Points of View

Reproduced by kind permission of
Michael Harris,  2003

It is my hope that this article is of some use to people, but please let me make it clear that my purpose here is not to put forward a new theory of LCH, nor to suggest approaching treatment from this point of view, but to just look at things from a new perspective.

One of the most important recent developments in the field of Curative Hypnotherapy has been the model of Symptom, Reason, Belief and Cause (SRBC) as developed by Helen Lesser. This discovery, and its implementation, have helped many therapists (me being one) to understand the ’cause-to-effect’ logic of the subconscious and therefore how to enable a cure for many patients.

One of the things that this theory ably demonstrates is how there is no direct correlation between a patient’s actual problem and the ’cause’ of it. This ‘unconnected-ness’ is one of the things that new students seem to have difficulty understanding at first. And even when they do, old habits die hard and it is easy to fall into the trap of coming up with all sorts of theories as to why a patient suffers from this or that. This is something that we are all guilty of at some time or other and not just those new to LCH.

Whilst pondering on this problem it occurred to me that a different interpretation or perspective might help. Then I got to thinking about context. The SRBC that we are all familiar with is from the context of