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Uncommon Therapy UNCOMMON THERAPY THE PSYCHIATRIC TECHNIQUES OF MILTON H. ERICKSON, M.D. JAY HALEY W · W · NORTON & COMPANY · INC · NEW YORK COPYRIGHT © 1973 BY JAY HALEY Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Haley, Jay. Uncommon therapy. 1. Hypnotism-Therapeutic use 2. Family psychotherapy. 3. Erickson, Milton H. I, Title. RC495.H34 616.8'9'00924 72-12924 ISBN 0-393-01100-3 Cloth Edition ISBN 0-393-00846-0 Paper Edition ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published simultaneously in Canada by George J. McLeod Limited, Toronto PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 567890 OCR by Medea Oblongata TO MRS. ELIZABETH ERICKSON MILTON H. ERICKSON CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. STRATEGIC THERAPY II. THE FAMILY LIFE CYCLE III. THE COURTSHIP PERIOD: CHANGING THE YOUNG ADULT IV. CHARACTER REVISION OF THE YOUNG ADULT V. MARRIAGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES VI. CHILDBIRTH AND DEALING WITH THE YOUNG VII. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY DILEMMAS VIII. WEANING PARENTS FROM CHILDREN IX. THE PAIN OF OLD AGE EPILOGUE INTRODUCTION This book is an unusual form of collaboration. My contribution has been the writing of it and the working out of a framework for thinking about the nature of human dilemmas. The contribution of Milton H. Erickson has been his influence on my thinking about that framework and the variety of brilliant therapeutic techniques presented here. Although most of the writing is mine, the case material is drawn from the writings of Dr. Erickson and from tape recordings of conversations with him. This work is actually a joint product of meetings I have had with Dr. Erickson over the last seventeen years. I was given a rare opportunity in January 1953, when I was employed by Gregory Bateson on his research project to study communication. John Weakland also joined the project at that time, and Bateson offered us full freedom to investigate whatever we wished as long as we dealt somehow with the paradoxes that arise in the communicative process. That first year Milton H. Erickson passed through our area offering one of his weekend seminars in hypnosis. I said I would like to attend, and Bateson arranged it. He had known Dr. Erickson from an earlier period when, with Margaret Mead, he had consulted him about trance films they had made in Bali. After that seminar my research investigation included the communicative aspects of the hypnotic relationship. John Weakland joined me in this endeavor, and we began to make regular visits to Phoenix, where Dr. Erickson was in private practice. We spent many hours talking with him about the nature of hypnosis and watching him work with subjects. On the road teaching and consulting somewhere in the country several times a month, he was also conducting a busy private practice. Despite his two attacks of polio and his need to walk awkwardly with a cane, he was vigorous and in good health. His office was in his home, a small room just off the dining room, and his living room was his waiting room. Several of his eight children were still small and at home in the 1950s, and so his patients mingled with his family. His home was a modest brick house on a quiet street, and I often wondered what patients from various parts of the country, who expected a leading psychiatrist to have a more pretentious office, must have thought. After we had studied the hypnosis of Dr. Erickson for a time, our interest shifted to his style of therapy. In the mid-1950s, I began a private practice of psychotherapy, specializing in brief treatment. My task was to get someone over his problem as rapidly as possible, usually using hypnosis. I soon realized that merely hypnotizing people did not cure them; I must do something to bring about change. I sought a consultant in brief-treatment methods, and in those days of long-term, insight therapy there was no one available. Don D. Jackson, who had been supervising the therapy we were doing with schizophrenics in our research project, could be helpful, but his experience with brief therapy was limited. As I cast around for someone to advise me, I found that the only person I knew with special experience in short-term therapy was Dr. Erickson. From our talks on hypnosis, I knew he had a special style of therapy that sometimes involved hypnosis and sometimes did not. I began to visit him to discuss problems about the cases I was treating. It soon became obvious to me that he had an original style of therapy that had never been adequately presented in the field. I attempted to describe his approach in an article on brief therapy, which was later incorporated as a chapter in Strategies of Psychotherapy (Jay Haley, New York: Grune & Stratton, 1963). Over the years I was tempted to present his approach more fully in book form. I hesitated because of the formidable labor of such a work and also because I did not have an appropriate theoretical framework for thinking about and presenting his methods of therapy. Our research project at that time was investigating a variety of forms of therapy, and we were recording and filming different practitioners. Yet Dr. Erickson stood out as a unique school in himself, and the usual premises of psychiatry and psychology were not adequate to describe him. During this period a revolution occurred in the field of therapy, with the introduction of the idea of a family orientation. What were once called symptoms, or individual problems, began to he redefined as products of personal relationships. As we explored the newly developing field of family therapy in our research, and as I began to treat couples and families, I found that Dr. Erickson's approach to treatment was especially revealing. It began to seem possible to place his therapy within a framework of family theory. His family orientation was implicit in his work, and talking with him and examining his cases helped me toward a new view of the family as a center of human dilemmas. When I began to think of human problems as inevitable in the way a family develops over time, I realized that Dr. Erickson's therapy was largely based upon that assumption. I had found the framework for describing his work. The reader of some of these extraordinary cases who is unfamiliar with Dr. Erickson and who might want to know more about him will find in Advanced Techniques of Hypnosis and Therapy: The Selected Papers of Milton B. Erickson, MD. Jay Haley, ed.,(New York; Crone & Stratton, 1967) Dr. Erickson's collected papers, an introduction giving biographical information about him, as well as an appendix offering a general discussion of his work. There is also in that book a complete bibliography of his writings for those who wish to pursue their interest further. But a few words about Dr. Erickson's professional background may be useful. He attended the University of Wisconsin and received his medical degree at the Colorado General Hospital, simultaneously receiving his master's degree in psychology. After completing special training at the Colorado Psychopathic Hospital, he became a junior psychiatrist at Rhode Island State Hospital. In 1930 he joined the staff of the Worcester (Massachusetts) State Hospital and became chief psychiatrist of the Research Service. Four years later he went to Eloise, Michigan, as director of psychiatric research and training at Wayne County General Hospital and Infirmary. He was also associate professor of psychiatry at the Wayne State University College of Medicine and professor in the graduate school. Concurrently, he was briefly a visiting professor of clinical psychology at Michigan State University, in East Lansing. In 1948 he settled in Phoenix, Arizona, largely for his health, and entered private practice. He is a Fellow of both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, as well as a Fellow of the American Psychopathological Association. In addition to being an honorary member of numerous societies of medical hypnosis in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, he was the founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis as well as editor of that society's professional journal. His professional life since 1950 has included both a busy private practice in Phoenix and constant traveling to offer seminars and lectures throughout the United States and in many foreign countries. Despite the collaboration in the ideas presented here, the point of view generally expressed in this work is not necessarily that of Dr. Erickson. It is my own way of describing his approach to therapy. He has read and approved of the manuscript, but his own view of his therapy is expressed in his own writings. The case reports I have included are in his words, many of them taken from his articles, but they are edited to emphasize the points I wish to make. I have taken his cases and adapted them to a framework that makes sense to me and perhaps to him. This work is only a partial portrait of Erickson's therapy. He has written over a hundred professional articles, and I have had over a hundred recorded hours of conversation with him. This selection of his cases represents only a portion of that vast amount of data on his work. He has a great range of hypnotic techniques that have not been included here, as well as a variety of approaches to individuals and families that have not been explored. This work also does not offer a critical review of Dr. Erickson and his work. I have not emphasized my disagreements with him but have emphasized as clearly as I could his ideas about what therapy should be.
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