Some said he was an eccentric genius whose work can never be replicated by others, but more and more people have been able to understand, practice and teach his approaches. This effort has given rise to the "Ericksonian" movement, people who work in Erickson's tradition and legacy. Erickson's work was often characterized (by himself and others) as naturalistic, directive and indirect. Cornerstones of Erickson's approaches were the use of task assignments; the use of stories, analogies and metaphor; and the utilization of client resources, resistance, beliefs and symptoms in the service of change. Each of these approaches will be discussed in more detail immediately below. ç the Naturalistic Approach ç Erickson viewed clients as having all the resources available within them and/or within their social system in order to make the changes they needed to make. the therapist's job is to access these resources and help the client put them to use in the appropriate areas of their life. Erickson didn't view people as fundamentally flawed or in need of fixing. He wasn't very oriented to discovering the "roots" of the client's difficulties, but rather, in getting them to use their own abilities to make changes in the present. He had a great faith in Nature and people's natural abilities to be healthy. Sometimes it was a matter of accessing their skills and abilities, and sometimes it was a matter of unblocking the expression of these natural abilities, but he had confidence that if they had access to and could use those abilities, they would be fine. To Erickson, therapy "...was predicated upon the assumption that there is a strong normal tendency for the personality to adjust if given an opportunity." (1955)

Erickson also approached the therapy situation as a more natural one than do many therapists. His interventions, even his hypnotic inductions, were often indistinguishable from ordinary conversations. He had social interactions with clients at times, and they often interacted with his family, as his waiting room was his living room (often also occupied by one of his 8 children or his wife).

Directive Therapy

Jay Haley's books, Uncommon Therapy (1973) and Ordeal Therapy (1984), skillfully and entertainingly describe the side of Erickson's work that is perhaps most like AT: getting people to do something in order to improve their situation or to break out of previous restrictive patterns. "The thing to do is to get your patient, any way you wish, any way you can, to do something," said Erickson (1980), and "...once you break through rigid, fixed patterns of behavior patients are forced to reorient; they are forced to pick up the pieces to put them together; and they are forced to function in a totally different way." (1962)

Erickson's task assignments were often the vehicle for his directive therapy. He didn't often try to teach people skills to practice, but instead gave them assignments that would naturally lead to the accessing of the personal or social resources or to breaking up symptom patterns or interaction patterns surrounding the symptom (e.g. family interactions). These tasks were often unusual, like telling a patient who was ashamed of a gap in her teeth to practice squirting water through the gap or having a young boy who wet the bed practice his handwriting under his mother's supervision in the middle of the night.

Erickson wasn't directive about how people should ultimately live their lives, but he had no qualms about directing people's behavior in order to move them beyond the dilemmas that confronted them.

The Indirect Approach: Tiptoeing around resistance

Erickson often used indirect communication in language and in action to suggest or imply rather than to direct request or state things. He created a context for the person to cooperate and to learn things implicitly rather than explicitly. He used words and his non-verbal communication to indirectly communicate an expectation of change and to make therapeutic interventions. He rarely used awareness or insight as the prime means of effecting therapeutic results.

The Use of Metaphor and Multi-Level Communication

Erickson was well known for his story-telling abilities in therapy and teaching, which is well represented in Sidney Rosen's book, My Voice Will Go With You (Rosen, 1982). This is another area in which Erickson used implicit communication rather than explicit. He might use planning and eating a meal together as a metaphor for a couple having sexual difficulties and he might never mention their sexual difficulties during the course of treatment. This approach not only brings forth the creativity of the therapist, but, allows clients to project their own meanings and solutions and to personalize the interventions.

The Utilization Approach: Matching, participation and alteration of clients' realities and symptoms

When a colleague recently asked which techniques of Erickson's would last the longest, the utilization approach immediately occurred to me. Erickson was firmly committed to using everything the client brought to therapy as grist for the therapeutic mill. Like a good organic gardener, everything is part of the compost to grow plants and harvest the fruits of one's labors. Erickson would accept, match (by his behavior and/or his words), and participate with what other people saw as resistance or uncooperativeness. He didn't interpret resistance. Instead, he encouraged it and then got the person to modify the expression of it to lead in useful directions. Erickson was able to work with many people who had "defeated" a number of therapists or who were generally not good candidates for therapy. Sometimes he was even able to accomplish this in a very brief time period. He would accept, participate with and alter clients' realities and behavior.

He was very adamant about treating each client as unique and individual. He espoused no theory of therapy, but had a general approach of utilizing clients' behavior, beliefs and symptoms. He thought that rigid categories of diagnosis or techniques in therapy were counterproductive and disrespectful of the individual.

What about hypnosis?

Erickson was one of the people who helped bring hypnosis into modern times, by updating the techniques and training in the area and by helping to get hypnosis recognized as a legitimate medical, dental and psychological tool. His hypnotic technique was as innovative and individual as the rest of his work. He emphasized flexibility and observation rather than ritual as the main tools of the hypnotist. He also stressed the importance of the ethical and knowledgeable use of hypnosis. He wrote many articles in the field and helped to found one of the major journals and professional societies in the field. Interest in his work is one of the factors surrounding the recent renaissance of hypnosis in psychotherapy.

Erickson's contributions

Erickson made seminal contributions in the areas of brief therapy, hypnosis, strategic therapy, family therapy and cybernetics. He was a curious, experimental psychiatrist who didn't accept the dogma of his profession. He counted among his admirers the famed anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, as well as numerous therapists. One of his former students, the family therapist Jay Haley, himself regarded as a master of therapy, "Not a day passes when I do not use something that I learned from Erickson in my work. Yet his basic ideas I only partially grasp. I feel that if I understood more fully what Erickson was trying to explain about changing people, new innovations in therapy would open up before me." Most of his former students feel this way. One of them, Jeffrey K. Zeig, set up the Milton H. Erickson Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona to further his work and to set up an archive for therapists to come and unravel the genius of Milton H. Erickson.

You are invited to investigate Erickson's work. But be careful, you may get hooked like the rest of us "Ericksonians" and I promise your therapy (and perhaps your life) will never be the same. There's something about Milton Erickson . . .

Bill O'Hanlon, 223 N. Guadalupe #278, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Phone: 505.983.2843, fax 505.983.2761

Website: www.billohanlon.com