Sinopsis
A single concept is destined to
dominate the field of psychotherapy for the rest of this century. That
concept—emerging from profound breakthroughs in our understanding of the
biological foundations of human emotion, thought, and motivation—is
neuroplasticity. The brain is continually changing, learning, and evolving, and
it is capable of changing itself in ways that could not even be imagined a few
decades ago. As summarized by Columbia University neurologist Norman Doidge, MD:
“The discovery that the human brain can change its own structure and function
with thought and experience, turning on its own genes to change its circuitry,
reorganize itself and change its operation, is the most important alteration in
our understanding of the brain in four hundred years.”
Freud’s “talking cure” utilized insight
and the uncovering of unconscious motivations, all within the container of the
therapeutic relationship, with its transferences and countertransferences
waiting to be analyzed. Sometimes this led to profound changes in behavior and
life satisfaction. More often it just led to greater insight into the roots of
one’s misery. A hundred years later, we are able to identify many of the
neurological shifts that are required to overcome depression, phobias,
generalized anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive behavior, posttraumatic
stress disorder (PTSD), and a host of other psychiatric maladies. Being able to facilitate desirable
changes in the brain’s chemistry trumps insight, willpower, and therapeutic
rapport.
So the race is on. What therapies are
able to most effectively, efficiently, and noninvasively shift the neurological
underpinnings of problems people cannot overcome through willpower alone? Among
the most promising of these new clinical modalities are descendents of Roger
Callahan’s Thought Field Therapy (TFT). By simply tapping on acupuncture points
on the skin of traumatized patients while they were bringing to mind a
distressful memory or trigger, something amazing seemed to occur. The memory or
emotional trigger lost its ability to activate the fight-or-flight response that
keeps people trapped in traumatic stress disorders. While initial case reports
were met with tremendous skepticism, recent controlled trials support the early
claims. Forty-seven of 50 Rwandan orphans who scored within the PTSD range 12
years after their parents were slaughtered in the genocide of 1994 were no
longer above the PTSD cutoff after a single session of TFT according to
caregiver ratings. Nor were they plagued by unrelenting nightmares, flashbacks,
concentration difficulties, aggression, withdrawal, bed-wetting, or other
symptoms of posttraumatic distress. Their improvements held on one-year
follow-up. Abused male adolescents showed comparable improvement after a single
session of tapping on acupuncture points, with 100% of the treatment group
starting in the PTSD range and dropping below it after one treatment session. A
wait-list comparison group showed no changes. Other studies are reporting
similar findings.
How is this possible? That question has
been engaging the fertile mind of the author of this book for the past
half-dozen years. Dr. Ruden, a physician with a PhD in organic chemistry, worked
early in his career with Nobel laureate E. J. Corey at Harvard, pioneering
computer models of chemical synthesis. Now after three decades of practicing
internal medicine and having established himself, with his book The Craving Brain, as one of the leading authorities on how
advances in the neurosciences can bolster the treatment of disorders such as
addictions and obesity, Dr. Ruden’s career has taken an unconventional
turn.
I met Dr. Ruden when he was newly into
the approach discussed in this book. He confided to me that although he had
established a substantial reputation for
treating addictions rapidly and effectively, this new approach was producing
stronger outcomes than anything else at his disposal. And it was deceptively
simple to apply.
How can tapping on the body help people
overcome long-standing, severe psychiatric disorders? The explanations that were
being posed reached back thousands of years to acupuncture theory or postulated
“thought fields” that cannot be detected or measured. Extraordinary results were
being produced with no coherent scientific explanation. Dr. Ruden was deeply
puzzled. This book is the fruit grown from that puzzlement.
With When the Past
Is Always Present: Emotional Traumatization, Causes, and Cures, Dr. Ruden
has done no less than to redraw the Eastern healing maps—written in the elusive
ink of energy fields, energy centers, and energy pathways—with the neurologist’s
precise concepts and language for understanding therapeutic change. This
monumental accomplishment will stand as the pioneering reference on the relevant
neurochemical mechanisms as we move into a future where the techniques presented
here become mainstays of psychotherapy and healing. The first eight chapters
provide a laudable first formulation of the neurological foundations of
trauma-based disorders, their cure, and how the methods featured bring about
that cure with unprecedented effectiveness.
The ways to apply these methods, the
best protocols, and the necessary ingredients are all areas of controversy. The
original approach used specific acupuncture points. It stimulated them by
tapping them in a given order. Now more than two dozen discrete variations have
been developed, each with its own proponents, literature, and training programs.
Many still use acupuncture points, although not necessarily those originally
prescribed, nor are they tapped in the order that was originally suggested. In
fact, some no longer use tapping, or acupuncture points for that matter. Some
focus on other energy systems familiar to Eastern healing and spiritual
traditions, such as the chakras or the aura. Some believe that almost any
innocuous sensory stimulation, combined with the mental activation of a problem
or a goal, can lead to desirable neurological change. Dr. Ruden enters his
preferred approach, called havening, into the ring with this book. It is built
upon his experimentation with numerous formulations in treating literally thousands of patients. Perhaps the most
interesting thing about these approaches, however, is not whether or not
havening is better than the others, but that they all seem to obtain similarly
strong results. One day research studies will have distinguished the most
important elements in the almost unbelievable effectiveness of these methods,
but this book already provides strong and illuminating hypotheses for how they
impact the brain.
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