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FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY AND HYPNOSIS 275 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024 Tel 212 873 4557 Fax 212 834 3271Presents The Four Masters Video Series |
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VIRGINIA SATIR 1916 – 1988Master, Choreographer and Pioneer of Family TherapyA One-Day Workshop on Family HypnosisASCH Certified |
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 “I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen, heard, understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understandand touch another person.” “I am convinced that the crucial factor in what happens inside people and and between people is the picture of individual worth that each personcarries around with him… He doesn’t have rules against anything he feels. He accepts all of himself as human.” - Virginia Satir |
Virginia Satir was a natural hypnotist who developed her own techniques, working in her own way with states of consciousness, using language, body organization, anchoring, weaving (fractionation) and most importantly, herself. The exquisite use of herself as a monitor, as an instrument, is what made her a great artist. In other words, she used her ability to go into trance – to be with herself, with the client, and above all, to be with the relationship space between them. Here is what she often said: “I no longer say I know somebody. I can only say I am in the process of knowing somebody.” “Few training programs focus on the person of the therapist.” “Our biggest problem as human beings is not knowing that we don’t know.” “I have observed that as soon as a person confronts or challenges whatever he is afraid of, the fear vanishes.” “Living in a family provides all kinds of seeing and hearing experiences. Some of these bring joy to the heart, some pain, and perhaps some bring a feeling of shame. Whatever feelings are aroused, if family members cannot recognize them and comment on them, the feelings can go underground and gnaw away at the roots of the family well-being.” |
| “Rossi has pointed out that Erickson often evoked hypnosis for short periods of time, then brought the subject to a conscious level, then back into trance again.
This refractionation is a deepening technique. Parsons, referring to this process in Satir’s work, calls it “weaving.” Satir constantly shifts the focus of attention from external to internal to external to internal, alternately eliciting experience on conscious and unconscious levels and by this process integrates multi-level experience. We carry within us from earliest childhood unconscious myths and messages communicated to us from our parents who received them from their parents. Children spend a lot of time in trance; parents were children once; parents are hypnotizees and hypnotists. The family is a hypnotic unit in which the family metaphor is trance-mitted from one generation to another. The Family Reconstruction utilizes work with the unconscious to enable people to free themselves from unconscious dysfunctional learnings and patterns that were absorbed from the family of origin. In altered states people can experience the family history and family patterns in new ways, can reconnect with the inner child and then discover the rich human resources that lie within their own roots. The Family Reconstruction Group is a safe and loving context in which this work can take place. The videotaped segments demonstrated the “weaving” process – how people put each other in and out of trance and how this awareness can be used therapeutically. |
| From “Hypnosis and the Family Trance: A Look at Satir’s Family Reconstruction Process” by Jane A. Parsons-Fein, Nyseph Newsletter, February 1988. |