With my business changing a bit currently, I have been back in my hypnotherapy consulting rooms this week with one-to-one clients, and I’ve also spent a day with one of my heroes, Professor Irving
Kirsch.
We have seen it written over and over that you should never meet your heroes, and the internet holds so many accounts of people who upon meeting their heroes, found that it was simply not as they had hoped. Some had unrealistic and high expectations that could not be met, others had fantastical ideas about how someone is and so on.
Nearly 10 years ago now, I wrote about meeting one of my sporting heroes Stuart Pearce and that went pretty well. You can read my 2009 blog entry of that encounter here:
So when my Phd supervisor and head of research in the Psychology department of Bournemouth University told me that he would be entertaining Irving Kirsch for a couple of
days and wanted me to present my current research to him, I was incredibly excited even if I was also riddled with nerves.
Those who have ever attended my courses know that I refer to Irving Kirsch’s major contribution to the body of research that the field of hypnosis boasts. He is currently the programme director for Placebo Studies at Harvard University and is officially retired. His
books on hypnosis and placebo adorn my shelves and are vital reading for any evidence based hypnotherapist and/or psychotherapist. If you’d like to read my full account of my day with him, and see plenty of the photos I took with him, read this…..
