Ericksonisms cont. I had polio, and I was totally paralyzed, and the inflammation was so great that I had a sensory paralysis too. I could move my eyes and my hearing was undisturbed. I got very lonesome lying in bed, unable to move anything except my eyeballs. I was quarantined on the farm with seven sisters, one brother, two parents, and a practical nurse. And how could I entertain myself? I started watching people and my environment. I soon learned that my sisters could say no when they meant yes. And they could say yes and mean no at the same time. They could offer another sister an apple and hold it back. And I began studying nonverbal language and body language. I had a baby sister who had begun to learn to creep. I would have to learn to stand up and walk. And you can imagine the intensity with which I watched as my baby sister grew from creeping to learning how to stand up. He began to recall body memories of the muscular activity of his own body. By concentrating on these memories, he slowly began to regain control of parts of his body to the point where he was eventually again able to talk and use his arms. Still unable to walk, he decided to train his body further, by embarking - alone - on a thousand mile canoe trip with only a few dollars. After this grueling trip, he was able to walk with a cane. This experience may have contributed to Ericksons technique of using ordeals in a therapeutic context. (See below). Erickson was an avid medical student, and was so curious about and engaged with psychiatry that he got a psychology degree while he was still studying medicine. Much later, in his fifties he developed post-polio syndrome, characterized by pain and muscle weakness caused by the chronic over-use of partially paralyzed muscles. The condition left him even more severely paralized, but having been through the experience once before, he now had a strategy for recovering some use of his muscles, which he employed again. After this second recovery, he was obliged to use a wheelchair, and suffered chronic pain, which he controlled with self-hypnosis: It usually takes me an hour after I awaken to get all the pain out. It used to be easier when I was younger. I have more muscle and joint difficulties now... Recently the only way I could get control over the pain was by sitting in bed, pulling a chair close, and pressing my larynx against the back of the chair. That was very uncomfortable: But it was discomfort I was deliberately creating. In the early 1950s, anthropologist/cyberneticist Gregory Bateson involved Erickson as a consultant as part of his extensive research on communication. The two had met earlier, after Bateson and Margaret Mead had called upon him to analize the films Mead had made of trance states in Bali. Through Bateson, Erickson met Jay Haley, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, amongst others, and had a profound influence on them all. They went on to write several books about him. In 1973, Jay Haley published Uncommon Therapy, which for the first time brought Erickson and his approaches to the attention of those outside the clinical hypnosis community. His fame and reputation spread rapidly, and so many people wished to meet him that he began holding teaching seminars, which continued until his death. Milton H. Erickson died in March 1980, aged 78, leaving four sons, four daughters, and a lasting legacy to the worlds of psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, pedagogics and communications. [edit] Trance and the unconscious mind ERICKSONS VIEW OF CONSCIOUS/UNCONSCIOUS MINDS 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. It should be noted that [Ericksons] conception of the unconscious is definitely not the one held by Freud.[6] 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, its 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 persons 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 re-stabilize 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 micro-dynamics of trance...[7] Because Erickson expected trance states to occur naturally and frequently, he was prepared to exploit them therapeutically, even when the patient was not present with him in the consulting room. He also discovered many techniques for how to increase the likelihood that a trance state would occur. He developed both verbal and non-verbal techniques, and pioneered the idea that the common experiences of wonderment, engrossment and confusion are, in reality, just kinds of trance. (These phenomena are of course central to many spiritual and religious disciplines, and are regularly employed by evangelists, cult leaders and holy men of all kinds). Clearly there are a great many kinds of trance. Many people are familiar with the idea of a deep trance, and earlier in his career Erickson was a pioneer in researching the unique and remarkable phenomena that are associated with that state, spending many hours at a time with individual test subjects, deepening the trance. That a trance may be light or deep suggest a one dimensional continuum of trance depth, but Erickson would often work with multiple trances in the same patient, for example suggesting that the hypnotized patient behave as if awake, blurring the line between the hypnotic and awake state. Erickson believed there are multiple states that may be utilized. This resonates with Charles Tarts idea (put forward in the book Waking Up) that all states of consciousness are trances, and that what we call normal waking consciousness is just a consensus trance. NLP also makes central use of the idea of changing state, without it explicitly being a hypnotic phenomenon. [edit] Indirect techniques Where classical hypnosis is authoritative and direct, and often encounters resistance in the subject, Ericksons approach is permissive, accommodating and indirect.[8] For example, where a classical hypnotist might say You are going into a trance, an Ericksonian hypnotist would be more likely to say you can comfortably learn how to go into a trance. In this way, he provides an opportunity for the subject to accept the suggestions they are most comfortable with, at their own pace, and with an awareness of the benefits. The subject knows they are not being hustled, and takes full ownership of, and participation in their transformation. Because the induction takes place during the course of a normal conversation, Ericksonian hypnosis is often known as Covert or Conversational Hypnosis. Erickson maintained that it was not possible to consciously instruct the unconscious mind, and that authoritarian suggestions were likely to be met with resistance. The unconscious mind responds to openings, opportunities, metaphors, symbols and contradictions. Effective hypnotic suggestion, then, should be artfully vague, leaving space for the subject to fill in the gaps with their own unconscious understandings - even if they do not consciously grasp what is happening. The skilled hypnotherapist constructs these gaps of meaning in a way most suited to the individual subject - in a way which is most likely to produce the desired change. To be cont.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 01:27:28 +0000
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