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“Speak to the wall so the door my hear.” The classically indirect method of illustration, which the Sufi Masters have summed up in this phrase, can be applied equally well to the writings of William Blake (“That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care”), the parables of the Hassidic rabbis, and to the psychotherapeutic approach of Milton Erickson.
Although some reviewers have been irritated or amused by the deceptive simplicity
of Erickson's cases or by his preference for setting up dramatic conflict situations which can only be resolved by the patient's moving to a higher level of integration, they have failed to understand that Erickson cannot be lightly dismissed as a “foxy grandpa of American hypnotism” (Time Magazine, October 22, 1973). Nor do we need to be content with vague, nonspecific explanations for the apparently “magical” result obtained by Erickson in short-term therapy with a wide variety of different patients — of all age groups and of all levels of sophistication. (Elsa First, [the New York Times, September 23, 1973] feels that Erickson “looks like the Goldwater of therapy” and that the “secret ingredient” in his use of hypnosis “seems to be the mobilization of genuine loving support from both outside and within the patient's psyche.”) Erickson himself has been much more open and specific than most therapists in describing exactly what he does with his patients, including giving us his own thoughts and reasons for using a particular word, for assigning a difficult exercise, or for adopting a certain tone of voice with each patient. In this book Haley quotes about fifty of Erickson's case reports.
In a previous book, Advanced Techniques in Hypnosis and Therapy, edited by Jay Haley, a paper is included in which Erickson outlines, explains, and analyzes word by word exactly what he said to a patient.
In this book Haley attempts to isolate some of the more important features of Erickson's approach and to fit them into the context of f