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New insights and understandings

The holistic human givens approach has generated, through the research of its co-founders and others, new insights and findings which are consistent with the latest neuroscientific research (as well as findings from other disciplines), and have major implications for making not only psychotherapy and counselling more effective, but also education and psychological interventions in general.

These are covered at length on the HG Diploma course and individually on other HG College's, online courses and UK-based training days and are fully referenced in our many publications.

They include:

  • Helps us to identify why a person is experiencing their current difficulties and what can be done about it
  • A new view of the unconscious mind – the APET™ model – which is compatible with neuroscience, clinical experience and experiment, and which shows how the brain works through ‘pattern matching’. This supersedes cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) because it is more true to the reality of brain functioning
  • A new insight into trauma and, therefore, how best to treat it
  • An holistic understanding of the evolutionary origins and function of human dreaming, which has huge implications for our emotional health
  • The crucial link between thinking styles and fluctuations in emotional arousal
  • An holistic, integrated theory for why depression develops and is maintained
  • A new explanation for addiction and why withdrawal symptoms occur
  • The discovery of ‘molar memories’ which generate and maintain some instances of compulsive behaviour (such as sexual compulsions, anorexia and bulimia)
  • An understanding of why the use of metaphor is so powerful as a form of treatment
  • A comprehensive understanding of the placebo and ‘nocebo’ effects
  • A psychobiological explanation of clinical hypnosis, why it works and what mechanisms are common to all forms of hypnotic induction
  • A new, empowering understanding of the potential cause of autism
  • A new insight into what psychosis is
  • Caetextia: a new definition of autistic and Asperger's behaviour
  • A more comprehensive understanding of the importance of the REM (rapid eye movement) state in generating reality and accessing intuitive knowledge
  • A new understanding of the nature of consciousness.

Explore our articles and interviews

Search our archive

  • Treating schizophrenia without drugs

    Treatmenta for schizophrenia that involve no drugs, or only low doses of them, urgently need investigation, suggests Dr Tim Calton, lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Nottingham, and colleagues.

  • The Emotional Needs Scale

    Brett Culham describes the outcome of his research to validate the needs-based human givens approach to psychological health.

  • Dying and Death

    When? That’s the big unanswerable question: the uncertainty of which can cause us debilitating fear or a ‘head in the sand’ attitude of ignoring the inevitable. In this article Julia Welstead looks at our mortality and preparing for the inevitable. 

  • Why abstractions confuse people

    Most people think ethics is concerned with truth, justice, equality, loyalty, fairness, values, principles, morals, etc. All these words in italics are abstractions. They are content free. They contain no sensory information. Such words used to be called 'reifications' in philosophy and are now more commonly called 'nominalisations'.

  • Practising ethically

    The HGI Ethics and Complaints Committee considers some of the ethical challenges that human givens practitioners may face. Ian Thomson sets the scene.
     

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