CASE STUDIES

Case Study #1. While living in the San Francisco Bay area, I developed a fairly close friendship with a neighborhood couple, Rick and Lisa. After I moved to Oklahoma I received a call from Lisa that their marriage was in trouble. She said that Rick had fallen in love with another woman and I was the only person who could save their marriage. They had tried marriage counseling and Rick was not only hostile toward the therapist but now refused to participate in any more sessions. She was not aware of most of the nuances of how my pendulum-aided therapy worked but thought that because Rick admired me as a person he might listen to me.  

This situation troubled me. I did not want to take sides. Yet I wanted to help. I told her that if Rick was willing to make the sacrifice of seeing me I would help. Rick called and arranged to spend two days in Oklahoma, staying at a local hotel. We had five sessions but I am only presenting the details of one of them.
 
Rick's new girlfriend was also married. They had known one another through business for at least six or seven years. He had always been attracted to her and had always enjoyed talking with her. I was amazed to discover that they had not had sexual intercourse. I was shocked that the anguish Rick and Lisa were going through was over a crush Rick had for another married woman. But Rick felt he had to be honest with Lisa. He wanted Lisa to know that he was in love with this other woman.

After talking at length with Rick about his feelings, I decided to approach my work with the assumption that Rick was in love with the other woman and not with Lisa. What was the problem, then? Why did not Rick simply divorce his wife and marry the other woman as soon as she obtained a divorce from her husband? He said that the other woman intended to divorce her husband and he was willing to divorce Lisa, but somehow he couldn't take the next step.

During Rick's two-day stay Lisa called me at least three times to monitor Rick's feelings. Sometimes Rick would get on the phone. I tried to explain some of Rick's feelings and emotions to Lisa without violating any trust Rick had placed in me. Lisa's conversations would always begin in a friendly, optimistic tone but would soon deteriorate to angry accusations. To complicate matters, Lisa had developed a dialogue with the other woman's husband. Also, during one of these conversations I discovered that Lisa's birth father left Lisa and her mother and her mother never forgave him. Lisa considered herself to be very religious and referred to Rick's intentions as sinful. I explained to Lisa that I cared equally for both her and Rick but that Rick was my client and that I had to continue working with him in the best way I knew how.

The imprint that most inhibited Rick from going on with his life involved his two sons, Marty and Dickie. Marty was 11 years old and very resentful toward his dad. Not coincidentally, Marty viewed his dad's behavior and feelings much as Lisa viewed them. Dickie, though, was only nine years old and responded to the family's problems by being perpetually sad. By accessing Rick’s unconscious through the use of the pendulum and through verbal conversations,  I discovered that Rick feared abandoning Dickie. The imprint related to this fear involved Rick's own father, Glenn.

Glenn had abandoned his wife and two sons when he was about the same age as Rick now was (mid- to late 30s). Rick's mother responded to Glenn leaving by becoming an angry, resentful, bitter woman. She constantly told the boys about how Glenn had ruined the family. I had met Glenn, who was at this time about 58 years old and still a slim, handsome, outgoing man, married to his third wife, a woman about 40 years old.

Rick was the older brother. After occasional scrapes with the authorities as a teenager, he had worked his way up to a successful career as a government inspector, traveling all across the United States. His younger brother, however, had become a drug addict and was currently divorced and unemployed.
 
The imprinted beliefs creating this roadblock for Rick involved the anxiety he had felt when Glenn abandoned the family. Rick did not feel any need to keep the family intact, but was fearful of doing to his own family what Glenn had done to his. I had regarded Rick and Lisa and their two sons as a nearly perfect family. Rick was a devoted father. He was always playing catch with the boys. They went camping several weekends a year. He coached their little league baseball teams. He was very involved in their lives and constantly acknowledged them in simple daily interactions.
 
What I came to understand was that Rick's role as a devoted family man had helped heal his relationship with his father. His father was constantly bragging about what a good father Rick was. His father was a loving and supportive grandfather to the boys, often taking them golfing or to baseball games. Rick frequently went golfing with his father.

Rick feared that he would lose the love and admiration of his father if he behaved as his father had. He assumed that Lisa would behave toward Marty and Dickie as his own mother had behaved toward her sons (attempting to turn them against their father). Rick didn't fear how the divorce would affect Marty, because Marty reminded Rick of himself, and he had triumphed in spite of what had happened. It was Dickie he was worried about. He could not do to Dickie what his father had done to Rick's younger brother. He assumed the results would be the same.

As I always do when “arguing” a belief, I asked Rick to trust his mind to present him an image that represented the belief that he would lose his father's love and respect if he divorced Lisa and that Lisa would become a unchecked bitter, negative force in the lives of the boys. This image would represent the belief that the consequences of his divorce would be exactly the same negative consequences that resulted from Glenn's divorce from Rick's mother.

I countered these beliefs by pointing out that a major difference in this relationship was that Rick would not abandon his boys. He would remain a part of their lives, still coaching their little league teams and still golfing with them. He would be camping with them. Although angry toward Rick, Marty had not refused to spend time with him. If Rick decided not to divorce Lisa, it should not be because he was a prisoner of the opinions of Lisa and Glenn. He should not stay in the marriage only because he thought it was the only way to maintain his father's love and respect. He should not stay in the marriage in an attempt to control Lisa's behavior. He should stay in the marriage because he still loved and cared about Lisa and believed she loved and cared about him. He should stay in the marriage because he thought Lisa and he could be happy raising the boys together. I continued, emphasizing that Rick's childhood relationships with his father and mother should not have any influence on the decisions he made regarding his relationship with Lisa.

By the time Rick flew back to California I fully expected him to separate from Lisa, which is exactly what he did. The effect of our therapy sessions was to relieve Rick from a lot of guilt and indecision. He was very happy and refreshed when he left Oklahoma. A month or so later he had moved into an apartment but still had not had intercourse with the other married woman. At this time Lisa was very bitter and resentful. Rick said that he was not tormented by Lisa's bitterness and did not blame her for feeling that way. He said that he really cared about her but felt sorry for her. He did not think he could ever admire her enough to want to stay married to her. In retrospect, I think the "other woman" awakened feelings in Rick that he realized he needed to feel about whomever he was going to share his life with. He had been ignoring dissatisfaction with his marriage for years (because he was satisfying the demands of his imprints). As is always true with clients, Rick's work was not about making sure that he made the right decision but that he had the right to make whatever decision his adult self desired…free of irrational, irrelevant interference.

 

Case Study #2. Wanda, a 40-year-old woman, came to me for relief from claustrophobia. She had lived with it since she was a very young girl and assumed that she would always suffer from it. She was not upset with the arrangements she had to make to avoid an attack but was very troubled on those occasions when she could not avoid triggering the anxiety.

By consulting her unimprinted unconscious with the use of the pendulum, I discovered that there was one incident at the root of the anxiety. Very soon after I began my search, Wanda interrupted me, certain that she knew what the incident was. She described the incident, although not sure exactly at what age it occurred. Consulting the pendulum confirmed that this was, in fact, the imprint incident.
 
The incident took place when Wanda was eight years old. One school day, at lunch time, Wanda used chalk to write some ugly comments about her teacher, Mrs. Long, on the sidewalk. The teacher discovered the comments and, after lunch, asked the class to identify the culprit. At first, no one commented. As Mrs. Long became angrier and more insistent, Wanda's best friend blurted out that Wanda was the perpetrator. This was a devastating moment in Wanda's life. It was as if the whole world had turned on her. There was no one to come to her rescue. She was helpless in Mrs. Long's glare.

At the moment of the impact of the imprint, Wanda felt instantly alone. Her best friend had betrayed her.  Within this devastation was the assumption that none of her classmates had suffered such a betrayal. Only her.  This aloneness was terribly shameful and painful, and to an eight-year-old, it would have seemed permanent.  

To whatever extent Wanda felt alone and isolated in that classroom at that moment, that sudden jolt from being part of that classroom community, to being isolated and betrayed, marked a new definition what “bad” could be.  From that moment on, isolation in a small room triggered this moment of helplessness, rejection, isolation, and betrayal...and the belief that she had no defense for it. The reminder was especially painful because of the assumption that she would always ultimately be alone among her peers like she was that moment in third grade.

I now asked Wanda to allow her unconscious to present her an image that would represent the fears and assumptions embodied in this imprint. Because she had some difficulty trusting that her image truly represented the imprinted, irrational belief, I used the pendulum to confirm its validity.  As always, I asked Wanda to set the image aside until later needed.

I then proposed alternative views of the imprint incident. I pointed out that there were probably a lot of kids who admired her for having the courage to write such things. Also, Wanda's act of writing on the sidewalk revealed imagination and creativity in dealing with her anger and frustration, rather than revealing that she was a "bad" person. It was a pretty reasonable reaction for an eight-year-old who did not like her teacher. If one of Wanda's friends would have done the same thing, would Wanda have ostracized her?

We discussed the fact that many of her classmates went on to become her good friends and acquaintances, never showing a hint of ostracizing her. We discussed how other teachers might have reacted much differently to the discovery of the written words. Some might have found it amusing. Most of all, I urged her to appreciate that any experience at the age of eight needed to be reassessed at a later date just because Wanda was constantly maturing and changing in her understanding of human relationships and experience.  To function as an adult required that she not be governed by the fears of eight-year-old.  I continued until I was convinced that Wanda no longer regarded the beliefs of the imprint as valid. It was then easy for her to alter the image.

The results were immediate. She used my bathroom with the door closed.