The scientfic method and its application to understanding ourselves and our world has brought us much. It has allowed the human race technological advancement that only a few decades ago, would have been imagined by very few. So how has the relentless 'progress' of scientific materialism assisted in the area of psychotherapy and healing? With all the advances in 'evidence based treatment', understandings of neuroplatisity, the neurobiology of trauma and brain development, have these developments made the process of psychotherapy, or the healing of the Soul any more efficient, and any more effective? Have more people in pain been brought to wholeness, the true meaning of healing, as a result?

I'm sure for many, these advances have lead to much useful intervention, healing and change. Yet it also seems that what they have done is give therapists the security & power of being experts on people's problem's and the idea that in some ways these scientific narratives are applicable to each and every individual the sits before them. This is one of the fundamental issues with research that generalises results and applies this across populations, especially in psychotherapy. As soon as you take a fixed position and apply your expert knowledge to the person before you, you will find that this person happens to be an outlier, one of those many who fortunatley havn't yet been standardised....

So while advances in neuroscience and evidence based treatment are facinating and provide insightful and and times helpful understandings and explanations of what might be going on in a clients experience, they can often lead us to devalue the knowledge and uniqueness of the individual client before us and the resources they bring. Milton H Eriskon M.D. the founder of much systemic, strategic and competency based approaches to psychotherapy spoke very clearly and strongly on this subject:

'Each Person is an unique individual. Hence, psychotherapy should be formulated to meet the uniqueness of the indiviudual's needs, rather than tailouring the person to fit the procrustean bed of a hypothetical theory of human behaviour'

Milton H Erikson. M.D.

This idea of celebrating and valuing the uniqueness of the individual client and letting this be the guide of the therapists approach sits to some degree at odds to the safety and secuirty of standardised treatment based on generalised research. It places the therapist in the position of co-explorer and collaborator, working with, not doing to, while celebrating and privleging

the person that we are helping to heal, not our theory about them, however elegant and wonderful we think it is.......

In some ways this process of utilization is similar to the idea of yeilding in Tai ji or using circular force in aikido. We take the unique energy that is brought in to relationship, we accept it, we join with it and we utilise this to formulate our response to vary its outcome and direction, and hence bring about change...