Milton H. Erickson

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Milton H. Erickson bigraphy, stories - Psychologists

Milton H. Erickson : biography

5 December 1901 – 25 March 1980

Milton Hyland Erickson (5 December 1901 – 25 March 1980) was an American psychiatrist specializing in medical hypnosis and family therapy. He was founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis and a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychopathological Association. He is noted for his approach to the unconscious mind as creative and solution-generating. He is also noted for influencing brief therapy, strategic family therapy, family systems therapy, solution focused brief therapy, and neuro-linguistic programming.Gregg E. Gorton, M.D. (2005) "Milton Hyland Erickson, 1901–1980." American Journal of Psychiatry 162:1255

Influence on others

Erickson’s friend, and sometime collaborator, Andre Weitzenhoffer, a well-known hypnosis researcher himself, has repeatedly raised concerns over the nature of Erickson’s legacy.

The majority of today’s Ericksonians consist of individuals who have never known Erickson, even less been directly trained by him. Today, and for some time now, much of the teaching of the Ericksonian approach is and has been done by individuals who have acquired their knowledge second and third hand. […] Some of those who did spend time with Erickson, like Jeffrey Zeig, Ernest Rossi, and William O’Hanlon have tried, I believe, to present and preserve as much as they could what they believed and have understood Erickson’s thought and methods to be. They have succeeded to do so to a fair degree. Others, like Richard Bandler and John Grinder have on the other hand, offered a much adulterated, and at times fanciful, version of what they perceived Erickson as saying and doing guided by their personal theorizing. […] Further distortions have resulted outside of the United States due to translation problems as well as for other reasons. More and more the Ericksonians have become a heterogeneous group of practitioners.Weitzenhoffer, A., The Practice of Hypnotism, 2000: 592-593.

One of his first students and developers of his work was Jay Haley. Other important followers include Stephen Gilligan, Jeffrey K. Zeig, Stephen R. Lankton and Stephen Brooks.

It has been claimed that Erickson was modeled (see Milton model) by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the co-founders of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

In the sphere of business coaching and training, he influenced the methods that behaviour training companies, such as , Krauthammer, Gustav Käser Training International or Dynargie used in communicating with coachees and training participants.

Ericksonian therapy

Erickson is most famous as a hypnotherapist, but his extensive research into and experience with hypnosis led him to develop an effective therapeutic technique. Many of these techniques are not explicitly hypnotic, but they are extensions of hypnotic strategies and language patterns. Erickson recognised that resistance to trance resembles resistance to change, and developed his therapeutic approach with that awareness.

Jay Haley identified several strategies, which appeared repeatedly in Erickson’s therapeutic approach.

  • Encouraging Resistance – For Erickson, the classic therapeutic request to "tell me everything about…" was both aggressive and disrespectful, instead he would ask the resistant patient to withhold information and only to tell what they were really ready to reveal:

I usually say, "There are a number of things that you don’t want me to know about, that you don’t want to tell me. There are a lot of things about yourself that you don’t want to discuss, therefore let’s discuss those that you are willing to discuss." She has blanket permission to withhold anything and everything. But she did come to discuss things. And therefore she starts discussing this, discussing that. And it’s always "Well, this is all right to talk about." And before she’s finished, she has mentioned everything. And each new item – "Well, this really isn’t so important that I have to withhold it. I can use the withholding permission for more important matters." Simply a hypnotic technique. To make them respond to the idea of withholding, and to respond to the idea of communicating.Transcription of Interview with Erickson quoted in Uncommon Therapy by Jay Haley.