They don't make them like that any more...

Thanks to Freeview and DVD, I’ve recently been re-watching some of the classic TV shows of the 1960s and early Seventies – The Avengers, The Saint, Department S, The Protectors and The Champions. All of these, as far as I can see, have two things in common.

Firstly, whenever a character drives somewhere, even in the middle of London, he always finds a parking space immediately outside the place that he is visiting. He never has to pay to park and never gets a ticket. Also, he never locks his car, and presumably always leaves the key in the ignition as his car can easily be stolen by anyone who jumps in.

While all that strains credibility, it’s not likely to be a major plot problem if anyone tried to do a modern remake (perish the thought). The second point of commonality, however, is potentially more serious.

In the Sixties and Seventies, there were no mobile phones. Apart from the Champions, who had the handy gift of telepathy, any character wanting to contact another had to find a telephone box and then hope that the contactee was at home or in his office. Many of the plots revolved around the fact that hero A was unable to contact hero B; hero A would then go off on his or her own and inevitably get into trouble. There was a good example of this in an episode of Department S which I watched the other night; Annabelle gives Jason a good talking to for going off on his own and getting beaten up; she then does precisely the same thing, although, to be fair, in her case she did have the foresight to leave a scribbled note in the empty office so she could be rescued at the last minute (of course).

So many of the plots from these shows just wouldn’t work nowadays. But I still enjoy these programmes, although for different reasons in each case; The Avengers and Department S for the humour and quirky plots, The Saint because I like the books, The Protectors because they packed everything into half-hour episodes, and The Champions – well, I’m not so sure now about that one...

Let me tell you a story...

If you watched the first Leader’s Debate, between the three British main party leaders, a couple of weeks ago, you may have noticed how often they used lines like: “I was in my constituency last week, talking to a group of ......, and one of them told me about....” This story-telling technique is known in therapeutic circles as metaphor.

Therapeutic metaphor is a form of suggestion through the use of stories or anecdotes. These can be examples from life, real or imaginary former clients, literature, folk tales or mythology. Classical mythology is full of tales which can be used as metaphors. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice, for example, is about dealing with grief and the futility of trying to hold on to the past.

Founder of modern hypnotherapy Milton Erickson was well known for his use of “teaching tales”. These were stories about his own life and previous clients – possibly real, possibly fictional – in which his clients could find their own meanings. I often use life experiences as metaphors for my clients. I may tell smokers, for example, that my father was forced to give up smoking after his heart attack – but it was the lung cancer that finally killed him.

Advanced therapeutic metaphors have a “nested loop” structure. See if you can spot it in this one, which I wrote for a client with the (very common) fear of public speaking.

“I heard someone on the radio recently talking about a famous actor – I forget his name – who is physically sick before every performance. He regards it as both normal and essential – he feels he has to be nervous to give a good performance. You know, I used to do quite a lot of acting at school, and eventually my father also encouraged me to go along to the debating society, and always to stand up and say something, even if it was only ‘Mr Chairman, Gentlemen’. I discovered that however nervous I was before I stood up, the nerves always vanished as soon as I started to speak. I eventually became Vice Chairman, and found that I was better as Chairman than as a speaker. So I suppose it was natural that when I became a Freemason I would go quickly up through the offices in the lodge – which are really just acting – and become Master, which is a mixture of role-playing and chairmanship. And years later, having been Master in the Craft three times, and now Master in the Royal Arch, I still get nervous before I go into the lodge room, but those nerves still vanish once I start to speak.

“And it’s a great pity that my father, who never became a Freemason, isn’t around now to see what his encouragement and advice led to. And although I’m not physically sick, like that great actor, before I speak in public, I still have that twinge of nervousness which all speakers learn to value and harness to their benefit.”

Although metaphors were very noticeable in the first Leaders’ Debate, I don’t remember any in the second – I wonder why?

The Element of Surprise

My former life as a tax adviser was frequently frustrating but rarely dull. The reason was that any plans I had for a particular day were often defenestrated (i.e. thrown out of the window) by a telephone call or visit from either a client or a partner wanting something done immediately. My favourite (not) were the partners who would turn up at 4 pm and say “I’ve promised Mr So and So that he’ll get his tax return first thing in the morning.” Thinks: “Fine for you to make the promise – you don’t have to do the work.”

Now I’ve put all that behind me, dei gratia, I still get the odd surprise in my work as a self-employed hypnotherapist. Very occasionally, I take a call from a prospective client who desperately needs my help straight away – a sudden attack of nerves before a presentation, perhaps, or fear about an upcoming flight. Another kind of surprise came from a client in Greece wanting a telephone session. But the most usual type of surprise comes from a client who turns up in my consulting room with an issue that I wasn’t expecting.

Generally, when I take a booking, I ask the client how he would like me to help him. Some give me a great deal of information at that stage, most give a brief overview and a few are so reticent – or perhaps they are calling from work – that they don’t want to give any details over the phone. Then they arrive and it quickly becomes clear that the issue they told me about isn’t what we need to work on. Or there’s the client who comes for a particular issue in session 1, then says he has other issues too – so when he comes back for session 2 I don’t know whether we’re going to be working on reinforcing what we’ve already covered or something entirely different.

Happily, my original hypnotherapy tutor was adamant that we shouldn’t use pre-prepared scripts and trained us to work completely cold with our practice clients. We wouldn’t even have any idea what issues they would bring to the session. That was about eight years ago, and I have since picked up a number of new techniques that can be adapted for most situations, such as Emotional Freedom Technique and Archetypal Parts Imagery (which I used with a client this morning). It can often be tricky to make an instant decision on which of the possible techniques to use, but all of my client sessions start with a pre-talk to find out what the client needs and there are usually clues there which will guide me on which way to go.

There is one more kind of surprise in my work – the client who fails to show up altogether. There are several possible reasons for that – but I’ll save them for a future blog.

My First Blog

Well, here it is. My first attempt at a blog on Blogger. It'll be interesting to see how it comes out.

It's a pleasant sunny afternoon here in NW London. That's a bit of a surprise, because it was damp and gloomy this morning and the forecast was for heavy showers.

Just as an experiment, here's a photo of one of the feral cats that own our back garden. Ah - that didn't come out quite as I expected, but I'll know for next time!