Extended, Strategic Therapy for Recalcitrant Mind/Body Healing: An Integrative Model

Abstract

The development of the power therapies, behavioral medicine, and short term interventions have reported such success even with trauma cases that it is relevant to question the justification for lengthy psychotherapy. Yet some patients with complex mind/body conditions impervious to medical treatment/hypnosis may require extended, multi-modal, integrative therapy.

This paper details a single complex case of paruresis as a prototype for illustrating a holographic treatment model for recalcitrant conditions: Component features of the proposed model presented include: 1) the sequential utilization of hypnobehavioral and analytic approaches; 2) uncovering work providing access to the somatic ego state associated with the illness condition; 3) the extended treatment time frame required for deep psycho-physiological change; and 4) the stages of counter-transference expectably evoked by such patients (e.g. urgency, exuberant optimism, frustration, discouragement), and the transformation of such reactions to achieve maximum therapeutic efficacy.

Key Words:

• Paruresis
• Ego State Therapy
• mind/body
• behavioral medicine
• hypnobehavioral therapy