What these more "mechanical" applications of Erickson's legacy missed was the elegant way he worked with ideodynamic processes on multiple levels and with much greater "flow" and sensitivity to the inherent energy and dynamism of the unconscious. In self-relations there is curiosity about the special character of such processes and their relationship to the breath, the spaces between words, and the physical rhythms of the body. Self relations has refined the art of touching something that is unconsciously present in the relational field – touching it not only by describing it in words, but welcoming it into a relational connection of blessing so the essence of the thing named can be revealed. Thus idiodynamicism is about more than ideas. It becomes a primary feature in "reading" the language of the body and working with symptoms. It becomes less about specific techniques to work with such processes, although it certainly employs them, and more about dancing with multiple textures of ideo-motor, ideo-sensory, ideo-cognitive, ideo-affective, ideo-perceptual, and/or ideo-imaginal expressions unfolding in the relational field. Any or all of these distinct processes may be involved. As Gilligan has observed (2002:30:
Seeing symptoms in the context of the flow of experience rather than negative states that must be extinguished at all costs is the central skill that must be cultivated and utilized in self-relations psychotherapy. In a sense then, self-relations has attempted to return to its roots in Milton Erickson's enormous gifts in accessing and utilizing such processes for the sake of therapeutic change.
Both/and logic is integral to both Ericksonian hypnotherapy and self-relations. It was shown to be the hallmark of trance in M.T. Orne's (1959) classic study of "trance-logic," discussed at length by Beahrs (1982 )-- a study in which he demonstrated convincingly that in trance subjects can see and not-see something that is experientially present and comfortably hold these apparently contradictory states at the same time. Orne showed that trance states in their most essential form collapse boundaries and open consciousness to possibilities where opposing states, values, or experiences can be held at the same time. Rather than assuming that they are simply illogical or contradictory, exploring and working with these paradoxical experiential realities becomes the gateway to opening avenues for meaningful change and transformation. "Trance-formation" is literally a process of fundamentally altering the "form" of experience. "Trance" in transformation is the process of collapsing, altering or playing with fundamental distinctions in such a way that we radically change the way the phenomenal world is held in experience. The first step in such alterations is made as one experiences and notes that boundaries typically used to mark distinctions in one's phenomenal world no longer operate in the way one assumes they should operate. The second step is to then utilize the confusion, uncertainty or curiosity -- and resultant openness to change that typically accompanies such states – so that the process opens new possibilities for affirmative, self-valuing experiences in a subject's phenomenal world. This is what makes therapy an experiential bridge in bringing the resource of trance into contact with the frozen logic and needless suffering of symptom states. In self-relations, the therapeutic utility of such "liminal" or "between" states is explored and exploited extensively. The core function of therapeutic trance-- to break open, alter, invert, subvert, or in other ways scramble frozen experience in the service of radical change--became increasingly something self-relations practitioners learned to value and dance with on multiple levels. Again, in so doing, self-relations has in a very real sense attempted to rediscover and utilize something that Milton Erickson seemed to do intuitively, with great artistry and integrity.
In self-relations, as with Ericksonian hypnotherapy, any significant shift in psychological experience inevitably is marked by subtle or not so subtle shifts in somatic experience. Erickson was a master at tracking and working with a wide variety of body changes in the course of trance experiences. Much of the core practice that Erickson embodied and taught, as is well-known, emerged from his personal struggles with polio, dyslexia, tone deafness, and color blindness, all of which were phenomena taking place within his body. Erickson's life was a wonderful demonstration that such "problems" with proper sponsorship can become opportunities for unique learning and growth. As we pointed out above, learning to "dance" with various symptomatic states is a hallmark of Ericksonian hypnotherapy and became a part of the core practice of self-relations. Above all, this entails an acquired sensitivity to the subtle languages of the body. Becoming sensitized to the body and its myriad ways of expressing itself unconsciously is one of the ways self-relations has built on Erickson's legacy. Self-relations involves extensive training in learning to track such changes as they develop, dancing with them while working across the somatic and experiential complements. As such changes unfold, we may note that clients may feel greater association with and/or greater dissociation from the body. For example, in trance a person may feel well "oriented" within the body or experience him or herself observing the body from a distance (dissociated). These alterations may well be accompanied by shifts in physical expression and patterns of breathing, movement, eye focus, pulse rate, etc. Within the Ericksonian tradition, as well as within self-relations, observation of such developments is a good indication of the initiation or deepening of trance. Self-relations has simply added the observation that behavioral patterns involved in therapeutic trances are clearly distinguishable from those accompanying symptomatic trances and attempt more rigorously and self-consciously to develop approaches that artfully transform one into the other. Our ability to note and to work across the somatic states associated with human distress and symptom states, transforming them into self-valuing resources, is what training in self-relations is all about. The variety and variability of somatic experiences awakened during trance is amazingly wide. The self-relations therapist often uses spontaneous bodily changes in therapy as naturalistic opportunities to invite, awaken, and amplify desirable changes without ever formally using a trance induction. When employed, formal trance inductions are often used to invite a widening or deepening of experience hinted at earlier in spontaneous or symptomatic trances but with an eye to placing them in a new more open, self-valuing context. In eye-open trance states, for example, vision may spontaneously become highly focal or blurry, light patterns may change, "tunnel vision" phenomena may occur. In association with such perceptual phenomena the face may distort or be associated with "hallucinatory" (both negative and positive) phenomena. In an eyes-closed trance, whether spontaneous or formally induced, the inner imaginal world may become more involved in experience--unusual images may develop, void-like spaces, dream images, screen memories, archetypal energy states, mythic figures, spirit-guides, etc. The central question becomes, how might these imaginal or somatic experiences that show up spontaneously or in formal trance be used so that a subject's life opens up to wonder, play and new possibilities in experience? Making the body/mind a vessel within which joy, flexibility, curiosity and play are experienced as increasingly possible becomes the overall objective of the work. It is important that we be clear about what self-relations has contributed to Erickson's legacy here. I have come to think of the shift as in some ways analogous to the difference between classical music and jazz improvisation. There has been a dangerous trend in the Ericksonian community leading to movement away from the latter's stress on the uniqueness of each person and situation and his sensitivity to context in addressing symptoms. Self-relations has sought to correct this fundamental misinterpretation of Erickson's legacy and return to its roots where fixed invariant meanings were transformed into context-sensitive approaches, rooted in the vibrancy of the present moment and sensitive to the uniqueness of each person and situation. Gilligan repeatedly has shown that descriptions disconnected from context and the unique qualities of person and moment, tend to become "fundamentalist texts that reject what is for what should be, thereby creating suffering". As he has said (2002:2234-235) the "repoetization of descriptions" characteristic of self-relations approaches seeks to shift the focus from the content of the text to the relationship of the reader to the text. "Thus, the magic is not in the story or its cleverly constructed details, but in the reengagement of consciousness to a story such that new meanings and experiences are unfolding. This is the primary goal in experiential-symbolic communication: not to cleverly deceive but to experientially revive the client's consciousness." The therapeutic meaning that emerges is something that is constructed and arises relationally from the ongoing connection between therapist and client. To summarize, since symptom phenomena and hypnotic phenomena share so many characteristics, learning to work with symptomatic states requires, above all, that we become extremely curious about the body and all the amazing ways it gives us our experience. The second level of experience -- the psychological, i.e., how a person thinks about or relates to their experience -- is continuously factored into the relational dance. Learning how to build experiential bridges to work across these levels of phenomena is extremely important and is one hallmark of what self-relations has done with the Ericksonian legacy.
Now we come to the core concepts and practices of self-relations that most clearly distinguish it from Ericksonian hypnotherapy. In the late 1980s and early 1990s those of us who participated in residential supervision groups with Stephen Gilligan began to notice some subtle changes in the structure and dynamics of the groups and the experiences we were having in them. More of work in the groups focused on our own struggles as therapists and attempts to internalize and apply what we were learning to our own lives and relationships and less focused on supervision in the work we were doing with clients. Perhaps it was a natural evolution that would be expected as many of the supervision groups "matured" and developed stable core membership and distinct cultures. Perhaps it was a natural evolution of Steve's thinking as he himself matured, systematized much of his thinking about Erickson, and found his own voice. Perhaps it was our own realization that the best way we could relate the experience of self-relations to our clients was to experience the model working in our own lives. Which ever of the above is most applicable, you can see Steve's struggle to find his own voice even as he sought to elucidate Erickson's thought in a few key pieces of writing he did during this time period. The first is an essay entitled "Generative Autonomy: Principles for an Ericksonian Hypnotherapy" (Cf., Zeig, Ed., 1985a). Here you see Steve in his glory as a systematizer and commentator on Erickson's thought. This article is quite paradoxical. It is both the most dense and systematic piece of writing Steve ever did in attempting to elucidate Erickson's thought and the most concerted attempt to work out the general shape of his own approach. In it you see foreshadowed the basic structure of his model that would later be more clearly articulated in "A River Runs Through it: The Relational Self in Psychotherapy" (Cf., Gilligan, 1996b), in "The Relational Self: The Expanding of Love Beyond Desire" (Cf., Hoyt, Ed., 1996a) and in his first book on self-relations, The Courage to Love: Principles and Practices of Self-Relations Psychotherapy, (Gilligan, 1997.)2 These four pieces of writing in my view are the most important attempts on Gilligan's part to lay out the core concepts and practices of self-relations psychotherapy. They should be read in conjunction with this chapter if the reader is to fully appreciate the connections between self-relations and its Ericksonian foundations. To begin this inquiry, I direct the reader's attention back to the story Steve related about an early encounter he had with Erickson in which he asked, "So, Dr. Erickson, what is psychotherapy?" and Erickson replied, "I don't know!" Erickson's answer to that question suggested that psychotherapy fundamentally is about what people want and their basic questions about life. Now, I would like to direct your attention to another important story that Steve frequently told in his residential workshops, a story that he related in "The Relational Self: the Expanding of Love Beyond Desire." Steve said (Cf., Gilligan, 2002: 254):
If we think about these two stories for a moment, it becomes clear that one of the questions that came more and more to the fore in the evolution of self-relations was the question of identity. As we shall see, the core concepts and practices of self-relations all in various ways sought to address this question of identity and place such questioning in a context where client's relationship to the myriad manifestations of being became central questions addressed in the therapeutic dance. This, in turn, opened up inquiry to how being is related to becoming and belonging and how all these processes may be framed so that the question of identity becomes central in the inquiry. The prototype or model of self-relations is well known and clearly articulated in several of the sources discussed above. However, it might be useful to briefly summarize it here and show how it builds on the Erickson's legacy. _________________________________
*Robert D. Rossel,
Ph.D. is a Life Coach/hypnotherapist practicing in Los Altos Hills, California. He is a long-time practitioner of self-relations psychotherapy and Ericksonian hypnotherapy. With an abiding interest in music, art, yoga, and other body-mind practices, Dr. Rossel is also a long-time practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism and has sought for many years to find ways to apply meditation and mindfulness in his psychotherapy practice. He may be reached at 10490 Albertsworth Lane, Los Altos Hills, CA 94024. Address
all correspondence to his e-mail address: Rosselrob@aol.com.
|
The
"Pure Heart, Simple Mind" Newsletter
We
won't ever rent, sell, or give away subscriber information.
|
||||||||||
| Home
||| Site Map ||| Search
||| News ||| Services
||| Seishindo |||
Workshops: in
Japan - in the US -
in Europe Contact ||| The Seishindo Team ||| Kudos ||| Somatics ||| Readings: Articles - Poetry - Books ||| Music ||| Newsletter* ||| Practices Self Hypnosis ||| Anger Management ||| Resources ||| Submit your site ||| Free content for your newsletter ||| Syndicate our content |
