I have recently had success with the Conference Therapy technique they describe
Cool!
I actually started reading the book, rage-quit in the middle, then came back to it years later and found it useful. I rage-quit because the section on EMDR was about a patient with panic attacks, EMDR was done, and afterward the patient still had panic attacks but they claimed the treatment was a success anyway.
Huh, I didn’t remember this from my read. Searching for “panic attacks” in my copy now, there’s the story of Susan who got EMDR for panic attacks, but my copy seems to say she only had one single panic attack after the treatment and after that they stopped for good? Is that the section you mean?
Another issue is that it is apparently not unusual for a problem to need to be solved with Coherence Therapy several times before the symptom goes away.
Can you say more about solving the problem multiple times? Is it maybe partially explainable by the same schema having been stored in the context of many different situations with each of those needing to be reconsolidated separately (something that the authors do mention), or being based on multiple different experiences that need to all be addressed before the symptom goes away entirely?
Another problem is that they claim to be agnostic about which learnings are true and which are false. Nevertheless they start the process by identifying a symptom. The word “symptom” presupposes that beliefs that justify it are false.
My reading is that “symptom” means something that disrupts a person’s life enough that they seek therapy for it—if there wasn’t anything that they experienced as a problem, they probably wouldn’t come to therapy in the first place. So I interpret “symptom” to suggest that some of the beliefs are disruptive, even if not necessarily false.
I don’t remember whether this was in UtEB, but Coherence Therapy: Practice Manual & Training Guide explains the concept of a purposeless symptom that’s the byproduct of something with more function. An example they give is a belief that a person needs to hide from the world, which limits their ability to act so much that they become depressed. In that case, the depression is a symptom, but it’s based on a correct belief that the person is currently unable to do things that would get them what they want.
Of course, it’s true that the methodology presupposes that there’s some incorrect belief in the client’s system. Otherwise there wouldn’t be anything for memory reconsolidation to fix, and those beliefs are somehow linked to the symptom. But I don’t read that as contradicting the claim that when you start investigating, you’re not going to know exactly which one of the client’s learnings are true and which ones are false.
I disagree with the review’s approach of trying to figure out if the technique described in the book works by analyzing whether it agrees with the research or with other techniques. There are lots of therapy techniques that sound like they ought to work in principle but don’t, so you can’t find the truth in this space by reasoning from first principles.You know it works if you tried it and got good results.
Hmm that makes sense, but I think I was mostly comparing with techniques that I have found to work, and noting that if the book’s take was true, it would explain why they work.
My reading of the EMDR section was that the patient had panic attacks, did EMDR, then had a panic attack, and then either the patient ran out of money or it was time to write the paper, so we don’t know about the presence or absence of panic attacks after that.
On rereading that section, it is clear that there is no claimed period of time when the patient was observed not to have a panic attack during that period of time. The last panic attack was labelled as “mild”. I didn’t bother to read back to see if any of the other panic attacks were “mild” before success was declared.
Cool!
Huh, I didn’t remember this from my read. Searching for “panic attacks” in my copy now, there’s the story of Susan who got EMDR for panic attacks, but my copy seems to say she only had one single panic attack after the treatment and after that they stopped for good? Is that the section you mean?
Can you say more about solving the problem multiple times? Is it maybe partially explainable by the same schema having been stored in the context of many different situations with each of those needing to be reconsolidated separately (something that the authors do mention), or being based on multiple different experiences that need to all be addressed before the symptom goes away entirely?
My reading is that “symptom” means something that disrupts a person’s life enough that they seek therapy for it—if there wasn’t anything that they experienced as a problem, they probably wouldn’t come to therapy in the first place. So I interpret “symptom” to suggest that some of the beliefs are disruptive, even if not necessarily false.
I don’t remember whether this was in UtEB, but Coherence Therapy: Practice Manual & Training Guide explains the concept of a purposeless symptom that’s the byproduct of something with more function. An example they give is a belief that a person needs to hide from the world, which limits their ability to act so much that they become depressed. In that case, the depression is a symptom, but it’s based on a correct belief that the person is currently unable to do things that would get them what they want.
Of course, it’s true that the methodology presupposes that there’s some incorrect belief in the client’s system. Otherwise there wouldn’t be anything for memory reconsolidation to fix, and those beliefs are somehow linked to the symptom. But I don’t read that as contradicting the claim that when you start investigating, you’re not going to know exactly which one of the client’s learnings are true and which ones are false.
Hmm that makes sense, but I think I was mostly comparing with techniques that I have found to work, and noting that if the book’s take was true, it would explain why they work.
My reading of the EMDR section was that the patient had panic attacks, did EMDR, then had a panic attack, and then either the patient ran out of money or it was time to write the paper, so we don’t know about the presence or absence of panic attacks after that.
On rereading that section, it is clear that there is no claimed period of time when the patient was observed not to have a panic attack during that period of time. The last panic attack was labelled as “mild”. I didn’t bother to read back to see if any of the other panic attacks were “mild” before success was declared.