Human Givens

tunepimper

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with the Human Givens therapy? Did you benefit from it?

I have a session of it coming up and would like to hear some client based experience.

Thanks.

LadyMayBelle

I haven't I am afraid, so can't help you but would like to find out about a client's view as well.. my manager is a big human givens fan and I have a chance to do some training... so just bumping this thread out of interest..

JuliusCaesar

From the Wiki:

In The British Medical Journal[12] the author asks the question 'so where's the evidence?' and Ivan Tyrell,who is the director of Director of the European Therapy Studies Institute and the Human Givens Institute,[6] comments 'People are starting to do it [research]—but we aren't doing it ourselves. If a plane is flying, you don't need to keep showing that it's possible to fly.’

This is in marked contrast to the ACT (Acceptance & Committment) approach, which stopped any publicising until they had gathered sufficient research evidence both developing the theory and in clinical effectiveness.

I know you are looking for anecdotes - but I'd prefer solid evidence, before engaging in any therapy.

The expectation fulfilment theory of dreaming, proposed by Joe Griffin in 1993[16] posits that the prime function of dreams is to metaphorically act out non-discharged emotional arousals (expectations) that were not acted out during the previous day. It theorises that excessive worrying while awake arouses the autonomic nervous system which then increases the need to dream during REM sleep, which deprives the individual of the refreshment of the mind brought about by regenerative slow-wave sleep. It regards worry as a misuse of the imagination. Griffin and Tyrrell proffer a connection between REM state dreaming and hypnotic phenomenon, and define hypnosis as "any artificial means of accessing the REM state"

Seems a pretty huge assumption to build a theory on!

hotspur

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

This is in marked contrast to the ACT (Acceptance & Committment) approach, which stopped any publicising until they had gathered sufficient research evidence both developing the theory and in clinical effectiveness.

Could you say more about that please. I like the "third wave behaviour therapies" but one thing which has always struck me about the ACT community is that their zeal tends to run beyond the evidence. It does bring up the crucial topic of how much research evidence is enough research evidence but Aaron Beck they are not.

In relation to the Human Givens approach I have found its practitioners tend towards a particular type. That type is not a proper psychotherapist. I recall looking through the list of the Human Givens professional register for Ireland and it being littered with people who had no other training as psychotherapists and were not accredited as psychotherapists with any other accrediting body.

And the evidence base that they have suggested for some of their techniques is very low quality and includes NLP crap and the like.

As for the book by Griffen on why we dream. I read some of it about a year ago. From what I read of it, and as far as I can recall, it wasn't bad actually. I found it interesting.