If there is any single skill that might be used to summarize what the most effective Ericksonian therapists are able to do really well, it would be the general ability to connect with others in deep and compelling ways. Whether you are describing the therapist’s use of effective communication, interpersonal flexibility, skillful observation, or love […]

I prefer to see therapy not as a method or a technique, but as the shared pursuit of power, power that paradoxically results from penetrating and excavating, like an archaeologist, the places within which powerlessness resides, which are usually the very places that most of us abhor and attempt to escape from. 24 year old […]

A universal tendency, found in every culture on earth, is to develop carefully prescribed rituals for coming and going. Why? Because beginnings and endings are extremely important to relationships. The way we are greeted sets the tone for everything else that will follow during a limited period of interaction. And it is the words and […]

Here is an example of a method for treating phobias in children with Autism or other Developmental Disabilities (DDs), using the approach we developed, Replays, (e.g. Levine and Chedd, 2007), or Affective Behavioral Play Therapy (ABPT) as we call it for professional consumption.  In this approach, as in traditional paradigms for treating phobias, we use […]

Most treatment models for mental health problems in children with Developmental Disabilities (DDs) including Autism or Intellectual Disability (e.g. Down syndrome) are based on manipulation of behaviors, with much less, or no emphasis on the child’s affective experiences or on use of interactions/relationships. Challenging behaviors in this population are so often regarded as just that, […]

With 20 plus years of work with angry individuals, in a variety of settings such as prisons, domestic violence programs, school rooms, universities, and in private practice, I have found that the strategies which are most effective for transforming raging behaviors are rarely discovered without professional help. Unfortunately, mainstream therapy also misses the boat on […]

I have been asked by Gil Levin to write about Brief Therapy, the topic of the August 26-30, 1998, conference organized by the Milton H. Erickson Foundation, to be held in New York City. In 1988, the first Brief Therapy Conference was held, and it remains the premier multidisciplinary congress on the topic. The three […]

Those are difficult words for me to write. While I do provide services directly to clients over the Internet, I have taken great pains to distinguish what I do from therapy. Not everybody does the same. Martha Ainsworth’s Internet Mental Health Services site lists many different mental health providers currently providing services. The site Concerned Counseling alone claims to have 150 […]

Even though most systems of treatment build on what has gone before and honor the history of our field, each school of therapy maintains that it offers advantages unavailable through any other method developed to promote emotional growth and re-mediate whatever it sees as dysfunction. All of us who serve as faculty or correspondents here on Behavior […]