Re: psychoceramics: 3 Christs of Ypsilanti Revisted

["Andrew C. Bulhak" <a--@z--.net>]

[Jerry Kuntz]
> Andrew C. Bulhak wrote:
> 
> > I recall reading that Richard Bandler (the psychologist who invented
> > neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)) used an unorthodox but related
> > technique for dealing with delusional patients.  He would match their
> > delusions so precisely that they fell apart.  In one case, he instructed
> > staff at a mental hospital to dress as Roman soldiers and went to the
> > cell of a patient who believed he was Jesus carrying a large wooden
> > cross.  Soon the patient was protesting that he isn't the real Jesus,
> > to the point where he remembered exactly who he was, whilst Bandler, in
> > Roman garb, pretended to not believe him.
> > 
> > I think the book may have been _Trance Formations_.
> > 
> >  -- acb
> > 
> I have to question whether this is a valid therapy. To me, it smacks of
> being simplistic, insensitive grandstanding. A lot more mental patients
> would be cured if it was an easy matter of pointing out the logical
> inconsistencies of their behavior. 

There's a difference between consciously arguing a delusional patient
out of their delusions (which is impossible if their delusions are 
internally consistent and they can define your argument out of them)
and entering their delusions and changing them from within.  

As for it being insensitive, that may be so, but it works.  Then again,
Bandler has been known to cure catatonic patients by deliberately
disturbing them (i.e., stamping on their feet or such).  His argument 
is that when psychiatrists adjust their behaviour to not disturb the
catatonics or delusionals, they merely help them settle into their 
disorders.  He also cites a principle from cybernetics which states
that the element in a system which has the most requisite variety 
(i.e., can change its behaviour the most readily) will become the
controlling element.  If a catatonic has more requisite variety than
the psychiatrists who walk on tiptoe as not to disturb him, then the
catatonic calls the shots, so to speak.

-- 
"I have spoken to one cat, and to many.  And wherever I have gone,   www.zikzak
 my message is the same...  Dream it!  Dream the world. Not this     .net/~acb/
 pallid shadow of reality.  Dream the world the way it truly is."
		-- Neil Gaiman, _Dream of a Thousand Cats_