Phoenix: Therapeutic Patterns of Milton H. Erickson

Milton H. Erickson, M.D. is considered to have been the world's foremost authority and practitioner of hypnotherapy and brief therapy. The depth of Milton Erickson's knowledge and the sweep of his skill, as revealed in his well over one hundred papers and books, has awed anyone fortunate enough to discover them. And beyond considerations of his therapeutic acumen (or perhaps because of it) lay Erickson's infections wit and personal commitment to the flourishing of the individual. As you will discover in this book, Erickson's personal orientations were as integral a part of his astounding effectiveness as were, for example, the induction techniques he used. A great many books and articles have been written about Milton Erickson's hypnotic work. But little attention has been paid to the tremendous portion of this therapeutic work that made little or no use of formal trance states. In this volume the authors address themselves to those aspects of Erickson's therapeutic work that did not rely on the use of formal trance states. Using Erickson's own verbatim case descriptions, those patterns that are characteristic of his approach are not only identified for you, but are described as sequences of internal and external behaviors that can be replicated by anyone. This book will not make you Milton H. Erickson, but it will make it possible for you to reproduce in your own work many of the therapeutic skills that made Erickson perhaps the most consistently successful psychotherapist we have known.