For 23 years, as Principal Trumpet of a major German orchestra, he had suffered from excess performance anxiety (stage fright). He said he had tried several psychotherapies, without success. He said he would like to be introduced to Masterful Life-Performance. He and I spent five hours, by phone, with his initiating each hour-long call from Germany. We covered the basics of ML-P.
He was accutely interested in the effects of the increase of Social Interest on one's concert performance. Social Interest (Gemeinschaftsgefuehl) is found in the social psychology of Alfred Adler. It refers to one's sense of social connectedness to community and intent to contribute to the commonweal. I prefer a simple interpretation of the concept. I think of Social Interest as the intent to GIVE TO the audience, rather than GET FROM the audience. One of the statistical conclusions of my research was that performers with the intent to give the gift of their performance experience less stage fright than those who hold the intent to get something from their audience.
He came up with his own ingenious stage fright reduction stategy, based on Social Interest. He imagined that his best trumpet student was sitting beside him in the concert, and he was showing the student how the part was to be played. He was GIVING a trumpet lesson during the concert.
He gave me two reports. The first said that he had experienced the most relaxed concert that he could remember. The second was that he had experienced the best season of his career.
Let's hear it for Gemeinschaftsgefuehl (assuming you can pronounce it.)