Psychotherapy on the Road to … Nowhere?

1. The question we ask, parenthetically, at this point is this: Nobel Prize in what?

This article is an adaptation to one that was inspired by a visit to one of the most unconventional seminars on psychotherapy my wife and I ever attended.

This was an experience I lived…

From now on, my voice overlaps the voice of one of the greatest therapists we ever met, while visiting Liverpool as guests of Professor Peter Slade.

The story is… well… is factual fiction…

"The small car careered toward a pile of barrels labeled ‘Danger TNT’, then turned sharply, ramming through a mock brick wall and into a dark tunnel. A light appeared ahead, coming fast and head-on. A locomotive whistled.

"’Uh-oh’", said one of the passengers, Dr. Martin Seligman, a psychologist and a pioneer in the study of positive emotions.

"However, in a moment, the car scudded safely under the light, out through the swinging doors of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and into the warm, clear light that seemed to radiate from the South Anglia pavement.

"Well," Dr. Seligman said. ‘I don't know that I expected to be doing that’.

"One of several prominent therapists who agreed to visit this place at the invitation of my friend, the psychoanalyst, Barton Blinder, Dr. Seligman was there in mid-December 2000, for a conference on the state of psychotherapy, its current challenges and its future. And a wild ride it was.

"Because it was clear at this landmark meeting that, although the participants agreed it was a time for bold action, psychotherapists were deeply divided over whether that action should be guided by the cool logic of science or a spirit of humanistic activism. The answer will determine not only what psychotherapy means, many experts said, but also its place in the 21st century.

"’In the 1960's and 1970's, we had these characters like Carl Rogers, Minuchin, Frankl and the like — psychotherapy felt like a social movement, and you just wanted to be a part of it," said Dr. Jeffrey Zeig, a psychologist who heads the Milton H. Erickson Foundation, which every five years since 1980 has sponsored the conference in honor of Dr. Erickson, a pioneer in the use of hypnosis and brief therapy techniques.