by Steve Carey

"Erickson worked... in locked wards of mental hospitals. One guy insisted he was Jesus Christ, despite the many efforts by staff to convince him otherwise. Erickson introduced himself to 'Jesus', let him know that there was a new ward being built on hospital grounds that needed some carpenters, and got 'Jesus' to work as a carpenter. His work led him to become involved with other folks, which eventually led him back into common reality." (http://www.stephengilligan.com/interviewA.html)

Milton Erickson did not enjoy a promising start: born colour-blind and, it turned out, dyslexic and tone-deaf, too, in 1901 into a dirt-poor farming family in which no-one had ever been to college; struck down, paralysed and very nearly killed at 17 by polio, and left forever after weakened and in pain.

Yet there was never a more cheerful, optimistic, forward-looking man. In fact, he not only seems never to have expressed regret, he actually turned these many and various disadvantages into his greatest assets: he did a really good job of being himself. From his sickness he learned pain and an ability to empathise, not just sympathise, with his clients, and from his paralysis he learned acute observation of people, and how they can tell you everything before they say anything.

Even his tone deafness was put to good use: "So much is communicated by the way a person speaks", he pointed out. "My tone deafness has forced me to pay attention to inflections in the voice. This means I'm less distracted by the content of what people say. Many patterns of behaviour are reflected in the way a person says something rather than in what he says."

Watch film of him, and what strikes you most is his absolute concentration on his client. There is footage of him at 79, months before his death, wheelchair-bound, his tongue partially paralysed, operating on one lung, in terrible pain. What is remarkable is how completely he is absorbed by his patient. He is driven by relentless curiosity to understand his patient's world, so that he can help him make the changes that he wants. (In Ericksonian therapy it is the patient does the work: the therapist is there to help.)

Despite – or, as he would say, because of – his various setbacks and difficulties, Erickson got off the farm and to college, went on to train as a medical doctor and a psychiatrist and to hold many senior positions in both professions. He is now remembered as the most eminent, the most gifted and perhaps too the oddest of clinical hypnotherapists, as well as for his central role in the development of NeuroLinguistic Programming (of which he never perhaps entirely approved: "they thought they'd got the whole onion", he's quoted of saying of Bandler and Grinder: "I gave them just the skin"). He has inspired thousands of psychotherapists around the world, and played a key part in the acceptance of hypnosis as a therapeutic tool and in brief therapy as a model for treatment.

His approach is characterised by flexibility and his ability to mobilise the client's unique strengths and capabilities, and it is this flexibility that makes it so damned tricky to define exactly what, if anything, 'Ericksonian' actually means. He seems to have worked hard, in fact, to avoid being pinned down, or allowing theory to overwhelm practice: "Each person is a unique individual", he was keen to point out: "hence, psychotherapy should be formulated to meet the uniqueness of the individual's needs, rather than tailoring the person to fit... a hypothetical theory of human behaviour". Theory always comes at a price: the richness of the facts.

So in the last couple of decades of his life, as his fame grew (and his health deteriorated), he was visited by psychiatrists and pyschotherapists, linguists and academics, all keen to bottle Erickson. Usually it went like this: on Monday they would come and tape and transcribe a session with Erickson and a client. On Tuesday they would ask him to explain the many points at which they had no idea what the hell he was doing. On Wednesday they would go away, more confused by the explanation than they had been before they'd heard it. Next year, each would publish a book, explaining exactly how Erickson really did it. They didn't agree on much.

In any case, Erickson preferred stories to theories, parables to explanations. He used to recall his own childhood, and watching his father struggle to lead a recalcitrant year-old calf back into the barn on a blustery winter day. Spurred by young Milton's laughter, Albert challenged him to get the calf into the barn. "Erickson responded, after some consideration, by pulling on the calf's tail as his father continued to attempt to lead it into the barn by its head. The calf directed its stubborn resistance at the more annoying of the two forces and dragged Milton into the barn." (Jeffrey Zeig, W. Michael Munion, Milton Erickson, London: Sage, 1999.) Utilisation, see? You can regard the calf as resisting, if you like, but where does that get you? Better to work out how to use that energy in a way that works.

Today, though it still has a long way to go, clinical hypnotherapy has advanced towards mainstream respectability. Erickson isn't solely responsible, but he has played a massive role in that development. And your therapist is almost certainly going to regard herself as 'Ericksonian'.

For one thing, she'll regard your unconscious as an important tool in directing the therapeutic process. For another, she'll expect you to possess the resources yourself to make the changes you want to make. She'll regard your presenting issue as non-pathological, a result of your attempt to adapt to the changing demands of your life. She'll take an active and directive role in your therapy. She'll expect you to work on your stuff between sessions, and regard that work as important in developing permanent change in you. Above all, she'll be looking to utilise aspects of your problem, your life, your behaviour and your functioning in the therapy she devises for and with you.

Even so, it makes little sense to speak of 'being Ericksonian', if, by that, we mean adopting Erickson's own peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, walking stick and love of purple... unless, that is, you too were born in rural poverty, colour-blind and dyslexic and struck by polio. Erickson was the best Erickson the world has ever known: your mission is to become the best you the world has ever known, rather than some rather lame and pale imitation of somebody else.

Finding out more about Erickson: The best book to start with is My Voice Will Go With You: Teaching Tales of Milton Erickson, edited by Sidney Rosen.

Dr Steve Carey is a clinical hypnotherapist and Course Director of the Academy of Hypnotic Science in Melbourne, which teaches Ericksonian hypnotherapy, but not 'being Ericksonian'.