By: Menedimos Geomelas

This is not an ordinary book. On the contrary, it is an exceptional book with gems of wisdom in literally every chapter, written by an astute agent of change. This book represents the distillation of 18 years of experience of Jorgen Rasmussen working with clients who want to change.
As the book title implies, realistic combinations of different approaches to changework in a step-by-step format are described.
Jorgen has studied the work of Albert Ellis ( REBT), Sydney Banks ( Three Principles), Byron Katie ( The Work), Robert Kegan ( developmental psychology) and John Grinder ( NLP), among others, and he presents, explains and analyzes these approaches and their application in real case studies.
The way Jorgen looks at things from different angles to assist the clients/ patients in shifting their perceptions of reality is simply an art in and of itself.
While reading through the book, these three key words come into play : honesty, sincerity and integrity. The author openly speaks about the cases where he was able to produce outstanding results as well as about the cases where the results were moderate or weak.

Although there are several philosophical insights and many philosophical points that leave room for constructive discussion in the book, „ provocative suggestions“ is far from being a theoretical book. It is rather a practical book with lots of advice and clear presentations of formats when dealing with anger, anxiety, fear, phobias, depression etc. The reader gets clear instructions about what to do ( concrete steps) and how to troubleshoot when things don’t go according to plan. These clear instructions and the troubleshooting tips alone, even if the rest of the book was useless ( which obviously isn‘t), would be worth the price of the book.

Another very interesting and helpful approach which is well described in the book is how to utilize hypnotic phenomena as a tool and as a metaphor to help the clients/ patients change stuck perspectives and fixed perceptions.

A central theme that permeates the entire book and that resonates with me is the realisation that in most cases a „ black or white „ thinking is a distorted thinking . There are few absolute, fixed truths in life.

I wish „provocative suggestions“ in particular and Jorgen’s work in general to get the attention and the recognition they deserve among psychotherapists, coaches, hypnotherapists, NLPers and medical doctors. Jorgen’s work can by all means be effectively applied to a host of psychosomatic and psychiatric disorders and help people free themselves from unnecessary psychological and physical suffering without drugs and without them having to go through endless hours of counselling.
To sum it all up, „ provocative suggestions“ and Jorgen’s approach are a piece of art and wholeheartedly recommended to anyone in the field of medicine, psychology or coaching who has a sincere interest in helping people!