Notes from the President
Bernhard Trenkle, Dipl
October 2018
It is a great honor to write this first Presidential Address for our Newsletter. I will use this first address to introduce the new BOD of ISH to the members and all our readers in the international world of hypnosis.
Some months ago, the individual members of ISH elected the new President-Elect (Mark Jensen, PhD; from Seattle, USA) and the new Secretary Treasurer (Enayat Shahidi, MD; from Teheran, Iran). The motto of ISH “Building Bridges of Understanding” is realized in a very impressive way having in such difficult political times colleagues from the USA and Iran in leading positions.
The other positions/places in the BOD were elected some days ago in Montreal by the representatives of the Constituent Societies of ISH. Each country has two representatives in this Council of Representatives. Before I write about the election result and the new BDD I like to write few words about the last years of ISH.
During the last 9 years, the ISH BODs have been working very efficiently. Camillo Loriedo suggested to have a live BOD meeting at least once every year. Almost all BOD Members have been able to participate in these meeting. Often, these meetings were integrated before or during a congress or teaching event, allowing us to have several days together. This helped to establish strong personal relationships and friendships. In the context of this background of good atmosphere, everybody invested more in the development of the society and many initiatives and projects.
Importantly, most of the BOD members said they would be happy to remain on the BOD in the event that they were re-elected, allowing them to follow through on the projects they are responsible for.
Claude Virot, MD is now the Immediate Past President of ISH. He will continue on the BOD in this role, and continue to develop many of the great projects he started in his 3 years as President, such as the Video-Streaming of the Congress and the ISH Youth Committee.
As new chair of the COR, we have Woltemade Hartman, PhD, from South Africa. Woltemade Hartman travels a great deal and teaches over 200 days a year all over the world. He is the ideal person for this position, because of the many opportunities he has to speak directly with the colleagues in their home countries. Giuseppe de Benedittis, MD, PhD, from the University of Milano, is the Vice Chair of the COR. He will continue with the project he initiated in the last year for WHO to recognize hypnosis as an effective treatment. Brian Allen, BSc, from Australia is the Secretary of the COR. He has held this position twice before.
Katalin Varga, PhD, from Budapest University, is also staying on as a BOD member. We all are happy with the fantastic work she has done with the ISH newsletter that ISH members receive 4 times a year. In addition, she is planning a congress that will be held in 2019 in Budapest called “Next Generations.” It will bring together a new generation of hypnotherapists and researchers.
New to the BOD Members are Krzysztof “Kris” Klajs, Dipl. Psych. from the Polish Milton Erickson Institute, Xin Fang, MA, Director of the Counseling Service of Beijing University, and Cecilia Fabre, MA, from Milton Erickson Institute Cancun Mexico. Kris will be the organizer of the next International Congress at Cracow University. Xin Fang is arguably the best hypnotherapy teacher in China, President of a fast growing Chinese Hypnosis Association, and an exceptional organizer of trainings and congresses. Cecilia knows the Latin American Hypnosis Field very well and will support ISH in the important field of Social Media. The BOD also asked the Past-President of European Society, Nicole Ruysschaert, MD, to stay as non-voting member in our BOD in order to allow us access to her experience and contacts as resource for our work.
The Past-President, Julie Linden, PhD, has devoted a great deal of time during the past nine years to reorganize the International Society and to create a virtual office which can be managed from every place in the world via internet. She also serves as the American Administrator for ISH, which is necessary because the society was founded and is registered in USA. I am delighted that she has promised to support us in administration.
In addition, I’d like to note that we owe a debt of gratitude to Consuelo Casula, PhD, for her 12 years of work on the ISH BOD. During this time, she served as Secretary/Treasurer and Editor of the Newsletter. Even when she served as the President of European Society of Hypnosis (ESH), she worked on the ISH BOD to support a close collaboration between ISH and ESH. I would like to thank her for our many good conversations and the good advice she has given be over these past years.
So, I am very happy to have a wonderful balance of colleagues from Europe, Asia, America, Africa and Australia. Importantly, there is also now a good balance in age of younger colleagues and older very experienced colleagues, women and men, and therapists and scientists/researchers.
During my life I have served on several BODs. The ISH BODs during the last 6 years have worked together in such a good atmosphere, and with such efficiency that it has been the best BOD experience in my whole life.
Sometimes I asked myself why this is the case. Maybe good luck. Or maybe a side effect of the fact that almost every BOD member has been a President of a hypnosis society in his or her home country before joining the ISH BOD. The wonderful atmosphere of our BOD may also be due everyone’s sense of humor and their ability to view the issues we address from a distance; knowing that one’s own ego is ultimately not that important when viewed from an intergalactic point of view. Maybe it is also the good luck having great Presidents for so many years.
Perhaps you wish to learn more about our current BOD Members. This is possible. One of the main projects of my term as President is the internet platform www.whoISHwho.com. There you can find a lot of information about the BOD, but also about many international experts in hypnosis and hypnotherapy. This system is just beginning, and will be expanding. You can enjoy checking things from time to time and see how many new colleagues around the world you will find there. So – if you like to know more about the ISH Board Members, their areas of expertise, and their work as therapists, scientists, authors, teachers, etc. – it is now very easy to get such information. Perhaps you are curious which BOD Member of ISH as psychologist is President-Elect of an important section of a medical society in his or her home country. Maybe you will learn something new about a friend or colleague, or even identify someone who does very interesting work who you want to contact, and who might become a friend and colleague.
The administration of ISH in the World Office was organized by Susanne Malik, USA and Marion Orel. Marion supported Claude Virot during his time of presidency. I thank Marion for all the work she did during the last three years and before in organizing the International Congress in Paris. Now Shady Tonn, a young psychologist from Germany, will support me in organizing things in the future. You will meet her at international congresses to represent the society. We will introduce her in one of the next newsletters.
Bernhard Trenkle, Dipl. Psych., Dipl.Wi.-Ing.