Clinicians Digest July/Aug 2008 - Page 5


Her book is a reminder about the power of a therapy that accepts patients as individuals rather than a collection of symptoms. She's one of the few lucky ones. Not only did her family have the money to pay for expensive psychoanalysis, but something about her particular form of schizophrenia may have made her more amenable to therapy. Nevertheless, her book makes you wonder whether her case would be less rare if long-term, intensive, interpersonal therapy were available to everyone with schizophrenia.

"There may be a substitute for the human connection," Saks writes, "for two people sitting together in a room, one of them with the freedom to speak her mind, knowing the other is paying careful and thoughtful attention, but I don't know what that substitute might be. . . . Often, I'm navigating my life through uncertain, even threatening, waters, and I need the people in my life to tell me what's safe, what's real, and what's worth holding on to."

Dr. MindMentor

Other people have designed therapy programs that deliver automated therapy over the Internet, but Dutch therapist Jaap Hollander considered those too limited in technique and scope. So he and fellow therapist Jeffrey Wijnberg, both of whom practice Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), created MindMentor.

NLP is a cross-disciplinary psychotherapy that weaves together neuroscience, communication theories, linguistics, and Ericksonian hypnotic suggestion. MindMentor incorporates these elements, along with cognitive, Rogerian, and other therapies. Hollander claims that the program, personified by Dr. MindMentor, a RoboCoach icon, can alleviate dozens of minor psychological problems, like insomnia, low motivation, lack of focus, and under- or overassertiveness, often in a single one-hour session. The cost is just under $8 per visit.

<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next > End >>
(Page 5 of 8)