New insights

Alongside their practical day-to-day therapeutic work, HG co-founders Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell spent decades researching, considering and consulting with colleagues on a wide range of  subjects related to psychology and mental health.

The new insights that resulted from their extensive work are consistent with scientific research and have proved profoundly helpful – increasing our understanding, bringing much-needed clarity and practical application, and dramatically improving the effectiveness of psychological interventions.

They include:

  • A new view of the unconscious mind – the APET™ model – which is compatible with neuroscience, clinical experience and experiment, and which shows how the brain works through ‘pattern matching’. This supersedes cognitive behavioural therapy because it is more true to the reality of brain functioning
  • A new insight into trauma and, therefore, how best to treat it
  • An holistic understanding of the evolutionary origins and function of human dreaming, which has huge implications for our emotional health
  • The crucial link between thinking styles and fluctuations in emotional arousal
  • An holistic, integrated theory for why depression develops and is maintained
  • A new explanation for addiction and why withdrawal symptoms occur
  • The discovery of ‘molar memories’ which generate and maintain some instances of compulsive behaviour (such as sexual compulsions, anorexia and bulimia)
  • An understanding of why the use of metaphor is so powerful as a form of treatment
  • A comprehensive understanding of the placebo and ‘nocebo’ effects
  • A psychobiological explanation of clinical hypnosis, why it works and what mechanisms are common to all forms of hypnotic induction
  • A new, empowering understanding of the potential cause of autism
  • A new insight into what psychosis is
  • Caetextia: a new definition of autistic and Asperger’s behaviour
  • A more comprehensive understanding of the importance of the REM (rapid eye movement) state in generating reality and accessing intuitive knowledge
  • A new understanding of the nature of consciousness.

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The above insights are covered at length on the HG Diploma course, and individually on other courses, and are fully referenced in our many publications, particularly: Human Givens: The new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

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