What we rest on
The course is personal development, and it builds on ideas and methods that others developed before us and that can be traced back to their origins. It is not medical care and we promise no measured effects, but we can show what it rests on. Here we go through it, arranged by the questions we tend to get, and at the bottom the sources are written out so that you can read them for yourself.
Is this woolly?
Bengt Stern, who developed the course, was a doctor in Skärholmen for fifteen years before he began holding courses at Mullingstorp. Why he did so is something he tells best himself, on our background page. His patients were given sedatives and sick leave, he said, when what they really needed was to take responsibility for their own lives.
What we work with in the course all has its origins, and they have names. Attachment theory comes from Bowlby and Ainsworth, the drama triangle from Karpman and the language of needs from Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication, and in Step 3 we lean on Gottman's relationship research. That intellect and feeling work together when we make decisions is Damasio's conclusion. Daniel Kahneman received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2002 for bringing psychology's knowledge of how people judge and decide into economics. What he described we probably all recognise, that understanding a pattern is one thing and being rid of it quite another.
That is exactly where the course takes over. Reading about something and practising it are two different things, and the one does not replace the other. Change rarely stops at having understood, but settles only when insight, feeling and bodily experience are allowed to come together. The methods we use all have names of their own, and none of them is ours.
We try to keep apart what is established and what is our own experience. That attachment shapes us, and that working in a group gives results as good as individual sessions for most people, has strong support in the research. The body-oriented work, psychodrama and the language of needs have thinner support, and we say so plainly. What the week does for you in particular no research can say in advance, because that is experience rather than measurement.
Why in a group?
We work in a group because that is where the patterns show themselves, not because it is cheaper. Christer Sandahl, professor at Karolinska Institutet, summarised the research like this in the journal Socionomen in 2014: “Group therapy stands on its own and gives results as good as individual therapy for the great majority of conceivable clients, although there are of course exceptions to the rule.” A review of twenty-five years of studies, in which group and individual sessions were compared within the same investigation, came to the same conclusion, that the results are equivalent.
He also describes why that is. In a group, the patterns that tend to cause trouble in our relationships are stirred, and there they can be seen and tried out. The course is not psychotherapy, but the form rests on the same observation. Perhaps that is why so much of the work happens through hearing someone else put words to what you have been carrying yourself.
Why a week somewhere else?
Our habits are governed by what we want, but just as much by where we are. They are woken by the context, by the place, by the people around us and by whatever usually happens just before. At home in the kitchen you do what you have always done, without thinking about it. That is why it matters that the course is held on an island and not at home. When you change the context the habits lose their grip, and only then can you get a proper look at them.
Most of what we do in relationships happens quickly and without reflection, and that kind of thing can only be learnt by practising and finding out how it went. In everyday life you rarely get that. Nobody tells you the same afternoon whether you read another person right or wrong. A week together with the others in the group is precisely such an occasion. You practise, and you find out how it went, from people who were there.
And now to what matters more than all of that. The kitchen is still there when you get home, and the habits with it. The week makes the pattern visible, but home is where the work begins. What that can mean is on the page After the course.
Three words we work by
Love. You may be exactly as you are and feel exactly what you feel, wherever you are in the process, and none of us will judge you for it.
Trust. We trust that every person carries their own ability and will to develop, and that is where we work from.
Quality. We keep to the course as it is laid out and meet you where you stand. We challenge you just enough, and we make sure you are safe while we do it.
What we do not claim
We do not measure what the course gives, and we promise nothing about it either. What we can tell you is what participants themselves say afterwards, and we have gathered that on the reviews page.
The course, as it was held at Mullingstorp in 2000 and 2001, was studied in a licentiate thesis at Karolinska Institutet. We mention it because it exists and can be read, not because it proves anything. The comparison group consisted of people who had already taken the course, so what the thesis says is that the course has been examined, not that it helps. What it shows most clearly is really something else, that many came there when they were feeling bad.
What the course is not, we have written out on the safety page. It is not healthcare, and it does not replace any care you are already receiving.
Sources
You will find the books in a library. The articles we have linked to their publishers, and some of them are, unfortunately, behind a paywall.
The origins
- Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss, vol. 1. Ainsworth, M. et al. (1978). Patterns of Attachment.
- Karpman, S. (1968). Fairy tales and script drama analysis. Transactional Analysis Bulletin 7(26). The article as a pdf
- Rosenberg, M. Nonviolent Communication. PuddleDancer Press.
- Gottman, J. and Silver, N. (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. A popular summary of the research, not a study.
- Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error.
- Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. The 2002 prize: the press release at nobelprize.org
The research on practice, habits and groups
- Kahneman, D. and Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for intuitive expertise. American Psychologist 64(6). doi.org/10.1037/a0016755
- Wood, W. and Neal, D. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit–goal interface. Psychological Review 114(4). doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843
- Sandahl, C. (2014). Gruppterapi, en underutnyttjad resurs. Socionomen no. 6, pp. 18–23. In Swedish.
- Burlingame, G. et al. (2016). Outcome differences between individual and group formats. Psychotherapy 53(4). doi.org/10.1037/pst0000090
- Rosendahl, J. et al. (2021). Effectiveness of body psychotherapy. Frontiers in Psychiatry 12. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.709798
- Orkibi, H. and Feniger-Schaal, R. (2019). Integrative systematic review of psychodrama psychotherapy research. PLOS ONE 14(2). doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212575
- Adriani, P. et al. (2024). Non-violent communication as a technology in interpersonal relationships in health work. BMC Health Services Research 24. doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-10753-2
The study of the course
- Fernros, L. (2009). Improving quality of life using mind-body therapies. Licentiate thesis, Karolinska Institutet. KI open archive
- Fernros, L., Furhoff, A.-K. and Wändell, P. (2005). Quality of life of participants in a mind-body-based self-development course. Quality of Life Research 14(2). doi.org/10.1007/s11136-004-1467-6
- Fernros, L., Furhoff, A.-K. and Wändell, P. (2008). Improving quality of life using compound mind-body therapies. Quality of Life Research 17(3). doi.org/10.1007/s11136-008-9321-x