Elements And Dimensions Of An Ericksonian Approach

Stephen R. Lankton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317772903
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

First published in 1986. This is Volume I of the Ericksoian Monographs and includes essays that look at the elements and dimensions of a Milton Ericksonian approach and to provide an opportunity for the exchange of ideas, knowledge and experiences relating to the field of Ericksonian hypnosis and family therapy.

Editor's Preface to Monograph No. 1

 

 

 

Elements and Dimensions of an Ericksonian Approach

The mandate for the Ericksonian Monographs is to expand and promote the work and influence created by Dr. Erickson. Yet his work is not easily understood; ironically, this may be because he was solution-oriented and practical. Erickson's decidedly unique approach is unprecedented in the history of therapy. For some, Erickson's work can be difficult to grasp because it operates from heuristic, problem-solving procedures. For many, this approach may represent a different philosophical stance toward therapy and change. Many practitioners rely upon a cause and effect model of intervention or approach therapy only in terms of reified constructs of personality. For those individuals, Erickson's work will appear to be, as Haley put it, an uncommon therapy.

Erickson disapproved of schools of therapy. As much as possible he avoided jargon that was taken from any particular school. He believed that a school presents the right ways to do therapy. In each school the other ways of doing things are wrong; many effective techniques are avoided or misunderstood. Each school defends its procedures, premises, dictates, theory, and research in order to establish a sort of territory of expertise and, possibly, to promote financial survival of its members.

Clients all too often pay a price for the profession's territorialism. This price is the loss of individuality, talent, and experience when clients are forced to fit into what Erickson (1979) referred to as the Procrustean bed. “Each person is a unique individual. Hence, psychotherapy should be formulated to meet the uniqueness of the individual's needs, rather than tailoring the person to fit the Procrustean bed of a hypothetical theory of human behavior.” He enjoyed demonstrating how various psychological theories are limited by their own preconceived constructs. He wanted to tailor the bed to fit the person and repeatedly stated that he created a new theory for each client.

That same spirit of intellectual freedom is demonstrated in the work of the authors appearing in this issue. We intend that it become the hallmark of the Ericksonian Monographs.

All of the articles in Monograph No. 1 are original and deal with the theme Elements and Dimensions of an Ericksonian Approach. Some authors have given examples from Erickson's own work and others have provided interpretations of their own. Yet, a comparison of these articles reveals agreement on some fundamental concepts of a distinctive approach. These concepts define and identify the work of Erickson as well as the work of those authors who have incorporated his influence throughout their work. In the final analysis, this is the Ericksonian approach as it is understood today.

The foundation of an Ericksonian approach, according to these authors, rests on several pillars that include: utilization of client behaviors; indirection techniques, including suggestions and stories; strategic therapy; a naturalistic approach; reliance upon anecdotes to promote personal understanding; utilization of the reality context, and a reliance upon the values of action, effort, and enjoyment. The authors come from many perspectives and approaches to treatment including medicine, psychology, social work, family therapy, hypnotherapy and psychiatry.

It is not surprising that the Ericksonian approaches presented in this volume deal with more than hypnotherapy. There is documentation for medical applications by William Bank who has provided a photo X-ray demonstration for the control of bleeding using Ericksonian suggestions. Carol Lankton has presented a thoughtful examination of the principles of Erickson's approach from the therapist's viewpoint. One of Erickson's previously unpublished educational and training examples is elucidated by Ernest Rossi. A theoretical model of states of consciousness in individual and family therapy is contributed by Stephen Lankton and will help link hypnotherapy and family therapy. Jeffrey Zeig presents several anecdotes relating personal views of the impact that Erickson made on students, trainees and clients. William Matthews examines Erickson's work from a cybernetic model that illustrates many tactics setting Erickson's work apart and explaining the role therapists play in affecting the reality they perceive with their clients. Michael Yapko presents an overview of hypnotic and nonhypnotic interventions aimed at helping depressed individuals. An application of Erickson's perspective, adapted to a unique diagnostic aid, is presented by Corydon Hammond. Finally, Milton Erickson himself is represented by a previously unpublished article on certain principles of medical hypnosis, contributed by Mrs. Elizabeth Erickson.

It is a rare pleasure to present the first issue of this new publication. We anticipate that the Ericksonian Monographs will make a contribution in the multidisciplinary fields of mental health. My excitement has grown throughout the many phases of developing this first issue. It began with organizing the staff of Editorial Board Members comprised of distinguished and creative professionals, many of whom are internationally renowned.

Manuscripts were then invited and received in the months that followed. The manuscripts represented the current work of theorists, family therapists, hypnotherapists, anthropologists, and physicians who are in the forefront of what may well be the most rapidly growing influence in the field of therapy, thropologists, and physicians who are on the forefront of what may well be the most rapidly growing influence in the field of therapy.

It was most rewarding to observe that Dr. Erickson's legacy is appreciating through applications of his approaches by thousands of therapists worldwide. These practitioners represent implementations of his ideas in many realms of therapy. The work in this issue is a partial representation of the state of the art of therapy in the 1980s and I cannot help but wonder what understandings the future will hold when our language and perception advances. Perhaps we will become even more able to profit from Erickson's creative genius and the integration of his work into family and individual therapy. I look forward to the future of the Ericksonian Monographs as a vehicle that will contribute to the comprehension and practice of effective therapy.

Stephen R. Lankton Gulf Breeze, Florida
April, 1985

Reference

ERICKSON, M. H. (1979). First International Congress (conference brochure). Phoenix: Milton H. Erickson Foundation, Inc.

Memory and Hallucination (Part 1): The Utilization Approach to Hypnotic Suggestion

---

Milton H. Erickson, M.D.

with Introduction, Commentaries, and Discussion by

Ernest L. Rossi

This paper provides an example of how Erickson utilized resistance and a subject's own memories and associative processes to facilitate positive and negative hallucinatory experience. The role of social context and personal associations in memory and hallucination is illustrated. Suggestions are made about the process of learning to utilize rather than merely analyze a subject's internal mental mechanisms and memories to facilitate hypnotic phenomena.

This fascinating though incomplete fragment about the process of evoking hallucinations was included in a box of incomplete manuscripts which Erickson entrusted to me during the period in which his Collected Papers (Rossi, 1980) were being edited (the late 1970s). I was able to edit most of those incomplete manuscripts into publication form for the Collected Papers. However, a few of them, such as the fragment that is the basis of this paper, were not really understood at the time and so were not included. I recently discovered that I had audio recorded a discussion of this fragment with two other professional visitors back in 1976. This discussion forms the body of the commentaries that I have now added to the original fragment to create this paper.

The significance of this paper derives from the emphasis it places on three aspects of Erickson's utilization approach to hypnotic suggestion:

1) The hypnotic state is an experience that belongs to the subject.

2) Deep trance experience involves a utilization of the subject's memories of well-motivated life experience (“experiential learnings”).

3) Mental mechanisms are evoked and utilized to facilitate the acceptance of hypnotic suggestion.

We will return to these three basic elements in the Discussion section of this paper, after we have seen how Erickson actually uses them to facilitate profound somnambulistic trance and hallucinatory behavior in his subject.

In what follows I am adopting the same conventions of presentation that Erickson and I developed in our books. The titles to each section are mine. The text under each title is from Erickson's unfinished paper, just as he originally wrote it. The only editorial liberty I took in this regard was to divide Erickson's original and unedited material into sections corresponding to our commentaries on it and to italicize those words, phrases, or sentences which were pertinent to the commentaries.

It appears from the contents of this paper that Erickson wrote it during the 1960s when he published his major paper on hypnotic and nonhypnotic realities (Erickson, 1967). While editing this material for publication, I added further summarizing commentaries in 1984. All commentaries are highly edited for readability. Irrelevant portions of our conversations were eliminated. Erickson's words are verbatim (though on occasion slightly rearranged), but the words of the other participants are sometimes shortened and/or clarified.

Accepting, Actualizing, and Depotentiating Resistance and the Negative as a Precondition for Facilitating Hypnotic Experience

Erickson's paper begins as follows:

E: Another incident pertinent to the subject of hypnotic and nonhypnotic realities concerns a college sophomore student who hesitantly volunteered as a subject by stating, “I am very sure you cannot hypnotize me.” Since this was an expression of a negative attitude, it was properly respected by the simple process of asking her to look at the rear wall of the classroom and to visualize mountain scenery, pine trees, snow, and rocks. She apologetically stated that no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't do it. The tone of her voice and her general bearing indicated that she would like to do something positively, since the author had allowed her to do a negative thing very well.

Rossi (R): [1984] Since the subject begins with doubt and a negative set, Erick-son apparently begins by giving her a visualization task at which she can fail. This failure “satisfies” her negative set so that she is then ready to do something positive.

Visitor (V): We don't have the actual words to demonstrate the way Erickson said that in the manuscript. Could you give an example of what you might say to permit a failure?

Erickson (E): S was a student who wanted to learn a lot about different hypnotic phenomena. She wanted to learn all the hypnotic phenomena. [To permit failure I might say,] “And one subject necessarily can't demonstrate all hypnotic phenomena … I'll try to offer you … perhaps by looking at that wall you may be able to visualize some scene. You try hard.”

V: So you've got four blocks in there: try, perhaps, may, and the introductory remark that you can't learn them all.

E: When I first asked S to be my subject she said she couldn't be. She was on the debate team and she was keenly interested in everything. [So I said to her,] “Have you any idea of how interested you are in hypnosis? And you're going to be interested in plenty of it.”

R: So you utilized and generalized her attitude of “I'm interested in everything” to include hypnosis.

E: She came up and said, “I don't really believe I can.” I said, “Well, I believe you can.” How can you dispute that statement? There's no way you can dispute it!

R: Except that she could say that you are a fool for believing such a thing and thus negate you.

E: Yes, but still, I believe — you can't negate that. She can call me a fool but regardless, I do believe. There is no way of getting around that, and it's a very disconcerting thing.

R: So you were shaking up her mental sets; that was a way of coping with the doubts of her conscious mind. You were depotentiating her doubts.

R: [1984 Summary] She volunteers as a hypnotic subject and presumably wants to have a positive experience. She demonstrates that she is not able to deal with her own negative mental set, however, when she says, “I am very sure you cannot hypnotize me.” Erickson does not respond to this as if it were a resistance challenging his authority, competence, or prestige. Instead he accepts it for what it is: the confession of a learned limitation by the subject whose belief system and life experience do not permit her to experience the reality of hypnosis yet. Erickson does not try to deny the reality or power of this negative mental set. Instead he fully accepts its validity and proceeds to facilitate a self-fulfilling expression of it: He asks her to visualize mountain scenery on the rear of the classroom and permits her negative mental set its full expression by allowing her to fail.

This is an example of one of Erickson's most original contributions to the practice of psychotherapy: He does not analyze or discuss the subject's negative mental set as a “faulty attitude” or a “resistance.” Instead, he arranges circumstances that permit the negative set to discharge itself fully so that another mental set (in this case a positive wish for hypnotic experience) can come into focal consciousness and be actualized into behavior. Erickson immediately proceeds to give her an opportunity to actualize this positive wish with his suggestions in the next section.

Erickson may have developed this approach from his early experimental studies on word association, induced complexes, and experimental neuroses using the Luria Technique (Erickson, 1935, 1936, 1944; Huston, Shakow, & Erickson, 1934). There seems to be the same general law of associa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Editor’s Preface to Monograph No. 1: Elements and Dimensions of an Ericksonian Approach.
• Articles
• Book Reviews