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Energy Psychology Interactive
attempts to provide the basic knowledge and skills that will allow
psychotherapists and other psychologically-oriented health care
professionals to responsibly incorporate into their practices an
energy-based approach to psychological problems and goals. The
program emerged from a survey of more than 30 energy-oriented
psychotherapists with an eye toward the way energy psychology is
currently practiced and an attempt to identify components that
should be part of every practitioner’s knowledge base.
Most of the approaches surveyed address, in one way or another,
neurological disorganization and psychological reversals. Some use
elaborate methods to diagnose which aspects of the client’s energy
system need to be treated. Others do not assess the energies at
all, assuming that since all the body’s energy systems are
interconnected, a single powerful intervention, routinely applied,
will reverberate throughout the system and catalyze changes where
needed.
Some present their methods within well-articulated and sophisticated
psychodynamic and psychosocial frameworks; others provide little theory.
Some focus primarily on the presenting problem; others routinely delve
into energetic disturbances that are based in the client’s history. Some
emphasize the spiritual dimensions of the human journey; others are
agnostic.
The most fundamental common denominator among the
systems is this: virtually all the systems investigated
1) have
the client access a problem state, and
2) correct energy disturbances while the
problem state is activated. Whether the energy system they
engage involves the meridians, chakras, aura, or radiant circuits, the
shared model is this:
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An internal or external stimulus
an energy disturbance
a disturbance in affect, thought, or
behavior
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Such disturbances may lead to diagnosable
psychopathology, but they may also be sub-clinical, interfering with the
most adaptive life choices or inhibiting a person’s potentials.
Energy psychology's unique
contribution is to be able to
directly interrupt this sequence—to remove the energy
disturbance—and it does so by intervening in the process at the point of
the arrow on the left. Therapists who address psychological issues in
this manner are practicing energy psychology.
Teaching a set of concepts and skills that allow you
to administer such interventions has been our focus. It admittedly
represents the most mechanistic end of the spectrum of energy
psychology. That is where the common denominators are found. A growing
number of talented clinicians are moving the field along a spectrum of
auspicious new directions. This module
provides an Internet tour of some of the approaches that have been
spawned.
The
most striking contradiction within energy psychology involves
the abundant reports of strong clinical results paired with
vehement
disagreements among practitioners on the reasons for
these results and the exact procedures that are necessary
to attain them. The theories range from mechanical to electromagnetic
to psychological to interpersonal to quantum dynamic to
metaphysical explanations. Techniques that are adhered to
strictly by one practitioner may be loosely applied by another,
or in a different sequence, or with certain elements omitted,
or omitted altogether, yet the clinical outcomes tend to
be relatively consistent across approaches, suggesting that
some non-specific factors are also involved in the treatment
outcomes. Stories are going around the energy psychology
community where, for instance, the foreign-language translator
in a class botched the directions for a procedure yet it
still worked for the class participants. Explanations range
from placebo effects to the power of intention to energy
exchanges between the client and practitioner.
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Amidst this theoretical and procedural confusion, the
field of energy psychology is exploding with innovations, new
directions, and all the attendant controversies. In fact, the
discipline’s primary professional organization, the
Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP), had to opt
for a more unwieldy name—featuring the word "comprehensive"—because the
field was already splintering into subgroups when the organization was
being formed in the late 1990s. |
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Deciding
what should comprise the field’s "basics" is fraught
with subjective calls, and the task has inevitably been
approached within the biases of the author and two primary
consultants. The largest focus is on the meridian system.
It could have been on the chakras, aura, or radiant circuits.
The protocols include those that require no assessment of
the disturbed energies, and they extend to elaborate assessment
techniques. Methods from energy medicine that are
not widely used within energy psychology are sprinkled throughout
the program. The program’s initial formulations have gone
through many generations based on exchanges with practitioners
of energy psychology who hold divergent perspectives. The
Energy
Psychology Interactive Advisory Board, for instance,
is composed of recognized leaders and innovators within
the field and represents a wide spectrum of positions on
fundamental clinical issues. Their input and critique has
expanded the program’s conceptual base and helped counter
the biases of the original designers. Nonetheless, the final
content remains the responsibility of the designers.
Because
innovations in technique, applications in new contexts,
adaptations for new client populations, spiritual implications
of working with subtle energies, and fertile unions with
other psychotherapeutic approaches (see next
module) are being reported at a dramatic rate, the designers
do not begin to pretend that the CD is comprehensive. It
is simply not possible within this program to attempt to
fairly represent the broad range of innovations and perspectives.
Instead, the goal has been to offer a sound basis
from which a practitioner might be able to knowledgably
explore the range of developments.
A
representative list of major approaches within energy psychology
is presented below, along with web links, so you may begin
that exploration. Not included here are the healing methods
that, while psychologically beneficial, are not explicitly
psychological in their focus. Nonetheless, several approaches
that are not explicitly psychological, such as
energy medicine,
reiki, and
therapeutic touch, balance the body’s energies and are
oriented toward facilitating psychological and spiritual
as well as physical health. Also not included are methods
that put a major emphasis on distance
healing or accessing spiritual forces in the healing
process. These areas, while they may become more prominent
as the field develops, are currently lightening rods of
controversy, and at the least would force the field to adopt
radical new explanatory models if they prove beneficial
and reproducible.
Your
assignment for this module is to dedicate some time for
an
INTERNET
TOUR
of the systems that are
listed below and to follow their links.
Bon voyage!
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For Additional Energy Psychology Organizations and Resources,
go to 
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