Resource Therapy

Development from ego state therapy

Resource Therapy International, the organization that now governs the approach, names Gordon Emmerson, PhD, as its founder and describes the therapy as an advanced evolution of ego state therapy. The same page lists him as an honorary fellow in the School of Psychology at Victoria University in Melbourne and says he holds no current governance role. It gives no year for when the approach was developed, and the earliest dated Resource Therapy titles it lists are books from 2014.

A 2020 German review of his book says that Emmerson trained under the founders of ego state therapy and gradually systematized his work into a separate parts-based approach. The review names the founders as John and Helen Hopkins, which appears to be an error for John and Helen Watkins, the clinicians usually credited with ego state therapy. Ego state therapy and its hypnotic roots are covered on the Ego State Therapy page.

Books, training and spread

The founder page lists Ego State Therapy (2003), Advanced Techniques in Therapeutic Counselling (2006), Healthy Parts, Happy Self (2012), Resource Therapy Primer (2014), Resource Therapy (2014) and Therapist Gold (2025, with Christiane Essing). The German review concerns Ressourcen-Therapie: Die Einführung, published by Carl-Auer in 2019, which it says builds on the 2014 primer. It also says formal multi-month trainings have been offered in Germany since 2018.

A 2024 article by the president of Resource Therapy International, published by the Australian Society of Clinical Hypnotherapists, reports practitioners in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the United Kingdom, North America and Southeast Asia. The organization's own page says the approach is taught and practiced in over 15 countries. Both counts come from the organization or its president and were not independently checked.

Resource states and their types

Resource Therapy International uses the term resource states for the parts of a personality that come forward in different situations. Its public page sorts them into five types: normal states, vaded states that carry unwanted emotions, retro states that carry unwanted behaviors, conflicted states that are in conflict with one another, and dissonant states, described as cases in which the wrong part holds conscious awareness. The aim, as stated there, is to move states from a pathological condition to a normal one.

The German review reports that Emmerson coined the word vaded, and lists four kinds: states vaded in fear, rejection, disappointment or confusion. It describes retro-original states as childlike behavior and retro-avoiding states as escape through addiction or compulsion. The 2024 article adds the idea of a conscious state, the one part in control at a given moment, and describes other states as resting beneath it.

Related terms and varying counts

Emmerson has written about sensory experience memory, which he defines as an emotional memory that may be linked to an intellectual memory or may have become dissociated from it. He proposes that when a state holding such a memory takes the conscious position, a person may show emotional reactions that seem unwarranted. This is a theoretical proposal from the founder, and the abstract reviewed does not report outcome data.

Sources differ on how many interventions the model has. A 2019 conference presentation from Bond University describes 12 intervention protocols that can be combined, while the organization's current page refers to 15 treatment interventions. The sources reviewed do not explain the difference. Historical reviews of ego state therapy note that comparable ideas have appeared under different names and by different authors.

How sources describe the work

Proponents describe a brief psychotherapy in which the therapist speaks directly with the part said to hold the problem, not with the part that reports it. The German review adds that the therapist first looks for the suffering part, which is often not the part that made the appointment, and that the method follows a fixed order of steps supported by diagnostic tools. It describes the person returning to the original distressing situation, speaking with the people involved, partly by switching roles, and changing how those memories affect the present.

The Bond University presentation says that a flowchart is used to diagnose the type of state before an intervention is chosen. The organization's public page does not list the steps of a session. This page does not set out how to carry out any procedure, because the sources reviewed describe the sequence only in outline.

Place of hypnosis

The organization's public page does not describe hypnosis as part of the method and lists clinical hypnotherapists only among the professions that use it. The 2024 article, published by a hypnotherapy society, says that clients may enter spontaneous hypnosis during parts work and that the approach suits practitioners with a hypnosis background. The sources reviewed do not state whether hypnosis is required, optional or avoided, so no position on that is given here.

Conditions named by the organization and its supporters

Resource Therapy International lists complex trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder, betrayal and relationship trauma, dissociation and identity confusion, anxiety, depression, self-sabotage cycles, complicated grief, somatic syndromes, emotional regulation and internal conflict. The 2024 article names anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, dissociative identity disorder and performance problems. These are claims made by the organization and by its president, and neither source cites outcome studies.

Claims in the book review and the founder's article

The German review recommends the book to counselors, coaches and therapists who already know hypnotherapy and ego state work, and it does not discuss empirical evidence. In his own article, Emmerson links sensory experience memories to posttraumatic stress disorder, panic disorder and anxiety, and says therapists could apply the idea within other modalities.

Searches run and what they found

For this page, PubMed was searched for the phrase Resource Therapy with Emmerson, for Emmerson as author combined with resource therapy, ego state or hypnosis, and for the state vocabulary (vaded, retro, conflicted). Each returned the same single record, the 2017 article on sensory experience memory, or nothing. Web searches found training providers, bookstores and organization pages. No randomized trial, systematic review or independent outcome study of Resource Therapy was found, and a search of one further research database could not be repeated because its monthly allowance was used up.

The 2024 article says its organization is still building an evidence base and illustrates the method with one case study of claustrophobia and panic. The organization's public page says the approach maps to diagnostic criteria, works with memory reconsolidation and gives quick and lasting results, but it cites no studies or outcome data. Those statements are untested claims in the sources reviewed.

Evidence from ego state therapy

The founder page lists a 2013 trial of abreactive ego state therapy among its selected references. That trial randomized 30 adults with posttraumatic stress disorder to one session of five to six hours of hypnotically activated reliving with ego strengthening or to a counting-method placebo, and reported improvement in the treated group at one and three months. It tested a different, single-session format of ego state therapy, and nothing in the sources shows that it tested Resource Therapy, so its results should not be carried over.

A 2013 review of research in ego state therapy argues that standards of care and training have rested largely on phenomenological studies and calls for combining them with evidence-based studies. Research on the parent approach is therefore itself limited, and Resource Therapy has no separate body of published trials in the sources reviewed.

Independence of the sources

Most descriptive material on Resource Therapy comes from its founder, its governing body and its president, who also leads a training institute. The 2024 article appears on a hypnotherapy society website, and the organization pages describe its own training and membership. The only independent description found is a single positive book review, which names no critique beyond noting that the book assumes prior experience in hypnotherapy and ego state work.

What the sources do not cover

The sources reviewed contain no comparison of Resource Therapy with other psychotherapies, no data on dropout or on who is helped, and no independent test of the state categories as measurable constructs. The categories are concepts of the approach. A reference listed on the founder page, a 1996 article by Emmerson and Farmer in an Australian hypnosis journal, could not be opened, so its content is not described here.

Reported harms and the gap in data

None of the sources reviewed reports adverse events, deterioration or dropout in Resource Therapy, so no frequency of harm can be stated, and the absence of reports does not show that none occur. A general review of psychotherapy side effects defines unwanted events, adverse treatment reactions and contraindications, and says that recognizing negative effects is a characteristic of good therapists. That review is not specific to this approach.

The method as described involves revisiting distressing events and speaking with the people involved, which the German review summarizes. The sources reviewed do not say how distress during sessions is managed, and the organization's code asks members to take reasonable care with high-risk presentations, naming trauma, suicidality and family violence.

Training, membership and conduct standards

Resource Therapy International lists a foundation training of 12 hours over 2 days, a clinical qualification of 60 hours over 10 days that it says is required to practice as a Resource Therapy therapist, and an advanced and train-the-trainer stage of 5 days. Annual membership levels are associate, clinical, trainer and organization. The associate level lists no specific credential, and the page does not state a prior mental health qualification for clinical members.

The organization's code of conduct, last updated 17 July 2026, applies to members and to anyone listed in its directories. It asks members to work within their training and registration, to meet the requirements of their own country and profession, to refer clients when needed, and not to promise particular results. Its complaints process can end in removal from a directory. This is a voluntary professional body's own code. The sources reviewed describe no independent register or protected title, and statutory regulation was not examined.

Care boundary

This page is information, not advice, and it is not a substitute for assessment or care. Anyone with trauma symptoms, thoughts of self-harm or suicide, hallucinations or other severe distress should seek assessment from a qualified clinician, or emergency services in a crisis, and should not delay or replace necessary care. The organization's own code says clients who need support outside a member's competence should be referred onward.