No comments about Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology (Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology (Hardcover APA)).

5 comments about The Magic Daughter: A Memoir of Living with Multiple Personality Disorder.

1. While this book is a refresher from the cliches about Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly Multiple Personality Disorder that "Sybil" and "The Three Faces of Eve" created, I was still sorely disappointed in this book. One thing that bothers me that there are people who view DID as an exotic condition and who go to great lengths to try to convince others they are hosts to other personalities. Instead of being exotic, it is a devastating condition that has cost people their jobs, families and in some cases their lives. Cases have been reported where one personality was out to kill another and as a result, the "host" or "core" personality was the casualty.
   
   The author, who is identified as "Jane Phillips" started this book as a suicide note. A survivor of fraternal incest and neglectful parents, she makes her way through therapists and treatments until one therapist, with whom she has established rapport finally realizes through researching DID that she does indeed have this condition.
   
   To this book's credit, Phillips is nothing like the stereotypes that currently exist about DID. She does not have any extraordinary artistic ability that "surfaces" in other personalities; she is a college professor; she is somehow able to keep herselves in check while at work. Embarrassing moments do crop up, such as when she has no recollection of someone her alters have met.
   
   One part that I really loved was when Jane went toy shopping at the behest of her child alters. They implored her not to buy "some dumb bear with a dumb expression on his face" and "no dumb bears, ever!" As one who also dislikes bears, that made me smile.
   
   Sexual abuse is often the taproot of DID. Jane was raped by her older brother; when she was in college, she became involved with a violent man named "Jack" who raped her when she insisted that he move out.
   
   Like the famous (or infamous) Sybil before her, Jane had "fugue" states that she dated back to middle school. She finally, at age 30 enlists therapy after suffering from migraines and panic attacks.
   
   Her childhood was paradoxical. On the one hand, she was cherished as she was the only daughter and girls were a rarity in her family. On the other hand, she was penalized for her feminity. Jane's mother bought her a doll one Christmas that Jane didn't want and insisted she play with it; whenever Jane left it alone for long intervals, her mother would hound her to play with it, all the while telling her how lucky she was to have such a thing.
   
   Jane's growing feminity was measured and recorded by her mother; her breasts, hips and cycles were duly noted and she was not given any privacy regarding these very intimate matters. When Jane makes decisions for herself, such as going into therapy in adulthood, her parents systematically and symbolically cut her out of their lives by having pictures of her removed. Her mother makes irrational comments such as Jane's silver baby cup "is none of her business." That sounded completely illogical.
   
   I didn't like this book and felt it "glided" through some of the more harrowing aspects of DID. This book is like bare bones compared to many other excellent, well-rounded works on this subject. I recommend "First Person Plural," "Katherine It's Time," "Shatter," and all the books Chris Sizemore, aka Eve has written about her own experiences with DID.



2. Most of us think of Multiple Personality Disorder in terms of 'Sybil,' or 'The Three Faces of Eve,' or that California serial killer who claimed the rest of him was innocent. To us, it's an exotic craziness that either doesn't exist or is sensationally unpredictable and dangerous.

   Phillips, pseudonymous author of 'The Magic Daughter,' not only makes the disorder (now called Dissociative Identity Disorder) credible, she puts one scared and human face on it. Phillips' memoir began in April 1993 as a suicide note. But in trying to explain why life was too difficult to bear, she became absorbed in the project and it eventually became a means of integrating her "selves."

   Phillips fits none of the stereotypes. She's a college professor whose students and colleagues are unaware of her disorder. She was considered thorough - because several selves would independently do her work, each needing to ensure it was done correctly - unbeknownst to Jane herself. She learned to cover when greeted by people she didn't remember. Nothing was more relaxing than hours spent gazing into the mirror, communing with a parade of faces, young, old, boyish, feminine, wise and foolish - none of which seemed to be hers. But just getting through a normal day could be exhausting as she fought to control conflicting emotions and maintain a moment to moment chronology.

   Since junior high she had been secretly aware of something wrong. "Mostly I just never seemed to be who I really was - although I had no idea who that was." All through college, through marriage to an alcoholic, she thought of seeing a psychiatrist but all she could think to ask was "What's wrong with me? Why is life so hard?"

   At 30, she finally sought help after a summer tormented by headaches, profound depression and uncontrollable bouts of terror and anger during which she tore out all the flowers in her beloved garden, carried a gasoline can to the house intending to burn the place down and spent hours in her closet crying because none of the clothes seemed to belong to her. But she was still, despite the psychologist's prodding, unable to express what she wanted out of therapy.

   Probing her childhood, the therapist precipitated a wrench back in time. "Suddenly, weirdly, I was nine years old again." Out came memories - the anger and violence of her older brother, Hank, who had tormented his younger siblings. And attempted to rape his sister Jane, failing only because their parents arrived home unexpectedly. "I couldn't tell if I had remembered it or made it up."

   Her brother's attacks and elaborate malice - much of it sexual - continued throughout her childhood. But there was another side to her home life. On both sides her family was overrun with boys. She was the girl all the adults had been waiting for. She was petted and loved and expected to rectify all the deficiencies of her mother's childhood. Failure to measure up was met with anger and recriminations. It was a turbulent, tormented childhood, but many children suffer worse horrors.

   Multiplicity, says Phillips, has three main causes. The first is a predisposing brain chemistry, second is trauma and third is a lack of recognition or acceptance of that trauma by adults.

   While she was recognized as dissociative early on, she was not diagnosed as a multiple until five years into therapy. Her memoir brings home to the reader how thin the line is between normal emotional turmoil and a fragmented personality. Even some of her truly bizarre symptoms, such as an inability to distinguish between current and remembered pain, or to explain symptoms before another personality takes over and the symptoms disappear, arouse empathy.

   This passionate, harrowing journey towards self-understanding and, ultimately, integration, makes unusual demands on the reader. Perception is a solitary thing - Phillips believed for years that everyone had psyches like hers but other people were braver and smarter about life. It's not the fragments themselves that defy comprehension but the wholeness and separateness of them - the personalities that remain forever 5 or 15, personalities that know only fear or loneliness or anger. With this book, Phillips makes it possible to understand how she protected her core by snapping off bits of herself which then took on particular functions in daily life, setting up a cycle which made her days almost impossible to negotiate.




3. The Magic Daughter: A Memoir of Living With Multiple Personality Disorder, by Jane Phillips (pseudonym) is the first-person narrative of a woman who suffers multiple personality disorder -- more precisely dissociative identity disorder (DID) -- most of her life. Since the author does not have the typical chronological concept of time until, for the most part, the end of the narrative, the book is composed of snippets of recollections and experiences with each chapter encompassing a theme. Oddly, however, the book does nonetheless have a peculiar linear fabric to the recollections. Apparently, to some extent, the author also recognizes this toward the end of the book.

   My reading this book was not one of choice. I was assigned this topic in an Abnormal Psychology course two years ago. However, after finding this book, I was still reluctant upon reading it, expecting it to be dull. (My apologies to those suffering from DID who found support and enlightenment in this book.) Suprisingly I found the book very engaging, regardless of its non chronological sequence, and the author's quite fluid writing style.
   
   Nonetheless, on the negative side, most of the way thru it I found myself feeling doubtful. I began doubting either the authenticity of this work or the writer's sincerity. However, that feeling is probably groundless....

   The negative criticisms I have are that there are certainly some unanswered questions; for that matter unraised questions in the text. But, if this work is authentic, it very well may have been that the writer wrote this more for herself than for others.

   Secondly, it is interesting to note again that if Jane had MPD, her disorder was not nearly of the severity as other noteworthy cases I have read about including the case of Chris Sizemore upon whose experiences the book and movie The Three Faces of Eve were based. There are similarities between Chris Sizemore's experiences and Jane's, however, it is difficult to get beyond the sense that much of Jane's supposed MPD symptoms and experiences did not result after, and as a result of the diagnosis of MPD.

   Nevertheless, it was a very good read. Engaging, thought provoking.




4. Like only a handful of books written about multiplicity, this one was written by the multiple herself, rather than her therapist. However, unlike so many other multiple-written books, this one was actually decently composed. Which, after attempting such poorly-crafted tomes as I'm Eve and Prism, was an enthusiastically received change.

   The Magic Daughter also differs from other multiplicity books in one other, significant way. Though arranged in rough chronological order, this book is more a series of personal essays than an autobiography. While this is frustrating in one regard--in that not all "plot threads" are adequately resolved--it allows the writer to avoid rehashing less than interesting moments in her life and concentrate on the issues that she truly wants to handle.

   Although I know multiples who truly hated this book, I enjoyed it highly. On numerous occasions, I found myself reflected in its pages. I was easily able to identify with passages such as:

   "Life is hard! I want to shriek. My head aches, my mind roars with voices, I have no extra money, I'm exhausted, and I can barely think straight. I scream in the night, my body aches with remembered abuses, and therapy requires that I recall and then relive those old, horrifying traumas."

   Perhaps if she had focused on the happier moments of multiplicity, her story may have been more endearing to empowered multiples. To her, however, multiplicity is something that needs to be cured, though she does acknowledge it may have causes completely unrelated to abuse.

   "I suddenly felt unnerved. Her therapist was a man who'd made a substantial name for himself because of his work with abuse survivors; he often lectured and offered workshops. For some reason, I blurted out that I'd been multiple three, maybe four years before I was sexually abused." (Italics mine.)

   Sadly Phillips does not deal with natural multiplicity for more than a few paragraphs. Perhaps such an exploration would have been out of place in this book, which is focused more or the end of multiplicity than its beginnings. It does not end happily with integration, though. While Phillips does make inroads towards that goal in the final half of the book, she is only at the start of the process when the book ends, with much work still ahead of her.

   How she handles integration may make many multiples wary. She simply decides to stop dissociating, that she's had enough. It's not that cut and dried, but that is the brunt of it. And, as she is seen in this book very much as the core personality, she believes that she can simply stop, much as one can stop chewing their nails. Multiplicity is simply a more elaborate and debilitating habit.

   And that's where she'll lose a lot of multiples, especially those that truly love and care for their system mates. Still, whether or not I agree with her, I enjoyed reading about her opinions and struggles. The book was very well constructed and a fast read. With that in mind, I'd recommend it, though it may drive some empowered, non-trauma-based multiples crazy.




5. This book was hard for me to put down. I was so interested in finding out if Jane Phillips had come to any peace with her disorder, and how she went about doing that. The book focuses on the process of dealing with MPD, rather than the traumatic events which caused her to have MPD.

   I have a lot of compassion for people living with MPD after reading her book. I don't feel like I understand the disorder, but the book is filled with amazing insights.

   Thank you for being brave enough to publish such a personal experience.

3 comments about Servant of the Lotus Feet: A Hare Krishna Odyssey.

1. Gabriel Brandis's book is paradoxical - he gives in many ways a very intimate look into the life of a Hare Krishna temple resident in the 80's - the rituals, chanting, temple worship etc. He also portrays accurately the focus of that era on fundraising, and the questionable morality employed by some devotees. He accurately portrays his spiritual master. He fails to tell us enough about his inner struggle with his sexuality, with his comprehension of bhakti-yoga and instead resorts to discredited anti-cult stereotype responses. In addition, referring to a devotee as " Asti Spumanti das " or "Rasta Farian das " is insulting to Hare Krishnas - as is his failure to note that in the 20 years since he left the movement, that the guru excesses have been eliminated, that his spiritual master Bhavananda Goswami is no longer a guru. The Hare Krishna movement is mainly composed of congregational members (like me) who have often never ben in a temple ashram to live. We aren't brainwashed zombies. The saddest indictement of this book is the acquiescence to the abusive and illegal kidnapping that he suffered at the hands of deprogrammers whose triumph in ripping off his neckbeads and getting him to eat chicken is appalling. Hare Krishna's do not need to answer forever for the sins of the few who abused the responsibility that His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada gave them before he died. We are a legitimate spiritual tradition, recognised by Hindus across the globe, committed to inter-faith dialogue, committed to respecting the rights of all people. Gabriel's deprogramming was an act of violence - physical, spiritual and psychological abuse, far worse than he experienced trying to deny his sexuality as a Hare Krishna monk. Gabriel struggled with his own inner demons and felt compelled to leave the ashram - his departure was inevitable, even if the deprogrammers hastened it. Nowadays our movement has thousands of householders, and for those lacking a vocation as a monk, spiritual life and material life can and do co-exist. It is a pity Gabriel didn't research that, because his book is caught in a counter-culture time-warp.



2. Apart from a few editorial glitches, this is a well-written book that takes the reader right inside the experience of being a Hare Krishna devotee. The strange manner of their dress and unfamiliar customs to Westerners may make them seem much more alien than they actually are. In fact, I recognized much of what Brandis went through, because I was once myself a member of a high-demand group, and even though the doctrines were very different between the two groups, the lifestyles were strikingly similar. I was a member of the Unification Church (the 'Moonies'), so it was amusing to read at one point what Brandis, who was then hawking wares for the Krishnas, thought of a Moonie whom he encountered who turned out to be engaged in a similar activity. He recognized him at once as "spaced out" and brainwashed, but failed to notice the strong parallels with his own situation. Eventually, Brandis burned out on the devotee lifestyle, as many cult members eventually do, and with the help of his mother, who engaged deprogrammers to speed his exit, he was able to make his escape.



3. Like any book dealing with experiences in a counterculture, Gabriel Brandis' book Servant of the Lotus Feet is worth reading to gain insight into a way of life so out of the ordinary and otherwise concealed to the general public. However, to my personal perception as an ex-Hare Krishna sympathizer, for a book examining the community from an ex-members' point of view, the book comes along oddly uncritical and un-distanced, without suggesting any process of detachment, which, for a four years membership within the movement, certainly must have been long, painful and complicated. On the last pages, Servant suddenly comes up with some rationalist analysis on mind-control, probably a result of some hastily-undergone process of de-programming, which contrasts drastically with the book's overall sentimental style. Great parts of the book are written in a narrative style which either shows that the author might not have really dealt with his cult experience or reflects it in some dream-like, hallucinatory way. The book's greatest plus is its strikingly detail-rich description of Hare Krishna rules, behaviours and prayers, thus catching well what being a Hare Krishna feels like.

No comments about Trickster in Tweed: The Quest for Quality in a Faculty Life (Writing Lives).

5 comments about The Secret Chief: Conversations With a Pioneer ofthe Underground Psychedelic Therapy Movement.

1. As a Master's candidate studying psychology, I am thrilled to have stumbled upon this book! Finally, some of the "darker" areas of the field have been illuminated by a first-hand expert.
   Written in a conversational tone, this book is safely navigated by the jargon-wary among us, and is entertaining as well as educational. Pick this one up if you have an interest in the fringe movements in psychology, have an open-minded approach to what is considered therapeutic, and/or simply are intrigued by the spiritually enhancing capabilities of psychedelic drugs.



2. Let me try this again. The Secret Chief is a fantastically written, conversational and often warm and humorous overview of a real pioneer in the field of psychology. Few researchers or clinicians are willing to boldly sidestep well-known but mostly unfounded restrictions on their practice.
   The hero of this story is a man that truly put his clients/patients first and upheld their well being as the foremost goal. From his uncanny ability to listen to what they were saying to his courage and wisdom in guiding them along the path toward recovery and growth, the reader is brought in to delightfully pick up on the knowledge gained.
   Operating not just from a medical expert perspective but from a caring human being equally engaged in the challenge of life, the therapist intuitively, assertively spurs the client onto self discovery and mind expansion. Tools of the psychological trade vary. The respective benefits of varying methods of therapy are discussed, and the trail blazing of supposed "radical" "innovative" methods occurs. That they have ever been explored is impressive. That there is a definite need to continue research and practice in this field is made resoundingly evident within the pages of this remarkable, insightful book.

   Highly recommended.

   Brian Wallace, author, Labyrinth of Chaos




3. This book reveals some of the true promise of psychedelic therapy that is obscured in other popular histories of the era that focus on the (albeit fascinating) aftermath of Dr. Leary et. al. ('Acid Dreams' and 'Storming Heaven').

   The most valuable aspect of the book, and its main focus, is an oral walkthrough of a session with the therapist Jacob. Mr. Stolaroff has done a valuable service in preserving Jacob's insights into what works and what doesnt work.

   Though, I was confused when Jacob described his purely religious orientation to the therapy yet didnt elaborate hardly at all on his own 'theological' outlook or experiences.

   Also, in my opinion, Jacob goes to an extreme in asserting at one point that transformation *requires* such entheogens. He seems to unfairly discount the traditional religious retreat practices and experiences.

   Personally, I side with the theory that such entheogens merely unveil latent faculties that can be cultivated by traditional retreat type practices without the need for entheogens at all.

   Also, one danger, perhaps, in the outlook and process described in this book, is its almost complete lack of orientation to 'Right View' (in the Buddhist sense) as the precursor to 'awakening'. The Buddha stressed that insight into Right View was a key prerequisite. Yet, this therapy seems to presume it is largely irrelevant.

   I would recommend Thaddeus Golas' 'The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment' as a complement to this book, as Golas himself broke through via entheogens, yet does not see them as absolutely necessary, and focuses on orienting to 'Right View' first as the means to awaken (his book is out of print, but available online now, search for the title in google).




4. This book points to the possibility of remembering the parts of ourselves we forgot long ago. It's a poem to the forgotten realms of being human and declares the potential to reclaim ones totality. For someone thinking of using psychedelics, there are instructions here for their proper use. For someone who has already used them, there are footnotes from infinitude. This book, and this subject will change you. No longer will you be stained by the propaganda of the drug war. The sacrements of freedom exist. Whether they be psychedelics, meditation, yoga or dreaming. A friendly, helpful voice speaks out to you from the pages of this book. You will be better for listening. Be careful, this is not recreation. This is you, that you are exploring. Have some respect.



5. People like Jacob give us "permission to hope" and inspiration to create a better future. This short book can provide ideas about how we can participate.

No comments about Washington Matthews: Studies of Navajo Culture, 1880-1894.

1 comments about Marcel Mauss: A Biography.

1. University of Montreal sociologist Marcel Fournier is now the world's expert on Marcel Mauss, Durkheim's nephew but by no means his mere shadow. In his clearly written and finely detailed intellectual biography, Fournier offers a wealth of new information on Mauss and his relations with many historians of religion, sociologists, and ethnologists working in the first half of the 20th century. Fournier is especially good at characterizing the institutional milieux where Mauss taught, conducted research, and served as administrator. The reader is privy for the first time to the complicated academic politics preceding his and others' appointments at Mauss's three berths: the section of religious science at the École Pratique des Hautes Études from 1901; the Institut d'Ethnologie from 1925; and the preeminent Collège de France from 1930-40. Reading Mauss's short works on sacrifice and magic (with religious historian Henri Hubert); primitive classification (with Durkheim); and, most famously, his seminal "The Gift" against this institutional background produces a greater understanding of their importance for the history of religion, sociology and the fieldwork-oriented anthropology arising in France after World War I. Drawing on the materials deposited by the Hubert and Mauss families at the Collège de France, including many letters, Fournier shows us the several ways Mauss was a unique scholar and personality. Unlike his uncle, Mauss avoided grand theory and focused instead on factual descriptions of far-flung and immensely varied religious rites, rituals, symbolism and cosmologies. He had a tendency to procrastinate, which annoyed his uncle and later collaborators, and probably caused him to despair of his thesis on prayer and books he planned on Bolshevism, nationalism and Melanesian religion. Also demanding were his socialist activities and work in the cooperative movement and people's universities, his own special gift to the principle of reciprocity he added to Durkheim's stress on social solidarity. Collaboration with his uncle, colleagues and students clearly took a toll on his own scholarly research; after reaching the apex of French academic life in 1930 as the leading representative of the "Durkheim School," he would go on to publish just an article a year on average. Most of Mauss's intellectual labor was spent on the many book reviews he placed in the "Année Sociologique" (1898-1913) and its two reincarnations (1925-27 and 1934-40) as well as the onerous editing of Durkheim's and others' posthumous publications. Fournier discreetly supplies some suggestive personal clues to Mauss's widely dispersed and fragmentary writings and seemingly desultory approach to his own work. For example, in 1914 Mauss wrote his mother that he was "utterly ill suited to the intellectual life" (70), preferring to socialize with both colleagues and students, or to hike in the forests around his birthplace in Alsace-Lorraine. Mauss also avoided the rigors of marriage and family for many years until he finally married a woman he had known for ten years in 1934, at the age of sixty-two. Fournier alludes to the possibility of a "domestic anomie" (121) leading the unattached bachelor to disorganization and dissipation, which both his mother and uncle claimed to see in his living habits. His earnings were very modest until 1930 and his budgeting spotty, so his mother subsidized him until her death the same year at eighty-two, the day before Mauss got the job at the Collège de France. Unlike Durkheim, who was austere, dour and workaholic, Mauss was lively, impetuous, and frequently dandyish in dress. As a researcher, he liked to read widely and take notes, but the demanding work of writing and publication put him off. In the French university system, many professors did not publish much if at all, so Mauss's shyness did not result in penalty. Ultimately, Fournier's characterization is particularly apt: "He remained a student at heart his entire life and at the end of his career wanted to become the pupil of his pupils" (4).
   Today mainly anthropologists commemorate Mauss by referring to, and extending, his thoughts on gift-giving and receiving, although this theme is making its way into other disciplines as any library search will attest. In his day, Fournier demonstrates, while Mauss was always seen as Durkheim's loyal standard-bearer, he was also identified with descriptive ethnography in all the courses he gave. It's therefore not surprising that he became teacher and mentor to a generation or more of French fieldworkers who left Paris starting in the late twenties to study tribal cultures in Africa, Latin America and Oceania. A floating group of fledgling anthropologists followed his courses at all three of his institutions to imbibe his encyclopedic wisdom and bibliographic riches. In helping to launch this movement, Fournier says, Mauss moved beyond sociology's armchair focus on primitive religions to father French ethnography in the field. The Institut d'Ethnologie, where the young anthropologists acquired Mauss's detailed questionnaire for fieldwork, we learn, was "not a specifically Durkheimian enterprise" (3). Even the future structural anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, who did not attend Mauss's courses, made sure to contact Mauss while he was preparing for fieldwork in Brazil during the 1930's and finishing up his classic book on kinship in the 1940's. As for everyone else who wanted to do anthropology then, Mauss was his touchstone. The kinship book started with "The Gift," Lévi-Strauss wrote Mauss from New York City on October 2, 1944, after Mauss, a Jew, had been forced to resign his academic posts by the Vichy regime. The younger man paid homage again with an introduction to six essays by Mauss appearing just after his death in 1950 at seventy-seven. With Lévi-Strauss's appointment to Mauss's old position at the École Pratique in this same year, the distinctive legacies of the grand-theorist uncle and the more modest and self-effacing nephew would combine to yield still another unique intellectual trajectory. As the founder of structural anthropology, Lévi-Strauss would gain fame for his "bold philosophical taste" as well as the "death of the subject" heralding the structuralist movement in other disciplines besides his own.
   I can think of no other book on French intellectual life after Durkheim's death in 1917 that offers such rich detail on its purely academic dimensions. Biographies of Bataille, Beauvoir, Beckett, Camus, Genet, Gide, Matisse, Picasso and Sartre necessarily describe milieux outside the university and the grandes écoles: the world of journals, publishing houses, theaters, studios, galleries and cafés. To be sure, books on Aron, Barthes, Foucault and Lacan contain some information, but not in such great detail. In his introduction, Fournier says that the Hubert-Mauss collection of letters and other archival materials "opened countless avenues" (5) for further research. The same may assuredly be said of Fournier's masterly study, which now beckons us to explore "the scope and breadth of Mauss's influence" (6) during his lifetime and beyond.

3 comments about The Art of Therapeutic Communication: The Collected Works of Kay Thompson.

1. Kay Thompson was one of the great hypnotherapists of the 20th century and one of Milton H. Erickson's most gifted protégés. She was a trainer of international renown and a brilliant hypnotherapist whose artistry with language patterns amazed her pupils and colleagues. The Art of Therapeutic Communication chronicles her professional life through her papers and presentations, transcripts of seminars, commentary on her life and work, and tributes by contemporaries. The CD that accompanies the book records ten of Thompson's "live" presentations. Thompson's collected works cover hypnosis, hypnotic language patterns, trance, pain management, hypnosis in dentistry, metaphor, utilization, and ethics.
   
   Thompson began her career as a dentist, and studied under Dr. Milton H. Erickson in 1953. She went on to become an internationally recognized speaker and trainer in medical hypnotherapy. She participated in the Erickson Foundation as a lecturer, workshop leader, and panel member. Colleagues admired her linguistic skills, integrity, ethics, and spirituality. She spoke and taught on the power of imagination, motivation, and belief as essential elements in the practice of psychotherapy.
   
   Her unusual style of delivering suggestions became her trademark. Her "word play" was engaging, trance-inducing, and confusing all at the same time, yet somehow always to the point, speaking to the mind via several levels of meaning. She employed puns, double-entendres, rhyme, and alliteration in spell-binding ways.
   
   Thompson advised using the client's own interests and common, every-day occurrences as metaphors for suggestions about problem-solving and personal growth. She debunked the common expectation that hypnosis requires relaxation, suggesting that hypnotherapists give clients the latitude to experience trance idiosyncratically. Thompson reminded her audiences to see the client's point of view and guide the client to tap into his or her own potential.
   
   The text features methods and demonstrations for pain management, describing how she helped clients prepare for surgery by teaching them to control anxiety, pain, and even bleeding. Thompson spoke on how hypnotic pain management can help cancer patients and the terminally ill. She described her own experiences in pain control during rhinoplasty, dermabrasion,root canals, and an auto accident in which she had broken bones.
   
   You can read her discussions on amnesia, time distortion and post-hypnotic suggestion. There are several papers on hypnosis in dentistry, in which Thompson explains the relationships among psychology, hypnotherapy and dentistry. She was an expert in approaches to bulimia, tongue thrust, gagging reflex, bruxism, hemophilia, root canals, dry sockets, and temporal mandibular jaw dysfunction.
   
   Kane and Olness poured devotion and painstaking effort into this book, locating, examining, and transcribing hours of tape-recorded interviews, panel discussions, and seminars. I enjoyed this book, consuming it like a smorgasbord of ideas. With a notebook at my side, I madly scribbled notes to myself about how I could adapt some of Thompson's methods in my own work. In my home library, I have a shelf reserved for favorite hypnotherapy books. This book will go on that shelf. I know I will turn to it again and again, seeking Thompson's advice for difficult cases. Through The Art of Therapeutic Communication, Kay Thompson continues to teach, to heal, to motivate, and to inspire.



2. This fascinating book is an inspiration, and an outstanding learning tool for therapists and those interested in hypnosis,and this extraordinarily profound woman.



3. BOOK REVIEWS
   The Art of Therapeutic Communication
   ( The collected works of Kay F Thompson)
   Edited by Saralee Kane and Karen Olness
   Publisher Crown House Publishing Ltd
   ISBN 1904424287
   This is a love story. It is a story of a love of words and a love of communicating them in a positive and healthy way. More than that it is a love of people and the story of a woman's dedication to helping all those around her for whom she felt compassion and love - her fellow men. No monument could provide a more fitting or lasting tribute to Kay Thompson than this skilfully executed and beautifully presented book
   I felt sorry for the girl who delivers my post when she came down my front path bearing the parcel which contained this book. To say that it is a hefty and weighty tome is an understatement, almost 600 pages long and with an accompanying CD.
   I too groaned under the weight of it and just wondered whether the reading would be as heavy as the book.
   I was very pleasantly surprised.
   It proved to be not only a joy but also a privilege to be allowed to explore the pages of this book. It was fascinating to have insight into the thought and work of Kay Thompson who was arguably one of the world's greatest hypnotherapists of the twentieth century. She was an intellectual, a lively brain, but also had the linguistic capability to be able to share her thoughts and ideas with a wide audience. Indeed, if she hadn't made the grade as a therapist I am sure she would have made a great novelist or communicator in other ways..
   Regular readers of my reviews will know that I am an ardent fan of the work of Milton Erickson. You can imagine the delight I felt when I read of Kay that she was one of his most gifted students. They shared a joy of communication, a gift for language. Their work is professionally intoxicating and compulsive reading.
   Much of our thinking and methodology has been built upon foundations laid originally by Kay Thompson. She has done much to develop and expand the whole subject of contemporary hypnosis.
   The book, a testament to her life and work, deals with the subject of therapeutic communication from a variety of angles - direct teaching, comment, explanation, example and is at all times fascinating as well as informative.
   On the one level we get excellent instruction and advice on how to approach and conduct our own therapy sessions to achieve the greatest benefit. On the other hand, and in a very subtle way, we are also taught much about ourselves and the way we think and live. It is a book of intense humanity not a scientific tome alone.
   Throughout all of the book we are being taught sensitively yet firmly, how to conduct our own personal lives ! It is a book of inspiration and interpretation. It is a book with both breadth and depth which covers the complexity of the subject in an immensely readable way. It is a book written with care, concern , understanding, respect and total integrity, and not a little love.
   Speaking of love, I just have to quote a poem by Roy croft included in the book. It is sensational !
   It sets out to describe the teaching of Erickson and the shared values and thoughts of his followers.
   
   I love you, not only for what you are,
   But for what I am when I am with you.
   I love you, not only for what you have made of yourself,
   But for what you are making of me.
   I love you for the part of me you bring out.
   I love you for putting your hand into my heaped up heart,
   And passing over all the foolish, weak things you can't help dimly seeing there,
   And for bringing out into the light all the beautiful belongings
   That no one else had ever looked quite far enough to find.
   I love you because you are helping me to make,
   Of the lumber of my life, not a tavern but a temple,
   And of the words of my everyday,
   Not a reproach but a song.
   I love you because you have done more than any creed could
   Have done to make me good,
   And more than any fate could have done to make me happy.
   You have done it,
   Without a word,
   Without a touch,
   Without a sign
   You have done it by being yourself
   Perhaps that is what being a friend means, after all.
   I wish that I could have been one of the pupils that Kay guided through in their early years. I feel that I would have been uplifted by her excitement and commitment, captivated by her strength of personality and personal warmth and dazzled by the depth of her knowledge and the brilliant way in which she could share this with others.
   It is a great book about a great woman written by two great authors who, through their careful editing and selection of material and contributors etc, have almost allowed us to travel within our minds so that we can experience the power that was, that still is Kay Thompson.
   I finished the book feeling that I had met her, spoken with her and most certainly been affected by her in a very positive sense.
   I will make a sweeping statement but it is one that will be true, I know, and that is I will never be the same therapist, maybe even person, again. I will have been strengthened, guided and enlightened by this experience and feel most if not all readers will feel the same. As Akira Otani says within the book, " and her words will go on".
   Practically the book covers all aspects of a therapist's work. There are fascinating and very valuable sections on Therapy with Pain and an excellent section on Hypnosis in Dentistry which I found most helpful.
   Inductions and the nature of trance are dealt with at length, including commentary on clinical work and demonstration.
   As I said earlier, this book is about humanity, and I was delighted to see included a section on Ethics in caring, so often omitted from such texts. You will enjoy, too, " Why do we learn about hypnosis?"
   "Well, if you can do something good for them, Do it!" Was her catch phrase and could well be the catchphrase of each and every one of us who endeavour to tread in her footsteps.
   I have no doubt that if there was an Oscar for Hypnotherapy books of 2004 this one would come storming home as an undisputed winner, but it wouldn't be Kay standing up there making tearful thanks to her family, friends, patients, baby goldfishes. This would be drowned by OUR acclaim of a woman who has been and will continue to be a beacon for us to follow, an example to emulate. Sincerity breeds sincerity. Love breeds love.
   As you read this book sense the sincerity, bathe in the love and bring part of her professionalism and expertise into your lives and practice.
   Do I recommend this book ??
   I most certainly do!!!!!! Oh yes, by the way, the experience in being in the company of this wonderful lady and teacher was made possible by the inclusion of a CD, secreted right at the back of the book. Crown House - I salute you. Another astonishing achievement I feel.

No comments about Freud: A Life for Our Times.

1 comments about Intimate Colonialism: Head, Heart, and Body in West African Development Work (Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives).

1. I enjoyed reading this book. It was so informative and substantive. I got a great sense of the author, Togo and its people. How interesting to learn about "butt worship" and it's ode to the female form. It's no wonder why my African American brothers are so enamored with the booty since it's origins hail straight from the Motherland! Throughout, I found myself reading slowly savoring every word like I was eating a really good meal, felt like I experienced it as the author had--does the brain really know the difference?...hmm. All the food descriptions made me hungry and reminded me of my childhood and having a Nigerian neighbor who would cook okra soup and Fufu for us. Oh how we'd beg him to cook that soup with such a distinctive aroma and flavor!.....I also appreciated how fully present the author was during her experience-- so aware of herself, sexuality and how she was being experienced-- without being self-absorbed. My first read of an ethnographic research novel and I was very pleased. I like this academic approach and still felt general happiness of a person having few complaints, very reality based without trying to transcend her humanity...eager to read more of her work and in this genre!