March 2020
Dear ISH Members,
The motto of ISH is: Building Bridges of Understanding. For over 40 years now, and since my studies in Heidelberg starting in 1975, I have been interested in ethnopsychiatry and intercultural communication, etc. In the meantime, I have a large library of books by authors such as Edward T. Hall. This interest and commitment to international communication and cooperation is consistent with the primary focus of ISH, and is one of the reasons I strongly support international projects and appreciate the great diversity of our the ISH board of directors, in which we have colleagues from the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia.
But I am starting here with a mental exercise. The event happened almost 40 years ago. At that time, I was studying psychology and already organising hypnosis workshops together with Gunther Schmidt. We invited students of Milton Erickson to Heidelberg to teach for us.
Here is a dialogue I had with one of these teachers:
Teacher: My workshop fee has increased. Last time I taught for 750 a day. Next year my fee will be 1200 a day.
Bernhard: How can this be feasible with our limited numbers of participants and so many student participants in a three-day seminar?
Teacher: Okay, okay. Gunther and you have done a lot to build up the reputation of hypnotherapy and you have laid the foundations for me to teach here. I would like to appreciate that. This is what we do. For two days, you pay me 1200 for one day, and the other I teach for free. I give you this as an appreciation of your commitment. Bernhard: Great, so 800 a day. That is no problem.
Teacher (with offended voice): Sorry, no, no, my daily fee is 1200.
So where was the cultural misunderstanding here?
Fortunately, the former director of the DAI (German-American Institute) in Heidelberg had already explained it to me before this dialogue. As a former diplomat he had a good training in intercultural differences. He explained the following to me: „As a DAI, unlike a classical America-House, I receive an honorarium to pay for any speakers’ fees from a German government fund. The total is simply 500 dollars, regardless of the speaker. Whether it be student reporting about a trip she or she made to another country, or it is a celebrity like Henry Kissinger. But a speaker from the USA has a fixed price that is linked to his or her reputation. It may be $5,000, or even $12,000 or more. That speaker would never speak for $500. Instead, he or she might donate that $500 to the library here. There hasn’t been a single German buy tramadol online cheap speaker who hasn’t taken the $500 – no matter how prominent or famous.”
My mistake toward my workshop teacher was that I did not thank him for this donation of $1200, but instead talked about 800 a day.
The question now from a 2020 point of view is this. If a colleague from the USA teaches in Europe and has a specific daily fee, should the Europeans follow this rule, or should the USA colleagues adapt to European rules?
Also, from 2020 point of view at least in hypnotherapy field things are not so rigid anymore. We learned from each other and learned to respect the different world views. There are some colleagues who are not at all acting along such cultural stereotypes. Our President-Elect Mark Jensen is for me an example and role model for acting “international” and being very flexible and always in a positive way goal-oriented for the benefit our hypnosis society or whatever project we are working on.
In any case, the first step is to know and appreciate these differences. How we then deal with them is then the creative challenge.
Somewhere I once read that Milton Erickson was asked how to become a good psychotherapist. His recommendation was this: Read anthropology books.
That makes sense. Recognising and taking into account intercultural differences also sharpens our awareness of interindividual differences in our own culture. In a married couple from the same home country, family socialisation in the families of origin can be so different that this is also good for intercultural conflicts.
On the ISH Executive Board, during our international conferences, and on our travels, we value and love the cultural differences. We appreciate the valuable and special features of others. In some respects, of course, we may be typically German, typically Chinese, typically American, or „typically” name of our country of original. On the other hand, it is useful to be flexible in expanding our repertoire of behaviour through sometimes surprising and often interesting encounters with others, in order to grow together and to co-develop.
We live and experience the recent past worldwide an unexpected tendency towards separatism, egoism, and a turning away from international community projects. The number of divorces has also increased worldwide. I experience the ISH as a counter-model.
Now – Even if you privately wear a T-shirt with the inscription “Don’t Marry – Stay Happy”, please consider this as a positive alternative to separatism: motivate your colleagues to join ISH as members. Consider contacting at least one valued colleague, right now, and invite him or her to join. This will help us all to have an inspiring and enriching family environment.
Best regards,
Bernhard Trenkle
Dipl.Psych., Dipl.Wi.-Ing.
President ISH