Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR): French and Harris describe a
clear, person-centered view of the way out of the aftermath of trauma
into relief, insight, resolution, and personal growth. Based on
concepts long familiar to the profession, TIR and its unique protocols
represent nonetheless an entirely new and dramatically effective
approach from which to view and address trauma-related conditions as
well as many other less obviously trauma-related symptoms and
conditions, including adjustment disorders, acute stress, traumatic
bereavement, anxiety and somatization disorders, sexual abuse, and
phobias. Aimed very much at the needs of the practitioner, the book
includes an excellent overview of TIR, as well as a full explanation
of the TIR procedure itself and a number of detailed and fascinating
session transcriptions. The authors also devote considerable and
important space to precise explication of the particular protocols and
careful management of communication necessary during sessions in order
to render TIR and related procedures fully effective. Finally, there
are chapters devoted to contraindications and to a tool the authors
call, after Gerbode, "Unblocking" - a powerful and extremely useful
adjunct to the TIR procedure.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Gerald French received his undergraduate
degree at Harvard
University. Together with Frank A. Gerbode, M.D.,
he founded the Institute
for Research in Metapsychology (IRM), later renamed the Traumatic Incident
Reduction Association (TIRA). He gave the first-ever TIR workshop and has
taught TIR to more students than anyone else in the world. He continues to
give workshops regularly. He is currently pursuing a
second master's degree
in counseling psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in
Palo Alto, California.
Chrys Harris received his B.S.
in psychology from Wofford College
and his master's from Wake Forest University. After working as a school
psychologist, he joined the Veterans Administration, counseling Vietnam
veterans and their families about combat-related traumas. He studied PTSD
with Charles Figley at
Purdue University, where he received his Ph.D., and
did post-doctoral therapy training at the University of Pennsylvania
Medical School. He utilizes TIR in his private practice as a marriage and
family therapist.
AUTHORS' STATEMENT
We have written this book for therapists, counselors, psychiatrists,
clinical social workers, and other helpers. Our hope is that the work will
serve as a practical introduction to a particularly rational and powerful
treatment paradigm, one that shows promise of being extremely effective across
quite a broad perspective of client-presenting situations. The approach in
question - Traumatic Incident Reduction, or TIR - is particularly notable for
endowing the therapist using it with the ability to support clients in coming
to terms with and growing beyond post-traumatic effects that seem unresponsive
to other traditional therapies. TIR as a therapeutic tool lends itself perhaps
most readily to the resolution of the residual emotional effects of known
traumatic experiences: rape, combat, CSA, natural disasters and the like. For
this reason, we have chosen to dwell largely on its use with survivors of such
incidents. Despite this fact, however, we urge readers not to overlook the
"Thematic" TIR's potential in addressing and resolving a great many other
client problems as well.
We have attempted with this book to provide a more detailed and
accessible reference manual than has been available for use until now for those
working with TIR. Our hope is that the manual - for such is really what we
hope it represents - will serve as both an introduction and as a practical
reference to TIR.
The first description of TIR was contained in Frank Gerbode's book,
Beyond Psychology: an Introduction to Metapsychology, published in 1988.
Although we have drawn more than a little on that excellent study, our focus in
this work has largely been a practical one. We encourage readers who wish to
acquire a detailed understanding of the background and theoretical and
philosophical underpinnings of TIR and related metapsychology-based procedures
to consult that earlier volume.
We have withheld nothing we are aware of in the way of essential data
concerning the TIR procedure and its competent
administration, and an intelligent and caring reader might well encounter a
significant - even remarkable - level of success in the use of TIR working only
from this book. No book, however, can ever substitute for training with an
experienced instructor. Responsible use of any
non-trivial technique demands it, and should you decide to incorporate the
approach into your repertoire, we urge that you seek out and attend a
professional workshop. The present authors
offer them, as do a number of other instructors certified by the Traumatic
Incident Reduction Association (TIRA).
SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND DEDICATION
We dedicate this volume to the memory of Lt. Col. Chris Christensen
(Ret). Chris was a kind, gifted, and truly remarkable man. He died suddenly
and unexpectedly, at far too young an age, on the morning of October 29th,
1992, in the course of pursuing his formal duties, then in Europe,
arranging for the transshipment of humanitarian aid desperately needed by
the peoples of Eastern Europe following the breakup of the Soviet Union. We
have quoted Chris throughout the book, and some of the ingenuous words with
which he described his selfless work with TIR introduce each of the
chapters of this book.
Chris was a student in the first-ever TIR Workshop, taught by
French in 1989 at the Institute for Research in Metapsychology in Menlo
Park, California. A veteran who had spent two years in combat in Vietnam,
frequently involved in what were called "unconventional" solo operations,
Chris had gone to work for the Idaho Department of Employment in Lewiston
subsequent to his retirement from the army, coming eventually to work
exclusively with jobless vets as a Disabled Veterans Outreach Program
Specialist.
In the course of that work, he discovered post-traumatic stress
disorder; and that his clients were not the only ones who had it, though
his own symptoms did not prevent him from working full time. Chris heard
about TIR and came to be trained in it in a roundabout fashion. To make a
long story short, Chris came to California, learned TIR, and from then
until the day he died, he employed it unselfishly, as a labor of love, with
virtually every needing, hurting person he encountered. Given the nature of
his chosen work, those folks were legion.
Of the period before he left for Europe, he later wrote, "When I
arrived at Job Service in Lewiston, Idaho, back in April of 1985, there
were in excess of one hundred and fifty disabled veterans on the rolls,
seeking employment. I worked with those people up until the time that I
went to California to receive my TIR training, and so we had close to five
years that I worked very hard with those folks to put 'em to work and keep
'em in jobs. I would say at the time that I went to California, I still had
a hundred and twenty of those people on the roles, seeking employment. With
the skills learned through TIR training I would estimate that I have worked
with close to sixty of those people, anywhere from two hours to twenty
hours at the most, the average probably running around 14 or 15 hours. And
out of those 60 people that I worked with on TIR, I had two - that's one,
two! - left on the roles, seeking employment, when I left Idaho for Germany
three weeks ago."
Christensen's unbridled enthusiasm for and delight in communicating
about the power of the tool he had discovered were a constant source of
inspiration to French, Gerbode, and others working with TIR and related
techniques who, in their efforts to "spread the word" about these promising
approaches, sometimes felt a bit like voices crying in the wilderness.
