Psychological Therapy in a Pharmacological World

By James E. Campbell, M.D.

A brief summary from the author:

Psychological Therapy in a Pharmacological World has been written to encourage an alternative look at current-day approaches to psychiatric therapy, and to share with my colleagues insights I have gained over 40 years of practice.
- Understanding the psychological world from a different vantage point.
- Show how accurate speech helps to understand and resolve many psychiatric problems.
- Show how and why immediate relief from psychological pain is possible.
- See how your thinking actually creates your psychological pain.
- Why some depressions are better off not being treated as depression.
- Teach your patients how to get rid of anger forever.
- Understand the childhood belief system which generates adult psychopathology.
- Learn how a better definition of responsibility can help solve problems in therapy.
- New ways to look at guilt and shame.
- Learn to use psychological language to treat psychological problems.
- Learn how education could extinguish many psychiatric problems.

Who should read this book?
- anyone who does therapy,
- any therapist looking for a quicker way to help people,
- any physician who wants a quick intervention to help psychiatric, or non-psychiatric, patients with life issues,
- anyone wanting a simple model to understand people’s behavior,
- anyone interested in the way a therapy approach was born.

• Language: English
• Publisher: UCS PRESS
• Release date: Jul 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780943247670

James E. Campbell, M.D.

James E. Campbell, M. D. was born in farm country in Middle Western Illinois. He graduated co-valedictorian from Warsaw High School. He then went to MacMurray College in Jacksonville , IL. for three years before being accepted to University of Iowa, University of IL. and St. Louis University Medical schools. He chose to go to St. Louis University, and then to Michael Reese in Chicago for his basic three year adult psychiatric residency training.In 1971, after two years in the Air Force, he set up private practice in Phoenix, Arizona. Because of the rapid turnover of patients in his office, an outcome of the use of rapid relief principles, he decided to extend the nature of his practice by taking a two-year child fellowship at UCLA. It was here that he met Dr. Gary Emery who he later collaborated with to write the original Rapid Relief from Emotional Distress.Web site: http://www.rapidreliefseries.comCall 602-439-2400 to find out if Dr. Campbell is available for an appointment; also, to order print editions of his books.

Book preview

It has been said that doctors go to scientific meetings to learn what their colleagues can teach them, and they go to the office to learn what their patients can teach them. Simply put, this book is a reflection on some of the lessons I have learned from my patients and other people in my life: this is a collection of some of the useful ideas I was not taught in my psychiatric residency and child fellowship. The ideas in this book are not intended create another type of therapy but is to enhance the therapies that are currently being used.

I chose to become a doctor who would work with the mind when I was in my fifth year of life. I learned psychiatrist was the name of those doctors much later. In the small town of Warsaw, Illinois, population of 2000 there were no psychiatrists, and there were no psychologists either. How the mind worked was a curiosity to me then, and it still intrigues me today.

Rapid Relief from Emotional Distress

Professional training seems at times to bring about a narrowing of one’s perspective, rather than broadening it. I have experienced this when I talk with other colleagues (doctors) about my experience and the points of view I have about treating patients. I get a far narrower response from psychiatrists, therapists and counselors than when I discuss these ideas with non-professionals. While I was at UCLA for my child fellowship, I tried to present several of these concepts to staff members there. With the blessed exception of Gary Emery Ph.D., I found no one was very interested in my observations. I get letters and calls from patients and non-patients who tell me how Dr. Emery and my book Rapid Relief from Emotional Distress opened up an entirely new approach to living for them. Yet, even in a time when therapy is not being paid for by many insurance companies, when there is a shortage of trained professionals, and I offer a type of therapy which not only works, but is compatible with the typical short appointment times, I have not been able to mobilize much interest in the medical community.

My initial psychiatric training at Michael Reese was highly psychoanalytic. In the three years of my residency, I may have had three supervisors, who were not analysts, or analysts in training. It was fun at times making formulations about why a person might be having a problem, using all the psychoanalytical rhetoric I was learning. Fortunately, most treatment plans no longer require such speculations. A lot of the principles I was taught in those days do not seem to have much application today. I have not heard anyone talk about Oedipus Complexes or penis envy for 25 years—although I am certain it is still discussed in some settings.

I believe Freud was a bright neurologist, but his neurology background eschewed his point of view. He developed Topographical (Conscious, Pre-conscious, Unconscious) and Structural (Id, Ego, Superego) Theories about personality development. He visualized these concepts with physical world ideation. Because of this orientation, I think he missed an important aspect of understanding development: The physical world runs on different principles than does the psychological world. We actually know this; it is one of those items we encounter every day, but do not really see. Let me give you an example: in the physical world, we use tools; in the psychological world, we use concepts. People will frequently come to me requesting "some tools" they can use to solve their problems. I usually tell them, If you want tools go to the hardware store. I do not offer them tools; I share concepts with them. Another area is pain; pain in the psychological world needs to be embraced, but in the physical world it is reasonable to avoid it, and the items causing the discomfort. In the psychological world, the raw materials we need to resolve a problem are always present all the time. In the physical world, we are constantly changing and our world is always in change; in the psychological world concepts and choices exist at the same time, both the concepts we choose and the ones we do not choose. In the physical world differences are made by changing the nature of the items we are working on, but in the psychological world differences are made by choice, movement, and selection. This is why in the physical world it takes time to accomplish a goal, but in the psychological world differences can occur almost immediately, unless the mental grounding is in the physical world, which, unfortunately, is exactly what happens in therapy today.

I keep seeing the same issues occurring over and over in my office and in life around me. A friend, who understood and accepted a lot of what I teach, once said to me, It can feel rather lonely when you realize a large part of the world is processing life differently than you do. If you judge this book I only ask for the Scottish Verdict: Do not know the answer; keep an open mind.

When I first started my practice a very nice, but very dispirited young lady came to me because she was sad and unhappy too much of the time. I was just out of a three-year adult psychiatric residence at Michael Reese in Chicago and a two-year stint with the Air Force; I thought I had a reasonable grasp on how to help someone.

I saw her for several months in weekly therapy sessions. I dug, I interpreted and I wracked my brain for the answer to her complaint. It was to no avail. Her misery continued. One day, I would like to say through inspiration, but the truth is more from frustration, I asked her why she thought she was so upset.

She paused and thought about my question for a while, and finally she turned to me, and she said in a sober, almost tearful manner, Doctor, if you are not upset or emotional, how are people going to know you care? The pungency of the answer nearly made me laugh. Her comment told me I was trying to help her remove a symbol she saw as having an important function. She certainly was not going to let go of her behavior, if, in her mind, it represented caring.

Thirty-five years later I quickly use this lesson to address hundreds, perhaps thousands, of complaints I have heard from patients, but I am more likely to go after this mental trap in the first or second session, than in 2-3 months down the road, like I did before meeting this young lady.

At times I will even preempt a recommendation: You might not be able to use what I am going to suggest to you immediately, if what you are doing has some positive meaning to you. or If you feel you are getting a benefit from what you are doing, you might not recognize the benefit of the alternative I am about to suggest to you.

I ran into the same type of problem with a different twist on another occasion. A friend arranged for me to give a talk to a group called Compassionate Friends. This group is composed of parents who have lost a child. My talk was an introduction to the idea that pain is optional, and there is a way you can get rid of it, if you want. I did not realize I had not adequately preempted my speech until after my talk.

I recognized my error when I was verbally accosted by about half the group which was very angry with me. Fortunately, there was the other half that was happy and appreciative about what I had taught them.

The people who believed pain was an indication of caring heard me talking about no longer caring, or showing their caring. Had I addressed their mental intermediation better, I might have been a more effective speaker/spokesman to the group.

I was a rather serious, somewhat moody youngster who, in any spare moment, was likely to have a book in my hands, or a horse between my legs. I grew up from the age of five in what I would now conclude was a simple life on a farm on the Mississippi River Bluff area seven miles south of Warsaw, Illinois, a town of about 2,000 residents, a post office, a movie theater, and a great drug store soda fountain. It was a simple existence, I knew both my parents loved me; I did not have to deal with divorces, frequent moves, abusive parents or a lack of support from my parents. We had out door facilities for several years, so there was some concern for a time about spiders, or other unwanted visitors looking for a place to get in from the cold, or out of the heat.

In my dating years, I experienced a lot of pain I thought was related to what the lady of my affection did. Then one day, after years of trying to deal with my pain, the experience fell into place for me, and I realized what my role in my unhappiness had been all along. I do not think it was a thunderclap-type realization, but it had a profound, meaningful effect on my life, and on the way I would see any future unhappiness, my own and others. The insight had to do with the realization all of my pain was built on a need for a different experience. Typically, it was for my future mother-in-law to be different, or my future wife to be different. Once I saw the causal connection, I could add the second part of the loop: when I got out of need for self, situation or others to be different from what I believed the reality to be, the pain went away. If I moved back into the need, the pain started again.

I still remember an incident which occurred about the time I was beginning to understand this principle better. I had met someone and I was learning about them. I had gone into a slump, and I did not know why. I kept asking myself, What do you need to be different? It took me several days, but finally the answer jumped into my mind. This person had revealed to me history about themselves I was not comfortable knowing. When I realized what had triggered the slump, I was able to choose to accept this information about my friend