Milton Erickson and American Psychiatrist, Psychologist and Hypnotherapist 

Milton Hyland Erickson was born in the small mining town of Aurum, Nevada (now a ghost town) in 1901. The second of nine children, the family moved to a small farm in Wisconsin when he was very young. All 9 children attended a one room schoolhouse in Lowell, Wisconsin. Milton was late learning to speak and had difficulties reading, which he later attributed to dyslexia. He was also color blind and tone deaf. Later in life when he explained what seemed to be his extraordinary abilities, he stated that his disabilities helped him to focus on aspects of communication and behavior which most people overlooked. 

His family valued education, however, books were scarce and Milton’s desire to learn led him to repeatedly read the dictionary from front to back.  

Erickson became interested in hypnosis at an early age when a traveling entertainer passed through his area and demonstrated hypnosis. He felt that hypnosis was too powerful a tool to be left to entertainers. He decided to bring this tool into the realm of scientific evaluation as well as into the practice of medicine. Erickson admired the local community doctor and had committed himself to becoming a physician. 

At age 17 he contracted polio which left him with additional lifelong disabilities. Milton’s year of recovery gave him the opportunity to explore the potential of self-healing through hypnosis. He began to recall “body memories” of the muscular activity of his own body before polio. While recovering in bed and unable to speak, he became strongly aware of the significance of nonverbal communication such as body language, tome of voice and the way these non-verbal communications directly contradicted the verbal ones. By concentrating on these memories, he slowly learned to tweak his muscles and to regain control of parts of his body, to the point where he was eventually able to talk and use his arms. Still unable to walk, he decided to further train his body by embarking alone on a thousand-mile canoe trip with only a few dollars. After this grueling adventure he was able to walk with a cane. He continued to use a cane throughout his adult life, requiring a wheelchair only in the last decade of his life.   

After recovering his ability to walk Erickson attended the University of Wisconsin, where he attained graduate degrees in both psychology and medicine. There he embarked on formal studies of hypnosis in the laboratory of Clark Hull. This gave him the opportunity to dive deep into rigorous scientific studies of hypnosis. Specializing in psychiatry, Erickson took a series of positions at state hospitals. This gave him the opportunity to further develop his hypnosis skills working with patients dealing with significant mental health challenges. 

During World War II Erickson conducted physical and mental examinations of soldiers. Eventually the U.S. Intelligence Services asked him to meet with other experts in the field in an effort to better understand the psychological and mental factors involved in communications related to combat. These included Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. 

Erickson’s career spanned more than 50 years. 

Despite almost constant intense physical pain and the progressive loss of mobility Dr. Erickson was prodigiously active. In 1957, he and a number of colleagues founded the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and was the inaugural President. In the 1970’s, restricted to his home by his physical condition, Erickson still conducted teaching seminars for professionals on an almost daily basis and continued seeing some patients. When he died at the age of 78, his seminars were booked through the end of that year and requests exceeded another year’s scheduling. Milton left a written legacy of more than 140 scholarly articles and five books on hypnosis which he co-authored. 

Erickson practiced hypnosis as a tool to access the unconscious mind and tap into the reservoir of resources held within. Erickson taught that the unconscious mind is made up of all of our learnings over a lifetime, many of which we have forgotten, but which serve us in our automatic functioning including its ability to help us solve problems. 

Erickson was known for his unconventional methods of using hypnosis with his patients that included story, metaphor and unconventional tasks to complete. Some of these have been coined as ‘teaching tales,” where he used metaphors and analogies, as well as giving his clients elaborate and involved homework assignments that could seem quite strange. These teaching tales were anecdotes about his own family life or the cases of previous patients that carried with them special meaning for his client’s problem. They usually involved an element of shock or surprise and were designed to provoke an ‘aha’ moment that allowed the client to get outside the normal circularity of their thoughts. Instead of saying ‘I see what’s wrong, this is what you should do,’ Erickson would let the client glean the message from the anecdote, as if they had figured it out on their own. 

Here’s an example from Psychology Classics by Tom Butler-Bowden: 

 “An alcoholic who came to see Erickson seemed a hopeless case. His parents were alcoholic, his grandparents on both sides were drinkers, even his wife and brother were alcoholics. Erickson could have sent the man to AA but given his environment – he worked on newspapers, which he said encouraged a hard drinking lifestyle – he thought he would try something different. Erickson asked the man to go to the local botanical gardens and sit and jut contemplate the cactus plants which ‘could go for three years without water and not die.’ Many years later the client’s daughter contacted Erickson and told him that after the ‘cactus treatment’ both her father and mother had stayed sober. The image of a flourishing cactus needing little ‘drink’ had obviously been a powerful one.” 

Another example of which you can watch in the video below is called the Little Girl who Lied and Lied:  

Known as the father of modern hypnosis and brief therapy, Erickson was a healer, scientist, poet and therapist. 

Resources: 

• An Epic Life: Milton H. Erickson, Professional Perspectives, by Jeffrey Zeig 

• Milton Erickson Foundation: www.erickson-foundation.org 
• My Voice Will Go With You, by Milton Erickson 
• Psychology Classics by Tom Butler-Bowden: 

My hope is that these brief biographies of the career paths of these individuals will inspire you to see some of their journey and characteristics in yourself. www.danmacy.org  To schedule a free 20-minute consultation contact me at 303-819-6178 or danmacy@yahoo.com