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Presenter: Gary Kelley, PhD

Multimodal therapy was initially developed as an approach to treat psychological issues in a comprehensive fashion with durable results. Arnold Lazarus, the developer of Multimodal Therapy, initially introduced the terms ?behavior therapy? and ?behavior therapist? into the professional literature in 1958, but found that Behavior Therapy failed to attend to important process variables and over-focused on techniques. As his thinking progressed, he released his reformulation in his book Behavior Therapy and Beyond (1971). This book was a precursor to the Cognitive Behavior Therapy movement and is generally considered to rest in the Cognitive Behavior Therapy realm. The use of Cognitive and Cognitive Behavior therapy integrated with hypnosis is well established in the research literature and the subject of several books. (Alladin, 2007; Alladin, 2008; Chapman, 2006; Dowd, 2000) Lazarus provided his first comprehensive conceptualization of Multimodal Therapy in 1973.

The key elements in Multimodal Therapy are as follows: Behavior, Affect, Sensations, Imagery, Cognitions, Interpersonal relationships, and Drugs/biological functioning; BASIC ID for short. This method of providing treatment asserts that for therapeutic results to be durable, an assessment of difficulties in each of these areas of human functioning must take place. In addition, in collaboration with the client, problems in 2 or 3 of the BASIC ID modalities are selected for treatment focus. Once problem areas are selected, a second order BASIC ID is conducted. With the second order of BASIC ID, each particular problem is assessed within each modality. Other techniques utilized in Multimodal Therapy are Bridging (moving from one modality of focus to another) and Tracking (determining the ?firing order?- the order in which these modalities arise in relation to a particular problem). Finally, the Multimodal Life History Inventory and a Structural Profile Inventory are used for diagnostic and treatment purposes.

Dr. Lazarus has supported the use of Hypnosis in treatment. However, his approach to hypnosis was of a minimalist nature. There has been little else written or presented in the use of Hypnosis together with Multimodal Therapy. The purpose of this presentation will be to provide a theoretical framework for the practice of Multimodal Therapy and demonstrate the integration of Hypnosis with it. This is an important issue. Gibbons (2004, 2005) proposes the formulation of hypnotic induction and suggestions using a Multimodal framework. However, a survey of 140 practicing psychotherapists selected from the membership directories of three professional associations suggests that a psychotherapist?s theoretical orientation coincides with their dominant modalities (Herman, 1993). Thus, many therapists may tend to apply therapeutic techniques from their own perspective and dominant modalities rather than the client?s particular modality order for a particular problem. This presentation will provide a framework for identifying a client?s profile as well as second order ID for particular problems and how to utilize that information in developing pertinent hypnotic induction procedures as well as suggestions.