Transactional Analysis Journal 1980 CURE edition was preceded by a paper on a cure accomplished by “permission giving.“

In January 1980, a few months before the journal of Transactional Analysis published their April edition, focusing on Cure published:

Effective Permission-Giving and Representational Systems by William H. Thweatt

William H Thweatt reports a case of narcolepsy (sleeping sickness) cured by Transactional Analysis. There is no external link to the specific case in the paper nor in any of the references listed. The case is presented as a story, an anecdote. This might lead us to dismiss the claim.

However, we must be aware that EVERY case of cured is a story, an anecdote. Cases are real, not statistical. We cannot judge an individual case using statistics. Every case must be justified on its own merits.

The paper discusses:

The Illness:

“A case of Narcolepsy {a symptom where the patient falls asleep at apparently random times} was treated successfully {cured} with “negative permission” which liberated the client of his symptoms.”

· “This paper reports on a case that was the result of an early traumatic provocation and which was cured with “negative permission”

Note: This is a hypothetical past cause which cannot be proven. All cases, once they move into the past, become hypothetical. We cannot go back in time.

The Cause

The cause, as reported in the paper, was: “It was Christmas eve. Morph, about 2½ years old, had been put to bed. He was too excited to sleep and kept calling to his parents to let him come downstairs. While Morph was standing in his bed holding on to the bars and crying to be let out his dad opened the door. He walked over to Morph, threw a glass of water in his face (he had read Dr. Shock), and shouted, “GO ТO SLEEP!” Morph fell backward and immediately went to sleep.”

The client reported: “just before the onset of an attack he distinctly heard his father’s voice shouting, “GO TO SLEEP!” And as a good boy, he did!”

The Cure

The cure was achieved by negative-permission, by negating the present illness, by giving the patient negative permission, that is, permission to not obey the past command.

“In the fourth session the therapist had Morph cathect that early scene using fantasy. At the point that his father commanded, “GO TO SLEEP!” the therapist intervened with a firm loud voice saying, “NO, MORPH, STAY AWAKE!” He anchored the new order by simultaneously touching Morph’s knee to give the new order through two representational channels.”

and the result? “Morph reported that he had no more attacks and was “cured.” He even had stopped his medication with his physician’s knowledge.”

Theory of Cure

The treatment was “negative permission” a change to the mind, to one of the beliefs of the patient.

The illness in this case was an elementary illness, having a single cause – and thus a single cure.

This cure was a one-time change, a transformation of a mind attribute, although it may have taken more than one session to determine the cause and design the cure. The result was an attribute cure. Once cured, the patient did not require any more treatment actions.

The paper reported, in the language of transactional analysis, that “He had dramatically changed one troublesome ego state.” In the theory of cure, the practitioner successfully changed one of the beliefs of the patient, one attribute of the mind, producing a cured state.

The cure reported in this paper clearly matches the definition of cure in the theory of cure with regards to present cause, curative action, and consequences, specifically,

· The patient came with an illness of unknown cause and unknown cure.

· The present cause was hypothesized based on the patient’s story, their history.

· The present cause was addressed, transformed, by a Transactional Analysis intervention, which addressed the present cause.

· The illness was cured.

I will quibble with the language. The paper misinterprets the concept of cure, reporting that “he was cured.” The illness was cured by addressing the cause. In the theory of cure, illnesses, not patients, are “cured.”

To your health, Tracy
Author: A New Theory of cure.

“It has been observed that scientific medicine is being replaced by scientistic medicine, with an accompanying collapse in the imperative to care as well as to cure, so that the human dimension of medicine is becoming lost and with it the fundamental purpose of medicine.”
J.P. Sturmberg and A. Miles, Handbook of Systems and Complexity in Health , 2012

What does the Theory of Cure say?

Modern medicine, for all it’s claims of “scientific” has no theory of cure, and little interest honest in cure, cures, curing nor cured. In reality, we have neither “scientific medicine” nor “scientistic medicine,” we have commercial, corporate, medicine for profit. Cures are not profitable. Modern medicine tracks payments for treatments. No doctor, medical clinic, hospital, healthcare system tracks cures. The World Health Organization has no statistics for cures.

In modern scientific (or scientistic) medicine, cured is not defined for most diseases. No cures can be detected, much less proven or disproven.

In the theory of cure, every curable illness can be cured. A cure occurs when we successfully address the cause of an element of illness. Healing is a cure without conscious intention.

Understanding Cure-ious Quotes

The theory of cure gives us a wider perspective, a way to look at quotes about cure in different ways, helping us to develop a more comprehensive view of cure.

The Theory of Cure website has a random “cure quote generator” that presents a random cure quote from a growing library of over 2700 quotes about cure from hundreds of different authors. Cure-ious quotes is a set of posts that explore those quotes from the perspective of the theory of cure.

To your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure