8 Comments

1. 

   Allan E. Larsen on August 23, 2013 at 5:03 am

   Fabulous! I use Jon’s book on a daily basis, both for my own enlightenment, and for teaching and supervising purposes, and I can not praise and recommend Jon’s book highly enough. It is a goldmine, clear, concise, and very, very inspiring. Allan E. Larsen, Danish ISTDP Society

2. 

   gloria on August 24, 2013 at 5:02 am

   What a fantastic information packed interview this was. Jon was exceptionally clear and articulate in his presentation and as always, your questions were the kind of inquiry those of us listening would like to have answered.

   I was interested to hear Jon\’s comments about psychotherapy being in its infancy and how bright the future looks in terms of its evolution. I certainly agree with his sentiments, having lived my life being involved in some way or another with the mental health field, mostly from a patient point of view. My mother was in and out of mental institutions from the early 50s to the early 80s with nervous breakdowns and was subjected to shock treatment, insulin therapy and every kind of experimental drug available, eventually turning to TM, evangelical Christianity and the emerging mental health community GROW groups before her death in 1984.

   For my own part I managed to avoid the institutional mental health arena but starting in the mid 70s, sampled several different kinds of professional private psychotherapies as well as many of the self help modalities that have become available since. Shrink Rap Radio, which I regard as part of my therapeutic team, being one of them and even though you don\’t promote it as such, I\’m sure I would have a lot of listener agreement.

   I totally agree with Jon about the need for the therapeutic relationship to be a cooperative effort and also with his attitude that the therapist is there to facilitate the client\’s process rather than be the one who attempts to fix them. I count myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity early in my days of seeking help, to be exposed to Transactional Analysis and that was based very much on the necessity of the client\’s motivation. It also encouraged client self education and to that end TA therapists had to complete a certain number of public educational 101s. This is how I first learned about it and it was like hearing my life story being told. Fortunately today we have the internet and shows such as this one, which are able to carry the information to a much wider audience than a lecture series at the local Workers Education Association or equivalent could ever do.

   Personal change is very difficult no matter how motivated a person is and without the motivation I think it would be very difficult to effect and maintain real change and growth. Without the erudition, support and encouragement of dedicated therapists, researchers, educators and allied professionals the struggle might well be impossible. The emerging field of neuroscience, along with a growing pool of psychological research findings, has been able to demonstrate in a very graphic way the mechanism that underlies the inbuilt inertia and resistance to change that makes it so difficult to make the changes we desire. Fortunately along with the bad news, there is a growing body of knowledge and understanding that change is not only possible but is also part of our natural healing capacity. It takes the combined courage and commitment of therapist and client alike and the partnership creates a wonderful feedback loop when the two synchronise. We\’re all in this collective experiment called life together.

3. 

   Louise on August 24, 2013 at 8:01 am

   Fantastic interview which really hit so many of the high points of psychotherapy today and the changes that are happening. I particularly loved the comment cautioning the oversimplification of brain functioning as I am fascinated by cognitive neuroscience but have noticed the tendency for people to simplistically divide the brain into functional parts. I am also a big fan of experiential learning in general and have often felt that I may have great insight but lack the support to make the changes necessary for deeper healing.
   I have to say it was pretty awesome to hear my song at the end of the show. I know it has been a long time coming and you are welcome to make it available for people to download for free from your site if they liked the song.
   For those of you who may be wondering, it was very much inspired by the work of Peter Levine and a story he told about some shamanic traditions who interpreted dissociation as being the spirit leaving the body and they would have rituals to call the spirit back to the body.
   So thanks David for another great interview and for letting me share some of my music with your listeners.
   Louise

4. 

   Louise on August 24, 2013 at 8:04 am

   I also meant to say that it was Rob Zozars playing the piano and Zandar Panda who did the mixing and recording for this piece. I could not have done it without them.

5. 

   Louise on August 24, 2013 at 5:52 pm

   Gloria you sound like my kind of person. For you and any other listeners who would like to have a free copy of my song please download and share.

6. 

   Louise on August 24, 2013 at 6:03 pm

   Gloria requested a youtube link – this is another song I wrote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oyZWCIiZEQ&feature=youtu.be

7. 

   sue on August 27, 2013 at 7:02 pm

   Thanks for such an insightful and rich interview full of many good ideas about how to approach psychological healing.

   I’d like to raise a question about the patient’s ‘will’ to heal or change. This seems a problematic and complex concept because defenses can also serve to keep other issues/feelings at bay, ie secondary gain for very valid reasons that need to be unpacked with respect and timing too and these reasons are often unconscious.

   Also in terms of the patient’s will it’s important while listening to listen for what the patient is possibly saying unconsciously. All speech is ambiguous. The patient who walked into the session and was asked what their problem was and stated ‘ well I don’t want to **** depend on you” may well appear to be expressing an a disdain for developing a therapeutic alliance and probably is but it is could also be an expression of their actual problem ie “ I don’t want to depend on anyone because …..its painful to rely on others, they let me down, they do away leave me etc etc” so that patient could have been expressing their problem around dependence and not simply have an issue of ‘will’.

8. 

   Michael Ocana on July 24, 2016 at 3:11 pm

   Here is a copy of my goodreads review of Jon’s book “Co-creating Change”.

   In this volume Jon Frederickson provides a powerful guide to short term psychodynamic therapy that integrates deep insights gleaned from somatic therapy approaches to the traditional psychoanalytic model. He illustrates the concepts of the short term psychodynamic model (from the Davenloo model) with many excellent case examples using direct therapist and patient exchanges to illustrate each point and variation in therapy. This is a highly user-friendly approach helping to flesh out the somatic nuances of the therapy and I found it very effective.

   To be perfectly fair I found some of the strategies in this model to be unappealing for myself. The model can be highly confrontational and the imagery that patients are asked to evoke is certainly not for everyone. All that being said I believe Frederickson is onto some deep truths here. I believe that the power of this approach is substantial and I have already been integrating concepts that he fleshes out here into my own practice. This is a powerful and integrative contribution to the field of psychotherapy.