Wise Counsel Podcasts

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Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D. on Strategic Child-Focused Family Therapy. Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist and author Dr. Marilyn Wedge is the originator of strategic child-focused family therapy, following in the family systems therapy tradition of Jay Haley. She strongly opposes the over-diagnosis of children with psychiatric disorders and the use of medication to treat childhood behavioral, emotional and social problems. A better approach, she believes, is the application of strategic family therapy which conceptualizes the childs problem in relationship to other problems occuring within the family. A frequent pattern is that a child will manifest a problem as a way to help draw parents attention away from their own problems. The therapist can then take on the role of helper within the system, relieving the child of that duty. As parental problems resolve or are isolated from the child, children tend to get better. Various systems techniques (such as the invariant question) and case histories are discussed.

Ellen Walker, Ph.D. on Living Child-Free. Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. Psychologist Ellen Walker, Ph.D. is the author of the book, Complete Without Kids: An Insiders Guide to Childfree Living by Choice or by Chance, written in reaction to her own decision to forgo having children and consequent awareness of many people who have made the same choice. Social pressure to have children cause this choice to be stigmatized unfairly. In response, she uses the term childfree rather than childless to emphasize that the choice to not have children can be a deliberate decision and not an absence. Childfree adults can be organized into three categories depending on their motivation to become childfree: deliberate choice, happenstance (where the person might have been happy to go either way) and circumstance (where the option to have children was blocked). Though there are many advantages to not having children (including the opportunity emphasize career and interests, to put more energy into maintaining marital happiness, and to save and spend money for/on ones self), there are also challenges, including a widespread perception that other people view childfree adults as selfish and concerns about retirement planning and legacy. Childfree orientated adults can have difficulties when in relationships with partners who have children due to competing expectation around who is the center of the parent partners attention.

Alistair McHarg is the author of the 2007 memoir of life with Bipolar Disorder, "Invisible Driving". Started as notes designed to record the experience of his third major manic episode, the book became a means of communicating the manic experience to people who otherwise could not relate. McHarg's family is predisposed to bipolar disorder with both his father and two half brothers sharing the diagnosis. The three major manic episodes of his life (interspersed with more low level hypomanias and depressions) have followed in the wake of severe stressors. in his twenties, an episode occured in response to his being arrested and jailed on drug related charges. Sixteen years later, a second major episode occurred in response to the sudden and unexpected event of his wife divorcing him. The third episode occurred in the wake of being laid off from his work. The title of the book "Invisible Driving" comes from a practice he invented while manic this third time in which he dangerously drove his car bent over onto the passenger seat so as to make it appear to other drivers that no one was behind the wheel. While acknowledging the strong biological underpinnings of mania, McHarg is keen to also communicate his sense that, at least in his case, his manias have represented a coping strategy of denial and flight; a way of psychologically escaping from stress which feels marvelous and which is quite irresistable during its ascent.

Dr. Grof, a psychiatrist, transpersonal theorist and noted researcher of psychedelic experience, first encountered LSD as a young doctor working in Prague when the Sandoz company asked him to see if the compound had any psychiatric utility. Personal and research experience with LSD and its effects (including visual hallucinations, pre-natal and transpersonal memory and expansive, disembodied consciousness) profoundly changed his worldview away from the mainstream mechanistic view to a vision of the universe as essentially conscious. He began to recognize the reality of perinatal and prenatal memories and the transpersonal/archetypal realm (as first identified by Jung). He researched the use of psychedelic drugs as therapeutic tools and yielded positive results with reports of long lasting pain remission across varied populations. Later, when psychedelic research became outlawed, he developed alternative techniques for accessing transpersonal experiences including holotropic breathwork. In his understanding, the transpersonal is not a fantasy brought on by a feverish mind but rather a reality which is normally not accessible to ordinary consciousness due to defensive mechanisms which can be bypassed in a variety of ways including but not limited to the use of psychedelics. He believes that naturally occuring forms of transpersonal experience, including some aspects of psychosis, are not pathological but rather represent the emergence of the transpersonal into the realm of the ordinary.

Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D., a Clinical Psychologist and REBT therapist is a protogee of Dr. Albert Ellis, one of the key founders of the modern cognitive behavioral therapy movement. Though today largely overshadowed by Dr. Aaron Beck, Ellis described the basic ideas that continue to inform cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) years before Beck started down that path. Dr. Edelstein's book Three Minute Therapist is a restatement of Ellis' important ideas for non-therapists who are interested in using these techniques as a mode of self-help. The REBT scheme is often described as the ABC theory, where A stands for an activating event, B for an irrational belief brought to mind by the event, and C for the undesirable emotional and behavioral consequences that stem from the irrational belief. The application of REBT (and all cognitive therapies) is designed to help people identify their irrational beliefs and then scrutinize and dispute them to see if they are based on anything substantial. As irrational beliefs are identified as faulty, their power to motivate sadness and anxiety lessens and people start to feel better. Regular practice of the ABC technique can help people to overcome their mood issues. In addition to clearly describing the REBT disputing process, Dr. Edelstein also uses the interview to discuss the demanding, global and polarizing nature of irrational beliefs (things must be all good or they are all bad), and the trap of high self-esteem. A critic of Alcoholics Anonymous, Dr. Edelstein helps coordinate SMART Recovery, an alternative self-help program for alcoholics based on rational principles.

Katherine Ellison on ADHD. Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. Ms. Ellison, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, is an adult with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD, and the mother of a son who also is diagnosed with ADHD. She has written a book, Buzz, about her experiences living with and coming to terms with ADHD in herself and her son. Ms. Ellison reports she has always been a restless and easily bored person. She gravitated towards journalism in part because it offered her an opportunity to work in a highly stimulating, rapidly changing environment which fit her need for constant novelty. Though decorated for the quality of her work (for her 1980s era coverage of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines) she was also prone to make mistakes and several times was nearly sued for inaccurate reportage. As a younger person she was skeptical about the validity of ADHD and critical of parents who allowed their children to be medicated for ADHD. However, as she became a parent of a child with ADHD symptoms and grappled with parenting issues made more difficult by her own tendency towards distraction she came around. Her son was medicated for a period of one year and showed dramatic improvement in terms of his ability to concentrate and to make friends and a decrease in oppositional behaviors. After being diagnosed herself she came to understand and appreciate the role this condition has played in the lives of multiple generations of her family.

Dr. Bryan discusses his suicide prevention research which has been shaped by his experience as an Air Force clinical psychologist in Iraq working with active duty soldiers. Dr. Bryan recommends training soldiers in problem solving techniques as an effective means of suicide prevention. Though soldiers typically reject efforts to talk about mental health issues, they are generally open to learning more efficient means of coping and problem solving. This is often best delivered as leadership training so that military commanders can be the ones to teach effective problem solving skills. Leader's ability to identify problems before they become crises and to show respect for soldiers morale also emerges as important protective factors.

Former CEO of the Autism Treatment Center of America Raun Kaufman was the first recipient of the Son-Rise program, developed by his parents in response to his childhood diagnosis of severe autism. Though his diagnosis was presented by doctors as incurable, the Kaufmans, who had recently engaged with the 1970s human potential movement, remained hopeful with the understanding that if they decided the situation was hopeless, it would become so. They engaged intensively with their son, joining in and participating with his autistic repetative behaviors (against medical advice), seeking to create rapport. As Mr. Kaufman began attending to and engaging with his parents, they then used that hook to challenge him and teach necessary interpersonal and communication skills. Today the son-rise program offers an alternative to the dominant applied behavior analysis model which seeks to treat autism by first addressing the autistic child's difficulty forming relationships rather than their odd behaviors. The Center offers intensive parent training in the son-rise intervention model (as parents - not professionals - deliver this care) from their Massachusetts campus. Having been developed by non-scientists outside the university, the efficacy of the son-rise program has not been established with clinical trials. However, Mr. Kaufman suggests that recently resarch has been occuring which will shortly be published.

Liana Lowenstein, MSW on Play Therapy. Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. Adult-oriented psychotherapy is talk-focused, making it inappropriate for children who are for developmental reasons less able or inclined to be able to talk about emotional difficulties. Play therapy involves a therapists systematic use of structured games and play activities to bond with, assess and treat children's psychosocial issues. Play activities allow children to approach their issues indirectly and (often) in a physical, primarily non-verbal manner. Play activities are orchestrated by the therapist according to one or more clinical play therapy models (e.g., this is not simply play but instead real therapy). Lowenstein describes several named therapeutic play activities variously designed to elicit discussion of feelings, elicit a ranked list of worries, or to enable children to act out their issues using the sand-tray or dollhouses. The entire family is frequently included in therapy so as to assess family dynamics that may be interfering with healing (such as when children feel the need to protect their parents), and to help parents become more aware of children's issues so that they can act on the information to alter their behavior.

Dr. Ceren has devoted her clinical career to developing a systematic program for providing effective premarital counseling, a niche that presented itself after working with troubled couples and recognizing the need for a prophylactic approach to identifying and addressing likely causes of incompatibility prior to marriage as a method of improving marital satisfaction and reducing the need for divorce. Currently, premarital counseling is emphasized in pastoral counseling settings such as the Catholic Church. Dr. Ceren would like to see an expansion of such counseling, however, such that marriage licenses could not be issued without participation. She has developed a 10 session program wherein partners individually fill out personality and relationship questionnaires and then share findings so as to identify and address areas of incompatibility. Though opposites attract, couples with similarities fare better in marriage according to Dr. Ceren. Conflict is not an issue, although the couple's ability to achieve compromise is vital. Apart from compatible styles with regard to big issues including sex, money and religion, it is also vital to identify partners with personality disorders (rigid personality styles) which will prevent compromise from being achieved (because one or both partners lacks the flexibility to achieve that compromise).

Joseph E. LeDoux, Ph.D. on the Synaptic Self and Memory Reconsolidation. Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. Entering psychology by way of marketing, Dr. LeDoux chose to study animal brain mechanisms of fear after becoming disenchanted with the overly broad concept of the limbic system and frustrated by the difficulties associated with the study of human brains in that era (e.g., modern brain imaging techniques did not yet exist). He applied an information processing approach to this work (wherein mental processes like memory and attention are attended to; not emotion or other subjective mental contents). He became well known after demonstrating that auditory signals indicating danger were independently transmitted by the thalamus (a sub-cortical switch of sorts) in parallel to both the auditory cortex and the amygdala. Because the route to the amygdala is physically shorter, animals are thus able to respond to danger signals before becoming consciously aware of the danger. Dr. LeDoux's more recent contributions include authoring several excellent books such as Synaptic Self, which introduce lay people to neuroscience concepts in accessible language, and conducting important work in memory reconsolidation, a recent advance in the understanding of the nature of how memory functions, which has enormous promise as a therapy for PTSD and other conditions which revolve around problems involving emotion and memory. The interview winds up with discussion of Dr. LeDoux's rock/pop band the Amygdaloids which has recently put out a new CD, Theory of My Mind