Maio 2009 Entrevista Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicoterapias 50MINUTES Construtivistas Bruce Ecker Coherence Psychology Institute COHERENCE THERAPY Bruce Ecker é Psicoterapeuta em Oakland, Califórnia, co-autor da Terapia de Coerência, e co-fundador com S. Bridges do Coherence Psychology Institute. Em Maio 2009 a Sociedade organizou em Lisboa em parceria com o CPI, o Seminário Internacional e Workshop em Terapia de Coerência. Esta conversa teve lugar na tarde de 20 de Maio. COHERENCE THERAPY Gregory Bateson, in a very different Bruce Ecker is co-originator of MAIN INFLUENCES way yet again an understanding of the Coherence Therapy and co-author of coherent production of what is visible Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy: How To —that there are unconscious personal Be Brief When You Were Trained To Be A.: You come from a family constructs, orderly knowledge Deep, and Vice Versa, systems training, right? structures giving rise to what looks as well as B.: Partially, but I wouldn’t say irrational on the surface. Paul Dell that was the main orientation. numerous wrote about replacing the concept of articles and A.: Ok, so what would you say are resistance with the constructivist training the main influences you can identify in concept of coherence, and the videos. He Coherence Therapy either theoretically constructivist brief therapies that were has taught or as methodological? so shaped by Bateson’s ideas, the widely in B.: We feel we were standing on strategic and systemic therapies, had a graduate many different shoulders and so I’ll try big impact on our thinking. The fact courses at to name several. There is Carl Jung’s that those therapies avoid the JFK University, professional workshop view of the psyche as coherent, underlying emotional material actually and clinical conferences, and operates although he may not have used that got us focused on how to include that a private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. This Interview took place in term, but he saw that any symptom material—how to be brief and deep. Lisbon, the 20 May 2009, at the makes sense within the operation of the Gestalt Therapy and other humanistic psyche. The psyche is operating International Seminar & Workshop on and existential therapies made it so Coherence Therapy. More recently he intelligently in producing a symptom. clear to us that you have to work and Sara Bridges co-founded the That view is very influential for us. experientially to get direct access to the Coherence Psychology Institute. [1] underlying, symptom-producing material What we set out to do was to apply emotional experience, as distinct from a and make it conscious and create shifts. constructivist thinking to the unconscious cognitive insight about that theme and And there is a mentor who Laurel Hulley emotional domain. talking about that theme. A coherence and I both fortunately had in our training: therapist aims in every session to have the Robert Shaw, a therapist who had a COHERENCE THERAPY client speak from and in the live strong, clear vision of the possibility of NOVELTY emotional experience of the relevant very rapidly restructuring a client’s material. So that’s one important relationship to a symptom and to the A.: Still on this topic of how much principle, the principle of accessing by circumstances in which a symptom this system integrates a wide range of subjectively experiencing the material occurs, creating rapid transformational therapies, what’s the novelty that directly. shifts. Coherence Therapy brings to the field of A.: Yes, indeed. psychotherapy? B.: Another is a principle of change, COHERENCE THERAPY B.: One novelty is what I just and it can be put in different ways, but I DISTINCTIVE FEATURES mentioned—it’s a constructivist approach like to put it as: People are able to change to the unconscious emotional world of a position that they experience having, but are not able to change an unconscious A.: Do you see Coherence Therapy people, without using interpretation. In position that they don’t know they have. as an integrated system of psychotherapy fact it’s very important in Coherence or more as an eclectic collection of Therapy for the therapist not to interpret And by “position” I mean a specific methods? to the client. And perhaps the main strategy for living based in a particular B.: I see it as a highly integrated novelty of Coherence Therapy is that it emotional learning or theme. That system and integrative in that it includes enables a therapist to dispel clinical principle indicates the process of many important features of many other symptoms through in-depth, Coherence Therapy, which is to enable therapies, yet not in a patchwork sort of transformational shifts, often life- someone to first consciously experience way. Often the word eclectic is used to changing shifts, in relatively few the themes and purposes that they are in mean a loose, ad hoc patchwork that isn’t sessions. fact living, that are giving rise to really unified, whereas Coherence A.: Right before your eyes. unwanted repeating patterns that we call Therapy is highly unified. The conceptual B.: Right before your eyes, with symptoms or problems. Once these things framework and the methods form a very decisive effectiveness. It’s not a miracle are consciously experienced, they are consistent, non-arbitrary overall system cure, it’s not an easy therapy for some then susceptible to a transformational of therapy. So it’s truly a synthesis in that therapists to learn and it’s not a cookie- shift. it combines many aspects of many cutter approach, not just a standard A.: Ok, great. therapies into a new whole that isn’t just a protocol, in that it requires creativity and B.: There’s another principle for how loose collection. customization and real sensitivity with that shift then happens, and that is also a A.: How much do you consider each client within a well-defined novelty which is at least as important as yourself a constructivist and also we methodology. It appears to be novel in the the ones I just mentioned. These would like to know if you were already a field to enable therapists to have that kind ingrained emotional themes and purposes constructivist while creating this system of in-depth effectiveness reliably in a and strategies of living that are creating of therapy and bringing together these small number of sessions. The field and maintaining a given symptom or various influences. assumes that it requires months or years problem can be dissolved, and then the B.: Yes, we regarded ourselves as of therapy to have such results. symptom ceases immediately. There’s a constructivists as we were forming built-in process in the mind and brain that Coherence Therapy and defining it to COHERENCE THERAPY we identified through studying many profound change events of our clients. ourselves. We were very interested in the GUIDING PRINCIPLES constructivist way of thinking and very What we found is that a transformational shift or even dissolution of these impressed by the constructivist approach A.: Which are the most important to helping people alter their experiential underlying emotional themes occurs therapeutic principles that guide your when the person is directly experiencing reality in a way that would change a integration? Is it possible to say you had symptom. And what we saw was that the the material and simultaneously some therapeutic principles that guide experiences another area of direct constructivist therapies at the time, in the your integration? late 1970s and early 1980s, were systems personal knowledge that is directly B.: Yes, I think we can name a few. contradictory to the knowledge in the that by design avoided in-depth work One is that a true accessing of an with the unconscious. We loved the symptom requiring material. This is what unconscious emotional theme and we call a juxtaposition experience. constructivist way of thinking and yet we strategy for living is achieved by a fully also loved and saw great value in-depth subjective experiencing of that theme and A.: This is a novelty too. work with the unconscious emotional strategy—a kind of immersive inhabiting material underlying a given symptom. or experiencing of that theme as a present B.: That’s a novelty. It has some parallels [2] earlier in the history of the field both in work needs to be empathic. Empathy can Piaget’s work on accommodation and in be focused in several different places. The Festinger’s work on cognitive dissonance. empathy most familiar to therapists is SEMINAR 2009 When we identified the juxtaposition empathy for the experience of having the process for deep change of emotional symptom, the particular distress or themes, we were surprised to see how it hardship that comes in the experience of extends Piaget’s and Festinger’s findings the symptom. Then there is also empathy to the unconscious emotional world, the for what we call the client’s anti-symptom world of the unconscious emotional position, the wish to be rid of the knowledge structures. symptom, hatred of the symptom, the client’s wish to be rid of the suffering of having the symptom—that is anti- COHERENCE THERAPY symptom empathy. Coherence empathy TRAINING includes those two kinds of empathies, because it’s very important to join with A.: Changing the subject a little bit, going the client’s terrible experience of a to training and supervision. We would symptom and the wish to be rid of it. In like to know how do you conceive it. addition the coherence therapist again and Which are for you the main steps toward again expresses coherence empathy, the making of a good coherence which is empathy for how the symptom is therapist? actually very necessary to have, for B.: Well actually there are a number of reasons that emerge very clearly, despite important components that all work the suffering that truly comes with it.