Virginia Satir: The Patterns of Her Magic - Softcover

Steve Andreas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0911226389 ISBN 13: 9780911226386

Publisher: Real People Press, 2019

Synopsis

This book provides a detailed analysis of how family therapy pioneer Virginia Satir -- one of the greatest therapists of our time -- helped people solve problems in relationships.

The first section of the book describes 16 key themes in Satir's work--the techniques and ideas she used to move people from their current situations to their desired outcomes. Satir skillfully reframed perceptions and attitudes, and installed useful presuppositions about positive intentions, alternative choices and learnings. She did this using physical contact, exaggeration, and humor. She directly challenged limiting beliefs and overgeneralizations, and used a wide range of hypnotic language patterns to help clients see events in new ways.

The second section is a richly-annotated verbatim transcript of a 73-minute videotaped session with Linda, a woman who started out with great resentment toward her mother, but who ended with a deep appreciation and loving understanding of her mother's behavior and attitudes.

A follow-up interview with Linda, conducted three years later, shows the permanent impact of the changes Satir had achieved with her. Steve Andreas' insightful commentary reveals the subtlety, precision, and wisdom of Satir's methods, both verbal and nonverbal. Therapists and other professionals who seek positive change in their clients can learn a lot from his book.

About this title

About the Author

Steve Andreas, and his wife Connirae, are internationally known trainers and researchers in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Together they founded NLP Comprehensive, through which they conducted training seminars and Certification Programs for many years. Today they continue their work through Andreas NLP (AndreasNLP.com). The Andreases have written nine other books about NLP: Heart of the Mind: Engaging Your Inner Power to Change With NLP (1989), Change Your Mind-and Keep the Change (1987), Transforming Your Self: Becoming who you want to be (2002), Six Blind Elephants: Understanding Ourselves and Each Other, Vols I & II (2006), Transforming Negative Self-Talk (2012), More Transforming Negative Self-Talk (2014), Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within (1994), and Coming to Wholeness: How to Awaken and Live with Ease (2018). They have written many training manuals which are drawn upon by trainers world-wide. Their early contributions included editing four books by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the co-developers of NLP: Frogs into Princes (1979), TRANCEformations (1981), Reframing (1981), and Using Your Brain-for a CHANGE (1985). Steve Andreas-under his former name, John O. Stevens-also wrote Awareness: exploring, experimenting, experiencing, based on his work with Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy. He edited Fritz Perls' Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, Perls' autobiography, In and Out the Garbage Pail, and Carl Rogers' book, Person to Person, coauthored by his mother, Barry Stevens. The Andreases have focused on developing new patterns of intervention for personal change that deal with common problems and challenges, including specific processes for resolving and healing grief, shame, guilt, anger, resentment, and being criticized. More Information at AndreasNLP.com

From the Back Cover

(From the Forward by Richard Bandler) In the transcript that Steve Andreas has analyzed here, he has taken to heart not only Virginia's caring attitude toward people, but the specific ways in which she achieves the outcome she seeks. The most powerful thing you can learn from this transcript is that Virginia never wavers from what she sets out to do. And what she sets out to do is what the client asks her to do. She tries everything she can, and everything she does relates directly to the client's desired state.

The terminology and the way in which Steve studies Virginia are perhaps different from how most people would, and perhaps similar to the way in which I would approach a study of her. But I think what this book offers the sincere student of Virginia Satir is more than just an attitude. It offers a profound example of how tenacious, persistent, and resourceful Virginia was, and at the same time, how precise and methodical. If Virginia was one of the people you ever envied in your life, or would ever want to emulate, rather than emulating her tonality, style, and jargon, or the kinds of things she said, I think it is time we got serious enough to emulate her skill. And that requires that we sit down and break it into pieces, and find out what this genius was doing, so that we can do the same kind of work with the same kind of tenacity and heart.

Steve, I think you have done a beautiful job. For those of you about to read this book, read on and learn. The wisdom of Virginia Satir will be worthy of study for centuries to come. I think this book stands as a real tribute to what she did and what she cared about. And although this is different from her own teaching style, as Virginia said, "We are all slow learners, but we are all educable."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I would like all of us to live as fully as we can. The only time I really feel awful is when people have not lived a life that expressed themselves. They lived with all their "shoulds" and "oughts" and their blaming and placating and all the rest of it, and I think, "How sad."

I once was with somebody I liked very much--an older person, when I was considerably younger than I am now. That person said, "Spend at least fifteen minutes a day weaving dreams. And if you weave a hundred, at least two of them will have a life." So continue with a dream and don't worry whether it can happen or not; weave it first. Many people have killed their dreams by figuring out whether they could do them or not before they dream them. So, if you're a first-rate dreamer, dream it out--several of them--and then see what realities can come to make them happen, instead of saying, "Oh, my God. With this reality, what can I dream?"

I proceed from the theory that my therapeutic job is to expand, redirect, and reshape individuals' ways of coping with each other and themselves, so they can solve their own problems in more healthy and relevant ways. Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem. Coping is the outcome of self-worth, rules of the family systems, and links to the outside world.

Human contact is not about words. Human contact is about eye connection, about voice, about skin, about breathing. Words are something you can read in a book, you can see on a billboard, and they can be totally differentiated from human beings. Words help when people are congruent.

And I suppose that before I leave this world, one thing that I would wish for all the world to know, is that human contact is made by the connection of skin, eyes, and voice tone. These are the things that taught us before we had words. How our parents touched us, how they looked at us, what their voices sounded like, were all recorded in us.

Edition details

• Publisher: Real People Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0911226389
• ISBN 13: 9780911226386
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196