Psychotherapy on the Road to … Nowhere?

1. The
   question we ask, parenthetically, at this point is this: Nobel
   Prize in what?

This article is an adaptation to one that was inspired
by a visit to one of the most unconventional seminars on
psychotherapy my wife and I ever attended.

This was an experience I lived…

From now on, my voice overlaps the voice of one of the
greatest therapists we ever met, while visiting Liverpool as
guests of Professor Peter Slade.

The story is… well… is factual
fiction…

"The small car careered toward a pile of barrels labeled
‘Danger TNT’, then turned sharply, ramming through a
mock brick wall and into a dark tunnel. A light appeared ahead,
coming fast and head-on. A locomotive whistled.

"’Uh-oh’", said one of the passengers, Dr.
Martin Seligman, a psychologist and a pioneer in the study of
positive emotions.

"However, in a moment, the car scudded safely under the
light, out through the swinging doors of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and
into the warm, clear light that seemed to radiate from the South
Anglia pavement.

"Well," Dr. Seligman said. ‘I don't know that I
expected to be doing that’.

"One of several prominent therapists who agreed to visit
this place at the invitation of my friend, the psychoanalyst,
Barton Blinder, Dr. Seligman was there in mid-December 2000, for
a conference on the state of psychotherapy, its current
challenges and its future. And a wild ride it was.

"Because it was clear at this landmark meeting that,
although the participants agreed it was a time for bold action,
psychotherapists were deeply divided over whether that action
should be guided by the cool logic of science or a spirit of
humanistic activism. The answer will determine not only what
psychotherapy means, many experts said, but also its place in the
21st century.

"’In the 1960's and 1970's, we had these
characters like Carl Rogers, Minuchin, Frankl and the like —
psychotherapy felt like a social movement, and you just wanted to
be a part of it," said Dr. Jeffrey Zeig, a psychologist who heads
the Milton H. Erickson Foundation, which every five years since
1980 has sponsored the conference in honor of Dr. Erickson, a
pioneer in the use of hypnosis and brief therapy
techniques.