Book review · Red Sistémica
There is no night that does not see the day. Brief therapy for panic attacks
Fear is the most primitive of our emotions; taken to the extreme, it becomes the most concrete of our sensations and engages the body before thought itself. Giorgio Nardone answers it with a brief protocol that starts not from the causes of the disorder but from the way it works and from its solution. A book of hope, in which strategic therapy demonstrates its speed on the ground of panic attacks.
The forms and the settings of panic are extremely varied, and everyone knows them for having experienced them at one time or another: the fear of heights, of crowds, of enclosed spaces, of flying, of lifts; the fear of losing those we love, or the fear of one’s own body. That this very widespread pathology should be so invasive and so disqualifying for the person who suffers from it does not mean, however, that it is a sentence from which there is no release.
The book sets out Giorgio Nardone’s therapeutic model and brings to light the mechanisms that lead to this kind of disorder. The method rests on a simple idea: to know a problem through its solution. Rather than looking for why disorders form, Nardone is interested in the way they work and concentrates his work on solutions. The protocol draws on refined techniques of hypnotic suggestion, on behavioural traps and on “profitable deceptions” that get round the patient’s resistance to change.
What the book brings
A specific protocol, described step by step, for panic attacks: where many approaches question the origin of fear, this one describes what the person does in order not to be afraid — and how those attempted solutions keep the disorder going. For the English-speaking therapist, it is a short and concrete way into the work of the Arezzo school, with its prescriptions, its paradoxes and its economy of means.
Who is the author
Giorgio Nardone is a psychologist, the founder and director of the Centre for Strategic Therapy in Arezzo, where he practises as a psychotherapist and heads the school of specialisation in brief strategic therapy. The review presents him as the most prominent figure among the researchers who came out of the Palo Alto school: his clinical research has led him to develop brief-therapy models specific to certain forms of pathology, such as phobic and obsessive disorders or eating disorders. His work, at once creative and systematic, inspires researchers and therapists throughout the world. He gives lectures and seminars in Italy and abroad, and he is the author of many books translated into several languages, among them The Art of Change (with Paul Watzlawick), Paura, panico, fobie and Brief Strategic Therapy (with Paul Watzlawick).
This book review is an English translation of “No hay noche que no vea el día. La terapia breve para los ataques de pánico”, published by Red Sistémica (first published in Red Sistémica). Translated and republished with the journal’s permission.
Read the original articleHow to cite this article
Des Champs, C. (2022). There is no night that does not see the day. Brief therapy for panic attacks (Complexe Systémique, Trans.). Complexe Systémique. https://app.complexe-systemique.com/en_GB/articles/there-is-no-night-that-does-not-see-the-day-brief-therapy-for-panic-attacks (Original work published in 2022 in Red Sistémica; republished in 2022 by Red Sistémica, https://redsistemica.ar/2022/08/01/no-hay-noche-que-no-vea-el-dia-la-terapia-breve-para-los-ataques-de-panico/)
To go further
- The world of fears (part 1). The use of prescriptions in phobic and panic disordersThe logic of prescriptions in phobic disorders, seen from inside a consultation.
- The world of fears (part 2). The use of prescriptions in phobic and panic disordersThe sequel: how a prescription holds over time and what makes it fail.
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