November Video of the Month
Cloé Madanes – Thanksgiving Therapy: A Live Demonstration with a Couple
Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference 2009 | Anaheim, CA
Clinical Demonstration
Timeless Presentations from Erickson Foundation Events
This ongoing series highlights keynotes, workshops, and demonstrations from past Erickson Foundation conferences…showcasing the most influential voices in psychotherapy. These archival recordings offer more than historical interest; they hold lasting clinical value. Each session distills complex therapeutic ideas into lived examples, practical applications, and subtle demonstrations of the art of therapy.
This month’s selection features Cloé Madanes working live with a couple struggling over Thanksgiving plans. What begins as a discussion about holiday disagreements grows into a look at the emotional habits that can be carried into family celebrations. Madanes uses humor and warmth to help the couple uncover what the holidays really mean to them and how they can connect instead of repeating old patterns.
📌 About the Speaker
Cloé Madanes, Lic. Psic., is a founder of strategic family therapy and a pioneer in using structure and compassion to create change. Her teaching blends emotional awareness with practical strategy. Known for her collaborations with Jay Haley and Tony Robbins, she has influenced generations of therapists with her creativity and belief in love as an agent of healing.
🧠 Demonstration Highlights: Holidays, History, and Healing
In this session, Madanes meets with Joanne and Tom, a married couple who argue every year about holiday gatherings. Tom becomes tense and withdrawn when Thanksgiving approaches. He recalls his childhood holidays filled with family conflict and pressure to appear happy. Those memories still shape his reactions as an adult.
Madanes helps him recognize that his frustration hides his fear. He dreads the buildup, the work, and the feeling that nothing will ever be good enough for recognition and praise.
Joanne wants to celebrate and bring people together, but she feels alone when he pulls away.
Madanes goes over her six Universal Human Needs and has Joanne and Tom each list them out in order of their importance to them personally. Madanes then shows the couple the ways in which their individual needs differ and complement each other. As they explore their needs more deeply, they begin to see how each one affects their interpersonal dynamic. The tension between them begins to soften.
🌀 Ericksonian Threads in Madanes’ Work
Madanes demonstrates the Ericksonian art of using whatever the moment offers. When Tom becomes defensive, she treats it as valuable information. When Joanne shows irritation, Madanes reframes it as energy that can be used for love.
Her playful suggestion that Joanne “dance naked” to interrupt Tom’s mood is a perfect example of paradox used with care. The laughter it sparks changes the emotional tone instantly. Madanes later guides the couple through a simple heart-breathing exercise that helps them slow down, breathe together, and remember their affection. Each technique turns conflict into an opportunity for closeness.
Watch as Cloé Madanes begins to break a rigid Thanksgiving conflict pattern with a playful Ericksonian intervention that instantly changes the emotional tone.
⏳ Why It Still Matters
These issues appear in therapy every holiday season. Couples struggle with expectations and the pressure to make everything perfect. Madanes reminds us that these moments can be opportunities to slow down and explore what each person truly needs.
In Madanes’ hands, Thanksgiving stress becomes a lesson in how love, patience, and play can restore the connection between two people.
You May Like …
A Memoir
by Cloé Madanes
Type: Softcover
Honest, clear, brilliant … Cloé Madanes tells her own story, and, in the process, explains how a psychotherapist is born, develops and contributes. She weaves a tapestry of her personal history, her social context and the politics of the time. The book is a gift to all who hope to understand the role of the past in who we become.
Not By Accident reflects Madanes’ conviction that free will and a system that follows its own rules exist simultaneously, and that the human spirit has the capacity to triumph in the face of all kinds of adversity. This conviction is central to Madanes’ account of her own life journey. In Not By Accident, she shows us how her therapy strategies evolved from her unshakeable belief in the power of people to drive each other sane and the power of words to change the world.
The book is a no-nonsense exploration of the hard truth about how Madanes went about constructing her own life. She captures contradiction, paradox and the complexity of the human experience in ways that will resonate with her readers’ own experiences and life stories.
A Memoir
by Cloé Madanes
Type: eBook
Format: .epub
Honest, clear, brilliant … Cloé Madanes tells her own story, and, in the process, explains how a psychotherapist is born, develops and contributes. She weaves a tapestry of her personal history, her social context and the politics of the time. The book is a gift to all who hope to understand the role of the past in who we become.
Not By Accident reflects Madanes’ conviction that free will and a system that follows its own rules exist simultaneously, and that the human spirit has the capacity to triumph in the face of all kinds of adversity. This conviction is central to Madanes’ account of her own life journey. In Not By Accident, she shows us how her therapy strategies evolved from her unshakeable belief in the power of people to drive each other sane and the power of words to change the world.
The book is a no-nonsense exploration of the hard truth about how Madanes went about constructing her own life. She captures contradiction, paradox and the complexity of the human experience in ways that will resonate with her readers’ own experiences and life stories.
Cloé Madanes (2009) Strategic Therapy with a Couple demonstrates with a young couple who is conflicted about holiday celebrations and vacations. The husband has wounds from his past that resonate with family holidays. He also wants to be more a part of his wife “inner circle” with her son from a previous marriage and vacations challenge him in this area. Madanes uses humor, insight and emotional connection to guide the couple to an accepting compromise.
Educational Objectives:
To name two strategies for therapy.
To list three important questions to ask in therapy.
by Cloé Madanes
Type: Softcover
After more than three decades, Behind the One-Way Mirror is as an essential resource now as ever. Why a revised edition? Because Cloé Madanes is a singular voice in strategic therapy, whose clarity and intellect can light the way for everyone working on the front lines of human relations — therapists and life coaches.
Ms Madanes has updated this important contribution to reflect an evolution in her own thinking: “I realized that now we possess a body of knowledge that can help millions of people and that we need to share this knowledge so that everyone can benefit from it, instead of limiting it to a small group of people who belong to the therapy professions. We are all related and we are here to help each other.” And it is with some urgency that she proffers a democratization of therapeutic advocacy: “ … we need to break up the illusion of separate identities that is the cause of so much intolerance.”
Ms Madanes’ clear observations, precise strategies, and nuanced understandings are brought to life in vivid case excerpts that allow therapists and coaches to identify the key steps in moving from idea to action with their own clients.
