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Provocative Therapy

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Provocative Therapy was developed in a psychiatric ward as Frank Farrelly, dissatisfied with his effectiveness as a therapist, began to explore new procedures for promoting significant, resilient change in chronic and recalcitrant patients. He now demonstrates the method in seminars and in this book for ordinary neurotics, like us.

Provocative therapy is a wild form of confrontational therapy that cuts to the quick of a problem, throws it up in the air, bathes it in outrageous humor and opens up the possibilities of change. It works because Frank Farrelly has a deep understanding of the human condition and he knows how to make people laugh at themselves.

This book has been called "the funniest book ever written in the clinical field" by students and professionals alike. Many of them have also described it as "the clearest book ever written about psychotherapy."

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Frank Farrelly is the man. Like all masters of art he reflects life as it is and couses a change, this time in the client. This is a book about communication, not beeing codependent and not feeling pity for a person. The book gives mutch laughter as it illustrates peoplas negative perceptions about them selves.

This is a book mostly for therapists, but it is a great start for anyone who has decided to stop destroying there own lifes.

The book is short but wery insightful.

(Sorry about the English!=)

This is an excellent book, and clearly a major influence on the two creators of NLP. Frank's style of working and approaches are quite unique and his use of humour to provoake solutions in clients is unique. I notice at [...] he confirms that he is still running workshops at the age of 75 and his mind is as sharp as when he wrote this classic!

Some people want to be spoonfed a nice formula when it comes to this subject.

The rest of us can actually learn from the experiences and story of another, and find ways in which this can help in our own lives when helping others.

Frank's book is one you want to read several times. There is no pretence that it will help a beginner become a therapist. Instead, an experienced flexible therapist, counsellor or coach can easily absorb the points of this book whilst enjoying a good read. This in turn can give yet more choices and ways of responding to a client, emphasizing honest response in particular.

There isn't enough humor in the world when it comes to helping people with issues. Thats not proven, just a feeling I get when I speak to various people at times. Humor can be incredibly healing. Honesty and humor could well be the fastest way to be allowed deep into the trust of the people you wish to help.

If I needed help, I wouldn't let anyone in to help me change things that are important to me unless I trusted them. Trust doesn't come from any formula alone. It comes from my knowing that the other is honest, empathic and cares enough to be totally straight in their response. This straightness is also them allowing themselves to be open to my criticism, my negative reaction to their honesty. By revealing themself to me in this way, as a response to my issues, I know that I may not like what they say...and I can trust what they say. I will then listen and trust.

This is some of what Frank is showing through his story, his experience of developing Provocative Therapy. He shows that he realised that being a therapist also answered deep needs in himself, that he didn't have to be a perfect "super therapist" with all issues solved, instead his very needs and issues serve as a form of bridge, a way to understand. A way to know that all trust, rapport and therapy work is actually a two way street.

This is why detached, emotionless or prepackaged "warm empathy" styles of therapy don't have huge success rates. Real therapy only works with Real people. Honesty, empathy, experience and trust.

Read this not because you get a potted 6 step plan or 12 step approach or canned theories to be applied. Read this to gain a deeper understanding of what it really takes to allow someone to realise how they can change themselves in the way that is beest for them.

Read this to learn how to trust yourself and your instincts.

This is a book that may make sense of all the theories and approaches you may have studied in the past, and perhaps not quite used brilliantly. This takes nothing away from any method that works, it can only add and enhance it.

Daring, funny, innovative, yet "simple but exquisitely complicated". Psychology will never be the same after Frank Farrelly. 5 things to do before dying: see Frank farrelly in action.

Frank Farrelly's novel is at best an interesting story about his particular brand of therapy. Using a mixture of prose and directly transcribed therapy sessions, he gives example after example attempting to support his theory of humorous provocation in treating patients who for the most part seem to have various self-esteem/self-image issues that affect their daily lives. While at parts entertaining in its humor and insightful in what may be considered a theory of being a jerk to patients (but doing it humorously), it is at best a bland read with only one real message within its eight chapters: if you humorously agree with the way someone sees themselves they will begin to defend themselves and eventually change.

The novel begins with Farrelly's formation of the theory. Its introduction starts from his very first clinical patient where, unsurprisingly, he learned that he needed more practice in order to reach the patients on a more personal level. He develops this idea through various cases that have come his way, each bringing a new message to him and planting the seeds that slowly blossomed into what he now calls "Provocative Therapy." While some of the cases do represent a clear lesson that he learned, much of his epiphanies seem to come at moments when his frustration at patients outweigh his training as a psychiatrist. In these moments he tells the patient exactly what he thinks, at times being humorous and at other times seemingly confrontational, and the responses he receives encourage him to pursue this line of action. These responses range from patients suddenly (the length of treatment is unclear in many of the examples) becoming self-aware to a complete reversal of actions. Farrelly comes to realize that portraying his patients as caricatures emphasizing the negative traits they most pity about themselves sometimes leads to patients to defend themselves. This provocation leads to a therapeutic effect: thus "Provocative Therapy."

While the first chapter in the book is alone enough to define provocative therapy, Farrelly expands on the subject by creating an almost manual broken into seven chapters on how this technique should be applied. He first begins this "manual" by explaining the numerous assumptions he made in creating his technique. While described in great detail, they sum to two very simple core hypotheses, the first being that "if provoked... the client will tend to move in the opposite direction from the therapist's definition of the client as a person" and the second being "if urged to continue his self-defeating, deviant behaviors, the client will tend to engage in... behaviors which more closely approximate the societal norm" (Farrelly 52). This seems to make the clients akin to adolescent teens rebelling against parental units simply for the sake of rebelling with the therapist now taking the role of a stern parent.

He continues his discussion with everything from what he sees as the role of a provocative therapist (to be a mirror for the client to see himself in a true light and to challenge the client to continue his or her ways in an effort to use reverse psychology) to what the roles of humor are in psychotherapy. He describes humor as the conduit with which a therapist can simultaneously disarm the patient and show the patient the therapist's true opinion of the patient thereby challenging him or her to do better. While other reasons are given about why humor is appropriate and useful in therapy, the most interesting reason given is that it makes therapy fun for the therapist. Farrelly says that humor can keep the therapist "sensitive to the client, in touch with himself, and make therapy endurable and even enjoyable for him" making it seem that therapists are naturally bored and out of tune when conducting interviews and therapy sessions (Farrelly 116). This, in truth, is not the true meaning of this statement, but coupled with the overall message of provocative therapy it brings the image of therapists being jerky frat boys making fun of people with problems, even if the technique does seem to bring positive results in certain patients.

The most informative passages in the novel outline the stages of provocative therapy. This is not so much a rigid set of steps that every therapist must use in order to get the desired results but instead "recurring themes [that] have gradually emerged" into what he describes as the "`stages of process' in provocative therapy" (Farrelly 131). Farrelly found that successful therapy sessions followed a general progression which he could incorporate into a general guideline process. The first stage is that the therapist will get the patient off balance by provoking the patient. This leaves the patient uncertain bypassing many of the defenses that the patient has set around himself. After the initial shock of the therapist in many ways poking fun at the client by agreeing with the doom and gloom self-image the client has created, the patient slowly realizes that he must change in some way. In successful patients, this stage would be the point where there would be a "diminishing if not total extinction of psychotic defenses" making the patient ready for changes to their lives (Farrelly 135). Stage three involves movement on the client's part into creating a new self-image by disagreeing with the therapist's negative view of the client. This stage builds the patient's self-confidence and helps transition into stage four which involves integrating the newly found self-image into everyday life.

In the end, there seems to be a few pieces missing behind the theory of provocative therapy as far as the novel itself is concerned. All the transcribed therapy sessions seem to be of patients under ideal circumstances where their ability to accept the humorous approach was intact, but there is no mention of patients who are non-ideal in their cases. Patients, for example, who did not respond to this brand of therapy because of their inability to realize the reverse psychology behind the therapy sessions are absent in the novel which casts doubt upon the entire thought. While the case for the use of humor is clear and convincing, there is a lack of true insight that would warrant the use of 157 pages in order to come to the point. Instead reading the first and last page of every chapter would be more than adequate to become as familiar with the technique as reading most of the novel would be. Perhaps it is a novel for readers more in tune with the various forms of therapy, but for those outside the field it is an average read with not enough humor to compensate for its faults.

You have to be associated with the psychology field - as a patient/client or professional - to think this is funny or even worthwhile reading about. The patient/therapist dialogues printed out at length in this book, have little information or entertaining value for "normal" people. The whole message of it is: being able to laugh about yourself is a sign of strength, behaving outrageous toward your fellow man is unacceptable - even when you're "nuts"! And self-pity is not to be taken serious. - Big deal!