Constructivist Psychology Network Conference, July 19-23, 2006
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Constructivist Psychology Network Conference, July 19-23, 2006
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Keynote Speakers
Michael F. Hoyt, Ph.D.
EVERYDAY CONSTRUCTIVISM
The doors of therapeutic perception and possibility have been opened wide by the recognition that we are actively constructing our mental realities rather than simply uncovering or coping with an objective ‘truth.’ How we look influences what we see, and what we see influences what we do, ‘round and around. Some stories are better than others, some ways of looking and thinking and acting are more invigorating and rewarding than others. People often come to therapy when their ways of looking aren’t getting them what they want. They come, in essence, looking for a new story, a new perception, a new way of understanding—which can lead to new behaviors and new outcomes. My approach to psychological intervention can be subsumed under the general rubric of constructive therapies, which incorporates ideas from both brief therapy and narrative constructivism. With special nods toward Milton Erickson, Steve de Shazer, Michael White, and others, the hallmarks of brief therapy are the development of a collaborative alliance and the emphasis on clients’ strengths and competencies in the service of the efficient attainment of co-created goals. The term narrative constructivism, as I use it, refers to the idea that we are actively building our worldview, using questions, directives, and imagination to make meaning and construct our psychological realities. Brief therapy and narrative constructivism and a competency focus are not merely a set of techniques. They are an overarching worldview, an orientation toward thinking and being, an everyday way of experiencing the world. While constructivist approaches strongly emphasize the role of language and the idea that ‘reality’ is mediated through awareness, there is also an external world to be reckoned with. There is a there there, and it is important not to confuse one’s perceptions and beliefs with hard realities. By discussing some personal and professional experiences and some of the issues and dilemmas I struggle with, my hope is that other people may get some ideas to help them expand their awareness of the possibilities and challenges when using a constructivist therapeutic approach with clients.
Michael F. Hoyt is an expert clinician and internationally renowned lecturer. A senior staff psychologist at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael, California, he is also a member of the clinical faculty of the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco. Dr. Hoyt is the author of The Present Is a Gift, Some Stories Are Better than Others, Interviews with Brief Therapy Experts, and Brief Therapy and Managed Care. He is the editor of Constructive Therapies, Vols. 1 & 2 and The Handbook of Constructive Therapies and is co-editor of The First Session in Brief Therapy. Dr. Hoyt has been honored as a Distinguished Continuing Education Speaker by both the American Psychological Association and the International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors. He has been named a Contributor of Note by the Milton H. Erickson Foundation.
Click here for a link to a 2001 interview with Michael Hoyt.
Bruce Ecker THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY: CONSTRUCTIVISM TO THE RESCUE!There is bad news, and there is good news. The bad news is truly bad. The many meta-analyses of psychotherapy efficacy studies to date have a clear conclusion: Shockingly, with investigator bias taken into account, no modality or technique of therapy has been significantly more effective than placebos. The good news, however, is truly good. Constructivism allows fundamentally different questions to be asked about symptom production, change, and clinical effectiveness than the placebo-matching methods consider. One of constructivism’s distinctive concepts has emerged as a master key to therapeutic effectiveness: the concept of coherence, the view that a therapy client’s presenting symptom is a coherent expression of the person’s existing, tacit constructions of self and world, not a “disorder.” A twenty-year study by the speaker and his collaborator, examining thousands of in-session, deep change events that resulted in symptom cessation, has found that (a) the coherence of a vast range of symptoms is empirically confirmed virtually without exception, using phenomenological methods of discovery, (b) symptoms cease to occur as of the moment when there no longer exists any construction in which the symptom is necessary to have, and (c) transformation of symptom-requiring constructs occurs reliably and verifiably not through counteractive methods, which the placebo-matching therapies use, but by cooperating closely with the mind-brain-body system’s native processes and built-in rules for change. The question, then, becomes: What if psychotherapy were redesigned wholly along those lines for utilizing the coherence of symptom production—for prompting native processes that find and transform all personal constructs requiring the symptom—and nothing else? What are the active ingredients of such a therapy—its essential elements of methodology—and do they differ fundamentally from those of therapies that are no better than placebos? Does this therapy have enhanced, verifiable effectiveness in a limited number of sessions? Does the coherence perspective reveal why the established modalities fail to improve upon placebos? The answers to these questions, emerging from the speaker’s study and from neuropsychological and clinical research, are highly promising and exciting for both clinicians and researchers. Bruce Ecker's psychotherapy career of two-plus decades follows his fourteen-year stint in physics research, where he first engaged the challenge of identifying patterns of order in complex phenomena. He is co-originator of coherence therapy and coherence psychology (formerly known as depth-oriented brief therapy, or DOBT) and co-author of Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy: How To Be Brief When You Were Trained To Be Deep, and Vice Versa as well as numerous articles and training videos. Bruce is an adept, inspiring, innovative clinician and an enjoyable, thought-provoking presenter. He has taught widely in professional workshops, clinical conferences and graduate courses at John F. Kennedy University. His private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area consists of therapy for individuals, couples and families and case consultation for therapists. Click here for a link to Bruce Ecker's web site describing his approach to "Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy."
Maureen O'Hara, Ph.D. WHAT TO DO IN A CONCEPTUAL EMERGENCY We live in challenging times--citizens of a global society, living in unprecedented conditions of boundless complexity, rapid change and radical interconnectedness. Old identities, rules and models of behavior and understanding have been swept into a confusing and fast-changing mix, and no new certainties as yet stand reliably in their place. With psyches constructed in and for a world that is no more, from tribal village to Silicon valley, humanity faces a conceptual emergency. In this presentation Dr. O’Hara will address the global capacity gap as both a threat and an evolutionary opportunity and will suggest some ways constructivists can become hospice workers for the dying cultures and midwives for the new. Maureen O'Hara, PhD. is President Emerita of Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco. Maureen is a “big picture” observer. Her current preoccupations include the impact of cultural shifts on our situated minds and the roles of psychology and academia in advancing the mental capacity and emotional well being in the face of new technologies, globalization, and structures of work. Her most recent project was the little book “Ten Things to Do in a Conceptual Emergency” written with colleagues from the International Futures Forum. Maureen is a Global Business Network Member, founding Fellow of the Meridian International Institute on Governance, Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the American Psychological Association. We will post information on additional Keynote Speakers here as the information becomes available.
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