[...]even the best scales can be unreliable when they\u27re completed in the midst of an emotiona... more [...]even the best scales can be unreliable when they\u27re completed in the midst of an emotional crisis. [...]rather than outsourcing your decision-making to an instrument, I recommend that you learn how to conduct a conversational evaluation that builds on your therapeutic skills. Once there, she\u27d meditate and, if necessary, call the numbers of family, friends, and professional resources that we wrote down.\n If the client appears to be at imminent risk of making a suicide attempt and a safety plan doesn\u27t seem feasible or sufficient to keep him or her safe, then you\u27ll need to arrange transportation to a psychiatric receiving facility for evaluation and possible involuntary admission
Although clinical hypnosis has been studied in a variety of ways, most researchers have focused o... more Although clinical hypnosis has been studied in a variety of ways, most researchers have focused on individual approaches; few have examined relational models influenced by Gregory Bateson's systemic concepts. This article explores how the second author, the developer of a relational approach to hypnotherapy, successfully helped a client who desired to have a baby but could not see or talk about blood, needles, or medical procedures without fainting. Using context-enriched conversation analysis (CECA), the authors examined multiple sources of data, including selected audio-recorded excerpts from the hypnotherapeutic sessions; the client's descriptions of change in her email correspondence with the second author; and the second author's case notes. Although there were a total of eight sessions, this article primarily concentrates on what transpired during the first two sessions of a single case. The authors address clinical and research implications for hypnosis, brief and...
Family Systems and Global Humanitarian Mental Health, 2019
This chapter is written as a metalogue—a dialogue in which the pattern of the interaction reflect... more This chapter is written as a metalogue—a dialogue in which the pattern of the interaction reflects, mirrors, and/or contributes to the topic at hand. The authors use this form of presentation to explore the extraordinary emotional, existential, and ethical challenges foreigners face when providing systemically oriented therapy and supervision in high-conflict countries. The chapter touches on issues of trauma, disorientation, colonialism, and secrecy, as well as feelings of trust, respect, fear, guilt, and inadequacy. The discussion, both emotional and theoretical, delves deeply into the second author’s experiences working with Syrian clinicians, with a particular focus during a 6-month period in the third year of the Syrian civil war. It also explicates and illustrates the nature of her conversations with the first author, whom she contacted at the time for help with her personal and supervisory challenges. The authors introduce the term transvision to articulate the process by which their conversations helped the second author find her way through the fog generated by the Syrian conflict. They use and repurpose cybernetic and systemic ideas, such as double bind, boundaries, and communication, to illuminate how existential and clinical struggles can be collaboratively understood and effectively addressed.
Shelley:I suppose we should explain the title.Douglas:“From Lingua Franca to Scriptio Animi”: Sou... more Shelley:I suppose we should explain the title.Douglas:“From Lingua Franca to Scriptio Animi”: Sounds so scholarly, eh? So learned.S:In an uptight, un-Carolyn kind of way.D:We first heard about her in that profile in Lingua Franca.S:I was teaching a qualitative research class. The idea of reflexive ethnography jumped off the page. She sounded so fascinating and courageous.D:And so close by! Living just across the swamp from us in Tampa. Was it then that you went out and bought Final Negotiations?S:Yes, and found myself drawn into her life and her writing in an intense way.D:How did reading her work change your approach to the research class?S:I became more and more interested in personal experience methods, and ultimately created a class devoted almost exclusively to autoethnography. I guess you could say Carolyn was a ghost member of our curriculum committee.D:Oh, I love the image of her hovering around us.S:She actually sort of entered my blood stream, and I’d never even met her yet, though I certainly wanted to.D:And during that same time, I happened to email this guy named Art Bochner to thank him for his amazing “Forming Warm Ideas” chapter in Rigor and Imagination (Bochner, 1981). He and I started corresponding back and forth, developing an online friendship, and all the while I didn’t have a clue that he and Carolyn were together.S:One day you came home and said, “You know Art, the guy I told you I’ve been chatting with via email? You’re never going to believe who his partner is!”D:The coincidence was wonderful! I was clueless!S:The Latin formality of the title is doubly ironic then. “Scriptio Animi.” Brother!D:How so?S:Well, for one thing, Latin is not the first language that jumps to mind for capturing the intimate, speaking-in-vernacular nature of Carolyn's scholarship.D:Right. Despite the fact that the term lingua franca has to do with speaking a common language and scriptio animi translates as “writing of the heart-and-mind-and-soul.”S:That's the first irony – using a dead language of disembodied scholarship to refer to Carolyn's lively and embodied first-person voice.D:And the second irony?S:The use of Latin makes us sound like we’re these all-knowing academics. But neither of us knows anything about Latin. In you’re words, we’re clueless.D:Absolutely. I was trying (and failing) to cobble together a meaningful phrase by working backwards in the O.E.D. Our friend John brought his expertise in classical languages to bear on my first few attempts and very sensitively suggested I torch them. Without him, we’d never have come up with “Scriptio Animi” (John Leeds, personal communication, March 9, 2003). A Liberal Arts colleague at the university, however, kindly normalized my ignorance: “Native Latin speakers,” he assured me, “are either dead for over a thousand years (in Rome) or in prison for child molestation” (Mark Cavanaugh, personal communication, March 7, 2003).S:Irony and our cluelessness aside, the title does a pretty good job of capturing the spirit of Carolyn's work. After all, she values “narrative soul” (Ellis, 2000, p. 274) – pretty close to the “writing of the soul” of “scriptio animi.”D:But irony and cluelessness shouldn’t be put to the side – they belong at the center. Carolyn's whole enterprise is grounded in the irony of knowing and the importance of maintaining a not-knowing stance.S:Okay, so the Latin stays. Besides, I like the reflexive paradox of the title, and Carolyn is nothing if not reflexive.D:Little did Lacan know that social science would go through its own “mirror stage,” using an ethnographic looking glass to encounter and transform the self-in-context.S:Right. Carolyn says reflexive stories should have “therapeutic value” – that they should change the reader in some significant way. Her stories, and her students’ stories, transformed me as a researcher and as a teacher. I invited personal experience into class discussions in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. After hearing her perform her story of her brother's death, I found that her voice was often with me in the classroom; it was very powerful.D:Therapeutic not only for the reader, but also for the writer. Last fall when I was traveling back and forth to Calgary while my mom was dying, I started writing an autoethnographic account of what I was going through. Carolyn and Art were in my head and my heart a lot as I storied my experience.S:Yes, I remember. And Carolyn's stories about her mother's illness and her many trips to West Virginia to be with her became entwined with your stories.D:Yeah. And something odd happened – something that unsettled me at the time and that cries out for a Carolyn consultation. It was like I couldn’t put down my pen. At some of the most tender, most difficult, most intimate times, I was composing sentences in my head, wondering how I could best grab the color and texture of what I was living. But in doing so, I felt removed from it. There I was, in the moment, crafting sentences…
Jay Haley once said, \u27The only reasonable excuse for adding another theory of hypnosis to the ... more Jay Haley once said, \u27The only reasonable excuse for adding another theory of hypnosis to the many that have been proposed is an entirely new approach to the problem.\u27 In Of One Mind, Douglas Flemons demonstrates that he has an eminently reasonable excuse. With the casual grace of an entrancing storyteller and the dry humor of an experienced therapist and teacher, he recasts the theory of hypnosis within a relational understanding of language, self, and mind. He then transports his ideas to the worlds of hypno-and brief therapies, offering fresh insights about how to connect with clients and help them change.https://nsuworks.nova.edu/shss_facbooks/1005/thumbnail.jp
Title: Completing Distinctions: Interweaving The Ideas Of Gregory Bateson And Taoism Into A Uniqu... more Title: Completing Distinctions: Interweaving The Ideas Of Gregory Bateson And Taoism Into A Unique Approach To Therapy Author: Douglas G. Flemons, Publisher: Shambhala Pages: 184 Published: 2001-05-01 ISBN-10: 1570626693 ISBN-13: 9781570626692 Category: ...
INTERLUDE High Noon: A" Fictional" Dialogue Carolyn Ellis And DOUGLAS F... more INTERLUDE High Noon: A" Fictional" Dialogue Carolyn Ellis And DOUGLAS FLEMONS >£ CAROLYN ENTERS the Dolphin bar to find ... They weren't at all shy about speaking their minds. ... Carolyn: Okay, what comes to my mind is a conversation of the" yes-and" vari-ety, rather ...
... For the sake of readabil-ity, we haven't textually indicated the sometimes sizable lapse... more ... For the sake of readabil-ity, we haven't textually indicated the sometimes sizable lapses of time between different points raised in the ... I, too, wrote a piece about a speech impediment that I had as a child, and writing it helped me define my interest in qualitative research. ...
This article is infused with the mindful presence of Gregor-wan Batesoni, the pattern-spinning al... more This article is infused with the mindful presence of Gregor-wan Batesoni, the pattern-spinning alter-ego of Star Wars’ Obi-wan Kenobi. The author, a Skywalker wannabe, careens through 25 years of Bateson-inspired ideas and practices, zigzagging between descriptions of his work and a thinking-out-loud search for an appropriate metaphor for classifying who he is and what he’s been up to. Along the way, he introduces readers to a self-referential distinction that opens the door to whole-part relationships; to a new way of thinking about therapeutic change; to a relational understanding of hypnosis; and to a fresh approach for teaching composition.
[...]even the best scales can be unreliable when they\u27re completed in the midst of an emotiona... more [...]even the best scales can be unreliable when they\u27re completed in the midst of an emotional crisis. [...]rather than outsourcing your decision-making to an instrument, I recommend that you learn how to conduct a conversational evaluation that builds on your therapeutic skills. Once there, she\u27d meditate and, if necessary, call the numbers of family, friends, and professional resources that we wrote down.\n If the client appears to be at imminent risk of making a suicide attempt and a safety plan doesn\u27t seem feasible or sufficient to keep him or her safe, then you\u27ll need to arrange transportation to a psychiatric receiving facility for evaluation and possible involuntary admission
Although clinical hypnosis has been studied in a variety of ways, most researchers have focused o... more Although clinical hypnosis has been studied in a variety of ways, most researchers have focused on individual approaches; few have examined relational models influenced by Gregory Bateson's systemic concepts. This article explores how the second author, the developer of a relational approach to hypnotherapy, successfully helped a client who desired to have a baby but could not see or talk about blood, needles, or medical procedures without fainting. Using context-enriched conversation analysis (CECA), the authors examined multiple sources of data, including selected audio-recorded excerpts from the hypnotherapeutic sessions; the client's descriptions of change in her email correspondence with the second author; and the second author's case notes. Although there were a total of eight sessions, this article primarily concentrates on what transpired during the first two sessions of a single case. The authors address clinical and research implications for hypnosis, brief and...
Family Systems and Global Humanitarian Mental Health, 2019
This chapter is written as a metalogue—a dialogue in which the pattern of the interaction reflect... more This chapter is written as a metalogue—a dialogue in which the pattern of the interaction reflects, mirrors, and/or contributes to the topic at hand. The authors use this form of presentation to explore the extraordinary emotional, existential, and ethical challenges foreigners face when providing systemically oriented therapy and supervision in high-conflict countries. The chapter touches on issues of trauma, disorientation, colonialism, and secrecy, as well as feelings of trust, respect, fear, guilt, and inadequacy. The discussion, both emotional and theoretical, delves deeply into the second author’s experiences working with Syrian clinicians, with a particular focus during a 6-month period in the third year of the Syrian civil war. It also explicates and illustrates the nature of her conversations with the first author, whom she contacted at the time for help with her personal and supervisory challenges. The authors introduce the term transvision to articulate the process by which their conversations helped the second author find her way through the fog generated by the Syrian conflict. They use and repurpose cybernetic and systemic ideas, such as double bind, boundaries, and communication, to illuminate how existential and clinical struggles can be collaboratively understood and effectively addressed.
Shelley:I suppose we should explain the title.Douglas:“From Lingua Franca to Scriptio Animi”: Sou... more Shelley:I suppose we should explain the title.Douglas:“From Lingua Franca to Scriptio Animi”: Sounds so scholarly, eh? So learned.S:In an uptight, un-Carolyn kind of way.D:We first heard about her in that profile in Lingua Franca.S:I was teaching a qualitative research class. The idea of reflexive ethnography jumped off the page. She sounded so fascinating and courageous.D:And so close by! Living just across the swamp from us in Tampa. Was it then that you went out and bought Final Negotiations?S:Yes, and found myself drawn into her life and her writing in an intense way.D:How did reading her work change your approach to the research class?S:I became more and more interested in personal experience methods, and ultimately created a class devoted almost exclusively to autoethnography. I guess you could say Carolyn was a ghost member of our curriculum committee.D:Oh, I love the image of her hovering around us.S:She actually sort of entered my blood stream, and I’d never even met her yet, though I certainly wanted to.D:And during that same time, I happened to email this guy named Art Bochner to thank him for his amazing “Forming Warm Ideas” chapter in Rigor and Imagination (Bochner, 1981). He and I started corresponding back and forth, developing an online friendship, and all the while I didn’t have a clue that he and Carolyn were together.S:One day you came home and said, “You know Art, the guy I told you I’ve been chatting with via email? You’re never going to believe who his partner is!”D:The coincidence was wonderful! I was clueless!S:The Latin formality of the title is doubly ironic then. “Scriptio Animi.” Brother!D:How so?S:Well, for one thing, Latin is not the first language that jumps to mind for capturing the intimate, speaking-in-vernacular nature of Carolyn's scholarship.D:Right. Despite the fact that the term lingua franca has to do with speaking a common language and scriptio animi translates as “writing of the heart-and-mind-and-soul.”S:That's the first irony – using a dead language of disembodied scholarship to refer to Carolyn's lively and embodied first-person voice.D:And the second irony?S:The use of Latin makes us sound like we’re these all-knowing academics. But neither of us knows anything about Latin. In you’re words, we’re clueless.D:Absolutely. I was trying (and failing) to cobble together a meaningful phrase by working backwards in the O.E.D. Our friend John brought his expertise in classical languages to bear on my first few attempts and very sensitively suggested I torch them. Without him, we’d never have come up with “Scriptio Animi” (John Leeds, personal communication, March 9, 2003). A Liberal Arts colleague at the university, however, kindly normalized my ignorance: “Native Latin speakers,” he assured me, “are either dead for over a thousand years (in Rome) or in prison for child molestation” (Mark Cavanaugh, personal communication, March 7, 2003).S:Irony and our cluelessness aside, the title does a pretty good job of capturing the spirit of Carolyn's work. After all, she values “narrative soul” (Ellis, 2000, p. 274) – pretty close to the “writing of the soul” of “scriptio animi.”D:But irony and cluelessness shouldn’t be put to the side – they belong at the center. Carolyn's whole enterprise is grounded in the irony of knowing and the importance of maintaining a not-knowing stance.S:Okay, so the Latin stays. Besides, I like the reflexive paradox of the title, and Carolyn is nothing if not reflexive.D:Little did Lacan know that social science would go through its own “mirror stage,” using an ethnographic looking glass to encounter and transform the self-in-context.S:Right. Carolyn says reflexive stories should have “therapeutic value” – that they should change the reader in some significant way. Her stories, and her students’ stories, transformed me as a researcher and as a teacher. I invited personal experience into class discussions in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. After hearing her perform her story of her brother's death, I found that her voice was often with me in the classroom; it was very powerful.D:Therapeutic not only for the reader, but also for the writer. Last fall when I was traveling back and forth to Calgary while my mom was dying, I started writing an autoethnographic account of what I was going through. Carolyn and Art were in my head and my heart a lot as I storied my experience.S:Yes, I remember. And Carolyn's stories about her mother's illness and her many trips to West Virginia to be with her became entwined with your stories.D:Yeah. And something odd happened – something that unsettled me at the time and that cries out for a Carolyn consultation. It was like I couldn’t put down my pen. At some of the most tender, most difficult, most intimate times, I was composing sentences in my head, wondering how I could best grab the color and texture of what I was living. But in doing so, I felt removed from it. There I was, in the moment, crafting sentences…
Jay Haley once said, \u27The only reasonable excuse for adding another theory of hypnosis to the ... more Jay Haley once said, \u27The only reasonable excuse for adding another theory of hypnosis to the many that have been proposed is an entirely new approach to the problem.\u27 In Of One Mind, Douglas Flemons demonstrates that he has an eminently reasonable excuse. With the casual grace of an entrancing storyteller and the dry humor of an experienced therapist and teacher, he recasts the theory of hypnosis within a relational understanding of language, self, and mind. He then transports his ideas to the worlds of hypno-and brief therapies, offering fresh insights about how to connect with clients and help them change.https://nsuworks.nova.edu/shss_facbooks/1005/thumbnail.jp
Title: Completing Distinctions: Interweaving The Ideas Of Gregory Bateson And Taoism Into A Uniqu... more Title: Completing Distinctions: Interweaving The Ideas Of Gregory Bateson And Taoism Into A Unique Approach To Therapy Author: Douglas G. Flemons, Publisher: Shambhala Pages: 184 Published: 2001-05-01 ISBN-10: 1570626693 ISBN-13: 9781570626692 Category: ...
INTERLUDE High Noon: A" Fictional" Dialogue Carolyn Ellis And DOUGLAS F... more INTERLUDE High Noon: A" Fictional" Dialogue Carolyn Ellis And DOUGLAS FLEMONS >£ CAROLYN ENTERS the Dolphin bar to find ... They weren't at all shy about speaking their minds. ... Carolyn: Okay, what comes to my mind is a conversation of the" yes-and" vari-ety, rather ...
... For the sake of readabil-ity, we haven't textually indicated the sometimes sizable lapse... more ... For the sake of readabil-ity, we haven't textually indicated the sometimes sizable lapses of time between different points raised in the ... I, too, wrote a piece about a speech impediment that I had as a child, and writing it helped me define my interest in qualitative research. ...
This article is infused with the mindful presence of Gregor-wan Batesoni, the pattern-spinning al... more This article is infused with the mindful presence of Gregor-wan Batesoni, the pattern-spinning alter-ego of Star Wars’ Obi-wan Kenobi. The author, a Skywalker wannabe, careens through 25 years of Bateson-inspired ideas and practices, zigzagging between descriptions of his work and a thinking-out-loud search for an appropriate metaphor for classifying who he is and what he’s been up to. Along the way, he introduces readers to a self-referential distinction that opens the door to whole-part relationships; to a new way of thinking about therapeutic change; to a relational understanding of hypnosis; and to a fresh approach for teaching composition.
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