Milton H. Erickson

Milton Hyland Erickson (Aurum, United States, December 5, 1901-Phoenix, United States, March 5, 1980) was an American psychologist, physician, and hypnotherapist who was an innovator and pioneer in changing Hypnotism techniques applied to psychotherapy.

Biography

Erickson was born in 1901 in Aurum, a small, now-defunct, town in Nevada. His family, consisting of his parents, seven sisters and one brother, immigrated to Wisconsin, where his parents owned a farm and the whole family participated in the work. Afflicted with poliomyelitis at the age of 17, and evicted by the doctors, he had time and temper to recover his movements by working on introspection.His willpower allowed him to overcome the disease and graduate in medicine and psychology; he worked as a psychiatrist at numerous institutions and later as a professor of psychiatry.

Hypnosis

He insists a lot on the role played by the unconscious, understood not in Freud's way but as a reservoir of personal resources to solve the problems of each individual on their own.

Milton Erickson laid the foundations for important lines within brief psychotherapy. Among which the following psychotherapeutic approaches are included: neurolinguistic programming, strategic systemic therapy, solution-focused brief therapy among others were influenced by Erickson's thinking.

The origin of his particular style of therapy can be found in his very particular personal experiences and the way in which he faced his illness, and although hypnotism was an important tool, the fundamental of his therapeutic model was the change in the other person through the interpersonal relationship. His therapeutic model does not respond to any clinical school, excluding himself from the influence of psychoanalysis, behaviorism and systemic therapy.

Controversy

Hypnotist Alex Tsander Masson shows us in his book Beyond Erickson, A Fresh Look at the Emperor of Hypnosis that the techniques carried out by Milton Erickson and often classified as remarkable are easier to achieve without the indirect and subjective approach of this author.

Alex Tsander also criticizes the double standards presented by Milton Erickson online:

"This duality (in Milton's morals) continued in the twentieth century and is exemplified with, again, no other than the 'Hypnosis Emperor', Milton Erickson; a man who wrote bitly his dislike for scenic hypnosis but who built his reputation as a hypnotizer with the stage hypnosis demonstrations that he gave throughout the USA. »

Erickson excused himself about this by saying that the difference between the demonstrations of hypnosis called scenic, playful or entertainment with the demonstrations made by Milton H. Erickson, is that these were always didactic demonstrations in academic environments and not for the purpose of obtaining an income as in the first. However, he did receive fees for talks and demonstrations.