He was a kindly old man, radiating love and positive regard for his clients. He told rather odd rambling stories. Tales that were more like streams of consciousness filled with interesting and unusual facts, subtle humor, in strange cadences with non-standard pauses. Milton Erickson told the kind of stories that a loveable old maudlin man might tell. A story with no apparent point and, yet, when patients left his office, they took with them valuable insights which would profoundly and positively change their unconscious mind forever.
Milton Hyland Erickson (5 December 1901 – 25 March 1980) was an American psychologist generally acknowledged as the father of modern hypnosis. The results of his therapies were so miraculous they were considered to be mystical. His success was frequently attributed to his personal charisma, which was considerable. However, his students realized that there was method to his madness. Each and every word was chosen for a specific purpose. Erickson believed that the true power to change was located in the subconscious mind and he used hypnosis and his teaching tales to gain access to it.
Unconscious mind
As humans, we believe we are making conscious choices all the time, but are we? Tony Robbins in Personal Power II succinctly explains that we are “deletion creatures”. Think for a moment about the almost infinite variety of choices that you could make in this moment. You could choose to concentrate on the sound of your breathing, to eat something, to day dream, to read, to stand, etc. You could not attend to all the input available in your field of awareness. For example, in order to focus on this reading you must delete 99.99 % of everything around you. Our conscious minds simply would be overwhelmed and immobilized by trying to analyze all the information available. Thus, our unconscious minds make most of our daily decisions. While the conscious mind can only deal with one idea at one time, the unconscious mind can keep you breathing, your heart circulating blood, your digestion system going, fight an infection and decide whether or not to lie all in the same instant.
Beliefs and Values
The unconscious mind makes decisions based on beliefs and values usually established a long time ago. For instance, if one of your values is “Honesty is the best policy”, you will be inclined to instinctively tell the truth. As a matter of fact, your conscious mind will have to override your unconscious mind to make the decision to lie. When this happens, we feel incongruent between actions and values. We say our conscious hurts and it literally does feel pain.
Erickson was a tireless therapist and researcher. During his more than 40 year career, he scientifically documented literally thousands of case studies. He learned from each patient and discovered the scientific principles required to construct teaching tales that truly spoke to the unconscious mind. Erickson believed that teaching tales worked best when a client was in a trance state (various stages of hypnosis). However, he thought that the unconscious mind was always listening, hearing, understanding and remembering, even in a waking state. Jeffrey Zeig in A Teaching Seminar with Milton Erickson gives the essential elements of an effective teaching tale listed below.
Critical Attributes of an Ericson Teaching Tale
- Anecdotes are nonthreatening
- Anecdotes are engaging
- Anecdotes foster independence
- Anecdotes can be used to bypass normal resistance to change
- Anecdotes can be used to control the relationship
- Anecdotes model flexibility
- Anecdotes promote hypnotic responsiveness by creating confusion
- Anecdotes are memorable
Learning and telling Erickson teaching tales is one powerful way to imprint positive values into the unconscious mind of your loved ones. For those readers that wish to learn more about teaching tales I recommend the books listed under sources. Also, have a look at a sample Erickson teaching tale about a boy named Joe.
Sources
Sidney Rosen, My Voice Will Go with You; The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson, New York, W.W. Norton and Company, 1982.
Ronald A. Havens, Catherine Walters, Hypnotherapy Scripts: A Neo-Ericksonian Approach to Persuasive Healing, Levittown PA, Brunner Mazel, 1989.
Lance Morton - Lance Morton is a writer, hypnotists, personal fitness trainer, and the author of Mentally Create your Ideal Weight.
