Book Review
More Common Therapy
The experiential psychotherapy of Jeffrey K. Zeig, Ph.D
by Staffin, Robert
American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis
2022. VOL. 64, No. 4, 383
In this book, Robert Staffin, Psy. D., provide a rich and detailed account of Jeffrey Zeig’s approach to experiential psychotherapy. Among many other accomplishments Jeffrey K. Zeig, Ph.D., is the founder and director of the Milton Erickson Foundation. This book is based on Staffin’s 17 years of experience attending Zeig’s master classes. Staffin describes Zeig as, “… likely Dr. Erickson’s most ardent and prolific protégée.” (p.1)
In the introduction he describes his meticulous and evolving note-taking process over the years. His observations of the transformative moments, detailed transcriptions and physical descriptions, and analysis of the larger arc of the sessions is apparent in this work. If you missed class, Robert would be the person from whom you would want to get your notes.
Fortunately, this book is more than a collection of notes. It is similar to a well constructed thematic analysis of a very long transcript. In what must have been a daunting task, Staffin has organized his recorded observations into themes and sub-themes that showcase elements of Zeig’s approach and how they are embodied. Each section describes a little of the session context, often larger theoretical contacts, illustrated with clinical examples and commentary that relates to both the client-student experience and the therapist perspective. The four “Compass Points” that Staffin, identifies are: Communication, Utilization, Interpersonal, and Strategy. Each of these compass points is comprised of a number of short sections (e.g., Allusions, Utilization of Self, Stepping off the Pedestal, Facilitation of Trance, etc.). While the sections are generally one-to-five pages long, they are dense with information of different types. For me, studying them slowly, allowing the descriptions of the clinical examples to manifest in my mind, and then circling back to the theoretical constructs they were intended to illustrate was a fruitful approach to digesting this work.
I was invited to review Staffin’s book as a clinical psychologist who does not have a background in Zeig’s work. However, I am familiar with that desire to capture and hold that ineffable magic wrought by a master therapist. Dr. Staffin’s book, his first, is clearly a tremendous labor of love for and devotion to Zeig’s magic, the effort of which, speaks as much to the inspirational power of its object as a final text does. I can imagine that students of Zeig will find this book to be an observant, extensive, and valuable collage of Zeig’s craft, a book they can return to again and again for inspiration and insight. They will likely find it to be more quickly resonant than those unfamiliar with this approach. This is not an introductory text intended for students new to experiential therapy, and/or to the ideas of Milton Erickson. However, in the right hands, it would be an excellent source, for even the uninitiated will find something of value in Staffin’s book. He invites us to broaden our concepts of how we communicate and relate; what can be used as a valuable source of therapeutic fodder; and the primacy of multimodal experience, intuition, and play in therapeutic transformation.
Bonnie L. Settlage
Saybrook University, Pasadena, CA, USA
bsettlage@saybrook.edu
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