“This outline of hypnosis and the world of Provocative Therapy is based on the definitive work of Milton Erickson, the father of hypnosis in America, and the conception of trance states by Stephen Wolinsky (“Trances People Live”; c 1991).I quote extensively from that book. In short, I consider that what Wolinsky maintains as the focus of his trance work is also the focus of the extraordinary work of Provocative Therapy. The client presents with the symptom-trance and phenomena intact and functioning! In particular, the concept of (oppositional) hypnotic identities and the pattern interruption of that trance state are integral to outcomes of Provocative Therapy. The symptom -trance is irrevocably altered by Provocative Therapy, and this happens reliably and consistently. You can argue about the “why” of change-hence this outline from one point of view- but not that it does occur as a result of the Provocative Therapy session. Trance

“Stephen Wolinsky postulates that trance phenomena hold symptoms together. He believes that haw we subjectively experience events, interactions, and our own inner self is observer-created-created by us… that we, the knowers of the experience, choose how an experience is experienced. This is the pivotal entry point of Deep Trance Phenomena, the medium in which our creative activity takes place whereby we select how experiences are perceived, interpreted and understood … each self-created reality is comprised of a specific Deep Trance Phenomenon (or clusters of several) that results in what we typically refer to as symptoms or problems. Acknowledging our observer-created trances – trances created by us – begins a deeper process of assuming responsibility for the part we all play in creating (however unknowingly or unconsciously) our own hypnotic and phenomenological realities … (this understanding) sets the stage for de- hypnosis.

• •Trance phenomena are at the core of symptom structure and, thus, at the core of symptom relief. Clients present symptoms and trances together.
• • We create the trance process as a coping mechanism, originally in response to
• • the content of trauma.
• • We enter trance states frequently, in a series of attachments and identifications
• • We are not our trances
• • We may develop a hypnotic identity, which means we have fused with a set of
• • experiences which define how we view ourselves. It is limited, fixated and narrow, compared to our being.
• • Changing the trances that hold the symptom structures together will have a cybernetic effect, impacting the deeper “organising principle” (which generates our behavioral, emotional and lifestyle inevitabilities).

Trance has 3 core characteristics:

a) it is characterised by a narrowing, shrinking or fixating of attention.

b) it is most often experienced as happening to the person

c) it is characterised by the spontaneous emergence of various hypnotic phenomena, including age-regression, dissociation, time distortion, pseudo-orientation in time, confusion, post-hypnotic suggestion and amnesia.

According to Milton Erickson, trance can be used therapeutically to evoke unconscious resources, whereas Wolinsky works to expand the focus of attention out of trance, so that resources emerge. Wolinsky refers to the therapeutic process work wherein the person is not trained in experiencing various hypnotic phenomena, but rather brings his/her own trance symptoms into the session. Content is used only as a stimulus to help the client re-create the symptom via its underlying Deep Trance Phenomena … once the trance phenomena underlying the problem are shifted interrupted re-associated or dissolved(my emphases) the person’s resources will automatically float to the surface (since they are no longer so identified)… the mechanism that sustains the symptoms is effectively altered … the therapist learns to communicate with the creative being, the “self’, behind the trance; it is the self that can change the trance and hence the symptom.

By asking clients to describe their symptoms while breathing and looking at me, I interrupt their self-to-self trance of the symptom by placing them (via eye-contact) in a self-to-other trance with me. This changes the context in which the symptom occurs, and adds the therapist as a resource in present time.

Polarity

One’s identity is a common psychological concept. What is uncommon is the realisation that many of the identities that people casually own as being representative of who they are, are actually trance identities. Like all Deep Trance Phenomena, a trance identity is created by the child as a means of self-preservation, and to handle various problems and traumas. This identity is comprised of the child’s assumptions and beliefs about his interactions with his parents: “This is how I should be… That is how I should not be… This is who I am”. These fused / resistant identities continue to function automatically throughout life. Confusion is the transitional state m which a person shifts out of his real self and into the creation of defensive or compensatory identities. Confusion is the primary ‘trance-substance’ fueling this process. We identify with our role, our profession, our self- image and m oppositional ways as well.

Whenever an identity is negative or uncomfortable there is often an oppositional identity formed too – “I’m a winner, no matter what”. If you say “I have a part that wants approval, and I also have a part that just wants to be me”, you are experiencing your oppositional identities. A co-dependent person may offer an alcoholic partner a drink, but shortly after, get angry with the partner for drinking. We spend our lives struggling with the tension between what “should be” and “what is”! The task for the therapist is to de-hypnotise the client so that the larger self behind the trance of identification can be experienced.
Paradox

The symptom is the cure. Whatever thought or emotion is completely experienced disappears into something else, and the experiencer enters a deepened state of well-being (The Law of Paradoxical Change Gestalt Therapy Now: Fagan & Shepard). Rossi explains symptom prescription like this: “by asking the patient to experience and worsen the symptom we are presumably turning on right-hemispheric processes that have a readier access to the state-dependent encoding of the problem” This means the therapist is working with the psycho-biological states of the problem rather than the cognitive version.

Intensifying the dynamic that creates the symptom actually helps the person move out of it into an expanded state. The more you shrink your focus of attention in therapeutic trance, the more your perspective spontaneously expands. Gilligan states that trance involves a paradoxical both/and logic, (where) a person identifies with both sides of a complementary distinction of ‘this’ and ‘that’, ‘subject’ and ‘object’ … the identification with either side does become so reduced that an integration naturally and effortlessly occurs – many times on a non-verbal level. Often, clients experience a deep comprehension of both sides of their issue without identifying with either.

Provocative Therapy

In Provocative Therapy there are numerous strategies which serve as pattern interruption or reframing of symptoms, especially using paradox. These could easily be defined as trance formations or &formations. I think the Provocative session functions as a massive confusion induction and reframe of the “problem” after comprehensive pattern interruption with humour. The therapist sides with the negative, the resistance, the opposite, the symptom! Provocative Therapy gives a difficult lesson about consequences of behavior by excusing or encouraging the opposite. Humour is the essential ingredient of transmission in Provocative Therapy, and is a teaching as well as a balancing. It assaults logic. We laugh when we see the irony of the “yes” and the “no” together (and we use both sides of the brain to do this). We laugh because the problem isn’t logical. We laugh because we have to – or else we would cry at our own deadly seriousness. Our problem is never the same after we’ve laughed at it. We have left our trance when we laugh authentically at ourselves.

Those who have studied the work of Milton Erickson closely have found that when a client is faced with a generalisation, they use cognitively “‘transderivational search” for meaning, in a highly personal way. We use the non-dominant hemisphere to associate and seek correlations. Provocative Therapy uses generalisations as an art form; there are enough to use on either side of a polarity of meaning to confuse a client indefinitely. The associative and oppositional shifting of identifications in the client will produce resourceful change, and self-affirming.

Frank Farrelly

Frank Farrelly also functions in person as a highly-skilled utiliser of techniques which any hypnotherapist (or NLP practitioner) would be proud to own. He has developed them naturalistically, and honed their effectiveness over years, without labelling or intellectualising the process. I suspect he uses what “works”, and avoids what doesn’t! His use of his voice alone would be worthy of a book on the subject (of trance). He is a master of trance management. If his process is hypnotising, it is also de-hypnotising when the trance is in opposition to the symptoms or problem. This is a highly confusing experience, and a hallmark of a session with Frank. He specialises in stimulating (and frustrating) dual oppositional-identities. If you can’t find one, he’ll create it for you! Thus he represents a “nightmare” for the falsely comfortable and those in denial. Instead of reinforcing our false self with unreal encouragement (as many therapies unfortunately tend to do), the Provocative therapist destroys the falsity by perverse support and bizarre help. The paradoxical opposite to our inner reality does not coexist peacefully in our mind. We flee into reality reluctantly…

Who goes into trance?

Frank (“I go into trance”)

The Client

The Audience (“Are you all in trance?”)

Anybody (“She was so gorgeous, she was a trance induction on two legs..”)

Here are some “interrupting” techniques from his work in sessions:

Naming

“do they think you’re the wicked witch of the West? ”

Relabelling

tears become “leakage” (content becomes process)

Jumping In

“I see from your expression you’ve answered that question!”

Incompleting

“It’s just so..God.. .well.. .arghh.. ..(muttering and groaning)”

Guffawing, Smirking, Grinning, Joshing, Yukking It Up, Kidding Around.. ..

“you think she understands your needs?? HA HA HA HA !”

Pretending (confusion, embarrassment, being impressed, crying.. ..)

”you what??. ..”
“I’m kind of embarrassed for you.. .”
“way to go! …”
“I was only trying to help.. .”
“I shouldn’t be laughing at a guy really trying, but.. .”

Fantasies (with a cast of thousands) and Imaginary Comic Dialogues Pithy Comments, Quips, Sayings, Folk Wisdom, Popular Song Lyrics and Frank’s Irish Daddy:

“stick with me honey, I’ll have you farting through silk!”

“the best indicator of your future behaviour is your past behaviour” ,

male and female ‘tribal wisdom’

Exaggerations

“you’re probably the worst mother in the world–or at least the state.. .”

Instant Research

“my research shows that Fridays occupy at least a seventh of our life span…”

Lampooning, Cartooning, Playing with the Problem, Consequences
Grimaces, Mirroring and other Expressions (typically the client’s chief features)
Voice Tones

Deeply confidential: “now some gals/guys…”
Authoritarian “my research indicates…”
Wheedling “come on, be reasonable!”
Whinging/Whining/Blaming/Meek and Mild

Gestures

nodding emphatically

Non Sequiteurs

“if you see what I mean……

Self-deprecation

“now where was I? … thank you for finishing my sentence”

The session

“So, what’s the problem?”

The session is exclusively person to person: the “contract” means no interruption (and no trance interruption except by Frank). The session incorporates a narrowed focus of attention, confusion, laughter, paradox and relaxation, as well as emotional release. It has a rhythm. Initially, the client is surprised by the paradoxical responses. Frank trawls the bottom of their mental harbour and examines the catch; whatever the client responds to, Frank keeps doing.

Soon the tension builds. They find themselves looking deep into the glittering eyes of a person who isn’t playing the game of the client’s choosing. He laughs, and seems to mock the issue. He encourages, but all in the wrong direction. They are bombarded with double-binding ideas which “worsen” the problem. They struggle with the “oppositional” but empathic therapist, then find that the problem has been completely redefined.

Then they begin a search for deeper meaning, with constant re-inductions of the original problem-trance by the therapist! This continues until the end of the “discussion” part of therapy demonstrations (after the “module” part). In hypnotherapy, such re-induction is called “fractionation”, and serves to deepen a trance, and provide a tension which only a general “letting go” can relieve.

“So, what’s the problem?”

The constant re-inducing occurs with numerous cues from Frank: he uses everything, from the client’s presentation and reactions, to his own extensive intuitive resources, on as many communication levels as possible. Particularly, he will choose the client’s involuntary reactions and call attention to these, or assume a deeply confidential voice tone, or touch, or use a cute description made up in the session, or generally over-agree with the pathology and dysfunction/symptom until it’s “too much”.

He does all this simultaneously! It’s funny-it’s silly-it’s ? The result is a client who doesn’t know what to think any more! Then Frank can step in and teach them how to really make their “show-business” produce results, or teach them how to do the opposite of what they thought was right (and enjoy it), and generally shred their cognitive dysfunction. Frank has more “show business” than the client, and meets their “act” with worse! He is the worst audience a symptom ever had, and takes over the theatre of the client’s mind.

“So, what’s the problem?”

By this time, the client is so desperate for guidance that they will accept some very simple and direct help-especially if Frank labels it as the secret of solving the problem. As a corollary, Frank will never let the client’s label or reframed solution go-he constantly uses it to keep the paradox alive. He is happy to contract you over and over a5 you expand out of that state (until it seems silly…) This stimulates reality-testing intensely. Wolinsky says: “the repetitious shifting in and out (of oppositional hypnotic identities) gives the client the experience of being more than the identities”. The triggers and labels developed in the session also function as a new series of bizarre ‘post-hypnotic suggestions’ for problem behaviour in the future.

“I’m the problem!!” (authentic client response, Sydney 1999)

The last word

Q: Does Frank Farrelly use hypnosis?

A: No, but if he did, he’d be very good at it.

A: No, he only uses humour.

A: No, I read a big book on the subject, and he wasn’t mentioned

A: No; it looks like a trance, and sounds like a trance, but it probably isn’t a trance.

A: No, but he likes hypnotherapists to explain things to him.

A: What’s hypnosis?

David Lake, September 1999.