Milton Hyland Erickson, MD (1901 - 1980) was a psychiatrist specializing in medical hypnosis. He was founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis and a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychopathological Association.

He was noted for:

• his often unconventional approach to psychotherapy, such as described in the book Uncommon Therapy by Jay Haley
• his extensive use of therapeutic metaphor and story as well as hypnosis
• coining the term Brief Therapy for his approach of addressing therapeutic changes in relatively few sessions

• his conceptualization of the unconscious as highly separate from the conscious mind, with it's own awareness, interests, responses, and learnings. For Erickson, the unconscious mind was creative, solution generating, and often positive.

• his ability to "utilize" anything about a patient to help them change, including their beliefs, favorite words, cultural background, personal history, or even their neurotic habits.

Erickson developed a type of hypnotherapy called Ericksonian hypnosis which was believed to be "the communication of ideas" to the patient at an unconscious level. This style of hypnosis often looked like a normal conversation that would induce a hypnotic trance in the subject.

Erickson was 'modeled' by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the co-founders of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

Books

Erickson was a prolific author. His prominent works include:

• Hypnotic Realities ISBN 0829001123

Related topics

• List of NLP topics
• Hypnosis
• Hypnotherapy

External links

• The Erickson Foundation (http://www.erickson-foundation.org) is part of an international organization that carries on his work and promotes the Erickson approach to therapy. It has a biography of Erickson available here (http://www.erickson-foundation.org/early.htm) written by Haley.

• The Hypnotic Handshake Induction of Milton H. Erickson (http://www.nlpweekly.com/index.php?p=35) plus more Hypnosis methods.

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