ABSTRACT
Greetings can be used to achieve significant progress towards all of the goals which clients typically wish to achieve in therapy, including those which they only reveal upon further questioning since they do not initially regard them as achievable. The purpose of the greetings is to increase the effectiveness of therapeutic work, i.e. to destabilise attitudes and beliefs which prevent clients reaching their therapeutic goals, to ensure that they are not “overloaded” either during or after the therapy session and to stabilise and build upon what has already been achieved. The purpose of the greeting is also to make the client more confident that the course of therapy will have the desired effects, and to invite him or her to adopt a playful attitude to any lingering doubts. Trauma can arise when a person feels helplessly exposed to an existential threat at an emotional or physical level, and is so overcome by fear that a state of numbness ensues.
