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The term "psychoanalysis" evokes images of a patient reclining on a couch, while a therapist sits quietly out of sight, taking notes and saying very little. Although there have been some psychoanalytic subcultures in which clinical practice has resembled this stereotype, especially in the middle of the last century, the contemporary psychodynamic landscape is both diverse and in stark contrast to such images.

The toxic culture of individualism and patriarchy rests on the delusions that we stand apart from nature and in control of it. Whether the ‘nature’ we are trying to control is our partner, our kids, our bodies (I must lose 10 pounds) or our own minds (I must be less negative).

Our autonomic nervous system scans our bodies 4 times a second “am I safe?”, “am I safe?”, “am I safe?”, “am I safe?” If the answer is ‘yes, I feel safe’, we remain seated in the wise adult part of ourselves, our prefrontal cortex. We remember the whole, the relationship. But when the answer is ‘no, I feel in danger’, we shift into subcortical parts of the brain, knee jerk automatic responses in which we see the world as a zero sum, I win, you lose power struggle.
In heated moments we lose the wisdom of us. We need to equip our clients to cultivate the ongoing practice of ‘relational mindfulness.’ Shifting from you and me consciousness into the centered adult parts of ourselves. Remembering love—that the person we are speaking to is someone we care about and not the enemy. This is the critical first step, the first skill from which all other skills depend.

Once we equip our clients to think ecologically and relationally, all of the terms change. For example, the relational answer to the question of who is right and who is wrong, is who cares? The real question is how are you and I going to work on this as a team? Come learn how to help people deal with their own trauma effectively triggering and not inflict it on their families to deal with.

More than as an individual/linear event hypnosis can be conceived in a systems perspective, as a circular and evolving process. This view of hypnotic trance demonstrates to be particularly useful when intergenerational conflicts develop in the family with the consequence of blocking the course of the natural family life cycle.

Adopting an Ericksonian Naturalistic approach, families can be considered as a source of natural resources that the therapist should discover and activate in order to solve interpersonal conflicts.

Specific direct and indirect techniques to induce a deep and meaningful change of the most rigid family patterns will be described. The demonstration of a family hypnotic session will introduce the different stages of the hypnotic treatment as well as of how naturalistic systemic hypnosis can transform resistances in the required solutions of family conflicts.