An Excerpt from THE ENCHANTED SELF, A Positive Therapy

The women I interviewed caused me to look at my clients in new ways. As Proust states, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." I discovered many aspects of enchantment in my clients as I began to look anew at them. I began to recognize, within my treatment room, extraordinary human beings. Yes, they often had difficult life situations, dysfunctional backgrounds, poorly functioning and damaging marriages, problem children and other disappointments, but they were still able to achieve many moments that worked well for them. Here were people who felt passion and excitement about many aspects of their lives.

What I saw led me to agree with those innovative professionals who have challenged the "disease" model, i.e.: the old way of looking at our clients or patients as primarily having problems, difficulties, dysfunctions, personality disorders or sickness. Classification numbers seem to be attached to them, labeling them as if they were items of clothing hanging from a department store rack. I began to perceive my clients differently, as if through a new lens--as people who have talents, who are survivors. They came equipped with a multitude of talents, capacities, hobbies, knowledge and passions. In the histories of their lives they experienced many enhances mental and/or physical states, even in far from ideal circumstances.

As children, my clients may have had special, peaceful ways of feeling when they went fishing alone by a pond, or when they were watching a sunset. This contented ego state of the ten-year-old was one way they experienced their ENCHANTED SELVES. Retrieved in adulthood, the positive state of being can serve as one Positive Fingerprint of the Mind and Positive Shadowprints are unique, as individual as one's fingerprints, utilizing different positive capacities within them.

The women I interviewed made me aware of how we can forget what it felt like to be experiencing one's ENCHANTED SELF. The way we were raised in our particular family may get in the way of recognition. This is particularly true if one's family has dismissed something a child once loved to do, as being unimportant. For example, one might have enjoyed daydreaming while sitting on a swing. An irritated mother, calling from the back door, might have felt such an activity to be an unwise use of time. Someone else may have longed to be an artist or writer, but her family discouraged such "impractical" dreams. Another may have felt whole and pure while organizing a chaotic home life. Although not an ideal circumstance, the competencies one experienced and the sense of power may well have been another Positive Fingerprint of the Mind.

I began to realize that we, as therapists, need to understand, as well as help our clients to understand, that many of our earlier integrated moments, hours, days, weeks, our "optimizing opportunities" may have been long forgotten and discarded aided by family as well as societal values, opinions and options. Each of my clients may not have had the chance, in terms of personal growth and education, to recognize or validate his or her Positive Fingerprints. But still, enhanced times have happened. Inside of each client is an ENCHANTED SELF.

About the Author

Dr. Holstein is the originator of The Enchanted Self and a psychologist since 1981. She is the author of two books: The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy and Recipes for Enchantment, The Secret Ingredient is YOU!
Dr. Holstein speaks on radio, and appears on television in NY and NJ. She gives lectures, seminars, retreats and audio interviews on LadybugLive.com and is in private practice in Long Branch, NJ with her husband, Dr. Russell Holstein.