The Collected Works of Milton H. Erickson: Volume 10 - Hardcover: Hypnotic Realities: The Induction of Clinical Hypnosis and Forms of Indirect Suggestion

Includes the updating essay—“What is a Suggestion? The Neuroscience of Implicit Processing Heuristics in Therapeutic Hypnosis and Psychotherapy” By Ernest L. Rossi and Kathryn L. Rossi

“For the many who never had the opportunity and never will have the opportunity to attend workshops led by Milton Erickson, this work will serve as an invaluable surrogate. Psychotherapists, in general, as well as hypnotherapists, will find the work rewarding reading and study, for Erickson is above all a psychotherapist, and his modus operandi transcends clinical hypnotism. As for academicians and researchers, I believe they will find enough food for thought and research here to keep them busy for some time to come.” —Andre M. Weitzenhoffer

Table of Contents

1. A Conversational Induction: The Early Learning Set
   • Observation and Erickson’s Basic Approach
   • The Conscious and Unconscious in Clinical Hypnosis
   • The Utilization Theory of Hypnotic Suggestion
   • Truisms utilizing Mental Mechanisms
   • Truisms Utilizing Time
   • Not Doing, Not Knowing
2. Indirect Induction by Recapitulation
   • The “Yes Set”
   • Psychological Implication
     • The Bind and Double Bind Question
     • The Time Bind an Double Bind
     • The Conscious-Unconscious Double Bind
     • The Double-Dissociation Double Bind
     • A General Hypothesis About Evoking Hypnotic Phenomena
     • Reverse Set Double Bind
     • The Non Sequitur Double Bind
     • Contrasting the Therapeutic and Schizogenic Double Bind
     • Unconscious and Metacommunication
     • Open-Ended Suggestion
   • Suggestions Covering All Possibilities of a Class of Responses
   • Ideomotor Signaling
3. The Handshake Induction
   • Confusion in the Dynamics of Trance Induction
   • Dynamics of the Handshake Induction
     • The Handshake Induction
   • Compound Suggestions
     • The Paradigms of Acceptance Set, Reinforcement, or Symbolic Logic
   • Compound Statements
     • The Paradigms of Shock and Creative Moments
   • Contingent Suggestions and Associational Networks
   • Multiple Tasks and Serial Suggestions
4. Mutual Trance Induction
   • The Surprise
   • The Confusion-Restructuring Approach
   • Therapeutic Trance as a State of Active Unconscious Learning
5. Trance Learning By Association
   • The Implied Directive
   • Questions that Focus, Suggest and Reinforce
   • Questions for Indirect Trance Induction
   • The Fragmentary Development of Trance
   • Depotentiating Conscious Mental Sets: Confusion, Mental Flux, and Creativity
6. Facilitating Hypnotic Learning
   • Displacing and Discharging Resistance
   • Multiple Levels of Communication: Analogy, Puns, Metaphor, Jokes, Folk Language
   • The Microdynamics of Suggestion
7. Indirectly Conditioned Eye Closure Induction
   • Trance Training and Utilization
   • The Dynamics of Indirect and Direct Suggestion
   • Indirect Conditioning of Trance
   • Voice Dynamics in Trance
   • Intercontextual Cues and Suggestions
   • Right- and Left-Hemispheric Functioning in Trance
8. Infinite Patterns of Learning: A Two-Year Follow-Up
   • Infinite Possibilities of Creativity, Healing, and Learning
9. Summary
   • The Nature of Therapeutic Trance
     • Trance Viewed as Inner Directed States
     • Trance Viewed as a Highly Motivated State
     • Trance Viewed as Active Unconscious Learning
     • Trance Viewed as an Altered State of Functioning
     • The Subjective Experience of Trance
   • Clinical Approaches to Hypnotic Induction
     • Orientation to Hypnotic Induction
     • Approaches to Hypnotic Induction
     • Depotentiating Habitual Frames of Reference
     • Indicators of Trance Development
     • Ratifying Trance
   • The Forms of Hypnotic Suggestion
     • The Nature of Hypnotic Suggestion
     • Indirect Approaches to Hypnotic Suggestion
   • Structuring an Acceptance Set
   • Utilizing the Patient’s Associative Structure and Mental Skills
     • The Facilitation of Human Potentials
10. What is a Suggestion? The Neuroscience of Implicit Processing Heuristics in Therapeutic Hypnosis and Psychotherapy