The Collected Works of Milton H. Erickson: Volume 04 - Hardcover: Advanced Approaches to Therapeutic Hypnosis

This volume contains some of Erickson’s most brilliant yet controversial papers about utilizing the patient’s classical symptoms of anxiety, confusion, and resistance in psychotherapy and therapeutic hypnosis. Even reading the first paper about Erickson’s “confusion technique in hypnosis” tends to make some readers confused about how this pioneering work is supposed to operate. What are the basic principles of working with the patient’s conflicts, confusion and resistance? Like many pioneers, Erickson tried to explain his thinking as he reported his actual experiences with patients, but one looks in vain for a clear protocol that students can follow to repeat his therapeutic success. The patient’s urgent needs and Erickson’s highly original approaches interact to generate complex therapeutic responses that always seem to be one-of-a-kind situations that defy scientific analysis.

Table of Contents

1. Advanced Approaches to Therapeutic Hypnosis
   • The Confusion Technique in Hypnosis
   • The Dynamics of Visualization, Levitation and Confusion in Trance Induction
   • Another Example of Confusion in Trance Induction
   • An Hypnotic Technique for Resistant Patients: The Patient, the Technique, and Its Rationale and Field Experiments
   • Pantomime Techniques in Hypnosis and the Implications
   • The Interspersal Hypnotic Technique for Symptom Correction and Pain Control
2. Facilitating New Identity Creation
   • Facilitating a New Cosmetic Frame of Reference
   • The Ugly Duckling: Transforming the Self-Image
   • A Shocking Breakout of a Mother Domination
   • Shock and Surprise Facilitating a New Self-Image
   • Correcting an Inferiority Complex
   • The Hypnotherapy of Two Psychosomatic Dental Problems
   • The Identification of a Secure Reality
   • The Hypnotic Corrective Emotional Experience
   • The February Man: Facilitating New Identity in Hypnotherapy: Milton H. Erickson and Ernest L. Rossi
3. Experimental Neurosis
   • A Clinical Note on a Word Association Test
   • A Study of Hypnotically Induced Complexes by Means of the Luria Technique: P. E. Huston, D. Shakow, Milton H. Erickson
   • A Study of an Experimental Neurosis Hypnotically Induced in a Case of Ejaculatio Praecox
   • The Method Employed to Formulate a Complex Story for the Induction of an Experimental Neurosis in an Hypnotic Subject
4. Therapeutic Hypnosis with Psychotics
   • Hypnotherapy with a Psychotic: Milton H. Erickson and Ernest L. Rossi
   • Symptom Prescription for Expanding the Psychotic’s World View: Milton H. Erickson and Jeffrey Zeig
5. Neuroscience Updates
   • The Ideodynamic Action Hypothesis of Therapeutic Suggestion: Creative Replay in the Psychosocial Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis: Ernest L. Rossi
   • Preparing and Motivating Behavior Outside of Awareness: Henk Aarts, Ruud Custers, Hans Marien
   • The Future Orientation of Constructive Memory: An Evolutionary Perspective on Therapeutic Hypnosis and Brief Psychotherapy: Ernest Rossi, Roxanna Erickson-Klein, Kathryn Rossi