NCJ Number
142196
Journal
Journal of Strategic and Systemic Therapies Volume: 8 Issue: 4 Dated: (Winter 1989) Pages: 3-8
Date Published
1989
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article demonstrates how techniques derived from Ericksonian hypnosis, brief and systemic therapy, were used conjointly in the treatment of a suicidal client suffering from debilitating memories of previously dissociated incest experiences.
Abstract
The client was a 42-year-old married woman, who came to therapy in a state of extreme depression and agitation, stating she was afraid that she might commit suicide. Three days previously she had spontaneously retrieved a series of vivid and traumatic memories of her father sexually molesting her when she was a child. Subsequently, she had become more and more upset and suicidal. The therapist used conscious and unconscious techniques in combination to enable the client to resolve issues from the past incest trauma in the context of a secure and positive present orientation, while building a practical foundation for nonsymptomatic future perceptions and behaviors. The unconscious techniques included the use of unconscious symbols to elicit and reelicit comfort and security, simultaneous partial age regression, and age progression to enable the client to experience corrective emotional experiences of compassion and hope. The treatment also used protective dissociative abilities that tend to occur naturally in trauma victims. To ensure that therapeutic unconscious adjustments are translated by the incest survivor into lasting behavioral changes, a variety of conscious techniques were used. These included "solution- focused" questions, a "first session formula task," and circular questioning. All of the techniques were designed to assist the client in reclaiming the unconscious resources she had before the abuse experience, resolving the painful revivification, depotentiating the significance of the incest experience, and enabling the client to develop highly individualized behavioral alternatives that she will continue to implement in a positive future orientation. 24 references