Ken Davis (22 July 1950 – 27 January 2024): Colleague, Fellow Trainer, Contributor to the Development of EFT

 

I learned a couple of days ago that Ken Davis, my friend, EFT colleague, and fellow trainer, has died. Here, in his honor and memory, I’m going to share some of my personal reflections on who Ken was and how I think he was important to me and to the development of Emotion-Focused Therapy.

Ken was instrumental in the development of Process-Experiential/Emotion-Focused Therapy research and training at the University of Toledo in the late 1980’s and through much of the 1990’s, and even into the early 2000’s.  He had quite a bit of prior training in humanistic-experiential psychotherapies and co-led PE/EFT trainings with me.  He was a natural group facilitator and often had to remind me to slow down and pay more attention to the relational processes in the group.  Ken was a key member of the team at Toledo that developed an EFT approach to crime-related PTSD in the early to mid 1990’s, and he went on to help me run the Friday afternoon EFT training workshops that ran for years in the sometimes-challenging environment of the Psychology Department. 

 

Based on these experiences and his interest in psychotherapy training, Ken was originally part of the writing team (with Jeanne Watson, Rhonda Goldman, Les Greenberg and me) for the first edition of Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy (APA, 2003).  Unfortunately, his personal circumstances made it impossible for him to take part. (This was primarily due to the untimely death from breast cancer of his wife Deb and the subsequent demands of private practice and being the single parent of their young son.) However, his interest in training group process and on how students learn EFT is part of the DNA of the Learning EFT book and in EFT today. (See in particular the last chapter of the Learning book, where we discuss our understanding of what EFT training should look like.)

 

Ken was both a colleague and a friend.  On the occasion of his 1992 wedding to Deb Smith (who was the great love of his life), I wrote the following little poem:

Flocking of flamingos

emergent property

as each one follows desire of heart

to take wing together.

 

For his PhD dissertation, Ken took on the challenging task of developing a measure of therapist response modes in EFT, analyzing a collection of significant therapy events identified by clients in the Toledo Experiential Therapy of Depression project. Probably his most interesting finding had to do with content directive responses, like advice-giving and interpretation.  He found that on average EFT therapists used these responses about 1% of the time, that is, about one per session; nevertheless, these therapists were clearly doing EFT.  However, one of the therapists in the study used these responses about 5% of the time, and it was quite clear that they were not really doing EFT at all.  Ken colorfully described this therapist as “a CBT wolf in process-experiential sheep’s clothing.” I still tell this story today when I cover the EFT therapist response modes in trainings.

 

Over the past two years I’ve numerous occasions to look things up in Ken’s dissertation as part of various recent projects.  If you are interested in learning more, here is the citation and a link that I hope will take you to more information about it:

Davis, Kenneth L. (1994). The role of therapist actions in process-experiential therapy. University of Toledo, Department of Psychology. 

https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/role-therapist-actions-process-experiential/docview/304145150/se-2?accountid=14116

 

In all my many moves over the past 18 years, I have lost track of the data set Ken used for this study, so about a year ago I reached out to him to see if he still had the transcripts and recordings from his project.  I thought this might be a nice excuse to reconnect with him.  He eventually said that he thought data was around somewhat but he wasn’t sure where and was having trouble getting around to try to locate it.

 

I’m not sure whether my reaching out to him had anything to do with it, but I was delighted when Ken signed up for one of my zoom-based Advanced Empathy Attunement trainings last August through the EFT Institute of Southern California, organized by Lada Safvati.  I don’t think that he really needed the training, but when asked why he signed up, he said it was fun for him to revisit EFT and see what is happening with it today.  He told me that he had a neuromuscular disorder that had really slowed him down, but even so it was lovely to see him.  After that, together with his sister Carla (who is currently studying counselling), he signed up for the Level 2 that Ladan and I ran in December. However, I think he was not well enough to participate, because he had to withdraw after a day or two. The last time I saw him was the first day of that training.

 

I remember Ken as gentle, wise, funny, kind, determined, and as deeply grounded in the body.  He was trained in massage and worked with folks with neuromuscular conditions. I remember how one time when someone said they were having back trouble, he got down on the ground, analyzed their stance, and offered a set of useful suggestions.  I remember another time when he and I had him put his allergies in a chair and have a dialogue with them.  Certainly, working with him gave me more appreciation for the bodily dimension of EFT, so I think that’s another influence he’s had on the development of EFT.

 

I also remember how he supported me while I was having a hard time with some colleagues in the Psychology department, as our relationship evolved from student-professor to colleague-friend.  And I remember how in the early days of managed care he used to complain about poorly trained staff mis-managing psychologists who were working with complicated, fragile clients who needed more than 10 sessions of CBT.

 

Burned into my memory are also images of him and Deb and their son Josh, and then him and Josh at Deb’s memorial service.  So in looking through the remembrances on his Tribute Wall it was especially poignant to see the photo of Ken, wearing his academic regalia, hooding his son Josh at Josh’s graduation with a doctoral degree in Physical Rehabilitation. (I love the legend at the bottom: Hooder: Dr. Father. Kenneth Davis).

 

So I’m left with a set of memories of our time together running EFT trainings when it all felt new and sometimes like we were making things up as we went along.  It was an exciting and challenging time, and I am grateful to have had Ken’s company through much of it. I’m also left with some regret that we weren’t able to do more together, for all the time of being disconnected after Diane and I moved to Scotland in 2006, and for not expressing to him the extent of what he meant to me.

 

In our time together, Ken and I published two book chapters together on the crime-related PTSD study.  I’ve listed both below, with links to versions of them listed after each. The first one is only available in a pre-publication version, while for the second one there is a photocopy of the published version:

 

Elliott, R., Suter, P., Manford, J., Radpour-Markert, L., Siegel-Hinson, R., Layman, C., & Davis, K.  (1996).  A Process-Experiential Approach to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  In R. Hutterer, G. Pawlowsky, P.F. Schmid, & R. Stipsits (eds.), Client-centered and experiential psychotherapy: A paradigm in motion (pp.235-254).  Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang. 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/a67k8zf739ac7v1lc4sw2/PTSDEXP_994.docx?rlkey=bez558e2uj626h3o8n6zvs88f&dl=0

 

Elliott, R., Davis, K., & Slatick, E. (1998).  Process-Experiential Therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Difficulties.  In L. Greenberg, G. Lietaer, & J. Watson, Handbook of experiential psychotherapy (pp. 249-271).  New York: Guilford.  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/r3plx64nw1fil9u6379zr/Elliott-Davis-Slatick-1998-EFT-for-Crime-Related-PTSD.pdf?rlkey=ncw8wnd453m1fndfkfug39f34&dl=0

 

Fare thee well, Ken: my old friend and colleague.  Your kind, compassionate, gentle spirit lives on in EFT today, and exemplifies what is best about it!

Vale Allen Bergin: Personal Reflections

Allen Bergin, one of the founders of the scientific field of psychotherapy research, died a couple of days ago at the age of 89. In the late 1960’s he and Hans Strupp got a grant to travel around the United States interviewing prominent psychotherapy researchers about where the field should go. The result was the book Changing Frontiers in the Science of Psychotherapy (1972), which I devoured as a grad student when I was at UCLA. I still remember the breathless excitement of their commentary on the process. It was one of the things that inspired me to become a psychotherapy researcher.

 

 

Allen had done a post-doc in the early 1960’s with Carl Rogers working on the famous Wisconsin Project, which had applied client-centered therapy (later relabelled as person-centered therapy) to work with clients with psychotic processes. With Sol Garfield, he began editing the Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change, whose first edition was published in 1971, and which was – and still remains – the standard reference for psychotherapy research.  In the early 1990’s Allen and Sol asked Les Greenberg to do a review of research on humanistic psychotherapies for the fourth edition of the Handbook.  Humanistic psychotherapies had not been covered since the first edition, so this was a big step, and a potentially an important moment for this branch of psychotherapy.  It was also the origin of the Humanistic-Experiential Psychotherapy (HEP) meta-analysis project, still continuing 30 years later. We set to work meta-analyzing pre-post effect sizes for all 37 HEP outcome studies we were able to find. (At that time, we were opposed to comparative outcome research.) Somewhat anxiously, we submitted the draft to Allen and Sol.  They knocked it back, insisting that we analyze the controlled (vs. no-treatment controls) and comparative (vs. other treatments) outcome studies.  We swallowed hard, held our noses, and analyzed the controlled and comparative outcome effects, producing the (for us) startling result of large controlled effects and null (d = 0) comparative effects.  We had obtained a no difference, “dodo bird” effect.  We submitted the revision to Allen and Sol, who knocked it back again, complaining that we had pooled comparative effects involving both CBT and psychodynamic therapies; how did we know that CBT wasn’t more effective that HEPs?  With great trepidation, we ran the comparison between CBT and HEPs; we found CBT to be slightly but nonsignificantly more effective than person-centered, but also tantalizing indications that EFT might more effective than CBT. At that point, much to our relief, Allen and Sol accepted the chapter. 

 

Years later Allen was visiting Toledo, where his son was teaching in the School of Education at the University of Toledo, and he and I arranged to meet up.  He told me that Sol had wanted to reject our humanistic therapy review chapter from the Handbook; he had insisted on keeping it in the book. Given the precarious state of these therapies in the early 1990’s, I think that the history of the humanistic-experiential therapies would be quite different today if Allen had not come our defense at that point. We owe him a debt of gratitude.

 

As another testament to his integrity, I want to point to his outspoken advocacy of bringing scientific attention to the important role of religious faith and involvement in religious communities as factors supporting mental health and psychological well-being, published in his ground-breaking paper, “Psychotherapy and religious values.,” in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (1980). I remember him presenting a version of this paper at a conference of the Society for Psychotherapy Research around that time. He must have  known that it was not a popular topic with psychotherapy researchers at that point in history, and would possibly lower the estimation that many of his fellow researchers had of him. Nevertheless, it was a testament to his scientific integrity and his religious faith that he went ahead to make his case regardless of the consequences.  As another person of faith, I personally felt validated and inspired by his attempt to combine the spiritual with the scientific. 

 

Over the past 20 years, various folks in the Society for Psychotherapy Research have reached out to Allen, encouraging him to come to meetings; however, the fact is that he was happy with his mission work (he was a prominent figure in the Church of the Latter Day Saints) and with his family.  Therefore, it was heartening to read the moving account by Michael Barkham (echoed by Wolfgang Lutz and Louis Castonguay) of his recent involvement in the 7^th edition of the Handbook (published in 2021). In order to write the preface for it, Michael reports that Allen carefully read and took detailed notes on all 800 pages.

 

Right now in my imagination I’m picturing him reading the latest version of the HEP chapter in the book he and Sol Garfield founded, pleased and smiling at the nearly 300 outcome studies of HEPs now included in our reviews, feeling glad that he put his faith in us 30 years ago, just when we needed that validation.  Thank you, Allen! Your integrity and faith live on in us.  You are an important piece in the history of psychotherapy research, and one of my personal validating elders (or “angels” or “saints” if you prefer).

 

For more on Allen Bergin and his life:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Bergin

 

Lambert, M. J., Gurman, A. S., & Richards, P. S. (2010). Allen E. Bergin: Consummate scholar and charter member of the Society for Psychotherapy Research. In L. G. Castonguay, J. C. Muran, L. Angus, J. A. Hayes, N. Ladany, & T. Anderson (Eds.), Bringing psychotherapy research to life: Understanding change through the work of leading clinical researchers (pp. 101–111). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/12137-009

 

 

Sneak Preview: Slowing the Process Down: Excerpt from Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy (second edition), in preparation

My colleagues Jeanne Watson, Rhonda Goldman, Les Greenberg and I are well along in our work on the second edition of our book Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy.  We're certainly more than halfway there and hope to have the draft of the whole thing to the editor by the beginning of May.  I recently finished the draft of the Chapter 9, which mostly deals with Focusing. In the process to a piece of training I did recently, I got inspired to write the following text for the early part of the chapter.  Although it's not the final version, I thought it might be fun and useful to share this passage here, because I hadn't seen this written up elsewhere in the EFT literature. As my favorite vloggers like to say, if you feel like, please fell free to jump into the comments section to let me know what you think about this:

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Facilitating the emotional experiencing tasks in this chapter requires therapists to help their clients slow their pace down in sessions. As Gendlin (1981), Cornell (1996) and others have pointed out, emotions need time to emerge. If the client is talking fast, this generally means that their current emotion processing mode is externalizing or purely conceptual (see Chapter 5). In these modes, clients typically stay stuck in secondary reactive emotions, skimming over the surface of their feelings. This leads in turn to the client not progressing into deeper emotions, making for slow therapeutic progress at best. On the other hand, helping the client slow their pace can allow more emotions to emerge, especially deeper, more primary emotions. The greater emotional depth will enable therapy to progress more quickly. Thus, in EFT, we like to say: Fast is slow, and slow is fast!

However, EFT is in general a fast, busy therapy, with many different processes for the therapist to juggle: many things therapists might want to remember, and a many different kinds of work that therapists can help clients with. It’s easy for EFT therapists to feel pressured and rushed by all of this. Probably the most important gift that Focusing has to give EFT therapists is the value of slowing down. This slower pace enables EFT therapists to take their client’s emotional experiences a bit at time, making sure that they understand each aspect of these experiences. More importantly, slowing down helps clients better access to their emotions, especially the deeper, more painful ones.

How can EFT therapists help slow their clients’ pace down? The key to this turns out to be for therapists slow their own pace down when they are with clients (and maybe at other times also). Response matching is a well-established phenomenon in therapy (Harper et al., 1978) and includes reaction time latency (how long before client or therapist start speaking), interruption and duration of utterance. Thus, therapists tend to match their clients’ pace (Rocco et al., 2018), and clients tend to match their therapists’ reaction time latency and interruptions (Harper et al., 1978). Here are some suggestions to help therapists slow their process down:

1. Consider what your natural pace is: Do I generally tend to feel time-pressured or in a hurry?

2. Start noticing your pace in sessions, especially when you feel anxious or in a hurry; or listen to recordings of your practice.

3. Give yourself time before each session to slow yourself down and to make space for your client.

4. Leave the book/model/shoulds/supervisor outside the door and focus to begin with on your empathy.

5. Disclose to your client that you are trying to slow your pace down.

6. If you or you client appear to racing, suggest that both of you take a minute to take a breath and slow down.

7. Realize that this might be difficult for your client and you, and therefore might take concerted or repeated effort.

8. Develop a focusing or mindfulness practice.