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Page 1 of 2 by Gordon Emmerson  Gordon & Roy I attended the CCH Roy Hunter 'Parts Therapy' workshop. It is appropriate for me to preface this review with the acknowledgment that Roy Hunter was one of the prepublication reviewers of my last book, and that he has spoken of my work positively in his book, Hypnosis for Inner Conflict Resolution: Introducing Parts Therapy. While I had not met or spoken to Roy Hunter prior to this trip to Australia, I was anticipating attending a workshop that I would appreciate, given my background in working with ego states. Given the feedback from other participants it was clear that they too were appreciative of the workshop.
An obvious feature of Roy's work, and one that he exhibited throughout the weekend, is the honouring respect he holds toward clients. He is a soft and gentle man who stresses that his parts therapy is client centered, which means listening to the client in terms of needs and interpretations. He does not see himself as a guru who knows best what is best for the client. Roy believes, as do I, that therapists’ instructions to clients in how they should live their lives are of little value. The workshop was organised in a didactic style with clear handouts that followed the progress of the teaching. The meat of the workshop was the Presentation of Roy's Eleven Step Process to Parts Therapy. As an adjunct to the 11 Step Process, Roy presented a set of tools (well received by participants) for working with the spiritual aspects of clients. He called this, “The Undiscovered Country” and it included training in how to call out the inner higher self so the client could receive internal guidance for some difficult issues.
Two participants cooperated with Roy, acting as examples of internal parts, to illustrate how internal negotiation can resolve issues. The workshop also included a demonstration by Roy with a volunteer, and two separate practice sessions so participants could get a firsthand experience of working with parts.  Roy Hunter MCCH
Roy believes it is important to locate the cause of client distress, rather than merely attending to the symptoms. He defined the difference between the Initial Sensitising Event (the origin of the problem) and an Activating Event (a reoccurrence of the problem). He believes that a current and continuing unresolved issue is not appropriate for parts therapy intervention, as he sees his intervention most appropriate for a resolution of a problem with internal causes. Here, parts therapy differs from ego states therapy, as an ego state therapist would attempt to find the most appropriate ego states to deal with current issues.
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