Psychotherapy & Hypnosis
We received our PhDs from Alliant University in 1983. When pursuing our training as psychotherapists, we sought to suppliment our formal education with independent study from innovative thinkers, meeting with them regularly, attending their classes, and delving deeply into their work. We learned how to perform research on therapeutic effectiveness from Jerome D. Frank at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Phipps Clinic. Frank's groundbreaking 25-year psychotherapy research project uncovered the nonspecific factors that are so important for effective therapy, such as faith, hope, expectancy, the therapeutic relationship and mastery. We also had the opportunity to meet personally with John C. Whitehorn, former director of Phipps Clinic who helped us learn the art of therapeutic interviewing that uncovers the person, situation, and reaction.
We met regularly with Milton H. Erickson, the brilliant innovator in incorporating hypnosis into treatments. Erickson showed us the vast potential of the unconscious and how to facilitate change through these natural automatic abilities. He supervised our clinical work and guided us in our hypnotherapy. Ernest L. Rossi guided us further in our theory, worked with us on our research, and supervised our practice of hypnosis and the facilitation of the brain. He encouraged us to recognize the close interaction between the body, mind, and brain, expressed at the deep and fundamental level of the genes. G. Wilson Shaffer , Dean of Johns Hopkins and Director of the Counseling Center was our first hypnosis teacher who taught us how to elicit hypnotic responsiveness and supervised our work with clients.
Neuroscience
We have attended classes and seminars in neuroscience for over 15 years. We were introduced to the topic by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran who taught how to learn from what patients can and cannot do. Jaime Pineda, an active researcher in mirror neurons and autism, has shown us how to integrate neuroscience with cognitive retraining. We continue our studies in this fascinating and quickly changing field from innovative researchers. Our hope is to bring these important findings to clinicians to integrate into their treatments.
Philosophy and Meditation
We studied phenomenology at the New School for Social Research attending classes and seminars with Aron Gurwitch on phenomenology and Edmund Husserl, and with Hannah Arendt on Immanual Kant. We have continued our philosophical studies at the philosopy department at University of California, San Diego, which masterfully integrates classical Greek philosophy, taught by Georgios Anagnastopoulos and David O. Brink with modern neuroscience research on philosophy of mind, scientific philosophy, and brain taught by Jonathan Cohen, William Bechtel, Christian Wuthrich and many others.
We have been meditating as part of our martial art, Tae Chun Do, for 40 years. According to ancient legend, the founder of martial arts, Bodhidharma, was also the founder of Zen, which translates as "meditation." and so the two are intimately linked. We attended classes with Alan Watts and at Zen, Daoist, and Buddhist monestaries. We continue the regular practice of meditation and communicating the art and science as a helpful tool of psychotherapy. We spent many years learning sensory awareness with Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks, delving deeply into mindful sensing.
From all our studies, research, and practice we continue to look at psychotherapy through the crystal of a broad vision which we communicate to you now, extending warmth and clarity through our books, teaching seminars, and this website.
