Review of Settling the Unsettled: Integrating Therapeutic Approaches to Depression and Anxiety Disorders

A Two-Day Training in Sydney with Jeffrey Zeig, PhD, presented by Psychotherapy in Australia

HypnosisAustralia, November 2003

By Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist & Counsellor
Editorial Director of HypnosisAustralia Online.

Jeffrey Zeig PhD, a practicing psychologist and therapist, is the founder, director and president of the Milton H Erickson Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona, USA and says he spent more than six years in intermittent study with Erickson himself. There can be little doubt about Zeig's list of achievements, having published over twenty volumes both as author and editor. He is further the architect of many conferences of Ericksonian hypnosis and brief therapy. In short he is within the royal court of the very heart and birthplace of Ericksonianism.

I particularly chose to attend the two-day workshop because I have had great respect for Zeig as a writer and publisher. It was held in a lecture theatre at the veterinary block at the University of Sydney. This venue was most unsuitable for any meeting calling itself a workshop/seminar although it would be satisfactory should I have gone to see a lecture. My understanding of a workshop held for therapists is that it could be interactive and participatory on the part of all participants who are each afforded the respectful opportunity to learn, contribute and grow as therapists.

This I thought would be an opportunity to learn from Zeig the legend as he did his tour across Australia. Without doubt he is largely responsible for us being exposed to much visual, auditory and written material in the form of transcripts and comment concerning Erickson that otherwise may have never come to light. Zeig, on the other hand, had a completely different idea. During the first day there was only fifteen minutes of interactional practical work for the participants and this had to be performed on rows of theatre seats.

Certainly the two-day training was described as considering integrated approaches to depression and anxiety disorders. Indeed according to Zeig he has studied with a profuse number of the most famous therapists from different disciplines, and his name dropping abilities would have put any wannabe Hollywood hopeful to shame. However, the substance of his presentation did not remain congruent with his claims.

His presentation was frequently contradictory. One moment he trashed the DSM and the next he quoted from it. Next he lambasted drug therapy and then later referred to it as part of an overall treatment plan for certain patients. His assassination of cognitive behavioural therapy led us to believe that all psycho-education is a complete waste of time, yet he seems to ignore the fact that many of his own techniques have cognitive behavioural bases.

Much of his presentation was based on the philosophy of therapy according to Erickson. Many of Erickson's clinical interventions today would be considered totally inappropriate and without doubt could lead to malpractice lawsuits. When Zeig read from his own verbatim account of Erickson's case methods, many audience members gave rise to grave doubts about their ethical implications. Zeig often refused to answer the participants' questions and dismissed their comments as disruptive and inconsequential. At one point Zeig's lack of guidance in the workshop left one set of participants verbally abusing others where some attendees wanted discussion but others did not. As a training, at one point it became a complete shambles and Zeig seemed both unwilling and unable to respond to intellectual challenges from his audience.

Australia is in the grip of an insurance crisis for practitioners in the health and caring professions. Our insurance policies have risen exponentially due to collapsing insurance companies and the profusion of lawsuits that have been levelled against professionals. In America some professional peer groups organisations have ceased to operate ethics committees and discipline their members because they fear lawsuits from those members and are now treating their codes of ethics as guidelines only and not formats by which they require their members to operate. There has rarely been a more important time within the history of therapy when it has been more important to consider ethical practice boundaries

As Ericksonianism has grown, it appears that many of the gurus that ate at Erickson's table have become iconoclastic experts who deter discussion or criticism. At this training were many extremely well qualified and experienced therapists who did not come to hear Zeig's evangelical blind fanaticism for Ericksonianism without questions.

Zeig showed a video of a Jewish therapist with a nail biting and tearing problem with whom he had worked. His solution was to force her to send money to the American Nazi Party if she tore her nails. Himself being Jewish, he should surely have known that was the cruellest bind he could have put her into as she was a European survivor of the holocaust. What he masqueraded as strategic therapy and permissive hypnotic techniques was nothing more than direct command negative re-enforcement.

I abandoned the training in the morning break of the second day as I did not become a therapist to see therapists abuse other therapists. I had secured an interview with Zeig for this journal but did not wait around for it because the training had turned into such an uncomfortable place for me to be that I decided I could spend my day more positively, constructively, and in much pleasanter and less hostile company.

©HypnosisAustralia, November 2003