August / September 2005

REVIEWS

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ENERGY PSYCHOLOGY INTERACTIVE: Rapid Interventions for Lasting Change
BY DAVID FEINSTEIN
Innersource, 2004, $60, 284 pp.,
0972520708.

Reviewed by Sharon G. Mijares

This interactive program includes a resource text for professionals, a self-help guide for clients and an interactive training CD. Each of these resources provides background information and experiential learning exercises to enable the clinician and the client to become profi cient in the use of energy psychology. The illustrations for various techniques are clear and especially helpful. Also, the art work on all three items is by Alex Grey, known for his incredible artwork called Sacred Mirrors. In short, David Feinstein has designed an informative and attractively useful training program that is a must for anyone wishing to learn and utilize Energy Psychology.

Candace Pert's forward explains that Energy Psychology Interactive is a synthesis of practices designed to deliberately shift the “molecules of emotion” with a “distinct advantage over psychiatric medications" (and therefore minus dangerous side effects). Pert notes how the treatment is “non-invasive” and speaks highly of its theory and techniques. Energy Psychology is considered to be a leading edge treatment.

The Interactive CD is a 40-hour course for health care professionals. It includes 17 basic training modules, embedded topics, well-defined figures and charts, video clips, and an excellent layout of contents to support the information in the text. The lessons are focused on simple questions and answers. Sections can be printed for use in the office with clients. The text itself explains the processes and essentially contains much of the same information as the CD. The Self-Help guide for clients likewise explains and illustrates the techniques to be used in an easy-to-read format.

Gary Craig’s Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and other forms of energy psychology are highlighted. Craig uses a process of tapping specifi c acupuncture meridian points as one uses transformational affi rmations. The following example from the Self-Help book explains the process. Imagine a client reporting, “When I think of confronting my boss, I get a headache.” First the client sets the goal of remaining calm and relaxed. The stress level related to the problem is then rated on a 0 to 10 intensity scale (similar to the use in EMDR). A rewording of the problem experience is: “Even though I get a headache when I think of confronting my boss, I deeply love and accept myself.” This is intended as a “psychological reversal.” Another example of a reversal is, “Even though I have neglected my body, I choose to know that I deserve to have time for regular, enjoyable exercise.” The client’s energy system will be accessed via the tapping procedure. The disturbing pattern can literally disappear during an EFT session as the client is guided to repeat the process until the emotional reaction has disappeared. This process is taught in all three of the training program’s instruments. There are also numerous other processes to use according to the client’s (or practitioner’s) need—some simply geared to heighten energy levels or to improve one’s outlook.

It is an impressive training package. I was grateful for the opportunity to review it, and I have given considerable attention to this project. The text explains “that a handful of preliminary scientific investigations appear [to be] promising.” A wide range of therapies focusing on energy systems were included in the preparatory research for the book. So I decided to do some research on my own. First I went on Stephen Gilligan’s Self Relations listserve to ask if any of the list participants used its techniques. I found out that many practitioners are aware of Gary Craig’s EFT. I received immediate responses from Canada, Europe, Australia and the U.S. Commentaries were mixed. A nurse in Australia swore by it, another practitioner trained therapists in professional workshops, others felt it might be useful for a small number of clients, and others felt it lacked credibility. I decided to test it out in that it is a controversial therapy, and the critics are still out to lunch. Would clients’ behaviors truly change as a result of tapping meridian points (used in acupuncture), humming tunes, and rotation of one’s eyes? I decided this program might be especially useful for any of my clients manifesting obsessive behaviors in that these were neurological patterns and therefore might be especially receptive to a pattern interruption. The following client provides a good example of successful use. She was especially annoyed by her husband’s noisy gum chewing, so I guessed she might benefit from EFT. I taught her the procedure and recommended she use it when he started “snapping” that gum. Two or more months have passed, and her reaction has not reoccurred. It disappeared after a few repetitions during her first and only session. It makes sense that interrupting a behavioral response pattern with a process that utilizes both right and left sides of the brain could initiate a helpful change.

My conclusion is that Energy Psychology techniques appear to be useful tools—especially for the eclectic practitioner, as long as the client’s deeper needs are not neglected. Beyond the disturbing pattern and the pattern interruption, there is a deeper self longing for recognition and for a voice. That is the place where therapy is most needed.

SHARON G. MIJARES, Ph.D., is a Self Relations Psychotherapist with a private practice in Del Mar, California. She co-edited The Psychospiritual Clinician’s Handbook: Alternative Methods for Understanding and Treating Mental Disorders with Gurucharan Singh Khalsa (2005). She is also the editor of Modern Psychology and Ancient Wisdom: Psychological Healing Practices from the World’s Religious Practices (2003). Sharon has a black belt (Shodan) in Aikido. She can be reached at www.psychospiritual.org or sharonmijares@aol.com.

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E PLURIBUS UNUM, OUT OF MANY . . . ONE: A Pictorial Presentation of a Journey from Fragmentation to Integration
BY SANDY SELA-SMITH AND BENJAMIN B. KEYES
Manitou Communications, 2004,
144 pp., $26.95, ISBN 0970432578.

Reviewed by Dassie Hoffman

Many books have been written about Multiple Personality Disorder and/or Dissociative Identity Disorder. They range from the scientifi c to the sensational— including The Three Faces of Eve, When Rabbit Screams, First Person Plural (written by a Saybrook Graduate School student). However, none of these books have the poignancy and impact of this book.

E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many . . . One is about a journey from a childhood filled with multiple instances of violence, physical and sexual abuse, through the valley of illness and despair, into a place of healing and health. The collaboration between Sandy Sela-Smith (faculty at Saybrook Graduate School and Institute for Transpersonal Psychology) and Benjamin Keyes was a therapeutic one, based upon client-centered techniques. When Dr. Keyes added Mind Mapping to the process, he provided Dr. Sela- Smith with an essential tool for the visualization, exploration, and ultimately, the integration of her many wounded selves.

Mind Mapping, which is a technique new to this therapist, proved to be the turning point in the collaborative therapeutic process described in the book. “Mapping is a technique that asks the client to draw or somehow represent either in symbol or word, aspects of the self that may show up as alters or fragmented parts of the self.” Dr. Keyes admits honestly that he chose to use this technique to help him keep the therapy focused and directed. He added that using these maps helped him to guide the course of treatment, always a challenge when working with DID clients. This client had more than 250 alters and fragments hidden away in her psyche. Dr. Keyes wanted to learn about these multiple selves (alters) before the tasks of consolidation and integration could occur.

This book is divided into several sections. Mind Maps is the largest section, and the most illustrative of Dr. Sela-Smith’s painful journey. What appears on mind maps are pictures, words, whatever the client elects to place upon them. The reader, studying the maps, is drawn into her actual experiences. We can observe her moments of fear, anger, confusion, and even resistance to the healing process. Dr. Keyes and Dr. Sela-Smith have written notes that appear with each of the Mind Maps. These notes provide an extremely rich addition to the unfolding therapeutic process. Her comments about each map are instructive, and always poignant. We can watch her inner process as it evolves, becomes integrated, and ultimately, whole.

Her mind maps showed landscapes with many small children grouped in different sections of the drawings; there were high walls, birds, and sometimes fl owers. As she progressed through her treatment, there were wounded children, places where children had suffered abuse, fi gures of evil; there were streams of blood dripping from parts of the canvas, and gradually, the landscapes began to shift and change. There were figures who seemed stronger, more central on the page, and the figures of evil were gone. The final maps show three figures, grouped together, with strong outlines, a bird of hope nearby.

This is a fascinating book. It leads the reader through an intrapsychic journey filled with pain and suffering. Yet its final pages remind us that healing and wholeness are always possible, even to those who have been brutally wounded. The Mind-Mapping technique can be particularly helpful to the clinician working with clients who have experienced severe childhood trauma. Because much of the material surrounding these incidents might not be consciously available to the client, nonverbal approaches can offer new insights and enhancements to the therapeutic process.

Dr. Keyes believes that Mind Mapping is a singularly valuable tool for working with clients who have Dissociative Identity Disorder. A mind map portrays the inner landscape of the client, making the unconscious visible, often for the fi rst time. Because personality integration is the ultimate goal, the client is instructed to draw maps at intervals during the treatment process. Then the client and therapist examine and discuss what appears on the map; and make note of any changes as they occur.

Congratulations to the authors who have made this document of hope available to us.

DASSIE HOFFMAN, Ph.D., A.D.T.R., is a graduate of Saybrook Graduate School (2002) and is a registered dance/movement therapist. She conducts a psychotherapy practice at the Center for Experiential Psychotherapy in New York. She teaches Voice Dialogue for Mental Health Professionals (with AHP CECs) and runs women’s groups. dassieh@aol. com, www.drdassiehoffman.com.

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BEYOND TRAUMA: Conversations on Traumatic Incident Reduction
EDITED BY VICTOR R. VOLKMAN
Loving Healing Press, 2003, 336
pp., $11.98, ISBN 193269000X.

Reviewed by Stanley Krippner

Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) is a brief, highly structured, one-onone method for treating trauma, the condition that occurs when an actual or perceived threat of emotional or physical danger, pain, or loss overwhelms one’s coping ability. Victor R. Volkman, the editor of Beyond Trauma, describes TIR as “person-centered” because it operates from the client’s viewpoint and from this perspective explains “what makes trauma traumatic.” Carl Rogers and Sigmund Freud are credited with providing the theoretical underpinnings of TIR, the former for avoiding therapist interpretations and evaluations, the latter for pioneering the psychiatric treatment of post-traumatic symptoms through recovering “lost memories.”

Beyond Trauma is a mosaic of case studies, session notes, therapeutic applications (to accident survivors, rape victims, combat veterans, clients suffering from phobias, grievers, etc.), comparisons with other therapists (for example, Rational- Emotional Behavior Therapy, Thought Field Therapy, Emotional Freedom Technique), and the curriculum for TIR training programs. Indeed, Beyond Trauma can be seen as an invitation to the reader to register for these programs, because few specifi c data are provided regarding what goes on in a TIR session. Several doctoral research projects have explored the effectiveness of TIR; their impressive results are summarized, and readers are told where they can obtain the entire documents. However, a ninepage summary of an investigation of the “active ingredient” present in TIR and three other therapies closes without specifi cally naming that “ingredient.”

Each contribution to this pastiche has something unique to offer, but the book’s organization is puzzling. TIR’s immediate predecessor was Frank Gerbode’s “metapsychology,” defined as “the careful study, classification, and description of direct human experience” derived from Husserl and other phenomenologists. However, this essay is placed toward the end of the book, as is the definition of “viewing”—TIR’s method of “drawing out of a person” what he or she knows about the trauma. An appendix contains some useful information about an actual session (such as when the “viewer” or client describes the traumatic incident as if watching a videotape, then “rewinds” that videotape and describes it again, and again, and again). Unfortunately, Gerbode does not mention the reports in the literature describing retraumatization following “implosion” therapy, which seems to resemble his “rewinding” technique.

A closer proofreading is needed to catch typographical errors in future editions of this work. A far more important omission is Volkman’s failure to include a rejoinder from a therapist who doubts the validity of the “lost memory” concept. However, in a world marked by violence, and in an era where civilian victims of wars outnumber combatant deaths and injuries, there is a desperate need for shortterm treatment techniques for those suffering from the sequelae of trauma. Traumatic Incident Reduction seems to live up to the promise implied in its name. If so, its advent on the psychological scene is not only timely but also welcome.

STANLEY KRIPPNER, Ph.D., teaches at Saybrook Graduate School and is a past AHP President.