“Supposed you had a miracle pill … “ - Changers: an individualized open label placebo for solution focused practitioners by Frederic Linssen, Germany
What if we had a preparation, a potent intervention that could help reduce the problem of overmedication with psychotropic drugs including and at the same time activate clients’ strengths and resources?
Steve de Shazer already experimented with the ’imaginary pill technique’ (1984). And so did Ben Furman with his ‘Suggestin’ intervention. Over the last years I developed the Changers as an innovative solution focused impact-intervention, a customized, image based open label placebo (OLP) that help overcome problems by literally incorporating goals and resources.
These small wafers are printed with a picture of an individual goal or resource and are packed in a tablet box with personalized suggestions. As an OLP, Changers are taken regularly like a medication to help clients activate resources and achieve goals. This edible intervention enables creative, humorous change work and sustainable change processes at the same time.
Changers combine twelve well-known active principles in one intervention:
Enhancing positive expectation / hope
Suggestion / autosuggestion
Power of positive pictures
Ingestion ritual as symbolic action
Clarifying goals
Activating creativity and solution-orientation
Reminder function
Priming and programming the subconscious
Strengthening therapist - client relationship
Disrupting problem patterns
Forming new habits
Increasing self-efficacy
When developing the label for the Changers box, clients almost always smile or laugh, especially when the possible consequences of an unintentional overdose are discussed. By ingesting it regularly, clients continue the therapeutic work between the sessions – consciously or unconsciously.
Attendants of this workshop will:
learn how to introduce this method and individualize the Changers,
get some astonishing scientific findings in placebo research
find out about the results of the first random-controlled-trial evaluation study on the Changers intervention Didactics:
theoretical introduction,
excerpts of a taped session (video demonstration)
reflection / Q & A
About Frederic Linssen:
Psycholgist and founder of ILK (Institute for SF Communication) in Bielefeld, Germany. Seasoned SF teacher, developper of the Changers-Intervention and founder of www.mind-changers.de
His interest for a solution focused open lable placebo is driven by the search for a theroetically founded, evidence-based, sustainably effective, scalable and at the same time playful method to enhance change.
