The Ericksonian hypnosis Hypnotherapy of Erickson Is a psychotherapeutic approach that uses hypnotic trance to help the patient use their own mental associations, memories and life potentials to achieve their own therapeutic goals.
Hypnotic suggestion can facilitate the use of skills and potentials that already exist within a person but remain unused or underdeveloped by lack of training or understanding.
The hypnotherapist carefully explores the individuality of a patient to know what life lessons, experiences and mental skills are available to tackle the problem.
The therapist then facilitates an approach to the experience of trance within which the patient can use these unique and personal internal responses to achieve therapeutic goals. The approach, in hypnotherapy, has 3 fundamental steps.
The 3 periods of ericksonian hypnotherapy
There is a first period, which is the preparation . Here, the therapist explores the patient's life experiences repertoire and provides constructive frames of reference to guide the patient towards therapeutic change.
The second period is that of therapeutic trance, in which the patient's own mental resources are activated and used. In the third period, finally, a careful Recognition, evaluation and ratification of therapeutic change Achieved.
Differences between classical and ericksonian hypnosis
First, hypnotherapy has a positive approach, while it is responsible for achieving the goals and improvements in the patient, and does not focus on finding the cause of conflicts or trauma, but about connecting the individual with his resources and his motivation.
The patient is not given a set of therapeutic messages without analyzing, because the intention is not to program behaviors. The idea is to facilitate the transformation from the unconscious, so that it is the subject who creates the creative resources and solves their problems.
For these reasons, Ericksonian hypnosis obtains results in very few sessions in the treatments of phobias, anxiety , Problems with self-esteem , Achievement of goals, preparation for future events, addictions, duels, depression and many more.
The Milton Method
In the last years of his life, Erickson was no longer talking about hypnotherapy, but about the Milton Method, which consists in using the word in order to create confusion while establishing a direct suggestion.
Erickson used metaphors, stories and paradoxes as main tools, whether or not provoking the trance. Hence many know their therapeutic model, too, like Milton Erickson's Metaphors and Paradoxes.
And right here we see the need to move from this point, in which the breadth of concepts and ideas around the subject of hypnosis was greatly abbreviated, the next one in which the rest of the elements of Milton's therapy are presented .
Therapeutic model: The so-called Milton Method
To understand the therapeutic model under which Erickson acted, it is necessary to start from a fundamental conclusion: Erickson's therapeutic strategy was totally original for its time and totally unstructured.
With this we try to say that Erickson did not start from recognizable influences of other authors, in the style of mentors or teachers, nor had he deduced his way of acting from a psychological or therapeutic school.
When Erickson began his journey through therapy, the great school that influenced the therapy was psychoanalysis, and obviously he was not part of its ranks, nor was it the later behavioral movement.
For Erickson, the past was not the key to solving the conflict. The past, according to his words, can not be changed, and although it can be explained, what is lived is today, tomorrow, next week, and that is what counts.
Let's say he was intuitive, observant, disciplined, and independent enough to create his own action strategy from hypnosis. However, we can not reduce their therapeutic drive to hypnosis.
Hypnosis as a means, not as an end
As time passed, their use became more and more diminished, giving more importance to metaphor and imperative language. This made it a forerunner of other very common models today, such as Narrative therapy .
For Erickson to learn hypnosis was primarily to learn to observe the other, to understand his vision of the world, to follow it step by step so that all this information could be used to help the patient to behave otherwise.
Therefore, it can be understood that, in Erickson's view, hypnosis is not the key point, it is another tool that allows us to reach this point: the change obtained through interpersonal influence.
Erickson's premise was to solve the problem, but without resorting to recipes, for which he had the patience and meticulousness to tackle each problem in a unique way. This originality in addressing his cases was what made it difficult to convey what he knew.
But that does not mean that his therapy had no form at all. Some authors think that there are some fundamental pillars in the therapy of Erickson, and here they will be mentioned next.
Pillars of ericksonian therapy
1- Do not have preconceived ideas about the patient
This point underlines the importance of observation and, above all, of non-clinical classification. This implies a more accurate understanding of the problem and allows us to escape the narrowness of classification to focus solely on the patient's universe.
2- Pretending a progressive change
Their goal was to achieve concrete goals for future futures. The therapist can not aspire to control the whole process of patient change. It only initiates it and later it follows its way.
3- Establish contact with the patient on his own ground
This idea is not only about Erickson's idea of leaving the office and intervening in the street or the patient's home. It also has to do with the way in which therapist and patient should come into contact, how to establish a relationship.
Develop listening and set aside the interpretations, in order to be able to understand the particularities of each patient. This implies understanding your world to enter it, which involves intense work, long hours of reflection and patience.
An example of this is when he began to speak the incoherent language of a schizophrenic patient and to communicate with him in his own terms. It also happened that if the person was accustomed to being treated in a hard way, Erickson treated him the same way. It was their way of contacting and achieving communication.
4- Create situations in which people can realize their own ability to change their way of thinking
For Erickson it was essential to allow the patient to recognize their abilities by placing them within a framework in which they could manifest themselves. Therefore, it was necessary to leave the patient in control of the situation and motivate him to exercise the change.
Erickson used the Insight (Realize) but differently from the psychodynamic approach. His educational approach emphasized the discovery of the positive (rather than negative) side to produce the Insight In the patient.
The Legacy of Milton Erickson: By way of conclusion
In studying the life and work of Milton Erickson, we realize that although his theory is not one of the best known, it has contributed to the growth of many others that today are commonplace when it comes to psychotherapy.
His contributions have been observed in psychoneuroimmunology, in the psychology of health, in humanism, and even in behaviorism and psychoanalysis. In addition to this, his contributions to the philosophical and scientific growth of the topic of hypnosis with therapeutic orientation is one of the greatest produced by a single person.
And if this were not enough, his way of life leaves the conscience calm to anyone who wants to follow his"confused doctrine,"because it can be assured that, more than a therapeutic method, Milton's theories constitute in true and applicable mode of life.
Who was Milton Erickson?
Brief Biography of Milton Erickson
There are certain cases where the biography of a scientist and his theory mix to the point of confusion. It is so much the influence of the life of the personage in his theory, and vice versa, that when speaking of one or the other you will inevitably be speaking of both.
This is the case of Milton Erickson and his prolific life in the development of psychological theories and therapies. To make it more graphic, then, there is a brief biographical review of our character, the creator of hypnotherapy based on paradoxes and metaphors.
Milton Erickson was born in 1901 in Aurum, Nevada; A city that has already disappeared from the maps. A few years after his birth, Milton, along with his family, moved to a rural village, where they had a farm and a lot of work to share among all.
Their childhood, adolescence and diseases
From his birth Milton was color blind and suffering from tonal deafness, but this was never a major impediment to him, nor to work. However, at age 16, Erickson suffered a fit of polio, which left him in bed, immobilized of all muscle, and deprived of any tactile sensation. I could only move my eyes.
At the time, a polio attack of this magnitude involved preparing to die or, with more luck, to extend life in an inert way. In Milton's case, luck had nothing to do with him walking again. It was only their search, technical intuition, determination and enthusiasm.
For a whole year, Milton began to train slowly to recognize his body again and to know the others. He spent hours trying to locate his own limbs in search of the slightest sensation.
He observed the body language of the people around him, he noticed the incongruities of this language with the spoken one, he tried to amplify the smallest movements that he detected in his body, he observed the learning of the locomotion in the babies, etc.
Thus it was re-educated and soon could walk, limping, and surprise a few people with fairly mature hypotheses about human movement as an indicator of adaptation, consciousness and behavioral patterns.
And he had even had time to consider how to reeducate the human movement to obtain a transformation in adaptation, consciousness and behaviors, this being one of its therapeutic principles.
Your formation and revolutionary ideas
To shorten the story, soon walked without crutches, began to study medicine, contacted Hull, his master of hypnosis for the time, quickly surpassed, and noticed that from 6 years and unknowingly was self-hypnotizing.
He revolutionized the concepts of the era by talking about self-hypnosis, which was in fact his way of curing polio during his year in bed. By the end of his first year of college he was almost a teacher, but he remained weak and weak in health.
So for strength he traveled 1900 kilometers of continuous river for 10 weeks, with a small canoe that he had to carry in the impassable breccias, and to its end it was robust and more healthy, although at the beginning the experience almost kills it.
He married at age 23, had 3 children and separated at age 10. By that time he was already a doctor and a master of arts, and began to act as a psychiatrist and to publish his first works on hypnosis.
He married again, had 5 more children, helped in World War II as a psychiatrist, and performed activities that are still secret, he worked with Aldous Huxley , Founded the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, and thus continued, producing knowledge and thickening its therapeutic formulas.
And talk of therapeutic formulas and not of specific techniques, because Milton always refused to form a structured theory and a strict therapeutic method. This intuitive and unstructured approach was precisely what produced its success.
His last years, new diseases and the maturation of his theories
After 50 years, Milton suffered another attack of polio, which along with his many allergies forced him to move to the desert. He never fully recovered and, at the end of his life, in a wheelchair, he had long sessions of self-hypnosis to have some control of his muscles. He even had to re-learn to speak, although after that and his voice was dwindling.
During these last years, Erickson was more interested in the paradoxes in the communication, and that is why, in his last interventions, the hypnosis each time acquired a second more frontal plane, although never it completely ruled it out.
In 1980, while writing his memoirs, and before being able to receive a tribute at the First International Meeting of Ericksonian Hypnosis, he died, leaving a magnificent legacy of knowledge that transcends the boundaries of psychology and therapy.
And with this it is observed that what was said at the beginning of this brief biography was true: man and his theory are so masterfully confused, and it is because there are not only sketches of it in his theory, but he is his Own theory.
Let us now see, then, the main basis of the therapy of Milton Erickson: hypnosis. After this we will discuss the more structured aspects of his method, to better understand what Erickson himself called"My technique confused."
What is hypnosis?
Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, similar to sleep, artificially induced under various methods, which mainly use suggestion, in which the hypnotist accepts the suggestions of the hypnotist, as long as they agree with the natural way of acting and thinking subject.
During the hypnotic trance one is more receptive to any stimulus than in any other state of consciousness. The hypnotized can think, act and behave the same or better than in everyday life, because his attention is intense and is free of distractions.
Classical hypnosis has been linked to medical and psychological approaches, overcoming the limitations it once presented. One of these convergent approaches is the Ericksonian, where hypnotherapy is spoken.
References
- Erickson, M. (1958). Pediatric Hypnotherapy . The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. 1, 25-29.
- Erickson, M., & Rossi, E. (1977). Autohypnotic Experiences of Milton H. Erickson . The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. 20, 36-54.
- Therapeutic Metaphors: Why Milton Erickson's Stories Healed (And How Yours Can Too) .