Word.

I was always shy and nervous but developed serious agoraphobia late in life. Big stores, crowded sidewalks, and many other public situations became often intolerable, and standing on a line became excruciating. SSRI's help, they really do. I take Buspar, a nice med, frequently in low doses. Allen should try the same.

He's a classical composer, he's multiphobic, and has a famous father and a brother who's, well, a little odd, too.

And he's a great detective.

Coming next season (that would be middle of July) to USA.

Freud's insights into axiety are interesting, but CBT, which focuses purely on behaviour and repogramming ones thought patterns works.

A therapist I saw put the relationship between medication and CBT like this. You're drowning. Meds get you out of the pool and breathing again. CBT teaches you to swim so you can get back in the water.

Inconceivable!

The story of this sad phobic ridden man is double tragic because it is written as though there is no cure for phobias. This is like doing a story on phneumonia with no reference to antibiotics. This phobia story is 30 years behind times. In my medical hypnosis practice phobic patients get over their phobias so easily they are amazed.

Consider thise: A phobia is just an automatic reaction to some trigger. The trigger might be a bridge, or a dog, or an elevator or crowded store. We now have strategies to change the response very quickly. For example I have seen several teen boys who are fine athletes but phobic about public speaking. They are surprised and delighted to find the public speaking trigger can now trigger the way they feel on the basketball court or soccer field. Same trigger, different response.

I find it so paradozical that, in our high speed information culture, one segment of the population can be so ignorant of another segment. The WALL STREET JOURNAL, not exactly a left wing newspaper, did a feature article: HYPNOSIS IN MAIN STREAM MEDICINE, naming many medical centers where hypnosis is routinely used for surgery, pain control and speeding up healing.

Yet many, if not most, physicians retain their old stereotypes about hypnosis.

likewise one would expect psychologists to know there are effective treatments for phobias but most of them appear ignorant of the new strategies.

Interested readers need only google NLP to become informed.

Ron Soderquist, Ph.D.

Westlake Village, Ca.