Interview: Bruce Ecker on Coherence Therapy

[TheRobin]

Great interview I just found with Bruce Ecker, one of the founders of Coherence therapy. 

http://sevencounties.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=29647

Here's  a bit of the interview and also why I think this might be very interesting to all people interested in Self-Knowledge and Therapy

 

 

David: Okay, shift was the word I had missed before. Now, I ask this next question somewhat tongue-in-cheek, which is there are so many psychotherapy approaches out there, why do we need another one?
 

 

Bruce Ecker: Good question and I'm sure there are a lot of answers to that, but here's my answer. The field has hit a ceiling on effectiveness, as you probably know. The affectionate term for this ceiling is the "dodo bird verdict". Now the dodo bird in Alice in Wonderland shouted, "All have won," this race that the dodo bird staged. "All have won and all should receive prizes." And the therapy field is very much in that situation.

For 70 years the outcome research keeps measuring the same level of efficacy across virtually all - in fact, to my knowledge, all different types and forms of psychotherapy. And that, as you know, has led to this very widespread belief in our field that it's the "common factors" of empathy, trust, good working alliance, and so on, that control the measured effectiveness of therapy, and that the specific techniques and theories really don't have much to with it.
 

Well, that's all well and good but, frankly, the level of effectiveness is kind of mild, and when in those occasional sessions we saw remarkable effectiveness happen, we got very interested in why isn't the field calibrating to this? Why hasn't anybody taught us how to make this happen from the first sessions with a given client? And that's what excited us and formed our vision and really shaped our careers.
 

And it took quite a few years of closely studying these profound change events when they happened to happen before we culled, I want to say, specific processes that turned out to be present whenever those profound shifts happened, whatever the client's presenting symptom or personality style. And once we identified the key ingredients of those profound shifts, we figured, well, let's form a therapy that's made of nothing but this and see what happens. And, again, that took some years of development and resulted in coherence therapy.
 

And now we've had about 15 years of teaching it to the field and we consistently hear from therapists who learn this approach that they feel they experience a dramatic enhancement of effectiveness; they see this kind of profound change happen as a regular event in their day to day clinical practice, rather than something few and far between.

[Copper_Heart]

Great interview I just found with Bruce Ecker, one of the founders of Coherence therapy. 

 

http://sevencounties.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=29647

 

Here's  a bit of the interview and also why I think this might be very interesting to all people interested in Self-Knowledge and Therapy

 

 

 

TheRobin,

 

I read your threads about Coherence therapy and I want to thank you for writing them although you did not get much answer, because it is probably most useful peace of information about psychology I found on internet. For fist time I fell like somebody switched on the light and psychology market place and I do not have to stumble on the next crook, but may guide myself to a professional.

 

Thank you very much for posting it and spreading information.

[TheRobin]

TheRobin,

 

I read your threads about Coherence therapy and I want to thank you for writing them although you did not get much answer, because it is probably most useful peace of information about psychology I found on internet. For fist time I fell like somebody switched on the light and psychology market place and I do not have to stumble on the next crook, but may guide myself to a professional.

 

Thank you very much for posting it and spreading information.

Thanks so much for the kind feedback. I appreciate it  

And yeah, it was pretty much the same for me when I discovered the material. Hope it gets spread more in the next decade or two. That would certainly help a lot of people