HYPNOTERAPl - Dansk Selskab for Klinisk Hypnose

deux" and retains a stable reality for the therapist's permanent self - to which the therapist
can return when the treatment has been accomplished. This "subject-object relationship"
permits simultaneously two different perspectives for understanding the patient, an external
and an internal one. It results in greater understanding than an "object relationship" alone.
2) For a theoretical explanation and rational as to how this can be accomplished from the
standpoint of Federn's Ego Psychology (1952) see Watkins & Watkins (1997).
and perhaps it is the "person" of the therapist, not the technique or approach, that is the really
significant factor in patient change.
If therapists are not willing to commit their own selves to the co-experiencing, the cofearing,
the co-raging, the co-hating, then those therapists should not do abreactions.
person of the therapist adds to the diagnostic understanding of the patient. But it keeps the
therapist as an external object to the patient and simply as a passive target on which to project
his or her past. Moreover, the transference/counter-transference stance adds nothing to the
ego strength or the patient's ability to confront and master such traumas, horrors or abusers. A
transference interpretation educates the patient into what is the problem and how he/she must
take the respon-sibility for it, but by itself does not provide the patient with the strength to do
that. This interpretation may be "understood". It also makes sense , but this "insight" may
only be cognitive, not experi-ential throughout the patient´s whole person
The alliance of the therapist's resonance, however, adds to the patient's ego strength making
it possible for him to risk a confron-tation with an internal abuser representation and prevail.
Good abreactions require a personal, experiential investment by the thera-pist through
resonance; transference does not. While waiting for transference to happen one observes the
patient's emotional storm from the outside but does not enter into it personally. That is being
objective, but it lacks the "weness" of resonance. Accordingly, a good abreaction may be an
exhausting emotional experience for "the self" of the therapist, but it is not counter-transference.
Perhaps the reason our patients are not overwhelmed and re-traumatized is because we
involve ourselves intensively in emotionally resonating with them when they abreact.
The addition of the therapist's self through resonance is illustrated in a specific case we
have recorded.
Ed, was a young man whose mother locked him at the age of three in a closet she said was
filled with monsters. From fright he passed out and when awakened had regressed to a one
year-old ego state which could not walk or talk. He had to learn to walk and talk all over
again - a fact that caused much concern in the family. After working-through some fear
abreactions his rage at his mother began to emerge, but regressed under hypnosis to the age of
two he was afraid of confronting her and reported a "had headache." (The object representation
of the introjected mother was punishing him for attempting to confront her.)
Ed: I'm not supposed to he mad. She told me when I got mad at her she was gonna beat me
with the belt. Th. (Helen Watkins): You're going to grow up a little bit now. You're gonna get
bigger. And you can see Mommy there with the helt? Now she's gonna hit you with that belt.
But you're bigger and bigger, and you can get mad. You can get mad.
(His ego is still not strong enough to confront the object represen-tation of the punishing
mother: So he replies.)
Ed: No, I´m just a little, tiny kid.
(Had he been forced or overly encouraged to express his anger at this point he could have
been inundated with fear. The strong object representation of his mother would probably
prevail. The abreaction would have been a failure if not a re-traumatizing. However, the
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