Rememberance Sunday and Therapy
Rememberance Sunday is a somber affair where we remember the fallen in war. It began, of course, as a way to remember those who fell in the Great War or as it was known then the War to End All Wars. Well that title sadly was short lived. Since the First World War there have been countless wars and military actions which have left millions dead on all sides.
In my lecture on the history of hypnosis I will mention that it was the First World War brought hypnosis back from the wilderness that Freud placed it in. This was as an anaesthetic as well as the treatment of choice for shell shock or as we would call it today PTSD. I am minded that the “War to end all wars” is quite a good therapeutic analogy. So many clients come to therapy believing that the issue they bring will be the last one they will face, only to discover that the unconscious has a limitless well of things a person may need to work on in order to grow. I would be nice, however, to get to a stage where therapy did genuinely represent the “treatment to end all treatments”
In any event, let us all today give a thought and thanks to those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we may live the lives we have today in freedom and without tyranny.
