Paradox and Spontaneity with Schizophrenic Communication

Many people will understand my former phobia of bouncy castles. One time as a child, my parents, grandparents and I were at a fair. I spotted a bouncy castle and wanted to go and have a bounce. My grandmother paid the man and up I got onto the castle. At that moment, my entire family gathered to watch me bounce and one of them called out, "You are enjoying that aren't you?"

And suddenly, it just wasn't the same any more. All the spontaneity had gone.

Paradoxical communication is outlined by Watzlawick et al in "Pragmatics." The astute reader would do well to study that book.

My favourite paradoxical theme is the "BE SPONTANEOUS" variety. Simply put, by demanding that someone is spontaneous-to-command it removes the ability to do so. Families often do this to each other. A variation on the theme is that of the dinner party where completely out of context and out of the mood, Beryl looks over to George and says, "Oh George, tell them that funny story about the parrot, oh Mildred, it is so funny!!" Where George at this point realises that his story will not fit into the context and is in no way feeling in the right mood for telling it.

This removal of spontaneity effect can be therapeutically utilised by the strategy commonly referred to as 'prescribing the symptom'. One lady came to see me for help with a lifelong phobia of vomiting in public, a surprisingly common phobia. Her entire life was constructed around this phobia so well that she had no memory of ever having actually vomited and would avoid all social engagements where she might have to eat or drink. This was particularly impressive to me because she was a senior research doctor, a profession that revolves around social meetings and gatherings.

Having secured trance, just to see what would happen, I gave her the suggestion that she would later go to a restaurant (something she described as her worst nightmare) and she was to stay there until she deliberately vomited onto the menu.

She never actually made herself vomit in the restaurant, of course - she found to her surprise that she just couldn't do it, even if she tried.

In absence of any other therapeutic work, this phobia simply vanished.

I have found this approach to have good effect on free-floating anxiety, blushing, irritable bowel syndrome and panic attacks. The insistence that the client rehearse his symptom over and over (until it gets boring?) has the effect of removing the symptom's apparent spontaneity. This is a bit archaic of course but just sometimes is all that is necessary. I prefer to see these clients again to install some generative changes as well, just to be sure.

I anchor a different experience into the symptom. For example, recently I worked with a lady who had a phobia of receiving any sort of medical treatment. Interestingly of course, this set up the paradox that she was also phobic of getting help for her phobia, so, like the agoraphobics who book appointments, I didn't actually expect her to turn up for her appointment.

This kind of reminded me of Bandler's riddle of how do you cure a phobic who has a phobia of making pictures of himself. Check carefully: just because the client claims that he has a phobia, doesn't actually mean that he actually has a phobia. Far too many people go right ahead and do the double dissociation 'cure' on every problem that appears to behave like a phobia, without even a basic understanding of the process itself.