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I taught my sons the best way of hoeing a garden. You hoe a square yard at the northeast corner, a square yard at the northwest corner, and then the southeast and then the southwest. Now that you have hoed a square yard at all corners, you hoe a square yard in the center. Then hoe a Iine from the middle to a corner. Now you are making a design of the garden. That is a very interesting way of doing a laborious piece of work. You become so interested in the design that it's a pleasure. Working at a problem of difficulty, you try to make an interesting design in the handling of it. That way you have an answer to the difficult problem. Become interested in the design and don't notice the back-breaking labor. In therapy that is often a very delightful thing to do.
These instructions to a therapist, given, in this case, under hypnosis, could very well lead to a fresh approach to therapy. “Make an interesting design.” Of course we do this in our analytic work, perhaps not so consciously as is prescribed here. Unfortunately we too often become fatigued by “the back-breaking labor.” We may also question whether Erickson's “interesting designs” are of interest or of sufficient value to those of us who are working in a framework of Horney's character analysis, but the basic principle cannot help but be of value to us.
For almost fifty years, Milton H. Erickson has been conducting clinical experiments in hypnosis, and has been reporting the results of his investigations in hundreds of articles mostly published in journals such as the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. While others have gone through phases in which they have been interested in hypnosis and then have gone on to develop their own particular approaches to psychotherapy, Erickson has steadfastly persisted in structuring his own work around the hypnotic model. In doing this, he has developed his own unique approaches to therapy. His results with all kinds of patients, many of whom would be considered to be refracto