Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting communication and how to
improve family relationships all over the world through the lens of self-government and in this
video, we're going to be talking about the scary story of non-directive psychotherapy.
In this video I'm going to share with you the principle of self-government so that we
can use that as a comparison or a measuring stick for non-directive psychotherapy and
what it does. I'm also going to be talking about the foundation of non-directive psychotherapy
and what has happened to the world because of that troubling therapeutic movement. Years ago,
I became a treatment parent and I started doing foster care for troubled teens and as I took these
troubled teens into my home, they all had things like ADHD, ADD, OCD, ODD, RAD, FAS, bipolar,
kleptomania, compulsive lying. They had sensory issues, anxiety problems, lots of issues that
they were working through as well as just some of the family baggage that they also happen to
be carrying. So, they came to my home for treatment. As we started working on treatment with them, they
obviously had a lot of things that they needed to talk about but they needed empowerment too and I
realized that one of the best principles that we could live by in our treatment home environment
was the principle of self-government. In fact it was those years doing treatment foster care
that made me the person that I am today because of those years of treatment foster care and
helping those children navigate those different processing styles through some pretty sensitive
issues, those were the years that drew everybody to me where people said wait a minute, what are
you doing there? How are you helping those children change so much especially when they're in such a
hard phase of life, adolescence and I said well I'm teaching them self-government. And so then
people said well how about you come teach us and then the BBC said how would you come beyond our
program called The World's Strictest Parents and show everybody what you do. So, it changed my life
those years. I had no idea that it was going to have that type of an impact on who I would become
and how I would potentially help the world. What I'd like to share with you is what self-government
is. Self-government is being able to determine the cause and effect of any given situation and
possessing a knowledge of your own behaviors so that you can control them. So what does that mean?
That means that a person understands cause and effect. Not just in relation to tangible things but
to themselves to their own actions, their own thoughts, their own behavior and their own
connections with other people. They make plans for what they want and then they follow through
and check up on how they're doing. They analyze themselves again and again as they choose to know
themselves more honestly. For a person to live the principle of self-government, they actually
have to be honest with themselves about what they are seeing and assessing in their own behavior and
their own thoughts. This is learned usually as a person helps assess them or analyze them at first
to teach them what they're seeing so that they can better see and make better plans for the future.
This is what I was helping all of the treatment children do as they came to my home.
We did this by helping them establish a vision for where they were headed for the future.
Also teaching them key skills like how to follow instructions, accept "no" answers and criticism,
accept consequences and disagree appropriately with other people. We taught them how to do
appropriate corrections, how to share their feelings and opinions with people without doing
it in an oppressive or aggressive way. We taught them how to get results and get understood without
having to go through a breakdown to get there. Many people think that that's required but it isn't
and I knew it wasn't because I was an emotional, strong-willed child myself and I learned some
key things in my adolescence that came in to this training that I did for these young people
that came to our home. So, let's start talking about non-directive psychotherapy but before I do, click
that subscribe button. There are a ton of great videos on this channel all about self-government,
family communication and overcoming some of the most difficult things that children face. Click
that subscribe button now so that you can have access to all of the new content that comes out.
You won't want to miss it. Non-directive psychotherapy started as an idea from a
psychologist, his name was Dr. Carl Rogers. He had this idea that maybe psychology and therapy was
going about things all wrong and I would like to share with you his story and how it has become
a little bit scary for the population. I suppose I should more accurately say that this is the story
of Dr. Rogers colleague, Dr. William Colson. Dr. William Colson was contacted by Dr. Rogers and
asked if he would be part of a project that he was working on. He had this idea that if a therapist,
instead of suggesting things for a person to do, just told the person that they should just decide
what they think they should do, that then that would change everything, that somehow inside the
person they knew exactly what they should do to solve their problem or to get relief in some way.
And so he wanted to do some tests on people who definitely needed therapy and he wanted to change
the therapy up so that it was this non-directive way and as he did that that he assumed that,
he would find people making better plans for themselves than a therapist could ever recommend.
Well Dr. Colson was intrigued by that and agreed to help him with this groundbreaking project.
So, both doctors were in the Midwest and they had some grants and some funding from
some Midwestern universities so that they could start their studies. Well at the very beginning,
they decided to try non-directive psychotherapy on diagnosed psychopaths. So, they met with psychopaths
and they told them how about you do what you think you should or what do you think that you should do?
What do you want to do? It was an utter failure total fail because these psychopaths were like
well I want to just kill that person or I want to you know punch that person next time I see them or
whatever. And so they knew that that was not going to direct those people in a good way Dr. Rogers
thought well, maybe this isn't the best approach for psychopaths. But it still could be the best
approach for other people. So how about we take brains that are a little bit more untampered with
and see if it works for them so they changed their study and decided to study on children instead.
Dr. Colson and Dr. Rogers had children come to these groups where they would do non-directive
psychotherapy. They would talk about their lives and tell them that they should choose what they
wanted to do. I'm sure you could see how this could go very wrong with children. Well it did.
In fact it went wrong real quick. The parents were like whoa, you are not going to suggest to my child
that they should be able to do anything that they want to do. You know obviously you're seeing parent,
warning, warning, warning. You're making entitled children- we're gonna make psychopaths now
and so anyway the parents pulled their children out at a rapid rate and they're like you don't get
a talk to my children. No way and so it did not work. The midwestern parents decided they would
not have it so at that point Dr. Rogers who still had funding that he needed to use and still wanted
to see if his idea really could stick because he felt like it was a really good thing decided
to change his focus. He and Dr. Colson decided to move their focus to the west coast. So, they went
to California and this was right around the time of the hippie era where everyone was getting high
and just embracing whatever they wanted to do anyway. Well their non-directive psychotherapy
hypothesis totally stuck in California on the west coast. People loved the enlightenment that they
felt like they were getting by never having to do anything that they ought to do but only just do
things that they want to do and then they took it to the next level. They started contacting catholic
private schools up and down the western seaboard. Dr. Colson lamented this in multiple different
talks that you actually can access online through Saint Joseph's ministries, I think is what it is.
He actually apologizes for his work that he did in non-directive psychotherapy and talks about
how it was instrumental in ruining society and how it racks him with guilt because of that. Dr.
Colson felt horrible that he said well, I have an inn with the catholic church. How about we contact
these catholic girls schools and these nuns and we do training for them so that's what they did.
So, here they are both doctors in California and Dr. Colson contacts these girls boarding schools
and the nuns are like oh yeah, sounds great. We'll do this. So, these nuns start coming to trainings
for doing non-directive psychotherapy. First they go through non-directive psychotherapy then they
start administering non-directive psychotherapy to the girls in the schools. Well to make a long story,
short many of the nuns renounced their vows, ended up going off into the woods and living living in
sex communes and different things because that's what they felt they should do, that's
what they wanted to do and that was what they were craving to do and many of their students had
some severe problems. In fact a ton of those schools closed, parents pulled their children
from the schools. They thought they were getting one type of education where in reality they were
getting something else and they would not have it. This ended up leading non-directive psychotherapy
into the real therapy world and therapists started embracing it as a way to help
clients find fulfillment in their offices. It also by the way perpetuated therapy. You would need it
forever if you were just going to keep you know bringing your problem and telling someone
else what you thought you should do for your own problem. You were just going to talk stuff out,
dump it, dump it, dump it but really hardly ever get anywhere. This was going to help therapists too you
know grow their practices. Not that that was the goal, it never was but it definitely was the result
of some of the non-directive psychotherapy. Now, we have Dr. Colson this many years later,
he's very old at this point I'm hoping he's still with us. I had a colleague who reached out
to him a few years back and I know he was elderly and had done some writings and things
on this topic trying to correct the problem. He said you know with our movement of non-directive
psychotherapy, we unknowingly opened the door for so much corruption on the population. He had
to pull away at one point. He said Dr. Rogers I'm out. I cannot do this anymore. I think it's
ruining people but Dr. Rogers stuck with it and stayed the course and ended up perpetuating it
across the globe actually. But Dr. Colson saw that there were movements like comprehensive
sexuality education and other different you know especially sexual movements, drug movements, stuff
like that that were making it so that basically whatever any person wanted was right. It brought in
moral relativism as the reigning theory of the day. If you want it, it's right so it removed
any morality whatsoever from the people's lives and it became very unfashionable for people to
declare that somebody's choice was somehow wrong or even dangerous even though it could
be. This made everyone in society their own God and this changed society drastically. So
what do we do now to change society back? Well I think I've got a solution. So, what is the solution?
This may sound simple but the solution is teaching people self-government. Self-government requires
morality because you have to decide who ought I to be. Ought, totally different than want. It comes from
understanding what's right and wrong, good and bad, true and false. Who am I really? What is my
true identity as a person and that's something that we learn within the family bonds in our
homes, that's why some people struggle if their family bonds are not, how they should be with
knowing really who they are and who we are has nothing to do with really our preferences but
how we see ourselves as a person. Super important that we help our children understand their roles
in the family, also understand morality, meaning what's right, wrong, good, bad, true, false and we
help them see that they have to bring themselves into alignment with those things in order to find
freedom and happiness. Full functionality only can happen when everything is in an honest state.
When we are pulling away from self-evident truths about ourselves or our family or our relationships
or attachments, we are in a dishonest state. Meaning we're buying a lie inside our own heads
so we have to come back into honesty, that requires self-analysis, making a plan and even sometimes
the painful self-correction. These are all part of self-government. Can you train a child to do
these things? Oh, yeah. You absolutely can and I want to give you help with that. In fact since you've
stayed to the end of this video, I want to give you a free gift. It's a mini course that I have that is
going to get you started on self-government and learning more about what you can do
for self-government. This class is called the not so known secret for parenting success.
It will share with you some of the key skills and principles that you need in order to learn
self-government yourself and to share it with your children. So, click on the link to that video now.