Monographs – Center for Counter-Conditioning Therapy

C-CTherapy®, The Canadian Psychotherapy, is practiced exclusively at the Center For Counter-Conditioning Therapy®.

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NOTE: This article is meant for the practicing
psychotherapist who wishes to apply the C-CTherapy® format. Understanding
its contents, however, will not supply the mode of application. Instruction
at the Center is the only means available to practise in C- CTherapy®.

ABSTRACT

Disease-model, cognitive theory is not employed,
or indeed, is it related to a non- counselling C-CTherapy® treatment
design; nor are any of the therapies based upon an “understanding why”
— study, diagnosis, treatment — approach. As a cross-cultural psychotherapy,
C-CTherapy® engages aberrant human behaviour. The treatment goal of
this non-counselling format is to provide the patient with his own way
of neutralizing his production of negative emotional material. This material
originates from the non-volitional
division of the patient’s functioning mentality. It is from this division
of functioning mentality, with its illogical thought material, that mental/emotional
turmoil arises.

INTRODUCTION

The C-CTherapy® approach to functioning mentality
addresses how a patient behaves, not theories on why he is behaving in
this way. It diverges radically from cognitive, counselling therapies for
they rely upon medical-psychological hypotheses. Relying upon these hypotheses
— rather than relying upon each patient’s actual mentation as does C-CTherapy®
— guides the counselling therapist’s diagnosis and treatment. Consequently,
the counselling therapist acts as the “expert” on a patient’s mental turmoil
when in fact he is merely an expert on theories.

Counselling therapies are specific to a patient
population, Western and European, and bound to those particular socio-economic
traditions. In contrast, the patient-population open to the C-CTherapy®
non-counselling format is the universe of human mental functioning. As
a direct result of its unique treatment design, the C-CTherapy® cross-
cultural methodology is available to any human being needing relief from
mental upset.

The methodology presented here has been developed
and perfected in the author’s field of aberrant human behaviour since 1967.
The conclusions result from the universe of practice in the mental health
field.

ROLE OF THE C-CTHERAPY® CLINICIAN

The C-CTherapy® clinician’s reason for intervening
in the patient’s mental turmoil is not to correct the patient’s immoral
behaviour — a counselling objective — instead, the therapist’s purpose
is to move the patient, as expeditiously as possible, from mental pain
to less mental pain.

During the opening session, the C-CTherapy®
clinician asks the patient: “What do you want to talk about?” The patient’s
answer gives the therapist enough material to begin the treatment project.
From the patient’s answer, the clinician introduces the treatment goal,
tying it to the patient’s current mental upset. One patient, for instance,
said: “My boyfriend gets mad at me and I don’t know what to do.” For this
patient, the issue is: “Human beings don’t like other humans being mad
at them”. That sentiment is universal, for we all want people to like us.
In this first session, the therapist begins identifying how the patient’s
thinking creates her mental upset. The therapist views the patient’s problem
as an example of how the patient’s emotional/illogical pattern operates.

For instance, this patient increases her anxiety
level by trying to convince someone (the boy-friend) not to be mad at her.
“If my boyfriend gets mad at me, that means he doesn’t like me. I try to
convince him not to be mad at me, but he doesn’t listen.” When her boyfriend
gets annoyed, she interprets his negative emotion as meaning that he is
leaving the relationship even though she has no real information to support
her suspicion. It is this brand of thinking which produces her anxiety
and to which the therapist must introduce her. To that end during another
session, the therapist points out an illogical demand.

Therapist: What is that stupid dream?

Patient: That he is tall, dark and handsome and
never gets mad and always comforts me.

Therapist: So he’s not measuring up to your illogical
demand.

Patient: But he can’t. He can’t be six feet tall
because he’s five foot four inches and he loses his patience every once
in a while. So why can’t I just accept this real situation?

Although my patient realizes the absurdity of her
behaviour, she has invested her emotional energy in convincing her boy-friend
to change — a losing project. She is experiencing that illogical patterns
are mentally powerful and drive her behaviour.

The beginning of this process is the patient’s
learning to detect “what your mental activity is doing”. Here is an example:

Therapist: That’s a good example of the thought-voices
that generate emotional behaviour creating your anxiety.

The patient discovers that thought-voices are a feature
of her illogical, non-volitional division. After all, one cannot NOT think!
My patient’s thought-voices uniquely fit her behaviour pattern because
every mental pattern is a unique product of that individual. The C-CTherapy®
clinician emphasizes to the patient the constant need to monitor her thought-voices.
In this way, the team works together — the coach highlights the character
and content of her mental pattern.

Because illogical, non-volitional patterns are
habit-based activity, it is difficult for the patient to detect their operation.
Detection, however, is precisely what the therapist is emphasizing. My
patient notices the rapidity of her mental action this way: “My emotional
pattern is running me before I know what I’m doing”. That emotional action
is reactive and instantaneous and, precisely, what the therapist is acquainting
her with.

The thought-voice activity is habit-based. It
is like a spinning bicycle wheel, the mental spokes invisible until the
wheel slows down. At this point the blurring spokes become apparent. Same
thing with mental action, it must be slowed down. This is the therapist’s
job otherwise the mental action poses a detection problem for the patient.
Unless one can detect one’s mental action, one remains at the mercy of
one’s own illogical pattern. The therapist uses the sessions to advance
the patient’s detection ability.

Therapist Directs the Session

In the C-CTherapy® design, the role of the
clinician changes from that of counselling EXPERT on the patient to that
of COACH . A coach outlines the learning exercises the patient will practise
to attain his new skill of emotional self-management. The duties of coach
diverge from those of a philosopher/counsellor imparting the “right way
to think and behave”. The duties of coach are the same as in any skill-acquisition
program. For instance, in learning how to drive a car — a skill-acquisition
task — the job is to practise braking, steering and parking, not philosophizing
upon the existence of cars or reading stories about chauffeurs and race
car drivers.

The therapist and patient combine their work into
a team effort, but the therapist-coach directs the effort. Attaining emotional
self-management dictates that the C-CTherapy® clinician be actively
involved in the whole of each session. There is no sitting back to listen
while the patient tells “stories”. Thus, the role of the C-CTherapy®
clinician is markedly different.

Another dramatic change occurs. While the therapist
is not the expert on the patient’s mentation, the therapist is the expert
on the building of an alternative procedure. Creation of an alternative
mental pathway enables the patient to counteract chronic emotional pain
production. An acquired skill, therefore, supplies the patient with the
ability needed to neutralize the illogical thought-voices of his operant
mentality. For, it is from this non-volitional mental division that the
patient’s emotional pain originates.

The therapist’s job, therefore, is to direct the
building of an alternative coping mechanism for the patient who must construct
that procedure from scratch. A building process is the only way the patient
can deal with the “logic” of his illogical non-volitional pattern. In
any process of building — a skill, a house, or whatever — one follows
a blueprint or a “building” plan.

The therapist outlines the building plan which
he and the patient will take to neutralize the patient’s state of turmoil.
A mental relief plan is introduced and the practitioner lays out the patient’s
role: the patient will tape-record his session and listen to his tape between
weekly sessions. Listening to his tape serves as the patient’s homework.
The therapist directs the patient as if to memorize his taped session,
for the taped session is the patient’s learning tool. All C-CTherapy®
clinicians follow this basic format.

For the patient, practising exercises assigned
by the therapist is mandatory. By doing what the coach tells you to do,
one eventually accumulates the elements which come together to form a skill.
An emotional self-management skill is not hypothetical or academic, it
is procedural. No disease-model treatment proceeds in this way, and thus,
cannot teach the patient a skill for long-term application.

PARTNERSHIP

The therapist holds and reads the blueprint and
instructs the patient in the building of the patient’s mental health skill.
In this way, the therapist and patient work as a team. The patient becomes
a PARTNER, and as such, is integral to the treatment process and its successful
outcome. The patient’s first duty is to practise detecting the activity
of his mental functioning. Neither he nor the clinician pay attention to
the patient’s emotions, for, emotion is the non-volitional product of the
patient’s mental functioning. The patient’s familiarity with the elements
of his mental functioning, rather than his “feelings” or personal philosophy,
is the team’s focus.

THE RATIONALE FOR THE PARTNERSHIP

In order to acquire a skill, one needs to be taught
by a teacher of that particular skill. The teacher’s job is to combine
the efforts of teacher and pupil into the learning process. Without this
teaching-learning structure, no skill-acquisition is possible. This is
the basis for the team effort.

In C-CTherapy®, the patient meets with the
therapist for one purpose — to build a mental coping skill that allows
the patient to move himself from mental self- victimization towards tranquility.
Only the patient is capable of neutralizing the negative production of
his non-volitional pattern.

Identifying the Negative Thought-Voices Which
Pop into One’s Head

The patient, ignorant of the origin of his mental
pain, lacked the means of coping with it. To cope with his mentally produced
turmoil, the patient must learn how to neutralize his negative thought-voices.

The contents of the patient’s non-volitional pattern
are that which the C-CTherapy® clinician calls `thought-voices‘. These
thought-voices constitute the patient’s preoccupation. By practising at
detecting the thoughts `popping into’ his head, the patient gains familiarity
with the characteristics of these thought-voices. By gaining familiarity,
the patient discovers the disruptive properties of his non-volitional pattern
and gradually acquires the ability to intercede.

Learning to detect thought-voices is the first
step which, eventually, will lead to the patient’s ability to sabotage
his mental self-victimization. Neutralizing the influence of the illogical
mentation is the treatment objective. After all, attack is the best defense
— as the expression goes.

THE THERAPIST’S ROLE IS TO TACKLE THE NON-VOLITIONAL
SYSTEM.

What is the Non-Volitional System?

The non-volitional system is a division of FUNCTIONING
MENTALITY, the one in which illogical and emotional material resides and
where crazy thoughts originate. Characteristically, non-volitional activity
is involuntary, illogical and emotionally reactive.

C-CTherapy® is the only psychotherapy which,
for treatment reasons, differentiates between volitional and non-volitional
sources of mentation. The interplay between these two divisions of the
operant mind constitute functioning mentality. The volitional division
operates from a mental stance of logic and reason. The non-volitional division,
on the other hand, is emotional in function and illogical in content. Thus,
the thought-voices configuring this division assume an obsessive manner.

How Do You Acquire a Non-Volitional Division of
Functioning Mentality? (For a detailed discussion follow this direct link
to the “Child Development” section or visit
the Center’s Website: http://www.c-ctherapy.org)

When you were little, you inadvertently copied
the adults around you. Today, those copied ingredients form your own non-volitional
pattern. They stem from the emotional and attitudinal contents displayed
by the adults surrounding you as a developing child. For example, the therapist
explains that the child’s developing mentality absorbs this parental material
during mental maturation. Simultaneously, the therapist calls on the patient’s
information bank to identify the copied items.

Here is an example:

Patient: I don’t know.

Therapist: Who talked like that?

Patient: It sounds like my Mom saying, `Don’t
get so excited, life isn’t like that’. Therapist: So it was Mom’s kind
of talk?

Patient: Yah. She said, `Don’t have such a good
time because then you won’t have such a bad time’.

Therapist: There it is, the style and content
of the thought-voice that you inadvertently copied when you were little.

Later in the session, the patient recalled more of
how her mother behaved. That the patient’s emotional system was absorbed
by her early emotional environment becomes vivid to her.

Therapist: Who got frantic when you were little?

Patient: Mother used to rush and hurry us around.

Therapist: What kinds of things did she do?

Patient: I remember that she would get on our
case about doing things quickly. Also, I remember her getting out of bed
and cleaning things in the middle of the night.

Therapist: Great! Now you’ve got a handle on where
`busy getting frantic’ originated. You see, it’s copied.

WHAT HAPPENS IF THE NON-VOLITIONAL DIVISION
IS NOT TACKLED?

If the therapist’s methodology does NOT tackle
the non-volitional pattern where emotional difficulties reside, an unsatisfactory
outcome is inevitable. It is inevitable because the origin of upset —
the non-volitional pattern — is left intact. For example, all therapists
have encountered the patient who begins to feel good and then mysteriously
becomes depressed again. The patient returns to his depressive state again
because the non-volitional pattern holds the emotional power. Thus, it
always has the ability to resurrect its old function and return the patient
to his former state of gloom and doom. When a depressive feels good, for
instance, thought-voices “pop in” with commentary such as: “Don’t count
on it! Feeling good never lasts.” Since feeling BAD is the patient’s daily
experience, the new sense of feeling good is out of synch with the patient’s
thought-voices. If the depressive, therefore, has no way of counteracting
his chronic mental activity, he is stuck, mentally, in “Woe is me”.

Although it is illogical to operate from feeling
good is BAD, all depressives operate from this mental position. Again,
our patient illustrates:

Therapist: Confusing, isn’t it?

Patient: Here I am better off than when I was
married yet I’m envious of my Ex and his lady friend.

Therapist: Does that sound logical?

Patient: That sounds ridiculous!

Therapist: Sounds like you can’t stand feeling
good.

Patient: It’s like when I’ve cooked a delicious
dinner and all my guests compliment me, but the voice inside my head says,
`You could’ve done better’.

Therapist: And perhaps there is another voice
which says you’re not supposed to enjoy the compliments?

Patient: Yah, I hear that voice too. Sometimes
when I’m feeling good and everything is going smoothly, I hear a doubting
voice and I get afraid.

Therapist: That’s the old business of `feeling
good is bad’. Can you hear the thought-voice messing up your good feeling?

Patient: Yah.

Therapist: That’s the habit. The habit is to get
scared when you don’t hear the usual thought-voice response.

If the therapist doesn’t tackle this non-volitionally
derived commentary — in this case `feeling good is bad’ — the patient
will be governed by these negative sentiments, and be so governed, for
the remainder of her life.

NATURE OF THE THERAPIST-PATIENT INTERACTION

The skill-acquisition project, changes the role
of the therapist; the C-CTherapy® clinician assumes the role of a “traffic
director” or coach. The coach facilitates the patient’s task of steering
himself through his mental “minefield”. The clinician keeps the patient’s
effort focused on the treatment goal of emotional self-management. This
is the clinician’s mandate and its success demands the therapist’s active
involvement.

The patient’s commentary provides the C-CTherapy®
clinician with an insight into those victimizing thought-voices operating
in the patient’s functioning mentality. Next, the therapist highlights
those thought-voices for the patient. Here’s the question the therapist
asks:

Patient: “I keep hearing thoughts like `be nice’
and thoughts like I `ought to do what they wish’.” Therapist: “That’s good,
that’s what we call thought-voices.”

The therapist continues to listen for variations
on the theme presented by his patient. Some common ones are: “get rid of
bad things” or “you must behave right” or “this is what you must think”.
These parental declarations originate from early mental development because
they are basic to parent-child interaction and are absorbed by the patient
from the family setting. For instance, here is how the C-CTherapy®
clinician interacts with the patient on the issue of early mental development.

Therapist: Who talked like that when you were
a kid?

Patient: Both my parents. They said; `think before
you speak’. `If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all’.

Therapist: This tells you who you inadvertently
copied.

Patient: Yeah…are these thoughts normal?

Therapist: Yes, you could not have done differently.
When you were little — when you were mentally developing — you absorbed
this commentary. Now, as an adult, it is in your non-volitional pattern.
You could not have avoided absorbing these kinds of attitudinal items.
These inadvertently copied items produce the foundation for your original
pattern of reacting. Our job now is to get a clear picture of who you copied
and how you put yourself together from the time you were little.

Patient: You mean it’s OK?

Therapist: Not only am I saying it’s OK, it is
humanly impossible to not have mental habits from early times.

Patient: Good habits, right?

Therapist: No! Mental habits don’t fit into good
or bad. C-CTherapy® assumes that habits are habits are habits. We focus
only on neutralizing the habits which victimize us.

The therapist draws the patient’s attention to the
words in the thought-voices and identifies their themes. Throughout one’s
life the themes remain the same, only the contents change.

Patient: “Yes, now the voice is saying that `I
shouldn’t think like that’.”

Therapist: “That’s good, become familiar with
that voice. You’ll hear it frequently because we just discovered that it
is one of your thought-voices.”

The challenge is for the patient to perform this
identification exercise outside the office and without the therapist’s
help. By consistently alerting himself to the repetitive mental rumination,
the patient eventually learns to handle this mental material in a new way.
He begins to appreciate that this mental material is simply habit-based
and only representative of past mental conditioning. In short, repetitive
mental rumination has no occult or mystical or pathological origin. By
its very nature, a mental preoccupation keeps the patient’s thought processes
moving in a repetitive and circular fashion. The patient, therefore, is
victimized by the constant barrage of repetitive mental ponderings, jam-packed
with negative subject material. The patient experiences that these thought-voices
result simply from the workings of the patient’s non-volitional pattern.
This recognition demystifies the patient’s mental turmoil and in itself
gives relief.

The Therapist-Coach Acts as a Mental Traffic Director

The C-CTherapy® clinician, by identifying
each of the patient’s mental items as they emerge, performs the role of
a “mental traffic director”. The therapist-coach assumes the posture of
neutrality, regarding the patient’s thought-voices as merely an example
of mental functioning. It is the therapist-coach’s mandate to have the
patient view thought-voices, also, as only mental functioning. The object
here is to get the patient to view the thought-voice habit in a neutral
fashion. While the therapist-coach identifies, the patient imitates him
so that, eventually, he becomes his own mental traffic director!

C-CTherapy® Treatment Does Not Apply to Groups

By practicing C-CTherapy® exercises supervised
by the clinician, the patient builds his own skill of emotional self-management.
The skill is customized for each person because each person’s reactive
system is unique. For, it is the uniqueness of one’s reaction system that
makes sisters different from sisters and brothers different from brothers.
It is this feature of uniqueness which makes it impossible to customize
a skill in a group setting. The skill is not transferable. For instance,
my tennis playing brother cannot transfer his tennis playing ability to
me without teaching me the game of tennis. A skill is not osmotically absorbed
from the group.

The Patient Discovers the Power of the Non-volitional
Pattern

The patient must discover for himself the weakness
of the volitional division compared with the power of the non-volitional
division. To do so, the C-CTherapy® clinician challenges the patient
during the session: Can you promise me you’ll never get mad again in your
life? The patient, of course, realizes that he cannot comply. It becomes
clear to him that no human being can satisfy the terms of that challenge.
In this stark fashion, the patient learns about his own mental capabilities.
He discovers that he cannot turn off, at will, the workings of his non-volitional
pattern. The patient faces the futility of telling himself: “Stop reacting!”
His participation in such experiments help him detect and activate real
information and provides a taste of how he will mentally apply himself
once he’s built a mental alternative.

Indeed, the patient learns what the Center’s research
has uncovered; the non- volitional division of mental functioning is the
source of illogical and aberrant behaviour. One’s volitional division of
functioning mentality — that is, logic and reason — does not produce
emotional upset.

The patient’s discovery that logic and reason
has no impact on the illogical emotional pattern is a revelation to him.
That there exists such an ability of shifting one’s mental stance so that
one can oppose negative thought-voices is another revelation. This discovery
precedes the patient’s ability to interrupt the obsessive demands of the
repetitive thought-voices. This procedure of shifting away from the thought-voices
inaugurates a countering routine with its accompanying methodology. It
is this process which creates a mental alternative to the negative items
in the patient’s non- volitional pattern.

A Sampling of What the Patient Brings to the Session

(1.) The counselling-voice

The counselling-voice is the thought-voice that
patients confuse with logical reasoning. The counselling-voice is the one
which tells us how to behave. It is the same voice the patient heard as
a child listening to parent instructions saying `Don’t take candy from
strangers’, `Don’t fight amongst yourselves’, and `Don’t burn yourself
on the hot- plate’. In short, these are the parental admonitions which
protect the growing child and ensure his or her survival. (The reader has
his or her own personal examples of these parental directives.)

The therapist orients the patient with regard
to the composition and style of the patient’s counselling-voice. The therapist
points out to the patient that the counselling- voice resembles reasonable
thinking in that it preoccupies the patient’s thoughts with “figuring out
the right way to behave”.

The patient brings to the skill-acquisition process
the mentally conditioned reflex of figuring out human behaviour — his
and others. By consistently identifying the counselling-voice, the patient
begins to associate it with a function. He gains familiarity with what
was, previously, an unknown automatic activity. For example:

Patient: I don’t understand.

Patient: My counselling voice wants you to explain
yourself so I can figure out whether or not I agree or disagree with you.

Therapist: Your counselling voice belongs to your
mental functioning. You will hear it throughout your life. It is a normal
activity — not right or wrong. Mental functioning is neutral. Since I
have more practice than you at detecting thought- voice activity, I will
alert you to them, so you can begin to detect them for yourself. Patient:
OK.

Therapist: Currently, you can’t detect your mental
functioning all by yourself because you are living the action in your head.
That’s why it is difficult to get a handle on the functioning which dictates
your behaviour. When you leave the office and go back into the community
you are immersed in your old pattern. That’s why we use our sessions to
practice detection.

Patient: Yes, my counseling voice tells me to
catch and remember what you’re saying.

Therapist: I agree that you’re listening very
hard for the formula of right behaving.

Patient: Yah. Give me a gold star.

(2.) External Solutions to Mental Turmoil

Another indicator of the thought-voice habit is
the push to solve one’s upset with an external solution. In the following
illustration, the external solution is the purchase of a house, but it
could easily be the purchase of a new car, a new boat, new clothes. The
Center calls this mental maneuver, buying things for the purpose of lifting
one’s mood, the BURMUDA SYNDROME. Finding a solution, externally, so the
myth goes, will permanently improve one’s mental state.

Patient: Yah! Buying a house will make me feel
better.

Therapist: Will this solution get rid of your
upset forever?

Patient: Well, it will make me feel like I’ve
got something that’s mine.

Therapist: We’ve got a myth working — that there
is a solution to your problems, all you have to do is locate that solution.

Patient: That doesn’t make sense.

Therapist: You are right, because it’s a fiction.

Patient: Here, I was looking for a quick-fix solution!

Therapist: Good! Now, you can hear the workings
of the Bermuda syndrome as if your new house will guarantee mental tranquility
forever.

(3.) Thought-Voices Produce Behaviour

Most patient’s don’t realize that their behaviour
comes from mental functioning. It is an important task in the therapist-patient
treatment process for the patient to learn how thought-voices connect with
behaviour. Here is an example of an angry patient who is out to teach her
boss a lesson.

Patient: Yah. It makes me feel less bullied by
them.

Therapist: Can you hear thought-voices motivating
you?

Patient: I don’t know, I guess I want to get back
at them. In fact I even uncovered a bad mistake my boss made.

Therapist: Ah hah. You caught him out! Could you
hear a voice commenting on your boss’ stupidity?

Patient: Yeah, the voice says my boss is an idiot.

Therapist: Good, you heard the thought-voice.

Patient: I got back at him, but my boss wasn’t
there so he doesn’t know that I made him pay for it. I slowed down and
didn’t do much work.

Therapist: You’ve just verbalized the voice telling
you to teach him a lesson. Patient: Yeah. So what?

Therapist: Now you know the mechanism that causes
you to give them “the finger.”

(4.) Repetition of Thought-Voices

Repetition of thought is a characteristic of mental
activity. The patient experiences how his mind repeats a menu of negative
thoughts. This phenomenon of conditioning is further illustrated here.

Patient: “You’re screwing-up again and they’re
going to find out”.

Therapist: This is how you make yourself miserable.

Patient: Yah. I hear that. I can feel the anger
inside.

Therapist: Thinking back, how long have you heard
this kind of thinking.

Patient: Now that you mention it, it seems that
I’ve thought that way as long as I can remember.

What the Patient Discovers: The Outcome of the Therapist-patient
Interaction.

The patient is working on several facets simultaneously.
As the patient begins to recognize that neither his reasoning nor logic
is capable of coping with his illogical non-volitional functioning, he
is also discovering the style and character of his reactive pattern. Next,
by practicing other exercises — taught by the C-CTherapy® clinician
at the Center — the patient gradually dilutes the power of the victimizing
thought-voices. Instead of routinely validating them, the patient now practices
interrupting his old habit each time it is activated. This ability marks
a significant change from his former obliviousness and inability to recognize
mental habit-based activities.

For instance:

Discovery (1.)

I had no idea how my
reactive system worked or that it runs my behaviour

“My mental busyness increases my emotional tension.
I get anxious when I’m preoccupied with safety and survival. I want to
guarantee that my relationship will last forever”.

Discovery (2.) I’m getting used to what
my head is doing.

“This detection exercise helps me to uncover my
mental mysteries and lets me operate differently.”

Discovery (3.) I ran around being manic
because I was depressed

“I realize how my depression made me feel very
high or very low.

Discovery (4.) I heard my thought-voice
say: you can only count on bad things.

“So, my good feelings get squashed by my conditioning
of `life is a disaster- zone’. I’m surprised that feeling good is possible
and that it’s OK.”

Discovery (5.) I discovered an old emotion
which I thought had gone away but is still around. ”

My sad, mourning activity still pops-up once in
a while. I don’t get so upset, but I still have the traumatic memory. At
least I am identifying the memory as a mental habit.”

Before C-CTherapy®, the patient behaved reflexively
in accordance with the demands of his thought-voices, unaware of their
presence and unaware of their influence. In the past, the absence of a
mental procedure left the patient with no alternative to turmoil. Therefore,
he had no means of operating differently. But now, the patient recognizes
immediately when his thought-voices are running him. At this stage, the
patient has created a foundation and can now acquire a dependable and consistent
coping mechanism.

SUMMARY.

(1.) C-CTherapy® is the first cross-cultural
psychotherapy in that its treatment design incorporates human behaviour
universals.

(2.) C-CTherapy® applies a unified non-cognitive,
non-counselling treatment design to the patient’s problem. The treatment
goal is that of teaching the patient a personal mental health “skill”.
The patient will employ this skill each time he is beset by non- volitionally
created mental turmoil.

(3.) Unlike counselling medical-model therapists,
the C-CTherapy® clinician does not assume the role of EXPERT on the
patient in respect to the workings of his functioning mentality.

(4.) In the C-CTherapy® treatment process,
the therapist accepts the patient’s verbalized commentary as factual. As
well, the patient is an equal PARTNER in the non-counselling treatment
process and so contributes equally. C-CTherapy®, is the first ever
psychotherapy of this kind.

(5.) In each session the therapist introduces
exercises which are tape-recorded by the patient for practise during the
week.

(6.) The impact of the exercises taught by the
C-CTherapy® practitioner accumulate to form a mental health skill which
corresponds with the goal of emotional self- management. Thus, the patient
acquires a dependable means of moving away from being chronically victimized
by his own emotional mentality.

(7.) C-CTherapy® is the only treatment format
to distinguish between behaviour produced by the VOLITIONAL division from
that produced by the NON-VOLITIONAL division. As a result, C-CTherapy®
directs the treatment effort at the division which has the operant capacity
to victimize the patient — the emotional, illogical NON- VOLITIONAL division.

SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION

Breggin, Peter, M.D., Toxic Psychiatry,
St. Martin’s Press, 1991

Friedberg,J. (1976). Shock Treatment is not
Good for Your Brain. San Francisco: Glide Press.

Kaminer, Wendy, I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional:
The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions, Addison-Wesley,
1992.

Beavin, Jackson, Watzlawick, Pragmatics of
Human Communication, W.W. Norton & Company, 1967.

Scull, Andrew, The Most Solitary of Afflictions:
Madness and Society in Britain 1700- 1900, Yale University, 1993.

C-CTherapy®, The Canadian Psychotherapy, is practiced exclusively at the Center For Counter-Conditioning Therapy®.