BT12 Short Course 04 – Using Movies in Ericksonian Therapy – Daniel Bass, Dipl. Psych

Description: This short course explores how films and movie clips can be used as therapeutic tools to evoke insight, emotional regulation, and change without direct instruction. Participants learn how cinematic scenes naturally engage attention, imagination, and identification, creating trance-like states that can support reframing, resource activation, and self-hypnosis. Through theory, clinical examples, and film excerpts, the session shows how movies can function as modern metaphors that help clients access strengths, shift stuck narratives, and move forward in a way that feels intuitive and engaging.

Syllabus Description: Movies are complex multisensory stories reflecting a specific world. They transport messages and solutions in order to provide the viewer with the possibility of identifying with the movie characters, get absorbed in it, empathize, recognize consciously or subconsciously one’s own central topics in life. They provide the possibility of being catalysts for developmental processes that can be used in psychotherapy. In this presentation participants will learn about the processes of watching movies and the transfer into therapy.

Educational Objectives:

1. Describe several techniques of how movies can be used to elicit therapeutic processes.
2. Describe a method of how therapists can identify and apply therapeutically useful movies.

*Sessions may be edited for content and to preserve confidentiality*