A STRUCTURED INTERACTIVE TACTIC USING IMAGERY

Landis (1991) uses a highly prescriptive technique of guided imagery based on his learning from Milton Erickson. Landis freely confesses that he is highly selective about who he is willing to take as a client.

I am not.

In my hands, the technique works well and I quickly discover the patient whose imagination is inaccessible to such a playful technique.

First and foremost, you must steep yourself in the fundamentals and lore of good hypnotherapist artistry. Be confident, expect the result you describe. Prescribe results in permissive terms, e.g. "I wonder if you might be able to learn from seeing yourself as a young girl, or perhaps from remembering when you were in kindergarten, or perhaps you will learn more from sensing a time when everything around you was very large."

Exhaustively comment on physiological changes as they become visible. Create a "yes set" by exhaustively listing all the possible responses. "I wonder if you notice that one hand is heavier than the other hand, perhaps it is the left hand that is the right hand to think about, and it might be that the right hand feels heavier, perhaps both hands might feel equally comfortably heavy and relaxed, although, of course, the feeling might be one of lightness."

Speak slowly, emphasizing phrases embedded to create comfort and movement "The tomato seed, Joe, CANNOT SEE, CANNOT FEEL, and yet I wonder if it does not FEEL A SENSE OF COMFORT."

Above all, accept the client, where she is and respond to her responses.

Landis recommends that the image of the client as a child be fixed by introducing the idea that the child she was might have enjoyed being able to go to a meadow where she could have anyone she wanted there and anything, and no one and no thing could be there that she didn't want.

It seems to be more productive to refer to the child in the third person as if a separate personality actually exists. Spend some time indirectly enriching the imagined field (I wonder what the birds are eating?). Eventually suggest that the the adult approaches the remembered child and introduces herself, praising and cherishing the child.

It is particularly important to create in the client an awareness that the child did very well given her situation, size, age, skills, knowledge and the people she had to cope with.

The therapist checks to see that the child has accepted the adult as who she is. In other words, introduce yourself to the child as herself all grown up. After praising and cherishing the child, check, through the child's eyes to see if she really accepts the adult as herself grown up.

Continually build the sense of comfort, interest and play, and cherishing and praising the child.

Ask if the child has a special place she likes to hide or snuggle up safely. Create a place if necessary, then teach the child that she can go there anytime that she likes. Reassure the child that you, the client, will be right here in the garden, and that she can come back by clicking her heels, instantly.

Practice.

This script creates the initial situation for work, but closure should always be made by reassuring the child that you, the client, will return and visit her here, at any time she wishes.

Always let the child leave the scene first, and always give her a hug.

Once the image of the child who can happily converse with the adult is established then systematic work can be done safely, playfully, and powerfully.

I usually ask for introduction of pets spending time building good feelings.

I also follow a suggestion of Landis to use "Data" the Android on STAR TREK: THE SECOND GENERATION. Suggest that the child might enjoy an indestructible twin, who could substitute for her and play tricks and games.

With all this scenario and cast the therapist can then use TV screens, remote viewers (eye in the sky), movie screens, crystal balls or whatever imagery works with the child to sneak up on traumas. Data Child can be sent to the scene, and then the scene can be modified to suit the child's needs.

The child always returns to the primary scene of comfort and safety.

It is not necessary to go all the way back to childhood, unless the trauma is there. Revisiting the younger adult, and thanking her for having the experience, "you" don't have to live through it again and "you" can be grateful that she lived through it. You can visit her and reassure her.

The desensitization which needs half a dozen to twenty sessions by RIT can be accomplished in a single session.

PARTS WORK

Landis suggests that you emphasize Milton Erickson's wise report that the unconscious mind may be humorless, and concretely literal minded, but that she is always benign and has as her job keeping you alive.

Pavlov recited to patients the fact that your mouth instantly responds with thin watery saliva or thick mucous or some other product, exactly right for processing whatever you have put into your mouth. The unconscious processes (mind) respond even when someone else squirts something that you don't know what it is into your mouth - the response is made instantly and appropriately.

Changes in respiration, pupil size, heart rate and so on are all carried out by unconscious methods. One of the scripts which follows, OCEAN, emphasizes the enormous data store in the vegetative, unconscious processes. This cognitive set enhances a therapeutic response.

When doing Parts Work, it is imperative to maintain a positive set toward the unconscious mind for inventing the "part" even when the Part is unpleasant and harmful. The Part was invented to save your life and often does just what it was designed to do.

Landis asks you to identify a feeling or action which seems to get in your way. Recover the feelings associated with the Part.

Always remembering to be artistically gifted as a hypnotherapist ask the Part if the Part will appear to the client (I am deliberately avoiding gender, especially the neuter).

"I wonder if you will be comfortable asking this Part of you to give you an image, if the Part will appear to you?" "It doesn't matter if you see a vivid image, just a simple change, or the vague awareness that the Part is willing to allow you to become conscious of the Part will do."

If the Part appears then ask the Part how old you were when the Part invented itself. Will the Part show you what events or sounds or what it is that calls the Part out? Does the Part have a name for herself (by now you've got a pronoun).

Often the answer is not "five years old" but an image of the client at age five appears to the client.

When I took Landis' Partwork seminar I brought a response I thought I had only recently developed to the therapy. I was remarried at age 57 and found myself, quite contrary to my habits and image of myself, occassionally raging at my wife. She and I were astonished at the vituperative fervor of the rages.

When the therapist asked me to look for the Part I responded, "you know I'm a fairly rational therapist and this California stuff isn't my ....." Well, staring at me behind my closed eyelids was a horrible looking Wolverine, streaked with pus. In response to the age question I saw an image of myself being carried by my father in a lawyers office whilst he and my mother shrieked at each other and the lawyer bleated about. So my response to the therapist was "About 18 months, two years - still being held in arms, at any rate."

I demurred again when asked to inquire of the Wolverine its name, but instantly came the name, "Squaller".

"How old does Squaller think you are now?" Again came an image, this time of my new mother and my father ferociously thrashing my brother when we were 9-10 years old.

The therapist determined with me that Squaller was evoked by a tone of voice, and that clearly his job was to keep me from being overwhelmed by ferocious adults and their destructive voices.

I had a very hard time thanking Squaller, I told the therapist "I don't think you understand how bad the things I say to my wife ...."

She responded by pointing out how strongly and well Squaller worked at preventing me from being overwhelmed by adults. She was able to get me to remember times when in a more conscious and deliberate way I have used the rage to protect my family and property. I was able to make a genuine "thank you."

The therapist then asked me to show Squaller my driver's license, to take him with me through a day of work, to introduce him to my grown chilren (he has never been active with my children).

Then the therapist asked me to ask if my creative self would be willing to appear and talk with me. Again I demurred "this is really too California for m...." and I was looking at J himself sitting on a cloud. Since then I have remember a Guindon cartoon based on Michaelangelo which formed the image, but there He was, laughing at me in a kindly manner.

"Ask Jay if he will take over the job of convincing Squaller that he can hold himself in reserve for major invasions, and what you need him to learn is to use something in addition to tones of voices." In fact, she suggested I transform the triggering tone to Mr. Magoo's voice.

I assure you my wife has not suffered my rage since that session almost ten years ago, nor has anyone else. A loving pet name for her has become "Magoo".

Landis also teaches a method of transacting with the "interface" between the conscious and unconscious minds. Weave a science fantasy about the interface. Tell a number of self disclosing and other metaphors about it. Then invite the client's own interface to show itself.

A number of my patients have spontaneously called this construct their "higher self".

I find it very useful with Christian clients to ask them to remember the hymn "In The Garden", then to invite them to visualize the walk with him, approaching Jesus comfortably, and asking him to ask the guardian angel to appear who serves the same function as the interface.

There is of course, a great deal of therapeutic lore about these technques and Landis fills four days of seminar in a manner which feels productive.

I always remind my students, nobody has proved that doing therapy one way is better than another. One thing I very much liked about Landis is that he says "there is no rule about when to use the interaction with the child, and when to use Parts, and when to use the Interface."

Principle one, don't get bored.

Principle two, let the client guide you.

In my hands, the responses I learned in the four day seminar have been very productive.

Salter insisted that the best source of good conditioning was the mine of successful experiences the client already enjoyed. If nothing makes the client smile but talking about her pussy cat by all means talk about the pussy cat.