Over the years, Frank Farrelly, the creator of Provocative Therapy used to on average stay at my house between 3 – 4 weeks each year, when he was running trainings in Europe. He would often say “Hey Nick, any room at the inn?” Of course, we were always delighted to have him to stay with us as he was great to hand out with, as well as being a brilliant mind of therapeutic information.
In one exchange he talked about what he termed “The Psychotherapeutic archeological dig” commenting
“You know Nick, many therapists are totally obsessed with digging into the client’s past, go deeper, and deeper and deeper. In 50 years of clinical practice, I’ve never found any benefit at all from this Psychotherapeutic archeological dig”
Provocative Therapy focusses on working in the here and now and is the opposite of analyzing past events and fixating on past events. My own experience in using my own Provocative Change Works approach totally agrees with Frank’s own observations. Yes, there is some benefit of eliciting information on how the client is creating the current stuck state, but this obsession with the idea that clients need to “remove past negative blocks” is in my experience a complete red herring and not that helpful.
I’ve often commented that in some hypnosis and NLP circles, practitioners are obsessed by digging into the past and I’ve seen countless clients who have been victims of this approach. Worse still, some characters now seem to believe in regression back to and beyond childhood. Frank’s description of this being “The Psychotherapeutic archeological dig” seems entirely appropriate, digging around mostly for the therapist’s own curiosity, rather than for the client’s benefit.
The polar opposite strategy is to work in the here and now with the client, avoiding pre decided techniques and jargon terms and actually connecting with the client in a human manner. Of course, that as Frank would say that means “Sacrificing your professional dignity in the service of the client”
Frank met all manner of resistance in creating his work, but crucially he was able to show the results from his approach which was light years ahead of many other talk therapies.
