How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 247

Hypnosis
Erickson is noted for his often unconventional approach to psychotherapy, such as described in the
book Uncommon Therapy, by Jay Haley, and the book Hypnotherapy: An Exploratory Casebook, by
Milton H. Erickson and Ernest L. Rossi (1979, New York: Irvington Publishers, Inc.). He developed an
extensive use of therapeutic metaphor and story as well as hypnosis and coined the term brief therapy
for his approach of addressing therapeutic changes in relatively few sessions.
Erickson's use of interventions influenced the strategic therapy and family systems therapy
practitioners beginning in the 1950s among them, Virginia Satir and Jay Haley. He was noted for his
ability to "utilize" anything about a patient to help them change, including their beliefs, favorite words,
cultural background, personal history, or even their neurotic habits.
Through conceptualizing the unconscious as highly separate from the conscious mind, with its own
awareness, interests, responses, and learnings, he taught that the unconscious mind was creative,
solution-generating, and often positive.
He was an important influence on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), which was in part based upon
his working methods.
Erickson believed that the unconscious mind was always listening, and that, whether or not the patient
was in trance, suggestions could be made which would have a hypnotic influence, as long as those
suggestions found some resonance at the unconscious level. The patient can be aware of this, or can be
completely oblivious that something is happening. Erickson would see if the patient would respond to
one or another kind of indirect suggestion, and allow the unconscious mind to actively participate in
the therapeutic process. In this way, what seemed like a normal conversation might induce a hypnotic
trance, or a therapeutic change in the subject. According to Weitzenhoffer, "[Erickson's] conception of
the unconscious is definitely not the one held by Freud."
Erickson was an irrepressible practical joker, and it was not uncommon for him to slip indirect
suggestions into all kinds of situations, including in his own books, papers, lectures and seminars.
Erickson also believed that it was even appropriate for the therapist to go into trance.
I go into trances so that I will be more sensitive to the intonations and inflections of my patients'
speech. And to enable me to hear better, see better.
Erickson maintained that trance is a common, everyday occurrence. For example, when waiting for
buses and trains, reading or listening, or even being involved in strenuous physical exercise, it's quite
normal to become immersed in the activity and go into a trance state, removed from any other
irrelevant stimuli. These states are so common and familiar that most people do not consciously
recognize them as hypnotic phenomena.
The same situation is in evidence in everyday life, however, whenever attention is fixated with a
question or an experience of the amazing, the unusual, or anything that holds a person's interest. At
such moments people experience the common everyday trance; they tend to gaze off to the right or left,
depending upon which cerebral hemisphere is most dominant (Baleen, 1969) and get that faraway or
blank look. Their eyes may actually close, their bodies tend to become immobile (a form of catalepsy),
certain reflexes (e.g., swallowing, respiration, etc.) may be suppressed, and they seem momentarily
oblivious to their surroundings until they have completed their inner search on the unconscious level
for the new idea, response, or frames of reference that will restabilize their general reality orientation.
We hypothesize that in everyday life consciousness is in a continual state of flux between the general
reality orientation and the momentary microdynamics of trance...[9]

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